How Trump Could Be Blocked at a Contested Republican Convention

Not pretty. Could it work? #fb
(tags: uspolitics )

The Paradox Of European Defence Strategy

Talking the talk without walking the walk. #fb
(tags: eu )

Openness can pay off: the economic impact of migrants

Actual facts. #fb
(tags: eu migration )

Mapped: The world’s nuclear power plants

Interesting! #fb
(tags: maps nuclearpower )

Welcome to the ‘Debt Star’

The EU’s Star Wars parody. #fb
(tags: eu sf funny )

EU referendum: Stephen Hawking and 150 Royal Society fellows warn Brexit would be ‘disaster for UK science’

The genius vote.
(tags: eu ukpolitics )

President Obama’s Interview With Jeffrey Goldberg on Syria and Foreign Policy

The last seven years. #fb
(tags: uspolitics syria )

The HAMILTON/STAR TREK Parody No One Was Asking For

Not throwin’ away my Spock!
(tags: sf music videos )

Why Am I Right-Handed?

Good question! #fb
(tags: biology )

Here’s what has to happen for Bernie Sanders to win

A dose of reality #fb
(tags: uspolitics )

My Favorite Stories Don’t Get Nominated

Why Joe Sherry loves the Hugo Awards. #fb
(tags: sf )

B&N Nook Is Failing Because They Make Customers Hate Them

Glorious rant. #fb
(tags: ebooks )

Pope imposes financial oversight for saints after abuses

The cost of canonisation #fb
(tags: religion )

Northern Ireland's parliamentary map is about to be redrawn again, with the number of seats cut from 18 to 17. This is likely to result in Belfast being reduced from four seats to three, two of which (on recent form) look like decent prospects for Sinn Féin. The former SDLP leader's seat of South Belfast is unlikely to survive, and the new boundaries of the South Antrim seat held by the UUP's Danny Kinahan are likely to favour the DUP, who he narrowly beat in 2015.

The coming Assembly election will be the last time that the current 18 constituencies are used for a Northern Ireland-wide election.

(This map taken from the Boundary Commission's archive site, but I have drawn on it to emphasise the boundaries.)

You may remember that the 2010-2015 Coalition government legislated to reduce the House of Commons from 650 to 600 seats, and that on that basis Northern Ireland was scheduled to lose two of its MPs and to be reduced to 16 seats. The Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland duly produced a new map of 16 constituencies, including reducing Belfast to three seats, but these were never enacted because the Liberal Democrats voted with the opposition to prevent the implementation of the new boundaries (not that it did them much good).

(This map is also from the Boundary Commission archive siteblocked, the law has not been changed and it still mandates a reduction to 600 seats overall, varying no more than 5% from average size in most cases, and to be revised every five-year Parliament. But this time, it seems that Northern Ireland's electorate has increased while the number of voters in England, Scotland and Wales has decreased, to the point that the Six Counties will now be entitled to 17 MPs out of 600, a loss of only one. I've had a go at working out one set of possible boundaries:

(This map is from the District Electoral Area Commissioner's website, so the thin boundaries mark the DEA boundaries for the 11 new local councils elected in 2014; the thick red lines are my guess at the new constituencies.)

A couple of housekeeping points here. First, the building blocks now are the new electoral wards which are the basis of the 11 new local councils. The 16-seat map last time round was generated on the basis of the old wards which were drawn up in the 1990s for the 26 old councils. There are fewer new wards, and on average they are bigger and have more population. So the construction of constituencies using them is going to lead to some very rough edges (as I think is apparent from my map).

Second, the constituency electorate limits are a bit looser in Northern Ireland than elsewhere. In the UK as a whole, the upper limit on constituency size is 78,507 voters (as of 1 December 2015) and the lower limit 71,031; the lower limit for Northern Ireland, however, is 69,401. I argued strongly last time around that the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland should have no hesitation in using the extra leeway, and I still think that, though in fact my own proposed seats are all inside both limits.

