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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

2010 election

I've started a todo list of things to fix when the election is done at Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom/2010 election. Just boring things like changing Category:UK MPs 2005- to Category:UK MPs 2005-2010, updating templates, etc. Please update/edit/add comments as you see fit. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:31, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Also, here's a page containing links to all sitting MPs, candidates and constituencies in the election: User:H2g2bob/Election candidates. It has suggested fixes for constituency pages and is useful for keeping track of election-related changes. It's generated by a script, so easy to re-run / add more checks. --h2g2bob (talk) 02:45, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Request for involvement at MigrationWatch UK

Resolved
 – I have left a brief review of the article. Other editors are welcome to comment if interested. Road Wizard (talk) 02:31, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Three single-purpose accounts have been making numerous comments at Talk:MigrationWatch UK about the reliability of sources used for the article and suggesting material that is critical of the organisation be removed. I'd appreciate the views of others on this. The comments start under this heading and continue to the bottom of the page. Cordless Larry (talk) 19:52, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes it does look like there is some unorthodox editing going on there. Are there any issues that you would like me to comment on? There have been a large number of comments and I don't want to jump into issues that have already been resolved. Road Wizard (talk) 20:53, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps a general comment on the reliability of the sources used? I'm suspicious that the editors (if they are actually different people) might work for or at least be avid supporters of MWUK, given that their homepage now states "This site was selected for preservation by The British Library and is archived regularly", something which one of the editors was very keen to include in the Wikipedia article a while back, and that they insist on everything in the article relying on the MWUK website for sources. Cordless Larry (talk) 21:06, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
More generally, I'd just like more editors to contribute to discussions on that talk page. At the moment I feel as if it's only me replying to posts there and I don't want to risk ownership of the article, plus second opinions are always good. Cordless Larry (talk) 23:42, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

There is a simple explanation of this difficulty. As a new editor I failed to sign my two edits correctly. That should now be resolved.--Jumping George (talk) 18:48, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, but my request didn't have anything to do with unsigned comments. Cordless Larry (talk) 19:05, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Martin McGuinness dispute

I would like to invite anyone reading this to participate in a discussion over whether to use "deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland" or "Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland" in the infobox on Martin McGuinness. The discussion can be found here: Talk:Martin McGuinness#"deputy" vs "Deputy". HonouraryMix (talk) 16:03, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

This is why I stay away from NI-related articles: a one letter capitalization change is the focal point for a ridiculous political controversy! --h2g2bob (talk) 18:03, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

What's on my mind

Roundup of article issues:

--h2g2bob (talk) 17:53, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I have removed the section from Nadine Dorries again as it appeared to be inserted against consensus and the blog can in no way be considered reliable.
The Caroline Flint section is a bit more complicated. The original section reads a little on the negative side of neutrality while the revised section seems to have spun it into the most positive light it could be under the circumstances. I am reluctant to revert it though without seeing the opinions of other editors. Road Wizard (talk) 18:47, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
That matches my reading of it too. Thanks --h2g2bob (talk) 02:38, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Some more

  • 86.137.123.81 (talk · contribs) has been removing the "Constituency abolished: see ...." from the list of MPs in constituencies. I think I've reverted most of those, but it could keep an eye.
  • There's been a lot of edits to Shahid Malik recently - one to look at.

--h2g2bob (talk) 18:05, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I've had a go at Caroline Flint based on what is said in the two Telegraph articles. I've probably trimmed too much - either that or there is less to the story than meets the eye. A quick check for more sources comes up with no more allegations that I can spot. Anyway, please review my edit. --h2g2bob (talk) 20:52, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Paulineward - an employee of John Smith House?

I have just discovered an account which has been puffing up Scottish Labour politicians, and removing referenced material which shows said politicians in a poor light. I have left a warning at User talk:Paulineward, but would appreciate if other experienced Users went through the mass of edits on eg. Wendy Alexander, which nearly all lack an Edit summary. A worrying amount of ip and other redlinked-user activity on Labour MSPs bio articles.

Thanks in advance. --Mais oui! (talk) 07:43, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I guess this is going to happen quite a bit until the election, and from all the parties (just look at edits made from the house of commons as an example). I'm fairly relaxed about people adding a small amount of puff to their pages, but blanking well sourced info (such as this case) is wrong. Here's a link to all election related edits. --h2g2bob (talk) 18:19, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Malcolm Rifkind

Can someone look at this edit to Malcolm Rifkind (made from the UK Parliament's computers)? Is this a reasonable edit to make? --h2g2bob (talk) 23:43, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I would say it is open for debate. Normally I would say removing sourced statements is completely wrong, but the source used there is clearly marked as an opinion piece by the publisher. I wouldn't be happy to reinsert it without a more reliable source. The tone of the opinion piece is also not very helpful as it is clearly critical of Rifkind, so even though the statement is likely to be true we cannot just accept it at face value. Road Wizard (talk) 00:54, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Infobox UK place: distances

I would like to draw the attention of the WikiProject to the ongoing discussion at Template talk:Infobox UK place#Dublin. In summary: {{Infobox UK place}} has the following four fields - |dublin_distance=, |dublin_distance_mi=, |dublin_distance_km=, and |dublin_direction= - should these be kept, or removed? --Jza84 |  Talk  01:13, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Claims that Gordon Brown has physically attacked his staff

Following today's story in the Mail on Sunday, please see discussion at Talk:Gordon Brown. --Mais oui! (talk) 14:06, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

CQC and voluntary sector

Hi, I'm interested to learn more about the following:

The Health and Social Act 2008 introduced new regulations and changed the role of Care Quality Commission. What are the key implications for the voluntary health sector?

Cheers, —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.225.151 (talk) 14:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Please consult the reference desk for general knowledge questions. This project talk page is for discussions about how to improve Wikipedia. Road Wizard (talk) 20:28, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Should Category:Scandals with -gate suffix stay deleted?

There's a discussion going on here [1] (until February 13) about whether it was proper to delete the "Scandals with -gate suffix" category (Watergate, Troopergate, Travelgate) a subject that may be of interest to members of this project. According to List of scandals with "-gate" suffix there are quite a few scandals having to do with UK politics (some articles are named "-gate", some are redirects, there are several on the list that don't have articles; this is only a sample): Betsygate, Fallagate, Irisgate (a redirect), Officegate, Stormontgate. There are a couple related to British royalty and several related to British sports, several more related to British celebrities; in some cases "-gate" is not the most common name) Please look at the discussion, look at the policy and insert your two cents with all the wisdom you have available to you. JohnWBarber (talk) 21:10, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Article for Deletion notification: Shadow Minister for Cornwall

The article Shadow Minister for Cornwall has been relisted as an Article for Deletion, in order to generate further discussion on the matter. As this article is in the scope of this WikiProject your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shadow Minister for Cornwall‎ and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

- Zangar (talk) 14:44, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Decision was keep. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:57, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Charlie Chaplin GA Review

This project has a declared interest in the Charlie Chaplin article, which is one our most important and most viewed articles. It is being reviewed to see if it matches the criteria for a WP:Good Article. Among other issues it is poorly sourced. The review has been put on hold for seven days to allow time for the article to be sourced. Reference sources can be found on the "Find sources" notice on the talkpage. Further comments can be found at Talk:Charlie Chaplin/GA1. If you feel that Charlie Chaplin doesn't quite match this project's interests, please let me know, and I will remove the project tag from the talkpage. SilkTork *YES! 08:59, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

We do? - Galloglass 16:07, 15 February 2010 (UTC)
It appears to be a mis-tag from the December bot run. I have taken the liberty of removing the banner. (Road Wizard on a mobile connection) 82.132.139.214 (talk) 22:11, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Guardian pages on MP's Expenses

The Guardian has an analysis of each MP's expenses, for example: http://mps-expenses.guardian.co.uk/labour/gordon-brown/

What about a template to link to those pages, added to each MP's article, perhaps by a Bot? Or even manually adding links? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 20:55, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

There's a few pages which I think should be added to all MP articles -- I was thinking of having a single template so we have a standard format for all of them, but never acted on it. I'd suggest a link to http;//theyworkforyou.com/ and http://thepublicwhip.org/, a link to http://edms.org.uk (which are often overlooked but give a nice idea of MP's interests imho), as well as a link to Hansard. --h2g2bob (talk) 19:28, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

National Bullying Helpline

The National Bullying Helplinenow has an article - I can't find much to say about it apart from the splurge of news stuff and thehelpline's own website - is there any info that can be added that doesn't fail [[WP:PRIMARY}} and WP:NOTNEWS? Totnesmartin (talk) 20:16, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Premiership of Gordon Brown

I wondered whether someone could take a look at this article for me. I've pretty much been wrorking on it singlehandedly for the past year or so as it had not been updated since 2007 and was in great need of improving. I've been adding things I felt were important events in Brown's premiership, but think the time has probably come to start consolidating some of this information. There's still also quite a lot to do as regards some of the prose, erc. I hope this is the right place to ask for help. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 16:19, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

Premiership of Gordon Brown is currently a good article nominee. Needs some work on it though so feel free to help out. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:57, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Derbyshire MPs

I have opened a discussion at Categories for discussion on a proposal to merge Category:Current Derbyshire MPs and Category:Past Derbyshire MPs to a newly-created Category:Derbyshire MPs.

The discussion is at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 March 10#Derbyshire_MPs, where you contributions will be welcome. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:15, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Voting record from TWFY

Do we have a policy on whether sections copying the voting record from TheyWorkForYou (like this) should be added or removed? I've seen people argue against them, but I can't remember where. I'd prefer not to keep them (as they can change, and it's easy enough to follow the link to TWFY), but I've not got a very strong opinion one way or another. --h2g2bob (talk) 01:25, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

If there's no guidance at present, there ought to be!
Extract from the article:
Voting Record
How David Davies voted on key issues since 2001:
  • Has never voted on a transparent Parliament.
  • Voted very strongly against introducing a smoking ban.
  • Voted strongly against introducing ID cards.
  • Voted moderately against Labour's anti-terrorism laws.
  • Voted very strongly for an investigation into the Iraq war.
  • Voted very strongly for replacing Trident.
  • Voted moderately against equal gay rights.
  • Voted very strongly for laws to stop climate change[2]
While these are reasonable shorthand for an attempt to categorise MPs within TWFY, some of the descriptions are too simplistic for a fair encyclopedia article.
For example, there are many ways to have "a transparent parliament"; it is not a binary choice. No doubt TWFY identifies the most secretive MPs in this respect, but no doubt too it is lumping them in with MPs who (rightly or wrongly) have traditionalist or alternative views on how transparency should be achieved, or on how it should be balanced against the perceived advantages of pursuing some matters in confidence. What is the definition of "transparent" here anyway, and is it a loaded word?
Though very few issues are truly binary, issues such as Trident are more likely to be polarised in parliamentary debate so might be fairly included. On the other hand, no MPs have opposed every investigation into Iraq; the votes are in fact about the form and timing of various such investigations.
Note that the TWFY webpage helpfully includes links to explain and contextualise all these matters. It's understandable that they chose simple headlines, but we shouldn't naively copypaste them whilst divorcing them from their meaning.
So, the current descriptions are generally too loaded to be NPOV. In principle, they could be carefully re-written. In practice, it would be more realistic to settle for a prominent link[3] and leave Wikipedia editors to write a more nuanced summary of each MP's voting record.
Could a standard link be added to {{Infobox MP}}?
— Richardguk (talk) 02:52, 27 February 2010 (UTC)
I don't think repeating the TWFY notes in the article is good practice. I like your idea of having a link to TWFY from the infobox of MPs. Fences&Windows 03:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)
20px|alt=|link=
Or we could do something smart with side boxes. --h2g2bob
We can use |blank1= and |data1= for this (without changing the large and unwieldy {{Infobox Officeholder}} template). I've put an example up at David Amess [4], just to see what it would look like. I added the votes link (to ThePublicWhip), but I'm not sure if that's really needed. --h2g2bob (talk) 00:13, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
David Amess
MP
Incumbent
Assumed office
etc...
Personal details
Parliamentary
activity		TheyWorkForYou
PublicWhip
Websitedavidamess.co.uk
I like the infobox addition as per Amess: simple and brief.
But the wording is a bit confusing because the TWFY and Public Whip pages have such similar aims, so there's no easy way to describte the difference.
Better, perhaps, to use the name of each website in its link text, with the row heading indicating the nature of the content (for example, as shown on the right).
I've also tried changing the PW url syntax so that it can be derived from the MP's name if this is unambiguous.
— Richardguk (talk) 01:53, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Awesome. One done, 600+ to go... Fences&Windows 02:56, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
Looks good to me too. --h2g2bob (talk) 23:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
A job for a bot? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:23, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Articles on Prospective Parliamentary Candidates for Election 2010

Hi, apologies if this has been discussed before, but are there any clear guidelines on articles on PPCs who are currently not notable? I ask this as a question was raised at WP:Editor assistance/Requests#Current Notability: Martin Tod. I foresee many similar articles as the election nears, and as awareness of the potential use of Wikipedia as a propaganda tool has risen substantially since 2005. Jezhotwells (talk) 00:07, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I wrote the article on Martin Tod that is referd to. It does seem like pepole have published articles on candidates for one reason or another i.e. Sarah Carr (politician) is currently live and I have come accross others that have been deleted including on Martin Tod. I asked the question on WP:EAR as I was unsure as regards to the threshold for covergage in the media stated here; WP:POLITICIAN which refers to; WP:GNG. Clarification might be usefull. --Wintonian (talk) 00:33, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
Just noticed that Sarah Carr (politician) was originally created by Herefordlibdems and links to 2 of the 3 references are dead and the 3rd is to the official website. Is this a candidate for speedy deletion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wintonian (talk • contribs) 00:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I've redirected Sarah Carr (politician) to Hereford and South Herefordshire (UK Parliament constituency). I daresay the Hereford Times link could be restored as I think some of the articles from that newspaper have been moved, but in any case she's not really notable unless she gets elected. May as well keep it as a redirect for now though as it contains useful information and decide what to do with it once the result of the election is known. TheRetroGuy (talk) 19:01, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
For possible future reference this is the Hereford Times article regarding Sarah Carr (see here). I notice the same article is cited in the Paul Keetch article so I may as well update that. TheRetroGuy (talk) 19:06, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I did some rescue work on the Sarah Carr article last year after noticing it had been written by Herefordlibdems. Should be all right to go if we need the information. Paul Largo (talk) 23:43, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oliver Colvile. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:56, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

