Alan's Green Thoughts

Readers, as we come to the end of the year 2016 AD, we also come to an end of another chapter in the history of humanity: The Information Age. Above all else, and amidst all the ideologies humanity has been through since 1980, especially 'neoliberal economics', progress in computer technology and electronics has changed our history forever. Back in 1980, mobile phones simply did not exist and personal computers were still largely being invented even though the first one, the Altair, had gone on sale as far back as 1975, and social media had not even been conceived. Now in 2016, we have many social media outlets, with Facebook and Twitter being the most dominant and seen as essential by most of my young generation, mobile phones in ubiquitous use and with easy internet access, default online communication and access for a majority of services, electronic application forms, and with electronic payments becoming the norm rather than the exception (cash is still useful for ...

Readers, Jamie Reed, Labour MP for Copeland since 2005, has recently resigned in order to get a new job as Head of Development with the Sellafield nuclear power plant, which provides substantial employment in rural Cumbria. This means a by-election will take place in the Copeland constituency sometime in early 2017 (date TBC). Copeland, called Whitehaven from 1832 to 1983 (Whitehaven is in fact still the clear focal point for this constituency, and little real change has happened to this constituency's boundaries since 1918) has been Labour-held since 1935 like many safe northern Labour seats, but the Conservatives do often make a strong challenge in their strongest years, reducing the Labour majority to as low as 4.3% in 1983 and 1987, and to just 6.5% in 2015 partly due to UKIP's intervention, which actually damaged both the Labour and Conservative votes. This is also strictly a Labour vs. Conservative contest, since the Liberal Democrats and their predecessors have never ...

(To be mainly sung to the hymn 'Forest Green' aka 'O Little Town of Bethlehem') O Christmasgoers of Great Britain, Try and see past that gleam, Those glittering gifts and tacked-up baubles Of which many can only dream, For near you, also exists a grey Christmas, Filled with despair and hopelessness. Just five minutes of your kindness will brighten the day of A child poor, sick and homeless. Is this the sort of Yuletide That truly keeps to Yule, With neon lights, pushy sparkling adverts, And shoppers so easily fooled? When all the while, so many just want Food, shelter and company. All three of which will be enough to represent Gold, frankincense and myrrh truly. If Christ himself could have foreseen this, Surely he would have sadly sighed, We forgot how to show our true festivities Amidst those bright night lights. The true spirit of Christmas is worth infinitely more Than pieces of overpriced tat Even though it seems so high-tech and so up-to...

Readers, the results of local by-elections featuring Green Party candidates within the first three weeks of December 2016 were as follows: (01/12/16): South Northamptonshire DC, Grange Park:  Conservative 244 (58.4%, -9.7%), Labour 105 (25.1%, -6.8%), UKIP 49 (11.7%), Green 20 (4.8%) Tower Hamlets LBC, Whitechapel: Independent (ex-Tower Hamlets First) 1147 (44.7%, +4.4%), Lab 823 (32.1%, +6.5%), Con 217 (8.5%, +0.7%), Lib Dem 173 (6.8%, -0.1%), Green 170 (6.6%, -6.4%), UKIP 34 (1.3%). (08/12/16): Lancaster BC, University & Scotforth Rural: Lab 98 (34.9%, -1.0%), Green 79 (28.1%, -3.8%), Con 68 (24.2%, -1.5%), Lib Dem 36 (12.8%, +6.3%) Maldon DC, Maldon West: Ind 279 (38.1%), Con 172 (23.5%, -5.3%), UKIP 114 (15.5%), Green 69 (9.4%, -10.3%), BNP 51 (7.0%), Lab 47 (6.4%). (15/12/16): Fife UA, Leven, Kenneway & Largo (1st preference votes): SNP 1501 (37.0%, -4.1%), Labour 1155 (28.4%, -6.9%), Conservative 752 (18.5%, +11.7%), Liberal Democrats 580 (14.3%, +4.3%...

Yesterday, two European countries, Macedonia and Romania, held parliamentary elections whose results bucked international trends that have been happening in Europe and elsewhere. Social democracy as a force is in long-term decline but both social-democratic parties performed well in both Macedonia and Romania. In Macedonia, the ruling nationalist and conservative party, VMRO-DPMNE (which in Macedonian stands for International Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity), which had experienced two major national protests under the tenure of ex-PM Nikola Gruevski, was soundly defeated despite just about retaining its status as the largest party in Macedonia, losing 10 seats and its overall majority in the Assembly. Its one-time allies, the Democratic Union for Integration, lost nearly half of their seats (they were reduced to 10 from 19), whereas the Social Democratic Union boosted their total to 49 seats, giving them potentially strong...

