Three people living on the outskirts of Cardiff are about to be moved by the authorities, but they’re not being evicted and won’t have to leave their houses.
The Boundary Commission for Wales is recommending that the three electors be transferred from the Cardiff South and Penarth constituency to the Vale of Glamorgan.
Meanwhile, as part of the same exercise, the Commission reckons another 46 voters should be transferred from Cardiff South and Penarth to Cardiff North.
And it says 733 people should be moved from Ogmore to Pontypridd while 96 should be switched from Pontypridd to Ogmore.
The MP for Ogmore, Labour’s Huw Irranca-Davies told me the game of musical chairs seems a waste of time.
‘Some poor blighter has been slaving away at this review for two years when it won’t mean two hoots because the constituencies are all going to be changed again in a couple of years,’ he said.
He’s on about the UK Government’s plan to cut the number of MPs with the Parliamentary voting system and constituencies bill (that’s also the one that will bring in the AV referendum) requiring the Boundary Commission to make all constituencies more or less equal. And that’s expected to mean around ten fewer Welsh constituencies.
Which begs the question, why is the Commission bothering switching small numbers of people from one constituency to the other?
Well it’s not really about the parliamentary boundaries. The person I spoke to at the Commission earlier acknowledged that they’ll almost certainly be changed again very shortly.
The real aim he said was to tidy up the constituencies to match local government areas for Assembly elections. And the reality is that, as a result of the changes I mentioned earlier, they’ll be different to parliamentary constituencies anyway from the next General Election onwards.
I hope that’s clear.
ITVAdrian 
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