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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Sept 25, 2016 17:22:02 GMT
I've been thinking about how to prepare submissions and considering what objective measurements I can use to demonstrate that my proposals are superior to the commission's. Obviously it's not possible to do this with some things like community ties and in other cases (e. g. splits of towns) you don't need to measure, because it either happens or it doesn't. And I'm aware that the BCE already takes into consideration the number of electors moving from one constituency to another.
But I think it's relevant to consider a) the number of local authorities each seat covers, and to sum these up and b) the number of seats taking in parts of a given local authority, and to sum this up. In addition, I've been comparing how many orphan wards different plans create. I think these measurements may be useful for showing when a plan has better respect for local authority boundaries, even if it moves more electors.
Does anybody else have any such measurements they're intending on using, or any opinion as to whether they should be marked on a sliding scale (e. g. extra penalties for salami-slicing an authority, or creating a seat that draws from more than three local authorities)?
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Sept 25, 2016 17:39:29 GMT
I've been thinking about some of these issues today in relation to the submission I intend to make for Hertfordshire. I have some problems here because my arguments in relation to Broxbourne and Welwyn Hatfield are based on avoiding the proposed creation of two orphan wards in Broxbourne from two different districts and unnecessarily taking WH outside the district boundaries. My plan envisages moving three East Herts wards into Broxbourne and removing the WH ward so it contains parts of two boroughs rather than three and no orphan wards. However I will then go on to argue (or will already have done so, depending on the order I present the seats) to add an orphan ward from Dacorum to the Hitchin & Harpenden seat, thus making that a three borough seat with an orphan ward to boot. I can argue that this is a necessary evil whereas the BC's proposals in Broxbourne represent an unnecessary evil, but it may not be entirely convincing to argue about such things in relation to one seat then do the opposite elsewhere (not least when H&H is one of the few seats where they propose no change at all)
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Post by lennon on Sept 26, 2016 8:47:05 GMT
Thinking about these it occurred to me that whilst we all talk about 'orphan' wards as being a bad thing - the real issue isn't a lone ward, but a small number of electors from one LA district. In some areas it could easily be the case that 2 or 3 wards combined only have the same number of electors as a single Sheffield or Birmingham ward - should they still count as 'orphan' even if there are technically more than 1 of them? I am thinking instead of categorising "Orphan" Electors, where less than 15% of the Electorate of the seat is from a single Local Authority. I suspect that realistically it makes very little difference except in a couple of places, but seems to be more 'rigorous' to my logical mind in terms of a reason why it is an issue to be avoided. Thoughts and comments?
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islington
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Post by islington on Sept 26, 2016 10:29:47 GMT
Lennon -
I completely agree and have responded in the 'Policy Issues' thread.
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Adrian
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Post by Adrian on Sept 26, 2016 13:16:53 GMT
I've been thinking about how to prepare submissions and considering what objective measurements I can use to demonstrate that my proposals are superior to the commission's. Obviously it's not possible to do this with some things like community ties and in other cases (e. g. splits of towns) you don't need to measure, because it either happens or it doesn't. And I'm aware that the BCE already takes into consideration the number of electors moving from one constituency to another. But I think it's relevant to consider a) the number of local authorities each seat covers, and to sum these up and b) the number of seats taking in parts of a given local authority, and to sum this up. In addition, I've been comparing how many orphan wards different plans create. I think these measurements may be useful for showing when a plan has better respect for local authority boundaries, even if it moves more electors. Does anybody else have any such measurements they're intending on using, or any opinion as to whether they should be marked on a sliding scale (e. g. extra penalties for salami-slicing an authority, or creating a seat that draws from more than three local authorities)? It's possible to calculate how much seats vary from current seats and from LA districts. This can either be done by area or by % of boundary. Some things are beyond my statistical knowhow and/or the amount of time available. One has to bear in mind that most people tend to go on the "feel" of things anyway, rather than data crunching. You say that you don't need to measure town splits because they either happen or they don't, but it rather depends on how you define each town, and how lenient you are with the boundaries. Examples that spring to mind are Preston and Bradford. Does Preston include Fulwood? Lea? Nog Tow? The whole city? In Bradford, should I count the Windhill & Wrose ward as part of Shipley, or as split between Bradford and Shipley?
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Sept 26, 2016 15:03:17 GMT
I think there are orphan wards and there are orphan wards. Clearly when an LA is around about the right size for an integer number of seats but there's one ward too few or too many, an orphan ward may be appropriate (and if they're small wards, I don't see that having one small ward is very much worse than having two small wards - it may even be better if the second ward has little to do with the seat's primary centre.) It's not even always bad to have small sections from several neighbouring authorities - I don't think those portions of the Stevenage constituency suffer on that account, in fact they get even more attention because any Tory candidate needs to love-bomb them to build up a decent margin there and any Labour candidate needs to limit the damage. The issue arises when the LA is nowhere near the right size for an integer number of seats and there's nothing about the ward that's liable to ensure it any sufficient amount of notice. Obviously this is too contextual to be usefully measured, but to me the question is whether a broad measurement still produces enough useful data to be worthwhile. I've been thinking about how to prepare submissions and considering what objective measurements I can use to demonstrate that my proposals are superior to the commission's. Obviously it's not possible to do this with some things like community ties and in other cases (e. g. splits of towns) you don't need to measure, because it either happens or it doesn't. And I'm aware that the BCE already takes into consideration the number of electors moving from one constituency to another. But I think it's relevant to consider a) the number of local authorities each seat covers, and to sum these up and b) the number of seats taking in parts of a given local authority, and to sum this up. In addition, I've been comparing how many orphan wards different plans create. I think these measurements may be useful for showing when a plan has better respect for local authority boundaries, even if it moves more electors. Does anybody else have any such measurements they're intending on using, or any opinion as to whether they should be marked on a sliding scale (e. g. extra penalties for salami-slicing an authority, or creating a seat that draws from more than three local authorities)? It's possible to calculate how much seats vary from current seats and from LA districts. This can either be done by area or by % of boundary. Some things are beyond my statistical knowhow and/or the amount of time available. One has to bear in mind that most people tend to go on the "feel" of things anyway, rather than data crunching. You say that you don't need to measure town splits because they either happen or they don't, but it rather depends on how you define each town, and how lenient you are with the boundaries. Examples that spring to mind are Preston and Bradford. Does Preston include Fulwood? Lea? Nog Tow? The whole city? In Bradford, should I count the Windhill & Wrose ward as part of Shipley, or as split between Bradford and Shipley? In those cases, I don't think it's objectively possible to say where the town's limits are - different people will have different definitions. The best thing you can do is refer to long-vanished urban districts, which doesn't really tell you anything more than where the town's limits were considered to be half a century ago.
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