Readers, the result of the Sleaford & North Hykeham by-election was as follows: Victoria Ayling, UKIP, 4,426 (13.5%, -2.2%) David Bishop, Bus-Pass Elvis Party, 55 (0.2%) Jim Clarke, Labour, 3,363 (10.2%, -7.1%) Paul Coyne (No Description, ex-Lincolnshire Independent), 186 (0.6%) Caroline Johnson, Conservative, 17,570 (53.5%, -2.7%) Marianne Overton, Lincolnshire Independents, 2,892 (8.8%, +3.6%) Ross Pepper, Liberal Democrats, 3,606 (11.0%, +5.3%) The Iconic Arty-Pole (real name Peter Hill), OMRLP, 200 (0.6%) Sarah Stock, Independent, 462 (1.4%) Mark Suffield, Independent, 74 (0.2%) Sleaford & North Hykeham is one of the safest Conservative seats in England, and is also rural meaning potential for change is more limited than in urban or suburban constituencies. There are fewer transient voters, fewer people in more casual jobs and higher levels of owner-occupation in the majority of predominantly rural seats (for richer or for poorer) meaning that swings i...

Yesterday, after a long-awaited runoff, Alexander van der Bellen, running as an Independent candidate in the 2016 Austrian presidential election despite actually being a member of Die Grunen, succeeded in becoming the next President of Austria, defeating the Freedom Party's Norbert Hofer, to the delight of real progressives like myself. As I said earlier, the two long-running Establishment partners-in-crime in Austria, the OVP and SPO, did not even make it to the runoff. The Italian constitutional referendum on changing the fundamental structure of its Parliament, introducing a winner take all premium (similar in principle to the 50 bonus seats rule in the Hellenic Parliament in Greece), and reducing the powers of the Senate was a clear example of where the real divides lie (centrist and moderate parties supported a Yes vote, but more radical and regionalist parties on both sides were firmly in favour of a No vote). Also, only the three most prosperous and culturally richest...

I would at this point have started off with alternative constituency proposals for Scotland to end my series on alternative constituencies for the 2018 review. However, the Boundary Commission for Scotland's site ( www.bcs2018.org.uk ) does not give me the option to select polling districts which is necessary for modifying constituencies I believe to be unacceptable, and this is essential in Scotland since due to its use of STV for local government elections, every ward must have 3 or 4 members and every ward therefore must have large numbers of electors to maintain both proportionality and fairness. Therefore, I will have to move to Northern Ireland in terms of alternative constituencies, and briefly say that the rule allowing constituencies of between 12,000 and 13,000 sq km in area to have an electorate under the minimum quota should be applied, in order to have undersized but geographically large constituencies in the Highland area (the only council area in the whole of ...

In case you have not seen them yet, here are the results of the momentous Richmond Park by-election: Zac Goldsmith, Independent, 18,638 (45.1%, -13.1%**) Howling Laud Hope, Official Monster Raving Loony Party, 184 (0.4%) Ankit Love (aka Maharaja Jammu and Kashmir), One Love Party, 67 (0.2%) Sarah Olney, Liberal Democrats, 20,510 (49.7%, +30.4%) David Powell (no description), 32 (0.1%) Dominic Stockford, Christian Peoples Alliance, 164 (0.4%) Fiona Syms, Independent, 173 (0.4%) Christian Wolmar, Labour Party, 1,515 (3.7%, -8.6%) Even many minutes before the official declaration, it was clear that Zac Goldsmith, the former Conservative MP who ran on a ticket to oppose the third runway at Heathrow, was going to lose to Sarah Olney, who becomes the first Liberal Democrat MP to have not been a member of that party during its infamous coalition years. Many are claiming that a 'Progressive Alliance' (which I do not support and nor do many of my friends because of t...

I am nearly at the end of my series of alternative constituencies for the 2018 Boundary Review, and the last England-focused section will be on North Yorkshire. Although I agree with the general structure of the changed constituencies, and with keeping York Outer and York Central essentially intact, I feel it is best if 'Ainsty' (a wapentake which has in fact not existed for centuries) is separated from Selby within Selby & Ainsty, and returned to Harrogate & Knaresborough. Selby does not look northwards within a Yorkshire context (but rather eastwards to Hull or westwards to Leeds) and should never have been moved into the area covered by North Yorkshire County Council. Since few real changes of any kind are needed in North Yorkshire, and since separating Thirsk & Malton (which are not really connected to each other) is not possible within this review, there is little else to say here. My alternative constituencies for North Yorkshire look like this: ...

