Quote:
Originally Posted by garinda
The viable alternative is to keep a M.P. for Hyndburn, or at least fight to keep one.
Let other areas get split up, and tagged on to neighbouring constituencies.
I don't personally care what happens elsewhere.
I do care if we are deemed not important enough an area to warrant our own M.P.
Our historical and unique identity will be harmed, as well as the power and political leverage having a M.P. who covers the same area as the borough council, affords us.
|
We need to go further than telling the Boundary Commission that we have a distinct community which should remain apart of one constituency.
We can suggest which wards we want to add to Hyndburn to make it within 5% of 75,000 electors. By doing that though we have to take in wards from other proposed constituencies which has a knock on effect across the region.
I think we need to go even further and draw up alternative plans for not just our area but the surrounding areas so that it all fits numbers wise. I do think we stand a better chance if we do this rather than just telling the Commission what we want and then leaving it up to them to redistribute everything, as obviously people from other areas may then object to the way they do it.
I think it's important to not start getting political about it either. The Commission are independent; the re-drawing happens every so often to make things fairer and this time it's also partly a result of the expenses scandal.
In my opinion it's crucial that the local parties work together on this, along with their colleagues from elsewhere in the region. If we can get all parties to push in the same direction it will be a far more powerful argument.