See also WP:Articles for deletion/Mark Wright (politician). Jezhotwells (talk) 20:31, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Templates depicting prospective parliamentary candidates for the 2010 election have been added to many UK Parliament constituencies: e.g. Barking (UK Parliament constituency)#Election results, Gateshead (UK Parliament constituency)#Election results, Cardiff West (UK Parliament constituency)#Election results. Shouldn't the prospective parliamentary candidates be noted in alphabetical order of the candidate surname, as opposed to the Party name? It may be perceived as WP:POV otherwise. Daicaregos (talk) 13:33, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

That would appear to be sensible, following the practice of election notices and ballot papers. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 13:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Alphabetic order by surname is the established and agreed policy for forthcoming election boxes so by all means if if you see any that are not in line with this, change them to abide by it. This was done to maintain neutrality as is a very good policy follow. - Galloglass 14:02, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. It seems there are quite a few. Daicaregos (talk) 14:16, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
There are also a fair number of candidates with no reference to actually show they are standing, these need to be removed until its clear they are a selected candidate by the party concerned as we've had a lot of fakes added over the past few months. - Galloglass 14:20, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Agreed WP:POV would seen to applie here. As far as I am aware no one can be considered to be a candidate until an election is called and the relevant forms are completed with the electoral services department of the relevant local authority. Of course some ‘perspective candidates’ can be assumed to be candidates for any forthcoming election, just that they aren’t formally candidates until the forms are complete and the candidates have been announced. --Wintonian (talk) 00:42, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Which is 5 pm on Day 6 after the writ for the dissolution of Parliament is issued. This could be as late as 18 May. Assuming that the Dissolution writ issued on 10 May. If the election is to be held on 6 May, to conincide with local elections, the last nomination date would be 20 April.[5] –– Jezhotwells (talk) 03:19, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough. However, some pages have templates depicting prospective parliamentary candidates already. Therefore, we seem to have the following choices, or a combination thereof:
  • 1. Remove all templates already added;
  • 2. Remove all prospective candidates named within the templates;
  • 3. Accept the pages with prospective candidates named (amend to ballot paper order), but add no new templates;
  • 4. Continue to add templates without naming prospective candidates;
Ah, there seems to be some misunderstanding in the above: the term Prospective Parliamentary candidate appears to be fine. That is what their status is, that is what the word prospective means. It is the term used by the media until nominations are confirmed by the returning officer. Terms such as "Confirmed candiadates" which I have seen on some articles should be avoided, as they are factuallly inaccurate. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 09:10, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying. Daicaregos (talk)

Just noticed that an IP has reverted the redirect for Sarah Carr (politician), is there somewhare where we can officialy come to consensus for redirects? Or should we discuss this at WP:AFD? --Wintonian (talk) 21:04, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

I redirected it again. I also came across an article for Jesse Norman, the Tory candidate for the same constituency as Carr so I've redirected that too. Whoever wins can have their article restored. I think some kind of consensus on when and how to redirect with these articles would be good. I have to confess to having made one or two redirects myself. For example I created Helen Grant (politician) as a redirect because she's standing in a safe Tory seat so is likely to win. It would be interesting to get the views of others on this subject. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 21:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
I just did a search using the term "Prospective parliamentary candidate" and up popped lots of PPC's which should be redirected. Would anyone have any objections if I went through and redirected some of them as Appropriate? --Wintonian (talk) 21:38, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
No objections from me. I think that's a good idea. TheRetroGuy (talk) 21:49, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
just thought I'd check as some people have reverted redirects. I have started with Ian Lavery. If anyone does have any objections let me know and we can talk about it in the Wiki way. --Wintonian (talk) 22:18, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
So far I'v redirected;
I didn't quite know what to do with these as there is some limated coverage in the nationals, so I have left them so someone else can have a look and decide; David Joseph Henry Joanne Cash Anas Sarwar. I have also added to the WP:AFD discussions about some others I had found that were tagged as AfD. --Wintonian (talk) 23:25, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
I think Cash could probably stay. She's seems to have done other notable stuff and as she's standing for the Tories in a safe seat her election is probably going to be a bit of a shoo-in. Also I notice she was up for AFD a few weeks ago and seems to have survived. Sarwar doesn't seem to have done anything else notable at the moment, but is also likely to become an MP. I suppose it could be redirected in the short term and restored on 7 May or whenever the election results are announced. I'm not sure about Henry. He's done other )possibly) notable things apart from being selected as a PPC, but is he really likely to beat Hazel Blears at the polls? TheRetroGuy (talk) 12:55, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
I've had a request to un-redirect Anna Soubry which I am about to do so it can be disscussed here, my reasons for redirecting were that I couldn't find substantial coverage in the media as per WP:POLITICIAN. I'll redirect Sarwar, I am not realy placing any weight as to how likly they are to get elected as per WP:BALL --Wintonian (talk) 15:15, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Good point on WP:BALL. Really I guess that unless they're known for something else notable, none of these people qualify for an article until they've actually been elected. I think Anna Soubry probably just about qualifies for an article at the moment. TheRetroGuy (talk) 18:55, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Thats how I read: WP:POLITICIAN when it says; "In the case of candidates for political office who do not meet this guideline, the general rule is to redirect to an appropriate page covering the election or political office sought in lieu of deletion. Relevant material from the biographical article can be merged into the election or political office page if appropriate." --Wintonian (talk) 19:19, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
All (or the vast majority) of PPCs listed are on the User:H2g2bob/Election candidates page. Personally I don't see much of a problem having articles PPCs likely to be elected - we'd need to create those following the election anyway! From a practical point of view, it's wasteful to delete them only to recreate them again in a few weeks. Yes, that's right. I'm arguing WP:IAR beats WP:CRYSTAL. --h2g2bob (talk) 15:24, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Generally, I think you will find support above for redirecting to the constituency page, which does not involve deletion. If a PPC is elected then the redirection can be reverted. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 17:49, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
I would be wary of using User:H2g2bob/Election candidates, the first two blue links I checked were a US sportsman and an Australian TV presenter! –– Jezhotwells (talk) 17:51, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Infoboxes of the UK Prime Ministers

We should use city/country for the DoB & DoD in the infoboxes - Example - Belfast, Northern Ireland & Edinburgh, Scotland. GoodDay (talk) 15:50, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

No, we should use city, nation and country ie "Edinburgh, Scotland, UK" for Tony Blair. More accurate information is always better. Irvine22 (talk) 18:25, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
I think I agree with Irvine here, with the proviso that, per WP:OVERLINK, the terms should not be linked. --John (talk) 19:22, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced living people articles bot

User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects provides a list, updated daily, of unreferenced living people articles (BLPs) related to your project. There has been a lot of discussion recently about deleting these unreferenced articles, so it is important that these articles are referenced.

The unreferenced articles related to your project can be found at >>>Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom/Archive 2/Unreferenced BLPs<<<

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Update: Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom/Archive 2/Unreferenced BLPs has been created. This list, which is updated by User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects daily, will allow your wikiproject to quickly identify unreferenced living person articles.
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If you have any questions or concerns, visit User talk:DASHBot/Wikiprojects. Okip 00:05, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
There are actually rather lot of articles in this listing, I have been through them all, prodding some, removing the UK politics banner from some that did not appear to have any connection with UK politics, redirecting non notable councillors. There are a number of diplomats, royal servants, civil servants, consultants and colonial governors, not sure if they should be included in this project. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 04:10, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
Colonial administrators/governors should only be included if they were notable for involvement in politics or government within the UK. For example, a number of colonial governors were MPs or members of the House of Lords before or after their period as governor. If they were notable purely for the colonial role then we would leave it to that country's WikiProject to look after it.
If someone is notable as a UK diplomat or Civil Servant then they would come under our banner; however if someone is notable for being a murderer and just happened to work as a civil servant in a job centre then we wouldn't be interested.
The status of Royal servants and consultants is a little more vague. While posts in the Royal household have little political or governmental power today some roles were significant in previous centuries; it might be worth debating which Royal servant roles are covered by the scope. Consultants would be entirely subjective and depend on what they were consulting about; if they are notable for involvement in UK politics or government then keep them. Road Wizard (talk) 11:07, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
Yhanks for thew clarification. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 13:39, 28 March 2010 (UTC) Oops, didn't have my glasses on. I meant to say, thanks for the clarification. –– Jezhotwells (talk)

Importance scale

Why isn't there an explanation of the importance scale. I'd rate pages as I go along, but I have no criteria for doing so. -Rrius (talk) 17:34, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

The assessment guide is linked from the Project page. It is at WP:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom/Assessment#Importance –– Jezhotwells (talk) 21:47, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't believe the list that prompted the search for criteria falls into any of those sub-categories. -Rrius (talk) 21:59, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I tried putting together some importance criteria back in 2008, but no one else seemed to be interested. As I wasn't comfortable operating under a silent consensus I never completed it. If you think importance assessment adds value then your suggestions for the criteria would be welcome. Road Wizard (talk) 21:53, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't think my suggestions would add value, so I'm not sure you should be so welcoming. I was just hoping there would be relatively easy-to-apply standards that I could more or less mindlessly use. -Rrius (talk) 21:59, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
Well they look pretty straightforward to me. What list are you referring to? –– Jezhotwells (talk) 22:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

2005 election results

There's a complete set of 2005 election results in RDF at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kebl2765/general-election-2005.rdf (3.5MiB file!). Provided by Twitter user @alexsdutton who should be able to confirm the source(s) used. Perhaps someone could get a bot to import them? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:10, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

We already have a complete set of 2005 and 2001 election results. Warofdreams talk 11:34, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
Ah, interesting. Could you point me at your source for the 2001 results? Alexsdutton (talk) 13:54, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
The 2001 election is available here [6] on its own and as Warofdreams has noted, all the post 2000 election results are already complete in the relevent wiki articles. - Galloglass 18:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps I can chip in here and say constituency boundary data from Ordnance Survey is available under a cc-by-3.0 compatible license. If we want to update the constituency boundary images at some point, we can use that data. --h2g2bob (talk) 22:52, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Peter Gershon

I've started an article on Peter Gershon as he's recieved a lot of coverage lately and appears to be notable for several things. It's very basic so will need some work on it. Feel free to help. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 17:50, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Non-notable PPCs - yet again...

Why do we have this new article: Naz Sarkar? I thought that we had consensus that most PPCs are nn prior to being actually elected.

Are we really going to create hundreds of meaningless, nn stubs? --Mais oui! (talk) 09:19, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I have redirecetd it to the constituency. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 09:22, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
I see that. I was about to Prod it, but you beat me to it. Ta. --Mais oui! (talk) 09:24, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
And I was edit conflicted by the redirect while trying to prod. Redirecting to the contituency is probably the best way to go, or perhaps if there's a section for current candidates then point to that. Totnesmartin (talk) 11:55, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Howling Laud Hope is notable as the leader of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, Cat Mandu I think should be merged wioth it. --Wintonian (talk) 14:39, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Have redirected Cat Mandu -> Howling Laud Hope as the subject is allready there. --Wintonian (talk) 23:38, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
I have gone through a lot of the list, the redirect to Cat Mandu was reverted so I put it up for WP:AFD as the content is almost exactly the same as on the other page. I have redirected some article and put up for WP:AFD others, most of the ones left are due to me not being sure about them due to amount of coverage or the subject has written a book or 2. --Wintonian (talk) 01:55, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Category name change, things to do

I've added a request to rename the "UK MPs 2005-" category to "UK MPs 2005-2010". All the hard work is done by a bot, but your comments on the request will be appreciated.

I'd also be really happy for others to review the list of things to change when the election actually arrives. --h2g2bob (talk) 22:57, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

I've had a look and made a few additions; it's a good idea. The lengthy discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Parliament constituencies#Advance planning - "Post-Election Edit War Syndrome" might also be of interest. Warofdreams talk 16:18, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
It going to be a lot of work so I'll chip in a bit. Will go and look at planning conversation. --Wintonian (talk) 14:23, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
Warofdreams - that's a good guide. I've run into those sort of edit wars before (they get far too nasty for something where they're only debating when to change, not what). --01:16, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Opposing Candidates.

