UK Politics Thread XII: The Lockdown

[Grimmsland]

The ravens are straying from the Tower of London, which portents the fall of the crown and UK.

“Never in a raven’s history have we seen fewer people in the Tower of London. Even in world war two, there were still hundreds in and around.” - Wow.

This is a cool photo.

[Vassenor]

The ravens are straying from the Tower of London, which portents the fall of the crown and UK.

“Never in a raven’s history have we seen fewer people in the Tower of London. Even in world war two, there were still hundreds in and around.” - Wow.

This is a cool photo.

Yes but that's because during the war we shoved all the captured spies there.

[Celritannia]

This map by the Lib Dems for STV constituencies is sexy.
I just wish it listed the number of seats each area would get.

This one is also similar, including a linked Google Doc spread sheet on the numbers of each constituencies as the top comment.

Although, compared to the Lib-Dem map, the second map shows some constituencies that have been merged which I disagree with.

One I will mention since I live in West Yorkshire is Kirklees and Calderdale. The second map shows a joint Kirklees-Calderdale Constituency with a total of 6 MPS.
Neither of them should be merged as the former is more urban and the latter more rural.
As a reference, the current constituencies in Kirklees have a combined total of 4 MPS, while Calderdale has 3.

With this in mind, it would make more sense to keep the 2 separate, as the Lib-Dem map has done.

[The New California Republic]

This map by the Lib Dems for STV constituencies is sexy.
I just wish it listed the numer odf seats each area would get.

My eyes went to Scotland at first, and saw that the yellowish areas, which I tend to interpret as SNP whenever I see it on constituency maps, were very few indeed. But then my heart sank, as I noticed that there were also yellow areas in England, Wales, and NI; meaning that it couldn't possibly mean SNP.

But what do the colours actually mean? There is no key on the map for those colours. Am I missing something really obvious?

EDIT: Is it constituencies that are being merged under that proposed STV plan?

[Celritannia]

This map by the Lib Dems for STV constituencies is sexy.
I just wish it listed the numer odf seats each area would get.

My eyes went to Scotland at first, and saw that the yellowish areas, which I tend to interpret as SNP whenever I see it on constituency maps, were very few indeed. But then my heart sank, as I noticed that there were also yellow areas in England, Wales, and NI; meaning that it couldn't possibly mean SNP.

But what do the colours actually mean? There is no key on the map for those colours. Am I missing something really obvious?

EDIT: Is it constituencies that are being merged under that proposed STV plan?

I wish it gave a colour code for the areas. I am assuming they represent the number of MPs to each constituency.
Maybe Arch knows a bit more.

That's what it appears to be, using the established countries, districts and boroughs of the UK.

[Vassenor]

My eyes went to Scotland at first, and saw that the yellowish areas, which I tend to interpret as SNP whenever I see it on constituency maps, were very few indeed. But then my heart sank, as I noticed that there were also yellow areas in England, Wales, and NI; meaning that it couldn't possibly mean SNP.

But what do the colours actually mean? There is no key on the map for those colours. Am I missing something really obvious?

EDIT: Is it constituencies that are being merged under that proposed STV plan?

I wish it gave a colour code for the areas. I am assuming they represent the number of MPs to each constituency.
Maybe Arch knows a bit more.

That's what it appears to be, using the established countries, districts and boroughs of the UK.

I just wish they'd picked a less eye-searing shade of magenta.

[The New California Republic]

I wish it gave a colour code for the areas. I am assuming they represent the number of MPs to each constituency.
Maybe Arch knows a bit more.

That's what it appears to be, using the established countries, districts and boroughs of the UK.

It's actually quite a bad map that needs more explanation than they figured that it needed.

I just wish they'd picked a less eye-searing shade of magenta.

I was wondering why I have been needing to wear my sunglasses more often as of late, perhaps it is because my area has turned neon pink without my noticing.

[Fartsniffage]

I was wondering why I have been needing to wear my sunglasses more often as of late, perhaps it is because my area has turned neon pink without my noticing.

Oddly enough, you can't actually see pink. It's an impossible colour. Your brain just makes it up when it can't figure out what the fuck is going on.

