Dwyfor Meirionnydd
2010 Results:
Conservative: 6447 (22.3%)
Labour: 4021 (13.91%)
Liberal Democrat: 3538 (12.24%)
Plaid Cymru: 12814 (44.33%)
UKIP: 776 (2.68%)
Independent: 1310 (4.53%)
Majority: 6367 (22.03%)
Notional 2005 Results:
Plaid Cymru: 14817 (48.9%)
Labour: 6716 (22.2%)
Liberal Democrat: 4091 (13.5%)
Conservative: 3977 (13.1%)
Other: 688 (2.3%)
Majority: 8101 (26.7%)
Actual 2005 result
Conservative: 3402 (16.5%)
Labour: 3983 (19.3%)
Liberal Democrat: 2192 (10.6%)
Plaid Cymru: 10597 (51.3%)
UKIP: 466 (2.3%)
Majority: 6614 (32%)
2001 Result
Conservative: 3962 (18.8%)
Labour: 4775 (22.7%)
Liberal Democrat: 1872 (8.9%)
Plaid Cymru: 10459 (49.6%)
Majority: 5684 (27%)
1997 Result
Conservative: 3922 (16%)
Labour: 5660 (23%)
Liberal Democrat: 1719 (7%)
Plaid Cymru: 12465 (50.7%)
Referendum: 809 (3.3%)
Majority: 6805 (27.7%)
Boundary changes:
Profile:
Current MP: Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru)
Simon Baynes (Conservative)Alwyn Humphreys (Labour)Steve Churchman (Liberal Democrat) Educated at Mayesbrook Compehensive and North East London Polytecnic. Sub-postmaster. Contested Barking 1992. Contested Caernarfon 2003 Welsh assembly elections.Elfyn Llwyd (Plaid Cymru) Frank Wykes (UKIP) Louise Hughes (Independent)2001 Census Demographics
Total 2001 Population: 60196
Male: 48.4%
Female: 51.6%
Under 18: 20.8%
Over 60: 29%
Born outside UK: 2.2%
White: 99.4%
Mixed: 0.4%
Christian: 76.7%
Full time students: 2.4%
Graduates 16-74: 17.8%
No Qualifications 16-74: 31.9%
Owner-Occupied: 69%
Social Housing: 15% (Council: 11.9%, Housing Ass.: 3.2%)
Privately Rented: 10.6%
Homes without central heating and/or private bathroom: 23.1%
“Rhondda Cynon Taff council in the English speaking south east recently renamed itself Rhondda Cynon Taf for the same reason.”
Did they actually go to the trouble of altering all the relevant signing, vehicle livery etc in order to reflect that change of name, or did they just send a few council workers round to put masking tape over the last “f”?
I hope all they did was tape over the last “f” – in a more affluent part of the country I bet the cost of a new logo would have run into millions of consultancy fees and rebranding exercises
Smokey – I am not sure who your comment is aimed at or what point you are trying to make???
Comments re RCT, new signs have the new spelling, old signs stay where they are until due for changing. No cost involved.
Wonder why the Tory candidate resigned – a conversation was reported between her and the leader of the Welsh Tories on his blog just two days before without a mention of it
“It’s a bilingual country ”
But thats the point Barnaby, it ISN’T that bi-lingual. Certainly no more than England with its minority of people speaking foreign languages.
Wales is a country that is overwhelmingly English speaking. I’m not saying that Welsh shouldn’t be given prominance in those very few areas that speak majority Welsh but why the over-promotion to give Welsh equal status with English accross the whole province?
“though I doubt we would agree on the actual policy of promoting Welsh in general”
You’re right Ben. I believe that language should not need to be ‘promoted’ . Either it is used and wanted or it isn’t. You wouldn’t need to promote Spanish to the Spanish, german to the Germans or French to the French. Why on earth are successive governments so eager to waste money promoting Welsh to the Welsh?
That is a question which nobody has ever answered.
“It is odd however how Welsh has a totally separate word for some place names in England which bear no relation to what we English call it (e.g. Cas-Grawnt for Cambridge). Are there any other examples of that?”
Caergrawnt to be exact. Plenty of examples where the Welsh name for the english place has a far older Brythonic root:
Caerefrog for York
Caerliwelydd – Carlisle
Caerlyr – Leicester
Caerwrangon – Gloucester
et cetera
Ther are also more modern names where the Welsh spelling relects how Welsh speakers have pronounced the name:
Bryste for Bristol
Lerpwl for Liverpool
“Why on earth are successive governments so eager to waste money promoting Welsh to the Welsh?”