So, to the map. I could see no way of preserving four seats in Belfast. It only narrowly escaped going down to a three-seat city in the mid-1990s, and the numbers since then have got worse. The new Belfast City Council boundaries enclose just under 3/17 of Northern Ireland's voters. To add another seat's worth would mean extending the city constituencies far into the rural fringes, to the point that they would lose the city identity anyway.

Belfast has 60 wards, so if we divide into three that means twenty each. In fact the twenty wards (apart from Belvoir) east of the river Lagan make a nice East Belfast block, if a little under the ideal number. (I have a solution for that, though.) The forty western wards (including Belvoir) do not quite divide as neatly, but I've found a line that I think can work, though it means the boundary between the new North West and South West Belfast constituencies snakes through the streets of the Lower Falls.

Outside Belfast, it struck me that several constituencies are already within the Boundary Commission's set limits for the 17 new constituencies: Foyle, Fermanagh and South Tyrone, South Down, Newry and Armagh, Lagan Valley and North Antrim. Upper Bann is actually above the upper allowed limit already. So I rejigged the boundaries of Foyle, Fermanagh and South Tyrone, South Down, and Newry and Armagh to fit the new DEA and ward boundaries, and got fairly satisfactory results. If the Commission decides to minimise the (major) amendments to existing boundaries that must take place, that would fix those four fairly quickly.

Turning now to County Down, you really have to start by uniting the Ards peninsula with the current North Down constituency. That gives you a seat that is just a little too big – but remember I said that East Belfast is on the small side? Transferring one North Down and Ards ward (Loughview) from North Down to East Belfast fixes both problems. Strangford then also turns out to be fairly easy; if you give it the voters outside the Belfast Council area who are currently in Belfast constituencies, you get a nice block of wards from the former Castlereagh and Ards councils (and three from further south as at present). The boundary between Upper Bann and Lagan Valley unfortunately becomes a bit scraggly, because of the much larger wards; part of the solution may be to split some of the more awkward wards between constituencies.

Let's pause in the East, and look West. If we're allowed to keep both Foyle and Fermanagh and South Tyrone more or less as they are, allowing for the new ward boundaries, then West Tyrone, already undersized, has no option but to annex three wards (Oaklands, Pomeroy and Donaghmore) from Mid Ulster – it looks like a big chunk on the map, but in fact is much less in terms of population. Mid Ulster similarly must annex five wards (Garvagh, Kilrea, Altahullion, Dungiven and Feeny) from East Londonderry, or rather from the new Causeway Coast and Glens council. What's left of East Londonderry now needs to stretch so far into Antrim that a renaming is in order; if you add to it all but one of the new Causeway Coast and Glens council's DEA's, that one being The Glens, you get a decent number of voters. So I propose a new Causeway Coast seat taking in a lot of East Londonderry and some of North Antrim.

We're doing well here; basically all that's left is the rest of County Antrim and the fringes of Lisburn and Lurgan. Last time round, the Boundary Commission's provisional recommendations were to create two east-west seats in County Antrim, one linking Ballymena, Larne and Carrickfergus, and the other linking Antrim town and Newtownabbey. I and others argued that it would be much better to have two north-south seats, one linking Larne, Carrickfergus and Newtownabbey and the other linking Ballymena and Antrim town, and the Boundary Commisson adopted that reasoning (specifically, my recommendations) in its revised proposals. I think the numbers and geography make the north-south seats the obvious option this time. You can construct a convincing Mid Antrim seat from just the five DEAs around Ballymena and Antrim town. The southern borders of East Antrim can be tweaked – at the last moment I put Ballyclare in and took out most of the Three Mile Water DEA, apart from Jordanstown – but the fundamentals are sound; the coast road is a real artery linking the constituency.