[Philjia]

Nick Gibb, the minister for School Standards, is dropping his boss Gavin Williamson in the shit by saying that the former director general of the Department for Education warned the secretary of state about problems with the system in July.

[Celritannia]

Nick Gibb, the minister for School Standards, is dropping his boss Gavin Williamson in the shit by saying that the former director general of the Department for Education warned the secretary of state about problems with the system in July.

You mean experts actually predicted this and the Tories didn't heed their warning? Say it isn't so!

[Vassenor]

I was wondering why I have been needing to wear my sunglasses more often as of late, perhaps it is because my area has turned neon pink without my noticing.

Oddly enough, you can't actually see pink. It's an impossible colour. Your brain just makes it up when it can't figure out what the fuck is going on.

That or reality is trying to piss off Anish Kapoor even more.

[The New California Republic]

I was wondering why I have been needing to wear my sunglasses more often as of late, perhaps it is because my area has turned neon pink without my noticing.

Oddly enough, you can't actually see pink. It's an impossible colour. Your brain just makes it up when it can't figure out what the fuck is going on.

There are actually quite a few "colours" of that general area of pink/magenta etc that sear my eyes so badly that it actually causes physical pain. No joke. I present the same colour to other people and they don't have a problem with it.

[Fartsniffage]

Oddly enough, you can't actually see pink. It's an impossible colour. Your brain just makes it up when it can't figure out what the fuck is going on.

There are actually quite a few "colours" of that general area of pink/magenta etc that sear my eyes so badly that it actually causes physical pain. No joke. I present the same colour to other people and they don't have a problem with it.

Then apparently your brain refuses to see a combination of red and purple without hurting you. You would have sucked at being a little girl.

[The New California Republic]

There are actually quite a few "colours" of that general area of pink/magenta etc that sear my eyes so badly that it actually causes physical pain. No joke. I present the same colour to other people and they don't have a problem with it.

Then apparently your brain refuses to see a combination of red and purple without hurting you. You would have sucked at being a little girl.

Yeah I dunno if it might actually be a psychosomatic response, perhaps I associate those colours with a painful memory that I have repressed or whatever; but I'm leaning more towards it actually being physical in nature as it makes my eyes genuinely hurt.

Thankfully there aren't any political parties in the UK whose primary colour has that effect on me, because at least in that regard they are sensible. But then again I bet there is some obscure single-issue party out there that does use such a colour.

[Salandriagado]

Then apparently your brain refuses to see a combination of red and purple without hurting you. You would have sucked at being a little girl.

Yeah I dunno if it might actually be a psychosomatic response, perhaps I associate those colours with a painful memory that I have repressed or whatever; but I'm leaning more towards it actually being physical in nature as it makes my eyes genuinely hurt.

Thankfully there aren't any political parties in the UK whose primary colour has that effect on me, because at least in that regard they are sensible. But then again I bet there is some obscure single-issue party out there that does use such a colour.

Wikipedia has a handy colour-coded list. Advance Together seems like the closest to me?

[The New California Republic]

Yeah I dunno if it might actually be a psychosomatic response, perhaps I associate those colours with a painful memory that I have repressed or whatever; but I'm leaning more towards it actually being physical in nature as it makes my eyes genuinely hurt.

Thankfully there aren't any political parties in the UK whose primary colour has that effect on me, because at least in that regard they are sensible. But then again I bet there is some obscure single-issue party out there that does use such a colour.

Wikipedia has a handy colour-coded list. Advance Together seems like the closest to me?

mm it's on the cusp of it, but not quite hurting the old peepers.

[The Archregimancy]

This map by the Lib Dems for STV constituencies is sexy.
I just wish it listed the numer odf seats each area would get.

This one is also similar, including a linked Google Doc spread sheet on the numbers of each constituencies as the top comment.

Although, compared to the Lib-Dem map, the second map shows some constituencies that have been merged which I disagree with.

A couple of quick points:

It's not a formal LibDem map. It's a map by the Liberal Democrats for Electoral Reform, or LDER - so a campaigning group of LibDem members, and one that represents a cause dear to LibDem hearts, but not formal LibDem policy. While the analogy's imperfect, you might think of the LDER as a LibDem electoral reform version of the ERG within the Conservative Party; they represent an issue that's important to the party, campaign strongly for that issue, and there's no doubt that they have a strong influence on party policy - but they do not set party policy, and their documents do not represent formal party policy.