Maybe a sense of guilt after spending so much money, time and effort suppressing it?
Bilingualism, as well as being linked to educational and developmental attainment, is culturally valuable in its own right as part of Welsh identity. I’m sure any serious study of the roots of BNP support, for example, would point out the decline of community or civic pride, and this is no different.
But most “promotion” is simply the additional cost of being accessible – providing signs or publications in both languages – if the powers that be simply made it impossible for Welsh-speakers to function as well as English-speakers then that would surely be unacceptable.
Maybe this is easier for me as a liberal to fathom because I come from a position of expecting the state to shape itself around its citizens rather than the other way round. If people speak Welsh.
Posts like that from Dewi about place names in Welsh make this website all the more special.
Many of those Welsh versions of places in England have the same sense as the names we use but done in a Welsh way – they may have evolved in parallel or they may be back-translations, who knows.
Caer has the same sense of “a settlement based on an old Roman town” as the Anglo-Saxon ending Chester (or Caster, Cester etc). So Caerefrog is the settlement based on what the Romans called Eboracum – the B and V sound and G and C sounds being highly interchangable. And Caerlyr is the town associated with the Ancient British king Lyr (or Lear) – and Leicester is exactly the same formation but using Anglo-Saxon roots rather than Celtic ones.
Thought I would point you to the discussion Dewi and I (and some others) had about Welsh placenames in the Na h-Eileanan an Iar strand of all inappropriate places.
According to my records, this is only one of 2 non Labour seats not to have selected a Labour candidate
PC Hold= 9,500 maj
Well done Shaun, another good set of prediction IMO. I’m still inclined to be slightly more Conservative than you in my predictions, but only fractionally ; my predictions are in hung parliament territory too. I am still predicting Tory gains in Dumfries & Galloway & Dewsbury, though the latter only very narrowly indeed; obviously I hope you’re right & I’m wrong. Otherwise I think your predictions are very good indeed. Please keep it up, it makes a change to read common sense rather than ramping or trolling here, whatever our obvious & enormous political differences.
Plaid should win here with well over half the vote – Conservatives a far behing but comfortable second.
PC Hold
Maj 8400
Alwyn Humphreys is the Labour candidate here
PC maj 12,000
Which seats have included Bala, Porthmadog, and Tywyn? Have they been in the same ones as Blaenau Ffestiniog listed upthread, ie Merioneth, Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, Dwyfor Meirionnydd? If they have always been part of Merionethshire, then I guess I have answered my own query!!
PC HOLD.
Be back with the next tranche later.
Just looking at this result by chance, and actually a very good one it is for the Conservatives, to rise from 13 to 22% (basically swapping with Labour). This could give them encouragement, and makes the seat less of a Plaid monolith than most expected.
If Dafydd Elis-Thomas who sits for this seat in Cardiff Bay stands down next May, who might be the new Presiding Officer?
Harry,
Unitil the 2007/2010 elections, Porthmadog was in the Caernarfon constituency.
Tywyn and Bala had previously been in Meirionnydd Nant Conwy and, as far as I know, in the Merioneth constituency before that .
Con share about 9.7% up against 1997 here.
Welsh Assembly 2011: PC Hold
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=13220
Here is Pathe newsreel footage of the funeral of Lloyd George, at Llanystumdwy on 30 March 1945 (where there is now a museum about him near his grave). Llanystumdwy is presently in this constituency, but I believe at the time it was in the former constituency of Merioneth, in which case the local MP would have been Sir Henry Haydn Jones of the Liberal Party.
Indeed, the Lloyd-George museum is well worth a visit. We went a number of times over the last couple of years. You can go for a nice quiet walk along the riverbank as well and visit his grave/memorial.
There was a rather disappointing result for Labour in 1945 in the Merioneth(shire) constituency when their vote only increased by 0.2%. It wasn’t a case of a Liberal MP with a strong personal vote because in 1945 HH Jones was replaced by EO Roberts:
1935:
Lib 9,466 (40.0%)
Lab 8,317 (35.2%)
Con 5,868 (24.8%)
1945:
Lib 8,495 (35.8%)
Lab 8,383 (35.4%)
Con 4,374 (18.5%)
PC 2,448 (10.3%)
Probably caused more by a split in the vote from plaid cymru the, seems to have effected the conservatives and liberals but not Labour