South Antrim and Lagan Valley are the losers here, basically being the bits left over that coudn't be fitted anywhere else. I'm not ecstatic about a South Antrim seat that stretches from Newtownabbey around Belfast to the northern fringes of Lisburn, but the numbers elsewhere don't leave much option, and actually it's not so different from the original South Antrim seats created in 1950. Similarly I'm not happy with a Lagan Valley that goes as far south as Rathfriland and whose western boundary dances through the back streets of Lurgan, but no better alternative jumped out at me. Once you have the coastal constituencies sorted out, you have to manage the land in the middle. No doubt those who have access to better equipment (and perhaps more time on their hands) than me will be able to improve on this. As I said above, I think the inherent (and unavoidable) clumsiness of some of the ward boundaries in crucial geographical locations will propel the Boundary Commission to breach them.

Last time round, the Boundary Commission for Scotland was able to provide lots of cool build-your-own-map online tools for budding electoral engineers. I hope that the Boundary Commission for Northern Ireland will be able to follow suit this time, though I appreciate that resources may be scarcer for a territory with a third of Scotland's population, and also that data visualisation for Northern Ireland is complicated by the messy disjunction between old and new wards. But here's hoping.

Who would win these seats? The last election delivered 8 DUP, 4 SF, 3 SDLP, 2 UUP and one independent (Lady Silvia Hermon). The picture is of course complicated by the 2015 electoral pact between Unionist parties in some constituencies. The UUP's narrowly won seat in South Antrim would be partitioned between neighbours with much stronger DUP support, so I think it would fall. That DUP gain, however, is offset by the new situation in three-seat Belfast, where SF look very competitive in both Belfast North West, effectively a gain from the DUP, and Belfast South West, effectively a gain from the SDLP. The new Belfast East would have (just) been DUP on last year's figures, but would be very competitive for the Alliance Party in a good year, especially without a Unionist electoral pact. So I see (on the 2015 figures only) net losses for the UUP and SDLP, and a net gain for SF. (I'm sure that the Ards Peninsula would have voted for Lady Sylvia Hermon if they had a chance.) Future elections will of course have different boundaries, different candidates and a different political environment; the one thing we can be certain of is that nothing is certain.

These seats will also be used for the 2021 Assembly election, where each will elect only 5 MLAs rather than six as at present, for a total of 85. By that time the *next* round of boundary revisions will also be kicking off; and thanks to the blunt arithmetic of the system, the number of seats could quite likely change again to 16 or 18 – and thanks to the 5% limit on variation, further major changes will be necessary to the map, even if the number of seats remains the same. This of course means further disruption of local electoral and political ties. It would be much better if Assembly constituencies were tied to the new local government districts, which are presumably going to be with us for a while, rather than the ephemeral, shifting and secondary Westminster constituencies. But perhaps that's a discussion for another day.

Seats in detail:

North West Belfast (71,511)

Belfast Council
All of Castle, Oldpark and Court DEA's (21,678 + 21,604 + 21,314)
Beechmount and Ballymurphy wards from Black Mountain DEA (6,915)

South West Belfast (75,302)

Belfast Council
All of Collin and Balmoral DEAs (22,559 + 17,396)
Blackstaff, Central, Stranmillis, and Windsor wards from Botanic DEA (16,483)
Andersonstown, Collin Glen, Falls Park, Shaw's Road, and Turf Lodge wards from Black Mountain DEA (18,504)

East Belfast (74,178)

Belfast Council
All of Ormiston, Titanic and Lisnasharragh DEA's (25,166 + 21,830 + 20,384)
Ormeau ward from Botanic DEA (3,655)

North Down and Ards Council
Loughview ward from Holywood and Clandeboye DEA (3,413)

North Down (76,992)

North Down and Ards Council
All of Ards Peninsula, Bangor East and Donaghadee, Bangor Central and Bangor West DEAs (17,051 + 17,246 + 17,721 + 13,601)
Clandeboye, Cultra, Helen's Bay and Holywood wards from Holywood and Clandeboye DEA (11,373)

Strangford 73,814

North Down and Ards Council
All of Comber and Newtownards DEAs (13,909 + 20,402)

Lisburn and Castlereagh Council
All of Castlereagh East and Castlereagh South DEAs (14,128 + 16,600)