All of that said... I thought the map was fairly straightforward myself, but perhaps that's because I'm more engaged with LibDem thinking. Urban seats get 4-6 members, rural seats get 3-5 members; the Western Isles and Orkney & Shetland continue to get single members (so that's one guaranteed LibDem seat - though also a guaranteed SNP seat). Colours on the map represent the boundaries of the proposed constituencies. So in Scotland, the three Ayrshire districts become a single STV constituency, while Fife is a single constituency

For a clearer map containing the full list of seats by constituency, you simply click on this link, which contains both the map and the full schedule (including the list of the local authorities forming each proposed constituency):

https://lder.org/wp-content/uploads/201 ... dule-1.pdf

For those of you desperately interested in the technicalities of seat apportioning, also available via this link:

For simplicity, this scheme keeps the existing numbers of MPs from each of the UK’s four
nations, with overall total 650, only changing the way in which they are elected. Constituencies
are based entirely on Local Authority (LA) boundaries, electing mostly 3 to 5 MPs in rural
areas and 4 to 6 in urban areas, with a few exceptions dictated by electoral numbers and
geography

Once boundaries have been chosen, and a target quota of electors per seat fixed,
the entitlement of each constituency can be calculated; this is then rounded up or down to
a whole number, with the cutoff chosen to minimise the proportional discrepancy between
entitlement and allocation

The target quota is chosen so as to give the desired overall total
of seats (533, 59, 40, 18 for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland respectively).
Some typical constitutencies, with numbers of seats in brackets,are as follows: Bristol (4),
Liverpool (4), Glasgow (6), Falkirk & West Lothian (4), Cornwall & Scilly (6), Lewisham &
Greenwich (5), Yorkshire East (East Riding and Hull) (6), Bedford and Milton Keynes (4),
West Glamorgan (Swansea and Neath Port Talbot) (5), Northern Ireland West (Fermanagh
and Omagh, Derry and Strabane, and Mid Ulster) (4). Only one LA, Birmingham with an
entitlement of 10 seats, has to be split. Almost all the amalgamations fit with traditional
county boundaries; only three cross county council boundaries.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the rule of not dividing LAs, so that for example a constituency
with entitlement 3.51 gets rounded up to an allocation of 4 seats, the overall variability of
electors per seat, ±6%, is less than that of the current FPTP system, which was 7% when it
was introduced in 2007 and has since drifted out to nearly 10%. In contrast, the variability
of the STV system does not drift over time, because it can be updated very easily each year,
adjusting the number of seats in a constituency rather than changing boundaries; data for
England 2003-19 show that none of the proposed boundaries would have had to be changed
over that period, with the single exception of Leeds, whose entitlement has varied between 7
and 8; about a quarter of constituencies would have seen their entitlement go up or down during
the period. This stability in constituency boundaries, and their close fit to the structure of local
government, are major additional attractions to both voters and representatives, quite apart
from the basic motives of fairness, voter choice and proportionality underlying the scheme.

[The Archregimancy]

The ravens are straying from the Tower of London, which portents the fall of the crown and UK.

I am reliably informed by colleagues at Historic Royal Palaces (which runs the Tower) that the Ravenmaster clips the wings to stop them from straying too far.

They're no longer fully clipped - for decades the ravens were incapable of more than a big hop - but it would be difficult for them to completely escape.

[Dumb Ideologies]

Daily reminder that proportional representation doesn't really help and is PR in more ways than one. If replaces one form of distortion with another, gives small parties disproprortionate bargaining power as permanent kingmakers, makes manifestos even more useless bunkum, and doesn't address the problem that it's inherently illegitimate for a government to enact policies that lead to its poor being deprived of the basic needs to shelter, food, jobs and healthcare - regardless of whether people have chosen to prioritise their own less critical needs and elect a party who want to enact such policies.

I don't have a very high opinion of policy wonks who think that constitutional flimflam and how you produce parliamentary majorities are major priorities in current year. We know that the Lib Dems will happily ally with the Tories for the faintest non-guaranteed chance of a little tweak, I hope they all print off their stupid useless maps and gets lots of nasty papercuts.

