Top and bottom

 

This map of signatures for our e-petition to ban driven grouse shooting (approaching 54,000 signatures) is endlessly fascinating for me – I’m that type of guy.

You can see that a lot of the support is coming from large rural upland constituencies near grouse shooting areas, and that much of the rest comes from other rural areas. Here is a reminder of the top-10 highest performing areas by number of signatures;

 

1. Calder Valley Craig Whittaker 317 CON
2. Ross, Skye and Lochaber Ian Blackford 230 SNP
3. High Peak Andrew Bingham 223 CON
4. Skipton and Ripon Julian Smith 210 CON
5. Isle of Wight Mr Andrew Turner 204 CON
6. Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey Drew Hendry 203 SNP
7. North Norfolk Rt Hon Norman Lamb 199 LIBDEM
8. Bristol West Thangam Debbonaire 198 LAB
9. Derbyshire Dales Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin 194 CON
10. Brighton, Pavilion Caroline Lucas 194 GREEN

There is another way of looking at these figures though (didn’t I say that they fascinated me) and that is to take into account the number of voters in each constituency. Although the 650 Westminster constituencies have roughly the same number of voters in them they vary from 103,480 in the Isle of Wight (see list above) which is difficult to split in two, and the Western Isles or Na h-Eileanan an Iar with 21,884 (another group of islands). That looks like a massive, fivefold variation but c600 of the 650 constituencies have between 60,000 and 80,000 voters.

When you take those figures into account the top 10 looks like this (ranked by % of voters having signed our e-petition):

1. Ross, Skye and Lochaber Ian Blackford 0.34
2. Calder Valley Craig Whittaker 0.3
3. Derbyshire Dales Rt Hon Patrick McLoughlin 0.25
4. High Peak Andrew Bingham 0.24
5. Skipton and Ripon Julian Smith 0.21
   
6. North Norfolk Rt Hon Norman Lamb 0.23
7. Orkney and Shetland Alistair Carmichael 0.23
8. Westmorland and Lonsdale Tim Farron 0.22
9. Argyll and Bute Brendan O’Hara 0.21
10. Penrith and the Border Rory Stewart 0.2

So Ross, Skye and Lochaber leaps to the top of the list by dint of its small population, there is a bit more reshuffling of the order, and there are now three LibDem constituencies represented in the top-10 (err that’s three out of a total of eight remember).

Let’s turn to the bottom-10. No offence! It’s a convenient term.

Not surprisingly, there is much less support from Northern Ireland and from urban centres with London and the West Midlands being particular cool spots for support;

• Newry and Armagh  Mickey Brady 9 SF
• Mid Ulster Francie Malloy 12 SF
• West Tyrone Pat Doherty 13 SF
• Fermanagh and South Tyrone Tom Elliot 13 UUP
• Edmonton Kate Osamor 16 LAB
• Brent North Barry Gardiner 16 LAB
• Harrow East Bob Blackman 20 CON
• Birmingham Hodge Hill Liam Byrne 22 LAB
• Leicester East Keith Vaz 25 LAB
• Birmingham Perry Bar Khalid Mahmood 25 LAB

And if we look at these in terms of % of voters signing our e-petition it looks like this;

1. Newry and Armagh  Mickey Brady 0.01
2. Mid Ulster Francie Malloy 0.01
   
3. Brent North Barry Gardiner 0.01
4. Fermanagh and South Tyrone Tom Elliot 0.01
   
5. Edmonton Kate Osamor 0.01
6. West Tyrone Pat Doherty 0.01
7. Birmingham Hodge Hill Liam Byrne 0.02 
8. Harrow East Bob Blackman 0.02
9. West Ham Lyn Brown 0.02
10. East Ham Stephen Timms 0.02

I’m grateful for any support from Northern Ireland but it is a big ask to get those numbers up very much. On the other hand, I say again, if anyone has a magic way to unlock support in Labour urban seats, then please let me know. That support must surely be there, we just aren’t finding it at the moment.

I think we will probably pass 54,000 signatures this weekend and there are plenty of things planned for the second half of July. But don’t wait for them – please sign this e-petition that will get politicians and decision-makers to address the massive problems of driven grouse shooting.

 

 

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