Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Local Government Commission for England (1992)

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[edit] Local Government Commission for England (1992)

Self-nomination. Been working on-and-off on this one for a while. Finally realised I had acess to an online newspaper archive so I could make it properly complete. Only comprehensive treatment of this topic on the interweb that I've seen. Oh, and it has 114 references. Morwen - Talk 19:50, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I dont feel the lead is very comprehensive on what this government organization does. Can you fix this? - Tutmosis 20:25, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I cetainly see no problem with expanding the lead - I'll try - but 'what it did' is make proposals and consult, and I'm not sure how to say much more than that without getting into details? How is lead now? Morwen - Talk 21:47, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

On first glance, I see messy footnotes throughout: please correct the footnote punctuation. The text has redundancies throughout, quick example: He greatly accelerated the programme of work, directing the Commission to start reviews of all remaining shire counties the next month, and that they should be finished by the end of 1994. One-sentence paragraphs, in succession, including this one: The commission published draft proposals on these districts in September 1995, recommending that of them, Blackpool, Blackburn, Halton Northampton, Peterborough, Thurrock, Warrington and the Wrekin should become unitary authorities, and also that Rochester upon Medway and Gillingham should unite to form a single unitary authority. (Do we need all of the words "unite", "single" and "unitary"?) Just samples: please run through the entire text again with an eye for redundancy. Sandy 22:13, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I shall endeavour to fix the footnotes/punctuation thing. There are some words that could be cut and I shall look at this. The repetition you identify there is not as bad as you make out - "unitary authority" is a stock phrase, and is not redundant with "unite" or "single". As to unite and single, maybe, but this helps with emphasis in showing we are talking about two things merging here. Morwen - Talk 22:33, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

The lead still doesn't explain what this is. Just answer this question: Local Government Commission for England is responsible for...? - Tutmosis 22:40, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

It was responsible for reviewing the structure of local government in England from 1992 to 1995, and subsequently did redistricting. The intro says that, doesn't it?

I've removed some redundancy and have tried to fix the punctuation issues. Morwen - Talk 22:58, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Ref/punctuation issues should be resolved now. Gimmetrow 05:03, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment. In the Timetable section it would be nice if the areas mentioned in the text were highlighted on the maps. At the moment it is not obvious where these changes are being made, especially as the maps shown are quite small. CheekyMonkey 08:38, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, I shall certainly do that. I'll make the new unitaries yellow and the rump two-tiers blue created in that year? Morwen - Talk 09:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

This matches the key used above, so sounds good to me. CheekyMonkey 11:37, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I did this now. Morwen - Talk 18:55, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that looks really good. I have another (nit-picky) comment regarding two of the sub headings. Could 'Start' not be renamed to something like 'Establishment' and 'Table' renamed to something like 'Summary of Commission proposals'? CheekyMonkey 09:47, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Morwen - Talk 03:24, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I feel the article is comprehensive yet concise and I now Support. CheekyMonkey 10:43, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: I like this article and I think it is close to being featured but there are a few things to tweak at this stage.

1. Can we get a source for Michael Heseltine's favouring unitary local government?
2. It had also long been Labour Party policy to favour unitary local government in principle, which was one reason why the government thought they were not doing anything politically risky. I can try and hunt out sources for that.
3. Were the court cases fought by aggrieved County Councils reported? If so this would be a useful link.
4. The section headed "Implementation and Cooksey commission" is too long and could be split up.
5. It would be a good idea to explain why more police authorities had to become joint boards. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 12:10, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

1 and 3 both have sources in newspaper reports which are indicated? Laying out Labour's position would be good - we'd probably need to find a source that analysed their behaviour : from my reading they regarded it as a big gerrymandering campaign to start with, and a total shambles at the end, but supported specific bits of it. To 4 and 5 yes and yes. Morwen - Talk 08:30, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. By 'reported' in 3 I meant 'legally reported', eg 'Lancashire County Council v. Secretary of State for the Environment 1 EWHC 789'. Fys. “Ta fys aym”. 08:41, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, yes. There seems to be something here about that, but I don't know how to cite that. Morwen - Talk 09:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

I have added a few more bits about Labour's attitude at the time. Morwen - Talk 22:01, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

So this seems to have stalled now - I think I've fixed all outstanding points (bar the legal citation thing) - but I've not got many positive supports... is this topic just too boring? Morwen - Talk 22:06, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