I note there's a reference to George Galloway standing against Jim Fitzpatrick (politician) in the final sentence of JF's bio. Should this remain? JRPG (talk) 09:42, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

In general, I would say probably not (unless there's some circumstance which it would make sense to mention, such as the candidate campaigning heavily against that particular candidate). This case is unusual as you have two sitting MPs going for one constituency - but really it's up to you and what makes sense in the article. --h2g2bob (talk) 01:22, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Constituency Infobox Templates

I think the infobox template on each constituency could be much more detailed. Population, Percentage of Students, Born outside UK etc, all of this info is readily available, it's just hard to find - Wikipedia could solve this. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Umbongo91 (talk • contribs) 15:55, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

It's not too hard to find - census data is available on http://www.statistics.gov.uk (see http://data.gov.uk too). Some sites already include this, for example UKPollingReport. The issue here is the license - I don't think Wikipedia can data which is Crown Copyright. --h2g2bob (talk) 01:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Outdated Constituency Maps due to Boundary Reviews in West Midlands

New Constituency Boundaries require new maps of Birmingham & West Midlands Constituencies. (Umbongo91 (talk) 16:33, 11 April 2010 (UTC))

We can use this data - not sure how just yet (if nobody else does, I'll probably get round to looking at this at some point, but not before the election). --h2g2bob (talk) 01:33, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
It might be that User:Wereon already got those. If so, I'm adding them as we speak. -Rrius (talk) 01:43, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Shall make the numbered maps shortly; the block-shaded ones already exist. Wereon (talk) 01:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

The Labour Party or Welsh Labour /Scottish Labour Party

As this seems right up your street, can we have some guidance on how to handle UK political parties in Wales and Scotland please. For example: the current First Minister for Wales, Carwyn Jones is a member of The Labour Party and was elected as a member of The Labour Party. He is also reported to be leader of Welsh Labour, although it should be noted that the Welsh Labour Party is not registered with the electoral commission (see here). One view is that as Welsh Labour have ostensibly separate policies to those of the UK Labour Party and as they refer to themselves as Welsh Labour, he should be noted as a member of Labour or Welsh Labour in the intro and infobox. The opposing view is that while politicians can be members of Welsh Labour, they represent the The Labour Party for electoral purposes and if Welsh Labour has separate policies then those should be dealt with in the aticle text, if notable, along with mention of his membership of Welsh Labour. A similar problem exists for Scottish Labour polititions: Iain Gray's intro notes him as a "Scottish Labour politician" and the infobox states his party as "Labour. Further, the issue has been raised that the only leader of the Labour Party in the UK is Gordon Brown see here. Thanks. Daicaregos (talk) 18:05, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

here is a reference confirming that the Labour Leader is leader only of the Labour group in parliament and not of the Scottish Labour Party. If you read the article you will also note a number of Scottish MP'S furiously stating that there is only one leader of the Labour Party in the UK (Gordon Brown). For any articles to say that any of the leaders of the Labour group in Parliament (Welsh or Scottish) are leaders of a Labour Party is incorrect. Another reference that confirms Iain Gray as Labour leader in the Scottish Parliament and not Leader of the Scottish Labour party. There is in fact no leader of the party in Scotland and Wales, only a General secretary. Jack forbes (talk) 18:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
I notice that Welsh Labour Party is redirected to Welsh Labour. Even on their own site they only mention Welsh Labour, unless of course it says Welsh Labour Party in Welsh? They also ask people to join the Labour Party, not the Welsh Labour Party. [7]. Jack forbes (talk) 19:26, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
The waters are muddied because while Labour in Wales is part of one British Labour Party, it's pursued a different policy agenda to Labour at Westminister.[8] Therefore it is sometimes useful to distinguish between the two. There is a Wales-level structure within the Labour Party, which has existed since 1947 and has been branded as Welsh Labour since 2000. This entity has an executive committee and holds an annual conference.[9] A paper by Andrew Lincoln discusses some of the institutional subtleties.[10]--Pondle (talk) 23:17, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
Herein lies the problem. In neither of the first two references is the phrase Welsh Labour Party, or even Welsh Labour, mentioned. In the in-depth discussion paper on the Labour Party in Wales, summing up what the Welsh Labour Party is Andrew Lincoln states "We will use the expression the Welsh Labour Party to refer to all of these levels collectively." (page 2) Welsh Labour does not exist as a legal entity. It is a collective expression for several groups of Labour Party and trade-unions officials. I have no doubt that separate policies may be pursued by the Labour Party at the Senedd, to those pursued at Westminster, but Welsh Labour is not a party and, its 'leader' has no control over the various groups. I maintain my original position i.e. that while politicians can be members of Welsh Labour, they represent the The Labour Party for electoral purposes and if Welsh Labour has separate policies then those should be dealt with in the article text, if notable, along with mention of their membership of Welsh Labour. Further, I contend that Welsh Labour should not be described as a "party". Daicaregos (talk) 17:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

The re-direct of Welsh Labour Party to Welsh Labour would be because people might type Welsh Labour Party in accidently, looking for Welsh Labour. As for the leadership of Scottish and Welsh Labour question. They are generally referred to in the press and by themselves as leader of the Scottish/Welsh Labour Party rather then as leader of the National Assembly party or the Scottish Parliament party. Indeed the National Assembly Websites refers to Carwyn as a party leader. General Secertary is, incidently a seperate role. [url=http://www.lgcplus.com/news/new-general-secretary-for-welsh-labour/547525.article] --Welshsocialist (talk) 00:58, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

I know it's a seperate role and I also know that the Welsh and Scottish General Secretarys are subordinate to the UK General Secretary. The bottom line is this, there are no leaders of the Scottish and Welsh branches of the Labour Party. There is only one leader of the Labour Party in the UK, and that's Gordon Brown. Jack forbes (talk) 12:02, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

They are widely recongised and referred to as the leader, in botht he media and by the parties themselves. The Welsh Labour Party had a website about the leadership battle called "welshlabourleadership" (now inactive), Carwyn Jones referred to Rhodri Morgan as the former leader of Welsh Labour, as do the press, and the National Assembly website. It is a very murky area though, especially given the different policies followed by Welsh, Scottish and the UK Labour Party.--Welshsocialist (talk) 14:43, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

From the National Assembly for Wales website: Election Results - 1999, Election Results - 2003 and Election Results - 2007. No candidates for the National Assembly for Wales have ever represented Welsh Labour or the Welsh Labour Party and AMs articles should not say that they do. Daicaregos (talk) 15:23, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

A disappointing response from WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom to a request for help. I am curious to discover the reason that the only member of this Wikiproject to have participated in this section was one who was already involved. Please enlighten me. Daicaregos (talk) 16:52, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Sadly, many Wikiprojects seem to suffer from low activity levels. Maybe folks just don't watch these pages.--Pondle (talk) 17:27, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps, but there are responses below. Still, with over 25,000 articles tagged as being within its scope, even an active project would be hard pushed to make any realistic difference to their quality. Back in December 2009, when the number of potential articles seemed almost limitless, I enquired (here) how the project intended to improve those articles. I was advised:
  • This talk page will be a central hub to bring issues and concerns relating to articles in our scope.
  • We will assess articles with the aim of doing our part towards universal assessment of Wikipedia articles.
  • We will monitor articles through the automated article alert system, which will allow participants to keep up to speed on issues they are interested in.
  • We will receive monthly updates on our popular pages, which will hopefully allow us to prioritise the articles we need to improve.
  • Depending on the level of involvement from other participants we could also start article improvement drives, A-class assessments and the various other functions carried out by the best quality projects.
These aspirations seem to have 'fallen at the first' and may have been more than a little ambitious. If a request for guidance on how to treat a UK political party on Wikipedia articles can't manage a single (uninvolved) response then this Wikiproject has clearly failed. Other than the UK appearing to have some level of influence and control over Welsh and Scottish articles (yet providing no help where and when needed), what is its point? Daicaregos (talk) 09:44, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
As the WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom appears to have abdicated responsibility for Wales related articles, would anyone here object to their being delisted from this project? There seems to be no discernible benefit from their continued inclusion. Daicaregos (talk) 20:26, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
I think you're making a little too much of a minor issue Dai. Sure, the response to your query here was a little disappointing, but it's hardly unprecedented for a post on a wikiproject talk page to elicit few replies. Wales is part of the UK, therefore Wales-related politics articles are within the scope of this wikiproject.--Pondle (talk) 23:36, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
That being the case - other than a UK Wikiproject appearing to have some level of influence and control over Welsh and Scottish articles (yet providing no help where and when needed), what is its point? Daicaregos (talk) 20:17, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I have been away from the Wiki for a month due to moving house and trying to get my internet connection sorted, so sorry for the lack of replies to this issue. However, I find it a little odd that due to a lack of response to a single issue an editor is suggesting purging all Welsh articles from the project. Is this a little bit of an overreaction? Road Wizard (talk) 20:36, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
As the purpose of the Project is in question, I should probably clarify my view of the situation. As I see it, WikiProjects fall into two main camps;
1) focussed projects looking at a single issue with editors driving to improve a small number of articles. An example of this type would be Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones, with 2,751 tagged pages and 140 Featured Articles.
2) larger projects that attempt to provide a minimum level of support for a larger number of articles. An example of this type would be Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography with 795,558 tagged pages and 703 Featured Articles.
I think the UK Politics project falls into the second type. The scope is large so all relevant articles are caught and can receive a minimum level of attention. However the scope is too large to give focussed attention to all articles. If you want to give specific attention to a particular area then feel free to set up a task force or a more specific WikiProject. As is mentioned on this project's main page we will defer to and support the more focussed project.
Editors will help out on specific articles when they can, but failing to give focussed attention on one issue out of several that have cropped up recently is not sufficient evidence to invalidate the purpose of the project. Road Wizard (talk) 20:57, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

→ Reading through the comments above it appears to be a difficult problem with strong views. I remember looking at this before when it first came up, but I chose not to comment because these nationalistic discussions invariably give me a headache and the consensus that forms is almost always overturned in a matter of days or weeks. It also seemed to be covered quite well with 4 editors involved in the discussion; if an issue is being actively debated by several editors already, is it any surprise that other editors focus on the issues that aren't being pursued? However, if you are looking for my judgement on the issue, I would suggest referring to the politicians as members of the Labour Party elected to the National Assembly for Wales; a separate sentence/paragraph later in the article could go into the specifics of what Welsh Labour is. In terms of the Leadership, both titles "Welsh Labour leader" and "Leader of the National Assembly Labour party" should be used (one is the common term used by the media and the other is the official description by the party). It does not particularly matter which title is used first as long as an explanation is made of the common title, the official title and the specific responsibilities/powers of the role. Road Wizard (talk) 22:01, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. I don't understand why this is labelled a nationalistic dispute - the Labour Party isn't well known for its nationalism. I was rather hoping for a concensus from the project on how to describe the Labour Party and its members in Wales and Scotland, confirmation as to whether Welsh Labour and Scottish Labour are political parties or not and if they should be noted as separate parties on Wikipedia articles, rather than a judgement. Candidates from the Labour Party contest (almost?) every Welsh or Scottish constituency: European, Westminster, Senedd, Scottish Partiament and council - so this will affect hundreds of articles. Consequently, it is an issue that deserves focussed attention. So to clarify: [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] or [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] should be used at the beginning of articles (and infoboxes) and the terms [[Welsh Labour]], [[Welsh Labour|Welsh Labour Party]], [[Scottish Labour Party|Scottish Labour]] or [[Scottish Labour Party]] should be used only after an explanation as to what they are. Does anyone disagree with this summary? Daicaregos (talk) 13:12, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
To put it another way: Does anyone agree or disagree with this summary? Daicaregos (talk) 12:59, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't think anyone disagrees with the proposition "Welsh Labour and Scottish Labour are not political parties in their own right" (which is clearly self-evident!) As I understood it, the argument here was about when the terms 'Welsh Labour' and 'Scottish Labour' should be used, if at all. I believe they are useful terms in devolved contexts -
(a) because the Labour Party uses these brand names;
(b) because the media does, even if just as a lazy shorthand sometimes; and
(c) because the parts of the Labour Party that operate in the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament do pursue distinctive policy agendas, and therefore it is often useful to differentiate between Labour at Westminster & Whitehall, and Labour in the Devolved Administrations.
All that being said, I am more than happy to give due prominence to Labour Party (UK) within all infoboxes and at the beginning of articles about any Labour politicians.--Pondle (talk) 18:43, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

It will be interesting to see if Welsh Labour has become a registered political party here, when the Electoral Commission re-opens its register on 12th April. I hope I'm wrong, but my money's on it staying as the Labour Party (UK), and on the control of "Welsh Labour" staying in London. Daicaregos (talk) 15:09, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Nope. Welsh Labour are still not on the register of political parties. And nor are the Welsh Conservative Party or the Welsh Liberal Democrats. Descriptions of the candidates' parties should be accurate. Does anyone disagree? Daicaregos (talk) 19:58, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

End of MPs' terms

Next week, all MPs will technically cease to be MPs when the Queen dissolves Parliament. None the less, we don't get all hyper-technical and change the infoboxes for all of them to say their terms have ended. However, a good number will forever cease to be MPs that day, many because they are standing down, and others because they will lose at the hustings. So, do we say that someone like Anne Widdecombe was an MP from 11 June 1987 to 12 April 2010 or do we say she served until 6 May? If we decide in favour of the former date, does that apply to people who lose? Should we go back and conform MPs who left at the end of older Parliaments? This is the sort of thing I can see being edited inconsistently next week, so I hope we can quickly come to consensus. For what its worth, my inclination is that we go with dissolution date, and if the difficulty of conforming old articles is a stumbling block, I'd volunteer to take an active role in the editing. -Rrius (talk) 02:15, 10 April 2010 (UTC)

I think the key to this will be the rule on the appointment of Ministers. Ministers remain in post until a new Minister is appointed (i.e. if Labour win the election and there is no reshuffle then the Ministers' terms will be uninterrupted) so that the functions of government can still be carried out behind the scenes during the election campaign. In the event that a current Minister dies between the dissolution of Parliament and a new election I believe the Queen can appoint an MP from the last Parliament as a Minister. Therefore, even though they are no longer MPs they are still qualified for appointment to a Crown Office until the election results come in. I would say it is best to use the election date as last day in office. Road Wizard (talk) 10:33, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Anyone can be appointed a minister, if the Prime Minister recommends it to the Queen; the convention is merely that ministers should be ennobled (or win a by-election) soon afterwards if they are not already members of either house, so the point is not relevant to this discussion.
Surely the best way to choose between the strict accuracy of the dissolution date, versus the notability of the polling date, is to look at which options are chosen by authoritative sources when writing about MPs who stood down or were defeated in previous elections. If there is an established consensus, it would be silly for us to go against it, given the merits of both approaches.
— Richardguk (talk) 11:19, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Part of the reason I brought this here was that I haven't the faintest clue where to begin looking. -Rrius (talk) 19:43, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
I don't really understand what all the fuss is about. The rules are quite clear cut.

