And it's back again (Shrinking the House : Take Two)

[kcguy]

I wasn't opposed to the law, but I was opposed to the stupid way the Boundary Commission chose to implement it.

According to the law, as I understand it, constituency electorates had to be within 3500 or so of the regional average.  And the Commission tried to accomplish this by gluing together wards with populations of around 10,000.  Is there any wonder why some of these constituencies had such weird shapes?  I mean, seriously, can't the Commission come up with more reasonably-sized building blocks?

And Mersey Banks was the result of arbitrary rules the Commission imposed upon itself.  First, they declared that there weren't enough links between the Wirral and Liverpool.  (I mean, the only things connecting the two are a couple of tunnels used by thousands of commuters and maybe a subway system, but that's obviously not enough justification for crossing a water barrier like the Mersey.) 

So, the Commission reviewed the Wirral with Cheshire instead.  And then once they were irretrievably committed down this path, they declared that the city of Chester, sitting at the base of the Wirral peninsula, had to remain intact, so they had only a narrow piece of land to connect Bebington to northwestern Cheshire.  Dumber and dumberer.

My only real objection to the law itself was that while the number of seats was reduced, the Isle of Wight was suddenly guaranteed 2 seats.