• Comment - the article is pretty comprehensive and well referenced, the maps are excellent and the "timetable" section is laid out in an innovative and clear manner. It's generally very good, and I'll be happy to support if some of these small suggestions are addressed:
  1. Could the first sentence be a brief statement of what the Commission was? Currently, the process by which it was created is given first, followed by wording from the Act which formed it - this may not be entirely clear to the casual reader.
  2. Also in the introduction, "rewarding" is slightly confusing as it suggests that some sort of prize was given! Perhaps either "re-warding" or a short phrase would be clearer for the intro?
  3. It would be good to have some explanation as to why the Commission was formed. It seems to have had entirely new personnel; why did the Government not use the old Commission?
  4. Is it correct that Banham was named chair before the Commission was formed? This seems presumptuous - was it commented on at the time?
  5. With regard to Lancashire and Derbyshire CCs' court case, do we have the text of the sentence in dispute? It seems that it should be central to this paragraph.
  6. It would be interesting to have something more on the Commission's reasoning in the very different proposals for different counties - for instance, what reason did they give for recommending the abolition of Berkshire and Dorset CCs, when they recommended the retention of so many others?
  7. I imagine that worries about legal action may have led to recommendations to leave so many counties unchanged despite Gummer's advice - is there any sourceable speculation on this (or any other possible reasons)?
  8. Banham resigned in 1995 - who took over as chair?
  9. The "other changes" section has no sources - the first paragraph, at least, could do with some.
  10. What did the Commission do after 1998? The intro states that it wasn't replaced until 2002 - was it entirely inactive?
• I hope to see this become a featured article soon. Warofdreams talk 02:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
• Good comments, I shall try to see how many of these I can address. Morwen - Talk 09:16, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
  • Support now that several of these points have been addressed, and work seems to be progressing on several others. Warofdreams talk 23:48, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
    • With respect to the remaining few: 3) he was named to the post in November according to a newspaper article the next year. this made no splash at the time, apparently : i'm not even able to find contemporary news reports about it, only after-the-fact ones. can't really work that into the article. 7) yeah, the court case had a big impact in what the commission was recommending. i'l try to source something about that: you'll note for instance in Derbyshire that its proposal under the re-review was in fact more conservative than the 1st proposal. Morwen - Talk 08:08, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

• Support an excellent article about a difficult-to-write-about subject. Rama's arrow 02:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

• Pending The first paragraph under "establishment" is a little confusing, because it first says that "Initially [when?] the Secretary of State was Michael Heseltine" and then jumps back to consider the history of counties since 1972. You might want to hold off on mentioning Heseltine until the second paragraph. On the whole, though, this is a very thorough, well-researched piece that doesn't deserve to have been stalled as a FAC for as long as it has been. I will look to see if I can find anything else that needs fixing, but am planning to support. MLilburne 11:48, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

• • Point. I'll fix that. I'm also just about to address User:Warofdreams's point 7 above. Morwen - Talk 21:32, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

• Object. The prose should be fixed. Overall, it's not bad, but there are little glitches throughout. For example, in the lead:
  • "The Act allowed the Secretary of State to order the Commission to undertake 'structural reviews' in specified areas, to create unitary authorities in the two-tier shire counties of England." (Third sentence from the top.) To ... to ... is unclear. Should the second one be replaced with "as a prelude to creating"/"as part of a program of creating"?
  • "After much political debate, and several legal challenges, the Commission's proposals resulted in ..."—Why not remove the first comma?
  • "The Commission continued in existence reviewing electoral arrangements"—"Continued in existence reviewing" is very clumsy.
  • "led to creation of unitary authorities"—THE creation?

Please get someone else to run through the whole article thoroughly. Tony 06:58, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you suggest where I can find "someone else" to do that? I am unaware of any "requests for copyedit" page. Morwen - Talk 07:23, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I've had a go at doing a full copyedit myself : but I was not able to identify as many problems in the article as you seem to have identified in the lead. Maybe the lead prose was worse? Or maybe I am not a professional copyeditor :) Morwen - Talk 08:19, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

All the more reason to find collaborators to help with the prose. Tony 08:53, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Object I fixed the ref punctuation to agree with WP:FN. I concur with Tony that there are extensive prose issues, calling for a thorough copyedit; an overuse of "this led to" and "as a result of" also makes the prose repetitive and uncompelling. It is unclear why basic sentences require four cites, or why links to some of the references (The Guardian) aren't provided. Sandy (Talk) 22:07, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
  • The guardian news archive isn't online that far back, as far as i am aware. As I noted before, if there are suggestions as to where I could go for a copyedit I will take that. Unfortunately, I can't magic up the copyediting fairy. I will try to fix every actionable specific objection, but the phrases here identified only happen a few times. There is one case I agree with removing in that it repeats this phrase in the next paragraph, and I shall do this. Morwen - Talk 21:30, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Further, with respect to references, I don't see any particular problems here. In some cases, entire paragraphs cite several sources: one or maybe two primary sources (Hansard), and a couple of news stories, which often aren't duplicates of each other anyway (guardian will say ABC, Times will say CDE). It seems sensible to cite a range of sources when alleging political motivations - if the Times and the Guardian agree on something then it is probably true. Morwen - Talk 21:46, 16 November 2006 (UTC)