Newry, Mourne and Down Council
Derryboy, Kilmore and Saintfield wards from Rowallane DEA (8,775)

South Down (73,711)

Newry, Mourne and Down Council
All of Downpatrick, Slieve Croob, The Mournes and Crotlieve DEAs (14,337 + 14,178 + 20,938 + 18,909)
Ballynahinch and Crossgar & Killyleagh wards from Rowallane DEA (5,889)

Newry and Armagh (78,182)

Newry, Mourne and Down Council
All of Newry and Slieve Gullion DEAs (18,934 + 19,957)

Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council
All of Armagh and Cusher DEAs (21,483 + 17,808)

Upper Bann

Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council
All of Craigavon and Portadown DEAs (18,008 + 21,018)
Banbridge North, Banbridge South, Banbridge West, Gilford and Loughbrickland wards from Banbridge DEA (17,342)
Knocknashane, Lough Road, Mourneview, Parklake, and Shankill wards from Lurgan DEA (17,559)

Lagan Valley (73,812)

Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council
All of Lagan River DEA (16,628)
Banbridge East and Rathfriland wards from Banbridge DEA (6,543)
Aghagallon and Magheralin wards from Lurgan DEA (6,861)

Lisburn and Castlereagh Council
All of Downshire East, Downshire West and Lisburn South DEAs (11,880 + 11,966 + 15,040)
Hilden and Lambeg wards from Lisburn North DEA (4,894)

South Antrim (77,612)

Lisburn and Castlereagh Council
All of Killultagh DEA (13,492)
Derryaghy, Harmony Hill, Magheralave, and Wallace Park wards from Lisburn North DEA (9,840)

Antrim and Newtownabbey Council
All of Airport, Glengormley Urban and Macedon DEAs (13,269 + 15,820 + 13,442)
Ballyduff, Fairview, Jordanstown, Monkstown, Mossley, and Rostulla wards of Three Mile Water DEA (11,749)

Mid Antrim (74,074)

Antrim and Newtownabbey Council
All of Dunsilly and Antrim DEAs (12,219 + 14,646)

Mid and East Antrim Council
All of Ballymena, Bannside and Braid DEAs (16,132 + 14,309 + 16,768)

East Antrim (78,267)

Antrim and Newtownabbey Council
All of Ballyclare DEA (12,635)
Jordanstown ward of Three Mile Water DEA (2,456)

Mid and East Antrim Council
All of Carrick Castle, Coast Road, Knockagh and Larne Lough DEAs (13,132 + 12,524 + 12,310 + 13,032)

Causeway Coast and Glens Council
All of The Glens DEA (12,178)

Coleraine and Causeway Coast (73,469)

Causeway Coast and Glens Council
All of Ballymoney, Causeway, Coleraine and Limavady DEAs (17,096 + 16,821 + 15,656 + 11,143)
Aghadowey, Castlerock and Macosquin wards from Bann DEA (7,510)
Bellykelly and Greysteel wards from Benbradagh DEA (5,243)

Foyle (74,539)

Derry and Strabane Council
All of Ballyarnet, Faughan, Foyleside, The Moor and Waterside DEAs (16,588 + 13,252 + 13,090 + 12,727 + 18,942)

Mid Ulster (72,703)

Mid Ulster Council
All of Carntogher, Magherafelt, and Moyola DEAs (11,913 + 12,800 + 12,382)
Coagh, Cookstown East, Cookstown South, Cookstown West and Loughry wards from Cookstown DEA (11,399)
Ardboe, Coalisland North, Coalisland South, Stewartstown, and Washing Bay wards from Torrent DEA (12,370)

Causeway Coast and Glens Council
Garvagh and Kilrea wards from Bann DEA (4,907)
Altahullion, Dungiven and Feeny wards from Benbradagh DEA (6,932)

West Tyrone

Derry and Strabane Council
All of Derg and Sperrin DEAs (12,703 + 17,509)