"When Parliament is dissolved every seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant. MPs immediately revert to being members of the general public and lose all the privileges associated with being a Member of Parliament.

They are allowed access to Parliament for just a few days in which to remove papers and equipment from their offices. All facilities and services for MPs at Westminster are closed at 5pm on the day of dissolution.

Until a new Parliament is elected, MPs do not exist. Those who wish to re-apply must stand again for election as candidates in their constituencies." Dissolution of Parliament at www.parliament.uk/

As pointed out above Ministers continue to be Ministers (but not MPs) until a new Government is formed. So on Thursday next at 5pm (BST) there are no MPs in the United Kingdom. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 21:30, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
That isn't in dispute. I think all contributors here would agree that there are no MPs between Dissolution and Return Day. Despite that being technically true, we say, for instance, that Dennis Skinner has been an MP since 1970. Of course that isn't really true. He was not an MP during each of those election periods since 1970. So, do we treat the beginning and ending dates differently? It is reasonable to consider MPs to have served from first election to election where they stand down or lose. It is also reasonable to consider their service to run from first Return to last Dissolution. The question is which of these we should go with. From what I've seen, articles tend to use election to election. My own inclination, again, is to be technical. However, if we do that, we have the problem of what to do with people who are running for re-election, especially those who lose. Do we continue to call them current MPs until election day, then back date their end date if they lose? As an aside, isn't dissolution expected sometime Monday? -Rrius (talk) 21:46, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
As far as I understand, most infoboxes (for previous elections) list the election date for both the start and end. --h2g2bob (talk) 01:18, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
That is also not in dispute. The question is whether they should be. If we choose to change, I would volunteer to be help change the old ones. -Rrius (talk) 18:30, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

I have updated Mark Oaten to reflect that he is not standing for re-election and parliament has now been dissolved. I think consensus was that this was ok for those standing down; I hope I have got that right. --Wintonian (talk) 16:07, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

AS I said above, the House of Commons hasn't been dissolved yet. That happens Thursday, 15 April at 17:00 (BST). –– Jezhotwells (talk) 17:23, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
I'd be interested to know where you got that precise time from. Isn't Parliament dissolved the moment HM signs the proclamation? Wereon (talk) 19:10, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
So you said, but you were mistaken. Parliament was dissolved today. — Richardguk (talk) 17:45, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Ah, I found the information elsewhere on the parliament site. Looks like they changed the rules again or didn't update all of the website. I stand corrected. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 18:15, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

UK-current-MP-stub

An editor has proposed that {{UK-current-MP-stub}} and its associated Category:Current British MP stubs should be merged to {{UK-MP-stub}} and Category:United Kingdom MP stubs.

The discussion is at Wikipedia:Stub types for deletion/Log/2010/April/12#.7B.7Btl.7CUK-current-MP-stub.7D.7D_.2F_Category:Current_British_MP_stubs. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:41, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

House of Commons Commission

I have created: House of Commons Commission

I think it would benefit from attention by editors who know more about the UK Parliament than I do.

thank you John Cross (talk) 18:20, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Ward IDs

Each current ward has a unique ID, apparently owned by Ordnance Survey. For example, Curborough ward (in Lichfield) is 7000000000014811. This can be resolved to a page on the Openly Local site: http://openlylocal.com/wards/os_id/7000000000014811 which has relevant infomeation. How can we use these numbers/ links? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 12:51, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Nice links - we could a link on infoboxes, or add to the external links (we could add a template similar to {{IMDB}})? --h2g2bob (talk) 00:07, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
The wards here are local council wards, which we don't have pages for - we probably want to link to the council pages instead (eg: http://openlylocal.com/councils/378-Southend-on-Sea-Council). A number of council pages already have this on their external links - probably just adding the link there is enough? --h2g2bob (talk) 17:52, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Constituency navigation boxes

I have created some naviagtional templates for use on constituency articles: see User:RFBailey/Temporary constituency templates. The idea is that the old templates, such as {{Constituencies in London}}, are now outdated, as many constituencies have been replaced for the election. They do not assign seats to parties, as the election hasn't happened yet; after the election, they can be replaced with ones that do that. (Note that I haven't done one for Scotland, as (i) there are no changes there, and (ii) we already have {{Scottish Westminster constituencies (style 1)}} and {{Constituencies in Scotland by Holding Party}}.) I'll implement these later today, if no-one objects. --RFBailey (talk) 21:40, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

They seem fine. Go ahead. - Galloglass 21:57, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Looking good. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 22:00, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
Yep, looks good. --h2g2bob (talk) 22:31, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
I've updated the individual templates. I haven't done anything about editing articles where the template may no longer be seen to be appropriate, i.e. constituencies which have been abolished, but I guess this can wait until after the election. --RFBailey (talk) 23:53, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

PPC references

Virtually every constituency page has a list of its PPCs, citing UK Polling Report as a reference. On Tuesday, those PPCs will become candidates proper - any idea what we should do then? Remove the reference?

Apart from a very few which cite David Boothroyd's site, most past results are given unsourced. Presumably (not without reason) we assume that the reader will find where to look if he wants to check. Wereon (talk) 01:22, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think we should remove the reference until we can replace it with another. Presumably, the Elections Commission will publish the candidates list(s) quickly after the 20th, so we can replace it with that. -Rrius (talk) 01:44, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
The returning officers will also publish individual lists of candidates for each council area, so the council websites could be another valid source.
We need to provide sources for past results as well as current ones. Assuming editors and readers will know where to check doesn't fit with the verifiability policy. Road Wizard (talk) 06:34, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
I think the reason for that is many of these articles date from before the days when Wikipedia had such strict citation policies. Back in the good old days (e.g. 2005-2006ish), it was sufficient for such information to be verifiable, in that if it was possible to look something up in an obvious place (e.g. a public library), then no reference needed to be given, so we didn't bother. --RFBailey (talk) 01:13, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
I am working my way through the South West English constituencies, using the official notices from the acting returning officers as references, it is interesting how many differences there are from the uk polling reports. You can find the official notices on local authority websites. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 18:59, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Constituency infobox templates

Speaking of templates, I've been wanting to merge together {{UK constituency infobox}} and {{UK constituency infobox alt}} (and also {{Infobox UK constituency (former)}}) for a while. I've just got around to doing a first attempt, at User:H2g2bob/Infobox UK constituency main. There are some examples of what it looks like.

I've been struggling to work out {{UK constituency infobox alt}}. It has DivisionType and Division parameters, which appear to be local government areas? If this is true, it's an odd choce to have local government regions in the infoboxes and not welsh/scottish parliament regions on them.

There's lots to improve in this template, but I'd like to ask if this sort of change would be supported (in principle, at least), and what the pitfalls are. --h2g2bob (talk) 22:52, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

A merger seems sensible, especially since we now have several former constituencies for which fuller details, such as maps, are available ({{Infobox UK constituency (former)}} doesn't have the ability to display maps). --RFBailey (talk) 04:35, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm thinking of moving the template to the template space, and start using it — initially to implement {{Infobox UK constituency (former)}}.

  • I've got a region parameter - should that be called entity, country, or something?
  • I've also added towns, which I'm not sure whether that's a good idea or not.
  • county will be shown as County, Districts of Northern Ireland, Subdivisions of Scotland or Preserved county, depending on which region is set. Is it a reasonable assumption that the county / division value is one of these (and nothing else) and depends only on country?
  • Finally, the image parameter (used for the maps) is a free-form thing which accepts an [[Image:....]] as a value - one of the infoboxes is more restrictive, using preset image names, sizes, captions, etc. Would it be worth doing the same thing here? I could even set it to use the default image name/size/caption if something like |has_map=yes is set.

--h2g2bob (talk) 23:10, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Incumbents on constituency pages

Copied from Talk:United Kingdom general election, 2010
I plan to start marking incumbent MPs by putting "(i)" after their names in the results boxes at the individual constituency pages. Does anyone have any objections? MPs contesting a seat different to that which they previously held would be marked as well. I'm not aware of any seats where two MPs from the last Parliament are contesting the same seat, but if so, I would handle that by marking them both as such. The idea is to make it clear for readers when an MP is being voted out, and with all the new constituencies, it would be hard to handle it any other way. -Rrius (talk) 22:33, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Brent Central Wereon (talk) 22:58, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

With the election only 10 days away I think this is more trouble than it's worth. People can easily enough find out the incumbent by looking down the article. PatGallacher (talk) 23:02, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

This is a really bad idea. There are no incumbent MPs, all seats are vacant. As PatGallacher says, looking downj the article to the results of the 2005 shows the former MPS. And this discussion should be taking place at WT:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom, not here. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 23:13, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Constituencies with new articles but old candidates will have no such table to look down at. If you really want to be hypertechnical about whether a person seeking re-election could be called an "incumbent", a different letter or symbol could be used. While it would require of me and anyone who decides to help me a certain amount of effort, it is difficult to see how it is "trouble" or a "bad idea".
By constituencies with "new articles but old MPs", do you mean new constituencies? If so, there are obviously no "incumbents". there are no "incumbents" of any seats, they are all vacant at the moment. After the results are decleared, the prose text of the articles will make it clear which MPs have lost their seats. –– Jezhotwells (talk)
New or renamed. If you go back and read my initial contribution, you will see that I already addressed that. The fact that the prose might end up saying that a sitting MP lost his seat (and I don't concede that it will or that such prose would remain forever) does not mean a simple note of that fact can't be made in the election table. Frankly, your objection just makes no sense. How does it hurt the table or detract from the table or in anyway inconvenience you for the table to note MPs in the preceding parliament. If we take into account your problem with using the letter "i", can you explain the risk to the article in putting an asterisk after the name of a 2005/10 Parliament MP with a note below the table that says asterisks mean "Served as an MP in the 2005–2010 Parliament"? -Rrius (talk) 23:38, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
Do you realise that the vast majority of seats in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have new boundaries? What you are proposing is a pointless and meaningless exercise. I repeat that no MP is an incumbent. Former MPs generally have Wiki articles, so it is fairly easy to identify what is going on. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 23:49, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
There is a second constituency where two members of the 54th Parliament are fighting each other for the same seat in the 55th Parliament: Poplar and Limehouse. It is significant when an MP sitting in the previous Parliament is not re-elected, even if the boundaries have changed, so it isn't unreasonable to mark it in election results. I would prefer to see asterisks used (as in the Press Association lists of election results) rather than the American "(i)". Perhaps the boundary changes mean that after the election, List of Members of the United Kingdom Parliament defeated in the 2010 election should be the focus. Sam Blacketer (talk) 23:51, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Of course I realise that boundaries have changed. What I am proposing to do is to show in these tables that an MP from the preceding parliament was or was not returned. There is nothing pointless about it. You have gotten so hung up on this idea of incumbents that you're failing to listen. Forget about the word "incumbent". In addition to the unprecedented number of MPs standing down, we are expecting an unprecedented number of MPs losing their seats. By including small symbol, it will be easy for readers to tell at a glance whether a sitting MP was returned or not when looking at any given constituency page. I can't fathom how that hurts the article, and you have not provided any illumination. I'll be more specific in my question, so if there is an answer, you may actually give it. What makes Table A great, but Table B a "bad idea"?
Table A
Candidates for the General Election 2010: Dwyfor Meirionnydd [1]
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Simon Baynes
Liberal Democrats Stephen Churchman
Independent Louise Hughes
Labour Alwyn Humphreys
Plaid Cymru Elfyn Llwyd
UKIP Frank Wykes
Majority
Turnout
Table B
Candidates for the General Election 2010: Dwyfor Meirionnydd [2]
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Conservative Simon Baynes
Liberal Democrats Stephen Churchman
Independent Louise Hughes
Labour Alwyn Humphreys
Plaid Cymru Elfyn Llwyd*
UKIP Frank Wykes
Majority
Turnout
* Served as an MP in the 2005–2010 Parliament
-Rrius (talk) 00:00, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) I agree with those who say this is more trouble than it's worth. --RFBailey (talk) 18:10, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I also agree. If someone was strongly motivated to do this, I wouldn't stop them, but several hours work to highlight something obvious already seems a waste of time, to me. Warofdreams talk 22:33, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
My question was never whether it is worth my time. I believe it is, and I am the ultimate arbiter of what is and is not worth my time. What I did want to know is whether anyone has an objection. So far, the only one I've heard is pretty nebulous. -Rrius (talk) 22:51, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
Well, I'm not intending to stop you. However, in cases where the incumbent MP in a constituency which is not newly-introduced is standing again, this should be obvious from the article already (by looking at the 2005 (or by-election) results in the box below it, or in the article text), while in the new constituencies it might be worth waiting until after the election, and then saying in the article text for New Constituency X something like:

"New Constituency X is represented by Person A, who was previously MP for Old Constituency Y before the 2010 general election"

or that

"New Constituency X is represented by Person B, who defeated Person A, the former MP for Old Constituency Y, at the 2010 general election."

