Category talk:Constituencies of the Parliament of the United Kingdom by year of establishment

This category is within the scope of WikiProject Elections and Referendums, an ongoing effort to improve the quality of, expand upon and create new articles relating to elections, electoral reform and other aspects of democratic decision-making. For more information, visit our project page.Elections and ReferendumsWikipedia:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsTemplate:WikiProject Elections and ReferendumsElections and Referendums articles

Politics of the United Kingdom

This category is within the scope of WikiProject Politics of the United Kingdom, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Politics of the United Kingdom on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Politics of the United KingdomWikipedia:WikiProject Politics of the United KingdomTemplate:WikiProject Politics of the United KingdomPolitics of the United Kingdom articles

Years

This category is within the scope of WikiProject Years, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Years on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.YearsWikipedia:WikiProject YearsTemplate:WikiProject YearsYears articles

United Kingdom?[edit]

By any argument the United Kingdom cannot be said to have existed before 1603 and so such categories as Category:United Kingdom Parliamentary constituencies established in 1290 seems wrong. To be fair, the constituency articles do have UK in brackets and I would imagine that has been done because their existance did overlap with that of the UK. It might be better to go for Category:British Parliamentary constituencies by year of establishment (although I don't things were viewed as being "British" in 1290). Alternatively, what about Category:Parliamentary constituencies by year of establishment? Greenshed 22:54, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that I see a neat answer to this one: this sort of thing is a perennial problem in dealing with historical issues in th UK, (and with some current issues too, which is why politicians wisely tend to speak of "this country" rather than risk offending anyone by using a name they dislike).

I'll we take your last suggestion first, of Category:Parliamentary constituencies by year of establishment: that would solve this problem, but would also mean that the category series should logically include constituencies from other countries, which would lead to it getting swamped, so I'd be very reluctant to use that one (we'd probably end up having to split the categories in the future, which is just postponing th problem).

I think that Category:British Parliamentary constituencies by year of establishment raises similar problms to the UK labels, and adds a bunch of new ones:

As a matter of historical fact, Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, but most Irish people outside the Unionist North-East deplore having the yerm "British" applied to them ("West Brit" remains a potent term of abuse). That would make it difficult to include th 1801-1922 Irish constituncies
Great Britain as a county was only founded in 1708, so that's inaccurate too
British Isles (terminology)#Historical_aspects seems to imply that the term British (or, in official speak, its Norman equivalent) was not widely used then.

However, I'm not sure that a UK label is really such a problem in this context. When the UK Parliament was created, it didn't actually create any new constrituencies in England, Scotand or Wales; and nor did the Act of Union in 1707 (it just alternated Scottish Burghs). So although the constituencies were not created for the UK Parliament, the UK Parliament did use the constituencies created earlier. It seems to me that the historical accuracy problem here isn't really that great ... or am I just being too jesuitical? --BrownHairedGirl ^{(talk) • (contribs)} 23:56, 13 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]