‘D-DAY is almost here – this is your chance to save this city.
At 12.30pm tomorrow, a massive gathering will come together at The Cross to say “no” to Boundary Commission proposals to “rip the heart” out of Gloucester.’
Three queries about this story in today’s paper. First, what does the ‘D’ in ‘D-Day’ stand for. Day? Debacle? No shortage of those in TiG. Maybe it should have been ‘B-Day’?
Secondly, ‘chance to save this city’? There’s been no shortage of readers, those that still visit the website anyway, who have pointed out that the ‘city’ is in no danger. Hypotenuse, much? There wasn’t all this fuss about Longlevens being transferred to the Tewkesbury constituency, and likewise, I’m pretty sure it continued to be served by Gloucester City Council. IIRC, Churchdown and Brockworth also belong to Tewkesbury. Or maybe Cheltenham? Something that appears to make little sense, but still didn’t inspire a march,anyway.
Thirdly, TiG is predicting a ‘massive gathering’? More than predicting, actually stating that it will happen, despite the failure of their purple prose on the subject to instill a fervour in the hearts of readers. I would have been half tempted to go into town to watch this spectacle tomorrow, but I’m afraid that I might be counted as part of the ‘massive gathering’, so I probably won’t now.
Perhaps the Citizen should ask their readers if they can think of a way to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 without some constituents getting a different MP? I wonder if some of TiG’s sister papers are running ‘Save Our MP’ campaigns?
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The proposal to move Wesgate ward to the Forest constituency may have been inspired by political mischief on the part of Lewis Baston, but alternative proposals haven’t demonstrated that there is a better alternative that involves Gloucester. If the Forest needs more voters, can’t they take a chunk out of Tewkesbury, instead of Gloucester, which seems to have just the right number at the moment?
Whatever proposal is accepted, it doesn’t seem like an urgent matter, since no seat will be abolished as a consequence. Is anyone getting such a great service from one Tory MP in Gloucester that they fear what they might receive from a Tory MP in the Forest?
November 5, 2011 at 2:05 pm
This is a reply I left, or tried to, on Barry Kirby’s blog, on the same subject. I created it as a draft on my own blog, so I could ensure that the links were nice and tidy before sending. Maybe the filter won’t let more than basic urls through. I’m going to try it here, then maybe put it up as a small blog entry in its own right, and post the link on Barry’s blog…
The reason I discovered all the stuff I mentioned above, far from local councillors or council employees taking the trouble to inform residents, is that I was looking for the date of the last boundary revision. It turns out to have been 2001. I’ve now found the literature, by the fairly simple expedient of Googling ‘Gloucester boundary changes 2001′. It’s literally illustrative, to compare the map before the changes, Map 1, to the final recomendations, Map 2.
But the kicker is this. Because of the way the words were shoved around in 2001, I thought I might be able to determine that the ‘crown jewels’ didn’t used to be in Westgate Ward, that they might have been in the old Eastgate Ward, and that if the boundary commission hadn’t changed things around, Westage could have been moved without the Cathedral, etc., being involved. I was wrong to think that. Westgate didn’t change all that much. What was interesting, though, was paragraph 58 of the Draft recommendations on the future electoral arrangements for the City of Gloucester, which dismissed a proposal by the Liberal Democrats for Westgate to be divided into two wards, Seven Ward and Cathedral Ward: ‘However, given the high levels of electoral imbalance in its proposed Cathedral and Severn wards by 2005 we are proposing that these two wards be combined to form a revised two-member Westgate ward.’ Maybe the commission was right, but if they’d followed the suggestion, it would be ‘Severn Ward’ which would be going to the Forest now.
That’s a fairly inconsequential point, though. The ultimate kicker is that people are making such a big deal about not ‘splitting wards’, when, as mentioned above, they are currently in the process of changing ward boundaries again. Not that many people will know this, if they are relying on TiG to tell them, but if both sets of boundaries are up for revision at the same time, how hard would it be to work something out? The GCLP have already demonstrated that the commission aren’t bothered about natural boundaries unless someone points out potential problems, so they could easily shift the cathedral into Barton & Tredworth (!), or Kingsholm & Wotton.
It’s an omelette, any way you slice it, but that doesn’t mean piling on more ketchup will make it any more appealing…
November 6, 2011 at 11:59 am
And this is the main page for the 2011 Gloucestershire council ward reviews:
http://www.lgbce.org.uk/all-reviews/south-west/gloucestershire/gloucestershire-single-member-ward-review
November 7, 2011 at 10:39 am
I see in the latest episode of this bonkers tale that councillor Andy Lewis is asking, “How can 2,000 years of Gloucester’s history be ignored like this?”
Leaving aside that Gloucester has had a constituency for barely more than 700 years, it seems to me that we’ve been ignoring certain other aspects of Gloucester’s history, in favour of the Siege…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
Yes, it’s Wiki, but will anyone argue that it isn’t fact?
Interesting to note that, prior to 1885, Gloucester did have two MPs, though it may not have been spit into North and South Gloucester. Perhaps local politicians don’t want to revisit that period…
November 7, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Hi Joe,
I will try and put this on my blog too, Im not sure why it didn’t go on when you put it in the first place, at the most it may have held it for the number of links, but its not in my moderations queue either.
Cheers
Barry
November 7, 2011 at 1:01 pm
Ta, Barry. It did say, when I tried a second time, that I had already posted that comment, so I’m not sure what was up.
The march drew around 200 people then. Not quite the ‘massive gathering’, I think, probably not a patch on the Gaza march nearly two years back, which didn’t accomplish much either. This has been one of TiG’s more notable molehills…