This also avoids having to introduce extra symbols etc. into the tables. --RFBailey (talk) 23:21, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Ward lists on constituency articles

Many constituency articles include a list of the wards that make up that constituency. This makes sense in many cases, as the Boundary Commission's review defined constituencies as groups of wards. However, local government reform since the review means that in some places, such as Cornwall, these wards no longer exist. In that situation, I'm not sure that the ward lists are especially helpful, and should probably be removed. What do others think? --RFBailey (talk) 18:13, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I think they should be kept but marked as historical in an explanatory note. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 18:38, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
I agree, mark as former or historical. Thanks for your work on this. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 20:18, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
From my observations, the constituency articles describe the geographical area covered in many different ways, admittedly some I have seen simply copy out the names of wards perhaps from the Boundary Commission reports. I would suggest it is for local editors to improve the articles as they see fit rather than unrealistically impose a uniform rule.
There is so much contradiction in the constituency articles anyway, since each article simultaneously tries to describe the 'current' constituency which is about to elect its MP, and tries to give historical data about previous constituencies that happen to have shared the same name. Look at Lewes (UK Parliament constituency) for an example. Hopefully some solution will be put forward to this in due course. Sussexonian (talk) 21:43, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
What's the problem? Lewes has very little information at all, but any modern constituency around for more than twenty years is pretty much bound to have changed its boundaries. It would be far more confusing to claim that every minor boundary change created a new constituency. I know we've discussed borderline cases at some length (e.g. where a constituency is created which shares its name with one abolished a few years earlier, or where a constituency name changes with little or no change to its boundaries), but I think this is the best possible approach for the many easier cases. Warofdreams talk 22:37, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
I think that describing current boundaries should have priority, followed by 1997–2010 boundaries if they are significantly different (e.g. East Devon), and a discussion of earlier ones. Of course, for constituencies like Lewes which have existed since before the Reform Acts, the notion of "boundaries" doesn't make quite as much sense as it does in the modern era.
In some cases the ward lists are helpful, for instance in the four Bristol constituencies, but I don't think this will always be the case. --RFBailey (talk) 22:41, 26 April 2010 (UTC)
For what it's worth I fully agree with the above, we need current boundaries and brief mention of previous, in terms of wards perhaps for urban areas and towns/villages elsewhere. Sussexonian (talk) 18:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Party

Candidates standing in some constituencies are on the official council ballot nomination as 'Support Our Troops Bring Them Home' (e.g. Clive Bennett,

Swansea East, here). These have been edited on the articles to show they are BNP candidates (e.g. here). Please advise if this is correct. Thanks. Daicaregos (talk) 07:59, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

In addition to the party name itself, the British National Party currently has the following registered descriptions:
  • "A Fair Deal for British People"
  • "British Homes for British Families"
  • "British Jobs for British Workers"
  • "Decent People Not Corrupt Politicians"
  • "End Afghan War Troops Home Now"
  • "Get Your Own Back"
  • "Putting Scottish People First"
  • "Scrap All Global Warming Hoax Taxes"
  • "Support Our Pensioners Support Our Troops"
  • "Support Our Troops Bring Them Home"
  • "With Nick Griffin Support Our Troops"
If a registered description is used for a BNP candidate instead of simply the party name, no direct reference to the BNP will appear anywhere on the election notices (in accordance with the Local Elections (Principal Areas) (England and Wales) Rules 2006, rule 5 of Schedule 3). If the candidates have requested an emblem to be used, then one of the registered BNP logos will be printed on the ballot paper after the candidate details and description.
— Richardguk (talk) 09:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)
BBC article here. Ghmyrtle (talk) 09:48, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it's worth mentioning in the articles. It's not uncommon for candidates to use such descriptions, and the logo means it's still abundantly clear they're BNP candidates. Wereon (talk) 23:16, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

If they are BNP candidates they should be described on Wikipedia as BNP candidates. If necessary add a reference to a reliable source. Sussexonian (talk) 18:47, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Lib Dem photos

Since I don't think any UK politics editors have noticed I'd like to point out that Nick Clegg's office and the Lib Dems have uploaded loads of photos to Picasa Web Albums and Flickr, most under the cc-by license. I've been uploading a lot of them to Wikimedia Commons, such as our first image at Miriam González Durántez. Does anybody else want to riffle through these (especially somebody who'd recognise more of the prominent British polticians than myself)? —innotata 18:44, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Links to their pages on the picture sites would be useful, please. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 19:36, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I managed to track down Nick Clegg's Picasa page. Road Wizard (talk) 20:02, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Caution: many of these images are Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported which is not suitable for Wikipedia. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 22:11, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
I always check the link to Creative Commons (or search compatible license categories [11] and [12], at Flickr). I haven't looked at the party photo stream until just now, but most there are cc-by-nc-nd, so we can't use them, while Clegg's are mostly cc-by. There probably are some MPs who could get decent photos if anybody would look through these. —innotata 13:27, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Tony Benn

A request has been made for the article Tony Benn to be peer reviwed at WP:Peer review/Tony Benn/archive1. Any comments welcome. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 02:05, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

With the election on Thursday being likely to result in an avalanche of false edits, both good-faith and bad-faith, at certain articles, should articles like Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and List of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom be fully protected or at least semi-protected beginning shortly before the polls close? -Rrius (talk) 21:19, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

This may well be wise. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
The two leader articles are already semi-protected until well after the election is over (as a side note Nick Clegg has similar protection). The two Prime Minister articles are not currently protected; you may wish to request page protection and see what the admins on duty say. Road Wizard (talk) 21:58, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm not really an expert on protection standards, so I was hoping to test the waters here, preferably with some interventions by editors, even admins, who know more about it. If the Tories get close to a majority on Thursday, we will probably see a constant barrage of edits trying to make Cameron PM and Brown Leader of the Opposition. I'm suggesting it might be best to forestall that, but then again, I might be wrong. -Rrius (talk) 22:04, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Implementation of protection standards depends partially on the admin reviewing the request. Some will see the potential danger of the situation and apply short term protection while others would take the view that as the Prime Minister articles have been relatively untouched throughout the campaign there is little need to pre-emptively protect with a few days left to go. Personally I would suggest waiting and seeing how the Prime Minister articles are edited in the next few days; if the level of vandalism picks up we can ask for semi-protection at that time.
Full protection is definitely not an option (unless a major dispute ensues between long term editors). Editors will need to update all the articles quite quickly over the next few days so needing to ask for admin intervention on each edit won't be accepted. Road Wizard (talk) 22:11, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Just to reiterate, I'm not talking about protecting now. Rather, I am talking about protecting on Thursday night shortly before the polls close and continuing for a brief period thereafter (presumably into Friday morning). -Rrius (talk) 22:46, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons

The WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons (UBLPs) aims to reduce the number of unreferenced biographical articles to under 30,000 by June 1, primarily by enabling WikiProjects to easily identify UBLP articles in their project's scope. There were over 52,000 unreferenced BLPs in January 2010 and this has been reduced to 35,715 as of May 1. A bot is now running daily to compile a list of all articles that are in both Category:All unreferenced BLPs and have been tagged by a WikiProject. Note that the bot does NOT place unreferenced tags or assign articles to projects - this has been done by others previously - it just compiles a list.

Your Project's list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom/Unreferenced BLPs. Currently you have approximately 123 articles to be referenced - down from a peak of 223 in March, so very well done! Other project lists can be found at User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects/Templates and User:DASHBot/Wikiprojects.

Your assistance in reviewing and referencing these articles is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please don't hestitate to ask either at WT:URBLP or at my talk page. Thanks, The-Pope (talk) 17:45, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

New constituency names

Here's a plea by Francis Irving of MySociety for consistency in the use of constituency names. He refers to the use of "and" not "&"; but the list to which he links also has commas, in names such as Birmingham, Perry Barr. Our articles often omit these: Birmingham Perry Barr (UK Parliament constituency), although the content uses them intermittently (note Navbox on that article). We should disambiguate, but be careful if the changes are new introductions. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 16:20, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

To be honest, I'd settle for people not putting "North" etc. after county constituencies, which seems to be endemic. As far as I can tell, the comma in the names of the city constituencies has always been there in real life, but virtually never on Wikipedia.
If anybody is planning to modify all the articles, I should point out the peculiarity that geographical descriptors don't require a comma, but area names do. Thus we have "Glasgow North", but the aforementioned "Birmingham, Perry Barr". Wereon (talk) 18:13, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
In general, the mangled constituency names come from the reliance of all the newspapers and, sadly, the BBC, on the Press Association's list here. So Mid Sussex is listed as the ghastly "Sussex Mid", and so for many other seats where the name begins with a compass direction. As far as I can tell the Wikipedia standard is to use the correct name for all constituencies (as defined by the parliamentary boundary order which fixed them), but in the article's title, the commas are omitted. Sussexonian (talk) 22:37, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
It's not just Wikipedia that misses the comma. Plenty of reputable sources omit them as well, such as the BBC, Daily Telegraph and The Guardian.
To be honest, much as I understand the need for pedantry in certain situations, I think we've got more pressing problems to deal with than this. --RFBailey (talk) 21:54, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. Sussexonian (talk) 23:26, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
I don't see anyone insisting that you do anything; so what if some of us do wish to get this right? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 08:59, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Article names

Commas not withstanding, why are the articles named like "Birmingham Perry Barr (UK Parliament constituency)" and not the shorter "Birmingham, Perry Barr" or "Birmingham Perry Barr", both of which redirect to it? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 08:59, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

This has been discussed at length before (see the talk page of WP:UKPC, which this project seems to have subsumed). I think the consensus was that it made sense to have a consistent set of article titles, even if they are a bit long sometimes. --RFBailey (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Taunton and Bridgwater

I know this is a tricky one ("When is a constituency newly created, or is it just renamed?"), but in the cases of Taunton Deane and Bridgwater and West Somerset, it does appear that these are renamed, rather than newly created, seats. Indeed, the Boundary Commission's original plans retained the names of Taunton and Bridgwater, and the Assistant Commissioner's report does specifically recommend "renaming" them ([13], page 24, paragraph 55). In this particular case, it seems that separate articles are unnecessary. Any thoughts? --RFBailey (talk) 14:51, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Since the 1980's, I have sign statements that the peace symbol is actually "the cross of Nero" and thus an anti-Christian sign. I have found no historical evidence for this what-so-ever and assume the actual origin was in 1958 as reported.
I would like to know where and how the "cross of Nero" rumor got started. I has been very popular among American conservative evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians. It has also been used in a comic political commentary on FOX news to link being anti-war to being anti-Christian (interestingly enough, the comic was Canadian).
The earliest reference I have seen to this theory was a police handout from the mid-1980's supposedly showing "signs to watch for" for Satanic cult activity in the area (upper Midwest). But this official police document seems to have been taken from a conservative Christian source and had no documentation.
The idea that the peace symbol is actually a Satanic or anti-Christian sign seems to have been the invention of conservative evangelicals or fundamentalist Christians some time in the 1970's or 1980's. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Minnesota Kent (talk • contribs) 15:53, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

If you mean ☮, the peace symbol, the symbol is in fact the symbol of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which it represents the initials of. I don't know of the rumours you mention, and I think this is a strange place to ask. —innotata 16:04, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
Maybe try Conservapedia..... --RFBailey (talk) 20:11, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
This BBC article explains it. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 20:26, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Plaid Cymru

Would someone have a look at this please. I don't want to be involved in an edit war. Thanks Daicaregos (talk) 07:02, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Discuss thsi on the article talk page if you have an issue with the edits. That is what it is there for. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 08:49, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
I've now opened a discussion at Talk:Plaid Cymru#Nationalist party? for anyone interested to join in. Cheers - Galloglass 10:00, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

AfD of 2010 UKIP PZL-104 Wilga crash

The 2010 UKIP PZL-104 Wilga crash article has been nominated for deletion. Mjroots (talk) 19:41, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

General election turnouts since 1945

The Guardian have data on General election turnouts since 1945, if it's of any use. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:36, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Ministers losing seats

I've noticed that someone has been editing the bios of Labour ministers who've lost seats to indicate their term of office ended on May 6th. Simply to note that unless they've actually resigned then they remain ministers until they are dismissed or the government resigns. One can be a minister without being an MP. Someone may wish to check there - as I see no sources for individual resignations.--Scott Mac 22:49, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

Just revert where you see that done. Its just someone who doesn't understand how it works out. - Galloglass 23:10, 8 May 2010 (UTC)

MP term dates

I've had the converse problem, with people insisting that MPs who did not stand again ceased to be MPs on 6 May, not 12 April: see Clare Short, for example. The same would apply to defeated MPs. Similarly, should new MPs' infoboxes say "Assumed office 6 May 2010", or should the date be the day when they;re sworn in? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:39, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

For ones who didn't stand or were defeated, their last day as MP was in April. New MPs should be dated from 6 May. If we took it from the time they are sworn in as MP Gerry Adams would never be listed as an MP due to abstaining from taking the oath. Road Wizard (talk) 10:58, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. The date of the returning officer's declaration would be more accurate (7 May in most cases) but for the sake of consistency and simplicity, 6 May would seem reasonable, unless an alternative convention can be demonstrated among authoritative reliable sources. — Richardguk (talk) 11:16, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Since he's not taken the oath, is Adams an MP? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 11:27, 10 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, several sources confirm his MP status:
Parliament lists him as a member.[14] Sources like the BBC refer to him as an MP.[15] He also qualifies for claiming MPs expenses.[16][17] Road Wizard (talk) 11:38, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Labour Party leadership election, 2010

I've started this article after Brown announced his plans to resign a few minutes ago. It's a very basic stub at the moment, but information can be added as it becomes avvailable. Hope I'm not doing this too early. TheRetroGuy (talk) 16:24, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Premiership of David Cameron

Article started as a stub now that Cameron is prime minister. Feel free to expand this. I'm hoping to take more of a back seat with this one as it kind of takes over your life (the Gordon Brown one certainly did anyway). Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

55th United Kingdom Parliament

I've started this article as a model of 111th United States Congress and 40th Canadian Parliament. Feel free to expand on what is already there. --[[User: Duffy2032|Duffy2032]] (talk) 01:52, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Added some categories. I notice similarly titled articles currently redirect to lists of MPs elected at a particular election. I think a few more of these would be a useful addition to Wikipedia. TheRetroGuy (talk) 11:41, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Do we have a source for "55th"? Whenever the numbering subject comes up the editor that proposes the number normally says they just saw the last number somewhere else on Wikipedia and added 1 - that means the Wiki is its own source.
Apart from the source issue, is the number meant to be 55th from the Union with Scotland? Or maybe 55th from the Union with Ireland? Road Wizard (talk) 12:05, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
The title is silly. The UK never names its parliaments as such, this is a US convention with no parallel. If anything the parliament would be numbered for the Monarch's name.--Scott Mac 12:36, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Indeed. And wouldn't it in large part be duplicating Premiership of David Cameron anyway? Wereon (talk) 13:51, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
I have nominated this nonsense fo delawetion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/United Kingdom Parliament of 2010. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 13:57, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Withdrawn as article was renamed whilst I was nominating this at AfD. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 16:39, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
It's a standard numbering scheme in the more formal official parliamentary documents. For example: "End of the Fifth Session (opened on 18 November 2009) of the Fifty-Fourth Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the Fifty-Ninth Year of the Reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second" (House of Commons Hansard, 8 April 2010, column 1260).
Parliamentary Bills are similarly disambiguated, so for example "HL Bill 14 54/5" means the 14th bill introduced in the House of Lords in the 5th session of the 54th UK parliament.
Working backwards confirms the statement made at List of Parliaments of the United Kingdom: "The Parliaments are numbered from the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland."
Whether the terminology is widely used or understood is, of course, a separate question.
— Richardguk (talk) 17:06, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
WP:COMMONNAME. The numbering appears only to be used in that set phrase of prorogation. Wereon (talk) 17:15, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Former shadow cabinets

Dear friends, I'm not an expert of British politics, but I'm following it a lot these days of course!