West Yorkshire has overall the second-largest ward sizes in the UK, with most wards having 11,000 to 13,000 electors each, and in Leeds' case sometimes as many as 17,000.  This makes ward splitting a necessity in several parts of this highly urbanised part of Britain for the purposes of creating sensible constituencies. Connectivity is vital. I believe it is best if the city of Leeds and 'Leeds Outer' are separated as much as possible for creating new constituencies. However, the area once covered by the county borough of Leeds before 1974 (i.e. the city of Leeds and not towns like Morley, Otley, or Pudsey) is not quite the correct size for creating a whole number of sensible constituencies entirely within Leeds, so a few outer parts of the city of Leeds will have to share territory with Leeds' suburbs (which are still civil parishes). Otley and Morley can have their own suburban/semi-rural constituencies to themselves, just like those places making up the current Elm...

The first part of the Yorkshire section of my series of alternative constituencies for the 2018 Review of Parliamentary Constituencies will focus on how I have successfully managed to separate 'the Humber' from South and East Yorkshire and also restore proper links. The Selby district is much better connected to South and East Yorkshire than it is to North Yorkshire, having been in the West Riding of Yorkshire before 1974. The same applies to the town of Goole, which has no true links with either North Lincolnshire or East Yorkshire. Much of the old Goole constituency outside of Goole ended up forming an integral part of the current Doncaster North! Now that Sheffield's electorate has shrunk, it is more practicable to have five whole constituencies entirely in Sheffield, and thus to separate Penistone and Stocksbridge. It is worth saying that Stocksbridge should not be combined with Hallam, when it is far better kept with Ecclesfield (which like Stocksbridge has its own...

Moving away from England, we move to the nation where a considerable proprtion of my distant ancestors come from: Wales (or Cymru if you know Cymraeg/Welsh, which I do to some extent) Wales is sadly the most hard done-by in this review, given that it now has to adapt to the English electoral quota when it did not need to do so before (partly because the mountainous and rural nature of much of Wales, combined with relatively poor road connections outside Glamorgan and Gwent, makes large rural constituencies unviable in many cases). It stands to lose 11 constituencies out of 40, varying substantially in size from Arfon (37,733 electors) to Cardiff South & Penarth (72,392, the only in-quota constituency of the 40), and no constituency will survive entirely unchanged. Many smaller constituencies in north Wales (Gwynedd and Clwyd) are not so much abolished as mostly absorbed into (most of) another constituency, Arfon being the clearest case in point. ...

Yesterday, Fidel Castro, who was President of Cuba from 1959 to 2008 and a revolutionary icon to so many, died. Fidel first came to fame when he ousted notorious, US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista at the end of 1958, taking office in January 1959. He then instituted a Marxist-Leninist system on Cuba, which instantly attracted hostility from the USA and other nations on the western side of the Berlin Wall, resulting in the USA imposing a trade embargo from 1962 onwards and the CIA making no less than 638 failed and rather bizarre attempts to assassinate him, which notably included poisoning Fidel's cigars and exploding seashells in his face. Cut off from the USA, and after the USSR's collapse in 1991 aid from Russia, Cuba under Fidel displayed so much ingenuity to keep itself afloat, such as keeping the old 'Yank tanks' alive in Havana with old Lada engines and mechanical parts from old Moskviches, and assorted replacement parts made purely from scrap meta...

As I move into the final part of the West Midlands section of my series of alternative constituencies, I can tell you that the deadline to electronically submit alternative proposals to the Boundary Commission for England regarding the 2018 review is 5 December, just 10 days from now. Making a total mess of Meriden and Solihull, however awkward the Meriden constituency looks, is not appropriate or necessary; the Solihull constituency forms a distinct community and should be left alone. The ward split in Meriden should happen at the edge and the spare polling district should go to the (expanded) North Warwickshire constituency, which formed a substantial part of the pre-1983 constituency of Meriden (it had 98,914 electors in 1979!). It is more appropriate to pair Kenilworth with a  Coventry constituency (since Coventry does not have quite enough electors for three constituencies on its own) since Bedworth is too large to fit into a Coventry constituency and Kenilworth ha...

The 'Greater Birmingham' area, aka the West Midlands conurbation aka the Black Country area, is the most difficult area in terms of drawing sensible constituencies in the whole of England. Part of the problem lies with what happened in redrawing Birmingham's constituencies for the 2010 election. The reduction from 11 seats to 10 (9 if you exclude Sutton Coldfield, really a separate community in its own right) was largely caused by a shrinking population in central and southern Birmingham. This caused many of the southern Birmingham constituencies to end up being formed of areas with few proper attachments to each other; the current Birmingham Hall Green is really Birmingham Sparkbrook with the Hall Green ward attached; the current Birmingham Selly Oak has two-thirds of the pre-2010 Hall Green and lacks Moseley & King's Heath, which had been paired with Selly Oak itself for decades in constituency terms. The northern Birmingham constituencies (Edgbaston, Perry Bar...