[The Blaatschapen]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... um-seekers

Better start patrolling the waves. No take backsies.

[Dumb Ideologies]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/20/eu-rejects-british-plan-for-post-brexit-return-of-asylum-seekers

Better start patrolling the waves. No take backsies.

I've just got off the phone with a lovely Greek chap. He's advised that illegal migrants in the sea are actually the responsibility of Poseidon. We'll have to convert to Hellenism to carry this off, but since C of E Anglo-Jesus didn't stop a Tory Brexit maybe we can do better. Rather than spending that £350m extra a week on the NHS it might be better to use it to loan Scylla and Charybdis until this all blows over.

[The Archregimancy]

I don't have a very high opinion of policy wonks who think that constitutional flimflam and how you produce parliamentary majorities are major priorities in current year.

Fortunately, then, there is no need for you to have a lower opinion of the party than you already do; implementation of STV is not a priority for the party 'in [the] current year'. Neither Ed Davey nor Layla Moran are pushing electoral reform in their leadership campaigns; I couldn't find a mention of electoral reform on either candidate website. Most LibDems realise that it's - rightly - fairly far down the list of anyone's priorities at present.

I don't know how Celritannia found the link, but it's a not a new map that's been magically conjured up to guide policy in the plague year of 2020. The current version was put together in September 2019 as a hypothetical discussion point by a subset of LibDem supporters (that you have to pay a separate membership fee to join - and which I'm not a member of), and in a very, very different political climate.

[The New California Republic]

All of that said... I thought the map was fairly straightforward myself, but perhaps that's because I'm more engaged with LibDem thinking. Urban seats get 4-6 members, rural seats get 3-5 members; the Western Isles and Orkney & Shetland continue to get single members (so that's one guaranteed LibDem seat - though also a guaranteed SNP seat). Colours on the map represent the boundaries of the proposed constituencies. So in Scotland, the three Ayrshire districts become a single STV constituency, while Fife is a single constituency

For a clearer map containing the full list of seats by constituency, you simply click on this link, which contains both the map and the full schedule (including the list of the local authorities forming each proposed constituency):

https://lder.org/wp-content/uploads/201 ... dule-1.pdf

Thanks for the link. I don't know if it'd change the results in Fife terribly much taken as a whole, might be SNP getting the lion's share of the four because of Glenrothes and southwards generally trending in that direction, while north of that fictional line has been volatile, between Lib Dem and SNP.

But at least any transition to STV would be slightly easier for Scottish voters since we already use it in local council elections, so barring those people who just vote in general elections and not local elections then the voters should know what it is all about.

[The Huskar Social Union]

This map by the Lib Dems for STV constituencies is sexy.
I just wish it listed the numer odf seats each area would get.

This one is also similar, including a linked Google Doc spread sheet on the numbers of each constituencies as the top comment.

Although, compared to the Lib-Dem map, the second map shows some constituencies that have been merged which I disagree with.

One I will mention since I live in West Yorkshire is Kirklees and Calderdale. The second map shows a joint Kirklees-Calderdale Constituency with a total of 6 MPS.
Neither of them should be merged as the former is more urban and the latter more rural.
As a reference, the current constituencies in Kirklees have a combined total of 4 MPS, while Calderdale has 3.

With this in mind, it would make more sense to keep the 2 separate, as the Lib-Dem map has done.

Yeah STV! Woo! Woo! Woo!

[The Blaatschapen]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/aug/20/eu-rejects-british-plan-for-post-brexit-return-of-asylum-seekers

Better start patrolling the waves. No take backsies.

I've just got off the phone with a lovely Greek chap. He's advised that illegal migrants in the sea are actually the responsibility of Poseidon. We'll have to convert to Hellenism to carry this off, but since C of E Anglo-Jesus didn't stop a Tory Brexit maybe we can do better. Rather than spending that £350m extra a week on the NHS it might be better to use it to loan Scylla and Charybdis until this all blows over.

Tio bad that Nessie is a fresh (well, as fresh as a Scottish bog can be) water creature. Otherwise she could help.