I noticed that almost no articles about former shadow cabinets have been saved in the previous years. I started two articles that need you help, by copying older versions of the article on the Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet (United Kingdom): British Shadow Cabinet 2003–2005 ‎and British Shadow Cabinet 2005–2010. I urge you to do the same for the Liberal Democrats: currently there is only one article about their frontbench team (Liberal Democrat Frontbench Team), but there should be at least three: one on Kennedy's, one on Menzies-Campbell's and one on Clegg's.

I think it is fairly important to register in Wikipedia all the information about former shadow cabinets and frontbench teams as we do with true Cabinets (see List of British ministries). Thank you for your help and attention. Enjoy! --Checco (talk) 18:05, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Cabinet of the United Kingdom

Suggests the Gordon Brown changed the date that Cabinet meets to Tuesday. But According to [18] Cabinet met today, i.e. a Thursday. Is this a reversion of the date, or is it too early to call? --Quentin Smith 19:28, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Too early. Regular meetings under Brown occurred on Tuesdays but there is nothing to prevent Cabinet meeting on another day if required (as an extreme example, imagine if the UK is about to go to war but asks its enemies to wait a few days to allow the Cabinet to discuss the issue on Tuesday). In 2007 after Brown took over as PM there were 3 cabinet meetings in less than a week;[19] it may take a bit of time to see if a pattern forms for the Cameron government. Road Wizard (talk) 20:02, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
BBC says they will meet on Tuesdays.--Scott Mac 20:53, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Lib Dem Frontbench Team

Now that the Liberal Democrats are in government, it beggars belief that they will shadow themselves. That leads to the question of what we do with that article Liberal Democrat Frontbench Team for the time being. Your input is welcome at Talk:Liberal Democrat Frontbench Team#What should be done?. -Rrius (talk) 07:42, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

It appears to be up in the air at the moment. Best to wait until the Lib Dems themselves decide how to approach this. - Galloglass 09:28, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

New government - reminder to update articles

Now that the UK has a new government - of a different political complexion to the old one, obviously - there is a need to make sure that all articles are checked to make sure that they don't retain out-of-date references to the old government, where they are sensitive to political changes. One example where an edit was needed was here - there may be many others, possibly hidden away in rarely-updated articles. So, if you know of any, please change them. Ghmyrtle (talk) 14:38, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Ghmyrtle. As I pointed out here, while it's relatively easy to spot these references in articles such as United Kingdom, there are likely many more hiding away all over the place, including in article that you wouldn't necessarily expect them such as West Highland Free Press! Cordless Larry (talk) 14:57, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Shadow Cabinet

The Labour Shadow Cabinet met shortly after Gordon Brown resigned.[20] I can provide more sources if they are desired. What they prove is that Labour has something the media is calling the Shadow Cabinet. On Friday, Sadiq Khan told that Harriet Harman had given him the job of Shadow Transport Secretary after Lord Adonis step away from frontline politics.[21] (I haven't found a separate ref for Adonis stepping down, but he gets so many coalition hits that I've given up trying.) This suggests that there really is a shadow cabinet in existence now and that the old Cabinet ministers are the new Shadow Cabinet. However, I can't find anything to support that this happens. Can anyone help? Relatedly, it appears that the Shadow Cabinet will be elected.[22] Does anyone know anything about this? -Rrius (talk) 20:11, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Aren't the (Shadow) Cabinet members elected rather than appointed when Labour is in opposition? If so, it's likely that the positions will be vacant until Conference. You might want to ask User:Sam Blacketer, he seems to have memorized the Labour Party rule book. Wereon (talk) 20:23, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, that's what you get for skim-reading posts! Wereon (talk) 20:25, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
I've since found this post, which suggests the oldies stick around until a new leader is elected. I'll leave a note at User:Sam Blacketer's talk page. Thanks for the suggestion. -Rrius (talk) 20:31, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
According to this, "the Shadow Cabinet [will be] chosen by the party... The detailed timing...would depend on the timetable set by the Labour Party for the leadership election. Elections to the Shadow Cabinet are not due to take place until a new leader is in post". Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Great find! Would people agree then that the following quote would adequately support saying the last Labour Cabinet ministers have been the Shadow Cabinet from 11 May?
-Rrius (talk) 21:16, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

British Shadow Cabinet election, 2010

This article has been started, but I think a better title for it would be Labour Party Shadow Cabinet election, 2010. I've started a discussion about this here. Thanks, --RFBailey (talk) 23:32, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Requested move discussion

Participants here will be interested in a discussion at Talk:Constituencies in the United Kingdom general election, 2010#Requested move. -Rrius (talk) 08:32, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

Constituency result boxes

If anybody's working on calculating swing, turnout, etc. for the election, have a look at User:Wereon/2010ge. The boxes can be copied and pasted into the relevant articles. Wereon (talk) 18:22, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Councils vs Places

UK Local Authorities are inherently notable. Yet many council names are currently redirects to articles about places; which are not the same thing at all. I feel we should do the same for all authorities which don't at the moment have their own articles. For example, I recently split Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council out from Metropolitan Borough of Walsall. What are your thoughts? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 21:20, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

That split was a good one, because there was enough material on the council to make a fairly substantive article. However, I don't think there is much point in doing the split if the resulting article on the council is a one-line stub. It would be great if there was a substantive article on every council, but until the text about the council has been written it seems to me to be better to keep the articles merged. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:52, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. Ben MacDui 20:13, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Page move of interest

At Talk:Catherine Ashton#Requested move 2, there is discussion potentially of interest to members of this WikiProject. -Rrius (talk) 02:06, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

That'd be Talk:Catherine Ashton#Requested move 2. — Richardguk (talk) 02:15, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
I've corrected it as now I have to at other talk pages. Thanks for the heads up. -Rrius (talk) 02:18, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Template: English district control

Template:English district control adds a line like

Executive Conservative / Independent

to the infobox on a number of place and council pages based on the ONS code. The information appears to be very out of date with only ten updates in the last two years. Is it a good idea? It's not the obvious place to go if you want to change the control of a council. I think references can only be added as comments or in edit summaries. If we do want to keep it, it does need to be kept up to date. I'd be able to do some but some more eyes / hands would be good. Cavrdg (talk) 15:47, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Discussion of Interest

I have opened a discussion at Template talk:Brown Cabinet about the future of the template now that Brown has left office. This discussion may be of interest to some in this WikiProject. Cheers. -[[User: Duffy2032|Duffy2032]] (talk) 04:57, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

There are articles at AFD that aren't picked up by the bot

These two articles both have the tag for this project on their talk pages, but aren't listed in the articles for deletion. An error? Or has it just not cycled through yet? Dream Focus 12:31, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Speaker Seat

A curious discussion has unfolded on the Buckingham Constituency page and can be found here. Further input is asked for as to resolve this discussion amicably as the two side are not willing to give any ground.--Lucy-marie (talk) 11:23, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Notional constituency results

I've had confrontations now with a couple of editors who for some reason object to our using Rallings and Thrasher's notional results for last month's general election. To me, using these seems to be a no-brainer, but I would welcome the comments of others.

With the exception of the Scottish seats and a handful of seats like the Islingtons, every constituency has changed its boundaries. That is to say, the new Rochdale seat is as much of a new creation as Central Devon, even if though it shares its name and much of its area with the old Rochdale seat. Swings and vote changes are self-evidently useful information to include, and this cannot be done without resorting to the notional figures. R&T's calculations are rigorous, face no serious criticism, and are used without exception throughout the media, so these should be the ones we use. Wereon (talk) 16:22, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Absolutely. They were used throughout the media and by political commentators, and there is no other way to compare results when constituencies change. We shouldn't obscure the actual results, but I don't think we do. Fences&Windows 00:11, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

The central problem of including these estimates as facts on constituency pages is that it clearly breaches one of the main policies of this encyclopedia, namely WP:Crystal. And make no bones about it, that is what is being done here, presenting extrapolation by academics as hard data. We simply do not to this, either in this project or in Wikipedia as a whole. - Galloglass 19:10, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

If the notional data has been adopted by reliable sources and we make clear that it is only notional data there is no problem with using it. As long as we are quoting the reliable sources and not the primary source data itself there is no issue. There is a danger that by deviating from the methodology used by reliable sources and presenting raw data in our own way we could be producing original research.
WP:Crystal is a red herring if we are talking about the recent election. The election has passed so it is not about a future event. Road Wizard (talk) 20:06, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
But what reliable sources Road Wizard? Rallings and Thrasher were fairly well discredited even before the election and its this source that the BBC notionals are based on. Anthony Wells notionals are somewhat better but even Anthony doesn't put them forward as wholly reliable. In the past when there has been a major boundary change, we have left the change percentages out as unreliable and misleading even when the constituency names have remained the same. Now its being proposed to add these notional change figures to seats that have never existed in any way, shape or form. This is very bad practice to introduce indeed. - Galloglass 20:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
If there are previous discussions on this subject then a link to them would be useful to clarify the issues that haven't come out yet in this discussion. I have no knowledge of particular data sets being discredited, so I cannot comment on that aspect; has the data been discredited in a reliable source, or is it just the opinion of individuals?
You have mentioned that there are other data sets available. If reliable sources have made use of different data sets then an extra level of confusion is added; has more than one set been used, or have sources generally gone with the same data set as the BBC?
I noticed below that you said that you can no longer participate in this discussion, but hopefully somebody else can provide an answer. Road Wizard (talk) 21:24, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm unfamiliar with this discreditation - I'd love to read it, though. Is the objection to the concept of notional results as a whole, or just to the particular method used here? Shimgray | talk | 22:04, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
  • And thats going to have to be my last contribution on this subject I'm afraid as work commitments prevent me from spending any longer on this subject. - Galloglass 20:48, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Shame! Please come back once you're free.
I've not heard anything about this discreditation either - could you (or anybody else) please enlighten us? R&T can't be vastly less reliable than Wells, if at all, because Wells himself acknowledges that their methodologies are virtually identical - see [23]. There's only one other data set that I'm aware of, Baxter, but it doesn't appear to be used anywhere other than Electoral Calculus, Baxter's own site.
Road Wizard, as far as I can tell, the only source used by the media is R&T, but bear in mind the relative paucity of independent sources. The newspapers all seem to have used the Press Association's results, and the BBC have their own, and both project with R&T. Wereon (talk) 23:30, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
References to WP:CRYSTAL are a total red herring. If reliable sources speculate or extrapolate, we're allowed to use those sources. WP:CRYSTAL stops us speculating. And in the absence of evidence that these notional result comparisons have been discredited, we should continue to use them. Fences&Windows 00:48, 10 June 2010 (UTC)
As long as we make it clear that notionals are just that, and that they are being included solely for the purpose of loss/hold/gain, then that seems to be the best option. Perhaps a boilerplate explanation, something like:
Because the boundaries of the constituency were changed prior to this election, the loss/gain/hold and swing are calculated on the basis of projections by X.
where X is the name(s) of the sources. ninety:one 14:35, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Constituency infobox duplication

Why do we have {{Infobox UK constituency}}, {{UK constituency infobox alt}}, {{Infobox UK constituency (former)}}, and {{Infobox UK constituency main}}? What are the differences between them? Can they be merged? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 15:53, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

It's a legacy issue: the up-to-date template is {{Infobox UK constituency main}}, and I am busy replacing the older ones with the new one. The process needs to be done manually, because there are inconsistencies in the data structure of the templates, and it would be great if other editors helped out. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:39, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Categorising UK local politicians by party

Two different formats in use. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 June 24#UK_local_politicians_by_party, where your comments will be welcome --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:41, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

Cooper and the leadership election

An editor at Yvette Cooper believes it is inappropriate to include a mention of her decision not to stand for the Labour leadership after her husband, Ed Balls, offered to stand aside for her. Your views are welcome at Talk:Yvette Cooper#2010 election for leader. -Rrius (talk) 21:19, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:Labour MEPs

Category:Labour MEPs, which is under the purview of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you.. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:27, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Categories for discussion nomination of Category:Members of the pre-1707 English Parliament

Category:Members of the pre-1707 English Parliament, which is under the purview of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you.