Fermanagh and Omagh Council
All of Mid Tyrone, Omagh and West Tyrone DEAs (12,005 + 12,602 + 11,929)

Mid Ulster Council
Oaklands and Pomeroy wards from Cookstown DEA (4,926)
Donaghmore ward from Torrent DEA (2,590)

Fermanagh and South Tyrone (74,339)

Fermanagh and Omagh Council
All of Enniskillen, Erne East, Erne North and Erne West DEAs (12,796 + 11,725 + 10,666 + 10,504)

Mid Ulster Council
All of Clogher Valley and Dungannon DEAs (14,239 + 14,409)

Other permutations are of course possible, particularly in Counties Antrim and Down, but I think the end result will not be too far from what I sketch above.

Dead could outnumber the living on Facebook by 2098

Ridiculous. I doubt that Facebook will last till 2028, never mind 2098!
(tags: facebook )

EU ignoring human rights in Azerbaijan

Energy trumps dignity. #fb
(tags: eu azerbaijan )

The First Time Texas Killed One of My Clients

Devastating.
(tags: capitalpunishment )

APCOForum celebrates International Women’s Day

A collection of blog posts by @APCOworldwide colleagues.
(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )

The Vast Bay Leaf Conspiracy

Do they make a difference?
(tags: cooking funny )

Six Reasons Why We Still Need International Women’s Day

From Amnesty International. #fb
(tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )

This year's submission list for the Arthur C. Clarke Award has been published – 113 books this year, a little more than last year, a little less than in 2014. My best wishes to the judges.

As usual, I've run the list through Goodreads and LibraryThing to count the number of owners and record the average ratings. In the table below, I've bolded the top 25 by ownership on both systems, and any rating of 4 or more. I'll just note that only one book which is not a later volume of a series is bolded in all four columns – The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers. But of course the process now depends on the personal tastes of five judges, rather than the tastes of Goodreads/LibraryThing users.

Remember the… er… hang on…. it’ll come to me….

@conbrunstrom on the Alamo. #fb
(tags: history )

The EU referendum, John Longworth and the British Chambers of Commerce

If there’s a line, stick to it!
(tags: ukpolitics eu )

A Moderate Conversation Re: Sad Puppies

A valiant effort; will it be listened to?
(tags: sadpuppies sf )

February 2016’s shocking global warming temperature record

For real. #fb
(tags: climatechange )

Donald Trump’s business disaster is worse than you think

@BrettArends looks at the numbers. #fb
(tags: uspolitics )

Cecilia Malmström finds her trade groove

Go @MalmstromEU!
(tags: eu ttip )

What Flint Teaches Us About Black Activism Now

From the front lines.
(tags: uspolitics race )

In her speech to the DUP party conference today, First Minister Arlene Foster called attention to the narrowness of the margin between her party and Sinn Féin:

A swing of only two votes in every hundred from the DUP to Féin would see Martin McGuinness become the next First Minister.

In the last Assembly election in 2011, the DUP won 38 seats with 30.0% of first preferences, and Sinn Féin won 29 seats with 26.9%. At a first glance, that 3.1% margin between the two parties’ vote shares is even closer than the First Minister claimed; a uniform swing of a mere 1.6% would be enough to make SF the largest party by votes, and as we all know the largest party by seats gets to choose the First Minister.

But there’s an important difference between seats and votes.

Looking at the 2011 results for each constituency, and applying a (highly improbable) uniform shift of votes from the DUP to Sinn Fein while keeping the votes for other parties at the 2011 levels, it seems that the real figure required to give SF more seats than the DUP is more like 5% than 2%; the DUP could actually trail SF by more than 6% in first preferences overall, and still win more seats. This is partly because the DUP’s stronger constituencies have smaller electorates, and partly because in the last election the DUP tended to get elected with votes to spare while a number of successful SF candidates had tighter squeaks to get in.

To be specific.

