Thursday, July 22, 2004

Aberdeen

Aberdeen is the oil capital of Europe (or so I'm told) and has a reputation for being rather... er... depressing, rainy, cold, windswept and not at all pretty to look at. The fact that it's in the middle of nowhere on the North East coast of Scotland hasn't helped.
Historically Aberdeen had two seats: Aberdeen North and Aberdeen South. Aberdeen North was a safe Labour seat and was mostly working class, while Aberdeen South was normally a Tory seat (except for 1966-70 and 1987-1992 when Labour held it) and was a mostly middle class seat.
However in the 1995 boundary changes, Aberdeen got another seat. The bulk of the old seat of Aberdeen North was given to Aberdeen Central, Aberdeen South was combined with some rural areas, while a new seat (Aberdeen North) was created, covering the City's northern Suburbs, and is a mixed seat with both middle class suburbs and working class council estates.
Currently all three are held by Labour, though South is vunerable to the LibDems, and the SNP won North in the Holyrood elections and think they can replicate this at Westminster level (bearing in mind the SNP's current state I'm beginning to doubt this).
I don't know anything about local politics in Aberdeen (IIRC it's NOC and the largest group are the LibDems. I may be wrong) and at Holyrood level, Labour hold Central, the SNP North and the LibDems South.

Next up: Dundee

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