Template:Infobox election

I have proposed adding an extra field to Template:Infobox election: elected_mps, to allow for an explicit link to the list of members elected in an election.

Discussion at Template talk:Infobox election#List of MPs elected in the election, where your comments will be welcome.

I have notified this project because the example I have used is of United Kingdom general election, 2010. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:43, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

This has now been implemented (see diff). I have started deploying it in the UK general election articles. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:59, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Lord infobox

Do we have an infobox for lords? I can't seem to find one! Thanks. --Half Price (talk) 20:44, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

William Biggs

Resolved
 – the name in the article has been corrected Road Wizard (talk) 21:03, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

The article about William Biggs is not actually about William Biggs. I would delete it, but would rather have it fixed as it is part of various categories. Which name is correct? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.254.183.233 (talk) 15:12, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

I've asked Ironholds, as he wrote it. Fences&Windows 19:08, 26 July 2010 (UTC)

Policy on SPAs active at politician bios

I'm aware of a recent Daily Telegraph talking about articles being polished by reletavies or aides of parliamentarians. On looking at a recent edit to Colin Moynihan, I have noticed that Zoecraig (talk · contribs · count) is solely active there. Googling her hasn't come up with a political connection that I've spotted, but she seems to both have added lots of good new details and to have removed any criticism. The latter is within WP:BLP given the lack of references, but it still has me wondering what's up.--Peter cohen (talk) 13:49, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes. But look at the content rather than the edits. SPAs can be doing useful things like removing unfair unreferenced criticism, or fixing factual errors. If referenced criticism is being removed, challenge it. If info is being added, ask for a source. Tell the SPA about WP:NPOV and WP:V.--Scott Mac 15:24, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
"Local topics" tend to attract a higher than usual proportion of "tightly focused" editors (whether or not we define them strictly as SPAs), who have a particular connection to their village or their council or whatever. Individual MPs would seem to fall into this - I can easily see a constituent who has Opinions about their particular MP deciding to work on the article and not really caring about others. I don't think we should automatically presume there's a direct conflict of interest, and as Scott says, look at the edits. Shimgray | talk | 15:43, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

MPs elected in 1832

I have just about finished work on List of MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, 1832, and moved it to mainspace.

This list is structured very differently to other similar lists, with a lot more data and full sortability, so I would welcome feedback on the notes I have left at Talk:List of MPs elected in the United Kingdom general election, 1832#Structure_of_this_list. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:34, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Hope not Hate

A new user, Londonblue, has arrived at this article and has made edits that are poorly formatted, remove references, add unreferenced material and are propagandistic and unencyclopedic. Lb has not responded to my post on his/her talk page and is reinstating similar text after I and another user reverted him/her. This project is not mentioned as associated with the article, but perhaps it should be. Is anyone here willing to try and engage or work with this new user to make changes without the sort of problems I have mentioned?--Peter cohen (talk) 23:32, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I have watchlisted and warned them about edit-warring. Jezhotwells (talk) 16:56, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. He has now commented on the talk page, so hopefully progress can be made.--Peter cohen (talk) 18:46, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Notability criteria of local elections, and cohesive style guide?

Hi all. I have searched and searched and cannot find any guidelines as to notability criterion for local elections. I have created and updated a number of pages on local elections, but wondered if anyone could give me clarification of what sized political area is too small? The levels of government we are talking about are articles on:

  1. County councils and unitary authorities including all Welsh and Scottish Unitary Authorities (eg. Norfolk County Council, Ceredigion County Council and Brighton and Hove) and their elections (eg. Ceredigion County Council election, 2004, Ceredigion County Council election, 2008 and Brighton and Hove local elections, Brighton and Hove City Council election, 2007);
  2. Metropolitan boroughs (Metropolitan Borough of Solihull) and London boroughs (London Borough of Richmond upon Thames);
  3. Districts (South Norfolk) and their elections (either South Norfolk District Council elections or South Norfolk local elections - yet to be created);
  4. Town, Parish and Community Councils (Aberystwyth Town Council, Llanelli Town Council, Llanelli Rural, Wymondham#Governance).

My gut instinct is that most town, parish and community councils are too non-notable to merit their own pages, but given the choice, I would prefer to go down to this level of detail, where party politics is applied (including the above examples of Aberystwyth and Wymondham).

The lack of cohesion amongst UK local election articles on Wikipedia does give us (this project) a certain amount of leeway to collectively define our own terms of notability and guidelines on pages regarding Councils, broad overviews of their elections and specific elections. I would like to see us creating at least a rough template for page nomenclature, and perhaps an overview of the best way to go about documenting elections.

So my questions to the project are basically 1) What level of local government should be deemed notable? 2) Should we follow a set page naming guide? 3) Should we follow a guide for page layout/style?

Thanks Woodgreener (talk) 17:39, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

A Journey

Hi. I've been expanding the article on Blair's memoirs this evening, adding details about the publication and a summary. I haven't actually read the book yet so am relying on press reports about it. I was wondering if someone who'd actually read it could take a look through what I've written just to make sure it's correct. Please feel free to add/expand/change anything which I've overlooked. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 21:50, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Also could someone upload a picture. I can't actually do that myself as Google images seems to crash my computer. Cheers again TheRetroGuy (talk) 21:52, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
Hi again. I've listed this for peer review and was wondering if anybody could help. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 20:28, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Legislation as part of project scope.

I had a look at the project scope, and was a bit surprised that I couldn't find UK legislation listed on the scope. It does fall under the natural scope of this WikiProject and would allow for greater crossover with WikiProject Law as well.--Topperfalkon (talk) 14:08, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi. Would it be appropriate for articles about individual acts of parliament to link out to the official text of the act? I notice that a few of them do, but not as a rule, and of the ones I looked at most of them point to opsi.gov.uk which is being retired.

And yes, I am offering to do the necessary spadework if it's seen as a good idea. Pinballslouch (talk) 20:48, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Sounds great. You might like to look at Template talk:UK-SLD#www.legislation.gov.uk for a recent discussion regarding the website and templates which link to it, including a comment from an editor identifying as the civil servant responsible for the website. — Richardguk (talk) 22:51, 2 September 2010 (UTC)
: OK, so I guess we'll want to make Template:Infobox_UK_Legislation able to link to either OPSI, SLD or legislation.gov.uk. Then it can be added to articles that don't have it already, and articles that already have it can be migrated as and when. I'll have to think a bit more. 93.97.26.64 (talk) 20:22, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Unreferenced BLPs

Throughout 2010, many Wikipedia editors have worked hard to halve the number of unreferenced biographical articles (UBLPs) from more than 52,000 in January to under 26,000 now. The WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons has assisted in many ways, including helping to setup a bot, which runs daily, compiling lists of all articles that are in both Category:All unreferenced BLPs and have been tagged by a WikiProject. Note that the bot does NOT place unreferenced tags or assign articles to projects - this has been done by others previously - it just compiles a list.

Your Project's list can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom/Unreferenced BLPs. Currently you have approximately 68 articles to be referenced. A list of all projects that are being tracked can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons/WikiProjects, including Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Politics and government/Unreferenced BLPs which has just under 3000 articles listed. The WP:CatScan tool can also be used to generate lists based on article categorys. For example, this search generates a list of the 30 unreferenced articles which are also marked as being a British politician stubs.

Your assistance in reviewing and referencing these articles is greatly appreciated. We've done a lot, but we still have a long way to go. If you have any questions, please don't hestitate to ask either at WT:URBLP or at my talk page. Thanks, The-Pope (talk) 13:35, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Politics of the United Kingdom articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Politics of the United Kingdom articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:29, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Hi, not sure if this is the right place to bring this up but a number of maps added recently for general election results seem to have been taken straight from the vision of Britain website except for 2001 which is from the BBC website and 1955 which is from somewhere else. 82.132.138.251 (talk) 19:21, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

William Whitelaw, 1st Viscount Whitelaw

Can someone look at the section "Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman's Inquiry into the 1972 IRA bombings at Claudy, County Londonderry" in the article on William Whitelaw. The information was added by a new account, User:Bighassan, on 24 and 25 of August. I don't know if there is any truth in the conclusions drawn from the inquiry as presented by Bighassan. As it is unreferenced I could have just removed the material but thought it would be better if someone with insight into the incident had a look at it. Tryde (talk) 13:48, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Lord redirects

May I suggest that for every Lord we make a redirect. For example: Lord Bloggs --> Joe Bloggs. Just like Lord Price and Lord Knight. —Half Price 21:10, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Party colour templates

I've noticed that there's two sets of templates existing that define different party colours, 1: Template:British politics/party colours/[Party] and 2: Template:[Party]/meta/color. This also applies for Template:Scottish politics/party colours/[Party].

The bgcolor=" ", as used in (1), is required for use in certain tables whereas the simple colour declaration in (2) is used directly in other templates or more complicated tables. The problem is that they're not linked, do not get updated at the same time and can have different colours for the same party (see the examples I've piped above). In one case Plaid Cymru had a dark green as well a muddy yellow as their party colour, both being displayed in two different tables on the same page, quite confusing! (I've since alligned the colour templates)

Does anyone object if I transclude the colour from (2) into (1) for all those templates? Therefore we'd only ever have to update (2) and (1) would automatically be up-to-date. Zangar (talk) 15:54, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Atheist RfC at Ed Miliband

An RfC is underway at Talk:Ed Miliband#RFC BLP regarding whether the article (notably the infobox and categories) can call Ed Miliband an atheist based on one source reporting he said, "I don't believe in God," and another reporting from a separate interview that "he confirmed that he is an atheist." -Rrius (talk) 23:01, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Maps

Bristol constituencies, 2010
Bristol wards, 2010
Test map to demonstrate variants

I'm working on a major project to revamp the maps of GB utilising the free Ordnance Survey OpenData - the location maps have just been refreshed. The data has a great deal more potential of course and one specific idea I've just experimented with is shown to the right. Bristol is the example, but I could do the same for the entire country. Or better, produce the blanks and instructions to enable them to be updated after elections...

Obviously local government is more awkward than national government, as wards can have 2, 3 (or more?) councillors. The ward map to right handles this with two tone stripes, which seems ok to me but any other thoughts?--Nilfanion (talk) 14:07, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

It looks good with the two-tone stripes, but how does it look with three or more colours (some Scottish wards have four councillors, and electoral areas in Northern Ireland typically have five but can have at least seven). One option for multi-member wards is to have spot colours close to the centre of the ward on the map. Warofdreams talk 13:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
What about proportional area fill?--Topperfalkon (talk) 14:27, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Can that be done in a way which doesn't suggest that particular parties represent certain areas of the ward? Warofdreams talk 19:59, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
I had one idea. Have the fill done in radial 'bands' (rather than segments like a pie chart) and have it mapped to the shape of the ward. Then you can just give the ward's actual boundary a thick boundary line to make it a bit clearer. Just one idea though.--Topperfalkon (talk) 23:08, 30 September 2010 (UTC)
Ok, I've uploaded a test with a number of variations on the theme. Obviously no real area will be quite that confused. The map shows all possibilities in wards with 1, 2, 3 or 4 councillor seats; in the case of a 2:1:1 split there are two different hatching methods shown. Personally I think just sticking to the stripe idea for this is sensible: This is intuitive to the viewer and is easy to code/implement. Also its a simple solution for the 2 party situation, which is the most common situation (if unequal representation have line thickness in similar ratio). Also if both diagonal directions (and possibly horizontal/vertical) are used then it will make borders more obvious. It will probably be a problem if the parties in a mixed ward have similar colours (LibDem and SNP maybe?) but I can't see an easy out.--Nilfanion (talk) 23:15, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
That's very useful, and looks much clearer for the three- and four-member wards than I had expected. I like the alternating colours (e.g. blue-red-blue-yellow) for a 2:1:1 split, although I can't see any way of implementing anything similar for a 2:1 or 3:1 split. Perhaps the Lib Dem/SNP colours will look sufficiently distinct when shown next together (could be worth doing a quick test of this, too)? Warofdreams talk 23:47, 1 October 2010 (UTC)
Uploaded a tweak to illustrate these. Firstly added a alternating thick/thin one for a 2:1 Con/Lab split. As for the LD/SNP issue, this ties in well with the thread below, as standardisation would be helpful. I've added two test areas showing adjacent wards with LD control, LD/SNP split and SNP control. The first area (in centre) uses this LD colour, whilst the other at bottom uses the Scottish LD colour. The Scottish orangey colour is much more distinct, however Lib Dem = "Yellow" is standard south of the border...--Nilfanion (talk) 08:39, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales.

Hello.

I was reading the page entitled Mental Health Review Tribunal (England and Wales). I wondered if this pre-dates the 2008 Wales rules? I left a comment on the page in August, because it's misleading.

The Tribunal for Wales has its own rules, and Chairman. The article mentions English regional chairs only. The "England and Wales" title is misleading as it suggests it's one body, which it isn't. I don't think the difference in rules means the Wales Tribunal would need its own article, but the separation of the two bodies could be made clearer- perhaps its own paragraph?

I have never written or edited a Wikipedia article before, but am happy to give what info I have to make the article more accurate. You can access the 2008 rules for Wales here: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2008/2705/contents/made Note I know very little about the English Tribunal so I can't help there.

Thanks.


87.114.178.182 (talk) 23:43, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Junior ministers and infoboxes

With the change in government, there are a lot of junior ministerial and shadow ministerial roles being added to infoboxes, and I'd like to discuss whether they belong. That some, like Minister for Europe or the Secretaries to the Treasury, should be included is, I think, beyond question because it is easy to establish a line of them going back through time and they are relatively high profile. Others, like Minister for Prisons or Minister for Public Health are sort of on the bubble. What I'm most concerned about are offices like Minister of State for Communities and Local Government or Shadow Minister for Health and titles that reflect the portfolio assignment of the day, such as "Minister of State for the UN and Africa". Since departments tend to have multiple ministers of state and parliamentary under-secretaries of state, and shadow teams have multiple junior shadow ministers, the navigation function of the including generic departmental titles in the infobox is largely negated. The very specific ones can likewise be impossible or convoluted to link up. Take for example the Foreign Office. At the change of government, we went from an easy to describe division of the world among junior ministers to one rather more complicated to describe. In addition, many MPs serve in several ministerial roles, so they can easily clutter up an infobox.