1% shift: DUP 37 (-1), SF 30 (+1)

The first consequential change as a result of a DUP->SF shift actually involves neither party directly. A mere 460 votes separated David McNarry, then of the UUP, from Joe Boyle of the SDLP in Strangford. A 0.8% swing from DUP to SF would have given the UUP fewer transfers, and the SDLP more, causing a different result.

0.9% extra votes for SF gives them a second seat at the expense of the SDLP in Upper BannEast Londonderry to the UUP.

2% shift (the “Foster line”): DUP 35 (-3), SF 30 (+1)

I see two more DUP seats at risk in this range – their third seat in North Belfast, which would have remained with the UUP in 2011 if the DUP had 1.3% fewer votes, and the third seat in South Antrim, which would have remained with the SDLP if the DUP had 1.8% fewer votes and there were also 1.8% more Nationalist transfers to go round.

3% shift: DUP 34 (-4), SF 30 (+1)

If the DUP vote shifts to SF uniformly by about 3%, I think that they lose the second seat in Upper Bann to SF and the SDLP keep theirs (rather than the SDLP losing to SF as imagined above). This is the first case of a direct transfer between the two parties.

4% shift: DUP 34(-4), SF 30 (+1)

I don’t see any more seats falling in this range, though the DUP would be trailing SF by at least 5% in total vote share by now.

5% shift: DUP 30 (-8), SF 34 (+5)

This is the real tipping point, with four direct transfers between the two parties. On a 5% shift, I think the DUP would likely lose seats directly to SF in South Down, Foyle, Lagan Valley and Mid Ulster. Even if only two of those four were to shift, it is enough to give SF the the right to choose the First Minister – they would be tied on 32 seats each, but the number of votes would then be taken into account. Sinn Fein would have 31.9% of the vote to the DUP’s 25.0%; the total Nationalist vote would be around 46% and the total Unionist vote around 43%.

So, basically, the DUP can afford to lose a few votes and still be the largest party. Understandably enough, this is not their preferred scenario.

I was already sitting there when my cousin Dixon came over to me. About half the Kneefolk had already arrived, and the others were coming in.

I’m reviving my previous practice of posting the second paragraph from the third chapter of each book I read this month – odd snapshots of the text which give a suitably random flavour. I’m also going to try and add cover pictures to these reviews, not so much for Livejournal readers but so as to enliven my Twitter and Facebook feeds rather than just illustrate these posts with the rather dull standard Livejournal picture.

Beckett’s setting is the lost tribes of humans on a far distant planet, descendants of a long ago crashed spaceship (whose own bitter story becomes fairly obvious to the reader, though not to the characters). They are in conflict over natural resources, the indigenous aliens, their own history, and the roles of women and men. The details of the plot, on reflection, are actually standard pulp themes; but the way Beckett chooses to tell the story through the voices of the young generation (mostly women) and his undercurrent of revolution (both class and gender) are very subversive of those tropes. The ending is bitter yet hopeful. I really liked this, as I enjoyed its predecessor, and will be agonising over my BSFA vote over the next three weeks. And needless to say, it’s in contention for my Hugo nominations as well.

“No government has been re-elected in the Eurozone other than Angela Merkel since 2008.”

Simply not true.
(tags: eu )

A Psychologist’s Open Letter to U.S. Voters

Narcissism and leadership – widely applicable!
(tags: uspolitics psychology )

Saving the Self in the Age of the Selfie

What are we becoming?
(tags: psychology internet )

How a detachment of U.S. Army soldiers smoked out the original Ku Klux Klan

Fascinating.
(tags: uspolitics history )

Can NATO and the EU survive Donald Trump, French nationalists, and a Brexit?

Anne Applebaum is alarmed.
(tags: uspolitics eu ukpolitics )

In acknowledgment of the leap day, I’m shifting my weekly book update from Friday to Saturday for the rest of this year. Not brilliant planning, in that I’m now intending two regular Saturday posts for the next few months (this one and the Double DeckersCurrent
Watership Down, by Richard Adams (a chapter a week)
Short Trips: Steel Skies, ed. John Binns
Wings of Sorrow and of Bone, by Beth Cato