I am not saying that adding these junior roles is horrible and they absolutely must go. I do think there are legitimate concerns with including them, and we should discuss it. Because it is timely, I suggest now is a good time to have the discussion. We should also probably figure out at what point exactly a junior ministerial or junior shadow ministerial role should be removed when there are a lot of Cabinet and high-profile roles also included. This will be helpful going forward, assuming we retain junior roles, and in deciding where to add them to for more established ministers and shadow ministers whose prior junior roles are not yet included. -Rrius (talk) 21:55, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Swinton Circle

The Swinton Circle is a pressure group that splintered off from the Conservative Monday Club and which became slightly notorious a decade ago for its connections to the far-right. It underwent further division, and now there are two competing "Swinton Circle" groups. Anyway, for the past month someone from the smaller faction has been rewriting parts of the article so it describes and links to his entity. I'm not sure this group is really notable. But if it is then we need to have a stable article. It'd be great if someone with an interest could draft text so it covers both factions. At a minimum, it'd be helpful for more readers to watchlist the page. Any help would be appreciated. UK politics isn't really my field.   Will Beback  talk  21:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

A few little things

I have come here to initiate discussion regarding a few little things I have encountered and have come against an editor who is "very set in their ways" over these issues.

The first is gains at general election after a by-election victory during the last parliament. The second is new seats formed and a notional swing in the new seats. Finally references and additions to results tables. I have listed the three issues in sub heading below with a brief introduction for each and welcome all comments on these issues.--Lucy-marie (talk) 12:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

By-election gains and GE gains/holds

In some articles such as the Eastbourne article the 1990 by election was a gain for one party but at the 1992 General election it is listed as a hold for the party that won in 1987. This is not accurate as going in to the 1992 election the seat was held by the party which won in 1990 and not in 1987. As such it should be listed as a gain for the party which won in 1992 as it was different to the party which held the seat going in to the 1992 general election.--Lucy-marie (talk) 12:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

The modern convention is the contrary, recognising that by-elections are increasingly just mid-term protest votes, and they're a real ****** to handle when boundaries change. National and local totals are recording the change since the previous general election, not different changes in different areas. Timrollpickering (talk) 13:23, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
It is though misleading stating party X held this seat even though going in to the election party Y was the holder of the seat. Also when there are boundary changes the by-election result would have no effect on the new seat as they are two separate seats fought under two separate boundaries. Also can some sources be provided for this convention?--Lucy-marie (talk) 13:28, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
On the face of it, I'd be inclined to agree with you Lucy, as the article should reflect the change from an incumbent MP. But we need to ensure consistency across the (reliable) web, not just here on the wiki, therefore I'd say we'd have to turn to a reliable/informative source to see what they do. So if we look at the good ole beeb and to Glasgow East (UK Parliament constituency), where Labour won the 2005 and 2010 general elections but the SNP gained it in 2008; the BBC lists here that it was a Labour win as opposed to a Labour gain or Labour hold that they could use if there was no by-election in between. Also the BBC use red as the colour of the previous holder and list the results of the previous general election, not the by-election.
So the beeb doesn't really fall on either side of the arguments here. Could we therefore follow them and list a gain over a by-election as a win rather than a gain/hold? I must admit, I don't have any preference on that. Are there any other reliable/informative sources we can look at? Zangar (talk) 13:29, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
There's a surpise - the BBC are a bit of a shambles when it comes to election results. One problem with describing it as a "win" is that I don't think the win box lets you enter a swing. Mathematically, that's the reason for the convention - seats won in by-elections tend to suffer UNS on top of their previous GE result in the ensuing election, rather than on their mid-term result as one might expect. Also, as Tim hints above, Rallings and Thasher don't calculated by-election notionals. Wereon (talk) 05:23, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

It is though misleading to claim the party which won, held the seat if they wernt the party who held the seat going in to the election. Also why are Railings and Thrasher used as the only organisation who complie swings, when multiple organisations compile swings with vastly differing results. Also if the addition of a swing is the problem, that is a problem to be fixed on the template which is fairly simple to remedy.--Lucy-marie (talk) 16:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Notional swings, vote changes and hold/gain/win in new seats

In new seats there is a notional swing, yet some articles list multiple notional swings from different organisation. If it is a new seat and there is no direct comparison for the seat ,the a notional swing and vote change is misleading and unreliable as it s based on original research and theories. Also as there is more than one organisation working out notional swings, which one is the one used and which is more reliable? Notional swings and vote changed should be a separate section in the article and not incorporated in to the results table as incorporation into the table implies that there change and swing is set in stone when it is just theory and has multiple different answers. The seats should also be listed as a win for the winning party and not as a gain or loss, this is because as the seat is being contested for the first time there will have been no single MP in the previous parliament representing the seat of that name or of those boundaries.--Lucy-marie (talk) 12:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Lucy, please look at the discussion we had on this matter - I left the link on your talk page. There are three sources of notionals that I'm aware of: Rallings and Thrasher, Anthony Wells, and Martin Baxter at Electoral Calculus. We've been using R&T, mainly because a) they're professors, and do this sort of thing for a living, b) they've published their work in print, and c) all the media do too. Wereon (talk) 05:11, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
Just because they are one of a number reliable sources doesn’t mean they are the only ones which should be used. There are multiple different organisations compiling notional swings all producing differing results so only using one is cherry picking and not representative. Also just because all the media do something doesn't mean we throw out the principle of a neutral and well sourced factual encyclopaedia which provides an accurate overview of the subject matters at hand.--Lucy-marie (talk) 16:33, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

References and commentary in results tables

In some of the articles such, there are references being used which provide a commentary such as this was the party's highest share of the vote in the GE. This is not what a reference should be used for a reference should be used for sourcing the candidates. Commentaries of this kind belong in the lead or in the main body of the article. The same is true of who served as an MP in the previous parliament. The commentary information should be in the main body of the text or the article lead. The results should be just the results the candidate their description, their votes and their vote change (if applicable). The tables are not the place for commentaries and additions other than that of the actual results or referencing of the information inside the table. --Lucy-marie (talk) 12:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

For those not in the know, Lucy is referring to this edit [24]. A constituency page in general consists of information about the seat, followed by how it voted in each election. MK's vote share in the 2010 election is only relevant for the 2010 election, and thus the note belongs with this year's results. The fact that the seat has only seen one election is irrelevant.
The asterisk convention is a decision reached on this talk page - you may want to look back in the archive to find the discussion. The reasoning was that it is not always obvious what a seat's "successor" is; this is especially important for seats such as Brent Central, which were contested by two "sitting" MPs. Wereon (talk) 05:18, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
The above does not address the central point that the information belongs in the main body of the text in a sentence for example "In 2010 there were X and Y who were sitting MPs from the previous parliament where re-drawing of boundaries left them contesting the same seat." The seats successor is also made clear in the infobox where it states seat created from X and Y seats.--Lucy-marie (talk) 16:40, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I wish to recreate Nasty Party

I wish to recreate the article Nasty party I found the origin of the word [25][26][27][28] and its usage [29][30][31][32][33] I wanna clear it with people because the last time this article was made it was deleted despite having some of the sources I present now. Dwanyewest (talk) 14:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid even with these references I can't see an article like this not being deleted again. All these sources are about one side of a point of view and might be seen as an attack page, failing WP:NPOV. What these sources say is that some people have referred to the Conservative party as the "Nasty Party" - note, many of the sources use the quote marks to emphasise that this is an opinion and not a fact. There is no Nasty Party on the register of political parties.
You may be able to put the info in a sub-section of the Conservative Party (UK) article but you'd have to ensure it was written neutrally. Zangar (talk) 15:46, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Bizarre edits by User:Somali123

User:Somali123 just made a bizarre edit to Folkestone and Hythe (UK Parliament constituency), and another one to David Laws, apparently trying to re-write electoral history.

I don't have time right now to take it up with him or to look further, so I'd be very grateful if project members could check out his other recent editing history, and make sure he hasn't engaged in any more vandalism like this. Jheald (talk) 19:08, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Looking through his contributions, I've reported him to admins. —Half Price 19:20, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Blocked for a week. Hopefully they'll see sense. —Half Price 19:52, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Liberal Party (UK)

Hi, on the infobox for that article it says under Colour:"Yellow, Historically Orange, Previously Green". Could someone say something like, "Green at first, then orange, then..." or...? ~ R.T.G 17:49, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Well I assume it is meant to say, "Orange, originally Green." ~ R.T.G 12:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
Was yellow actually the colour of the Liberal Party or was it only the colour of the Liberal Democrat Party? ~ R.T.G 13:24, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
It's all rather confusing... Historically, the colour used by the parties differed around the country, even up until the recent past. For example, in Ceredigion mid-Wales, the Lib Dem office in Aberystwyth still has a sign above the door with blue writing, which I am reliably informed was the colour used there by the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party definitely used both yellow and orange nationally, but can we get a definitive source on the "Yellow, Historically Orange, Previously Green" statement? --Woodgreener (talk) 23:03, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I was rather perplexed when working on the Newmarket by-election, 1913 article to find that the Liberal colour was blue, while the Unionists used pink and white.Lozleader (talk) 23:36, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Having a single national party colour is a relatively new idea. In the past every area had its own tradition. I am not sure when the Liberal Party began to use orange as its national colour, but the process was not complete even in 1988. In my own experience, the Slough Liberal Association was still using green up until the merger with the SDP and were distinctly hostile to the use of orange. The Liberal Democrats began using yellow, but I do not recall the Liberal Party using it. --Gary J (talk) 19:53, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Early day motions

Hi, could anyone help me to properly cite an Early Day Motion please? The Cite Hansard template doesn't seem to do the job and I can't find a print copy to cite (do they exist?) despite working in the library of a major UK University which has shelves full of parliamentary papers. I'm trying to get an article to FA and have had some comments that the cite I'm using at present isn't good enough: {{cite web|last=Llwyd|first=Elfyn|title=Early Day Motion 800|publisher=[[Parliament of the United Kingdom]]|date=2000-06-06|url=http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=18173|accessdate=2008-03-24}} Thanks for your help! Cavie78 (talk) 11:21, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Tough times :-( Cavie78 (talk) 21:29, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Legislation linking: new/updated templates

Hello all - not sure how active this Project is, but thought it sensible to ask for your input before going any further! As you might be aware, we currently use templates to link to UK legislation on both www.opsi.gov.uk and www.sld.gov.uk. These are both being merged into the new www.legislation.gov.uk and I've re-written/written some templates to accommodate this. I think they're all done now, but I'd still appreciate any input/comments! The changes I'm proposing making are:

{{UK-SLD}} is used in two contexts: on articles that have the same name as the item it links to, it could simply be replaced with {{UK-LEG}} - no parameters necessary. On articles that do not have the same name as the item it links to, the parameter "title" could be retained and the template simply changed to {{UK-LEG}}. However, this is not perfect - a number of "title" fields contain additional text which breaks the autolinking. This second set might require a manual changeover, though I can do the first set of articles on AWB.
This template appears to be mainly used to link to PDF versions of original Acts (some of which have been wholly repealed), which are now contained as HTML on leg.gov.uk. Non-PDF files now redirect to the relevant item leg.gov.uk anyway, so having two templates would be superfluous.
The template only has 252 transclusions, of which the vast majority are on articles that have the same name as the item it links to. An AWB run should clean these up. The few (literally a few) that are on other pages can be manually removed/changed as appropriate.
Because this template already uses a number of parameters, we can provide direct links to the item on legislation.gov.uk. Unfortunately, this won't work retrospectively (due to the way parameters have been filled in up until now), but we can still provide automatic links using the article title - the only downside to this being is that we can't automatically link to original versions. We can work through post-1963 legislation and turn on automatic direct linking, but this will probably never be possible for pre-1963 legislation (owing to its use of regnal not calendar years), but we still have automatic article title linking for those.

I've linked to this section from all the relevant places (I think!) so I look forward to any comments etc. I aim to start this in about a week's time, baring objections of course (does deprecating templates require TfD? Seems a bit pointless if you do it then go to TfD afterwards?) ninety:one 22:04, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Mass update of place of birth

Recently user:SE7 has made mass updates to the place of birth of a large number of people and I disagree with these edits and would appreciate the input of other edits. My main problem is adding un-necessary addition locations, overlinking and using England when the UK would be more appropriate. The discussion is ongoing at my talk page. Thanks. Bjmullan (talk) 11:58, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with the view that User:SE7 is over-linking. Since this is not a paper encyclopedia, there is no need to worry about overly wordly statements. Besides, arguably user:SE7 is just clarifying and formalising their places of births to avoid confusion with other places of the same name (e.g. in the USA, there are several locations called Cambridge as can be observed here Cambridge (disambiguation) and/or historical reasons (e.g. Richmond, Surrey prior to 1965 compared with Richmond, Greater London post 1965). Therefore, if this is done on a few peoples' pages, then it may as well be done merely for consistency sake. As a so called "free encyclopedia", it should be our aim to make every aspect of it as accurate as possible, which is why I disagree with your view. DMJohnston (talk) 20:10, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
  1. ^ Dwyfor Meirionnydd Cyngor Gwynedd Council - candidates Dwyfor Meirionnydd
  2. ^ Dwyfor Meirionnydd Cyngor Gwynedd Council - candidates Dwyfor Meirionnydd
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