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Mazda's Maps and Mwikiboxes

Eat a dick, New Zealand.

This is between Mt Albert's upgrade from Borough to City and the merger of Mt Wellington and Otahuhu Boroughs (to the south) to form Tamaki City. Tamaki lasted three years until this area was unified as Auckland City Council, which then existed until the Supercity was formed in 2010.

i mean

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NZ general election, 2014
National Party (John Key) - 46.04% - 58 seats
Labour Party (David Cunliffe) - 24.13% - 31
Green Party (Russel Norman and Metiria Turei) - 9.70% - 12
New Zealand First (Winston Peters) - 7.62% - 10
Internet MANA (Hone Harawira and Laila Harre) - 5.84% - 7
Maori Party (Te Ururoa Flavell) - 0.91% - 1
ACT (Jamie Whyte) - 0.69% - 1
United Future (Peter Dunne) - 0.22% - 1


NZ general election, 2017
National Party (Bill English) - 41.52% - 53 seats
Labour Party (Grant Robertson) - 29.51% - 38
New Zealand First (Winston Peters) - 10.37% - 13
Internet MANA (Hone Harawira and Laila Harre) - 6.12% - 8
The Opportunities Party (Gareth Morgan) - 5.58% - 7

ACT (David Seymour) - 0.42% - 1

Nobody was quite sure how Internet Mana pulled it off in 2014 - some say it was the skilled media strategy leading up to an election-week Moment of Truth during which the Panama Papers were unleashed on an unsuspecting world; some say it was David Cunliffe's continual gaffes and virtue-signalling; others still suggest that it was the leak of the story that the Government were paying private investigators to spy on survivors of the Canterbury Earthquake. We may never know, but the fact remains that Hone and Laila led their party over the line. Both had some choice words for the Conservatives, who had missed out by about 1%.

The coalition between the left-wing Maori rights warriors in the Mana Movement and the left-libertarian-piratical Internet Party had been accused during the campaign of splitting the anti-National vote. In fact, by getting into Parliament, they forced John Key to rely ever more on his increasingly tiny support partners. Te Ururoa, now a lone and uncharismatic figure, was a lame duck from the outset, not being expected to hold Waiariki next time, and therefore got little out of National for Whanau Ora - which only exacerbated his situation. Similarly, Peter Dunne became exhausted by holding the balance of power and retired at the next election.

On the Opposition benches, Cunliffe was - to the relief of all - shuffled out of the Labour leadership and the first openly gay Labour Leader defeated David Parker to succeed him. Robertson, as MP for Wellington Central, was very experienced in winning Green votes, but his doughy whiteness was equally attractive to soft National voters, and he pulled Labour back from the electoral brink - although not into the lead. The Greens now had competition for their urban liberal voters in Labour and for their left-wing and anti-Establishment voters from Internet Mana. They therefore had a tricky term of repositioning towards blue-green policies, spear-headed by new co-leader James Shaw, but their history held them back on this score and Gareth Morgan's TOP vehicle proved a more acceptable mode of transport for this constituency - and a fair few former National voters.

Surprisingly, there was little drama within Internet Mana during this period - although John Minto didn't feel at home in caucus, and jumped at the chance to resign to launch a futile campaign for the Auckland mayoralty. Some others among Hone's crowd felt that their invasion by urbanauts was a negative development, including the boisterous singer-songwriter Te Hamua Nikora who briefly started his own party in 2017 - which fizzled out before the election. All internal factions were united, however, by debates about the awfulness of the TPPA.

Going into 2017, the Opposition was therefore facing the issues of Robertson's lack of progress as Labour Leader, the diceyness of the Green and Internet Mana positions near the threshold, and the retention of the unpopular policies such as the Capital Gains Tax. Calls for Jacinda to take over never reached critical mass, meaning that the Left could only take over if National couldn't govern alone. Fortunately, the demise of their support partners delivered this outcome, and although the Greens lost out, their wonkish replacements in TOP were convinced to work with Labour after Winston announced his acceptance of Robertson's coalition deal. This was despite Gareth Morgan having promised to work with "anyone but Winston". Morgan also took a ministerial role despite having pledged not to, leading to his being hounded out of Parliament after just two months.

The four-party Government has been an interesting experience for Internet Mana - Georgina Beyer was a welcome addition to the Executive after her victory over kidney disease, while the two co-Leaders forced the Government to pull out of the Pacific trade deal to much internal recrimination. On the back benches, crusading journalist Suzie Dawson refused to take her seat as it would mean leaving her self-imposed exile in Moscow for the dangers of constant surveillance by the Kiwi deep state. Her position was filled by Wetex Kang, who immediately turned out to be guilty of electoral fraud, and the troublesome seat has now been taken by literally just Kim Dotcom's new wife.

As junior Government parties tend to lose votes, and Hone lost his electorate to Labour newcomer Kelvin Davis in 2017, it is not expected that they will stay in for the long haul.

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Continuing Cymru 1: Deathless Deheubarth

Could have sworn I'd done something like this before, but can't find it.

This is OTL local election results from 2012 (would have used 2017, but Andrew Teale hasn't got round to transferring them and I'm lazy) mapped onto the borders of medieval Welsh kingdoms - or as near as I can make out.

Strap yourselves in!

First up, the Kingdom of Deheubarth, which is the bit in the South-west and which was united by Hywel Dda ("the Good") in the 10th century. Hywel was one of the most prominent Welsh rulers of the middle ages and he codified the Welsh legal code which was used until the time of Henry VIII. However, the place was almost immediately over-run by other Welsh warlords and, later, English Marcher Lords. Only the Lord Rhys in the late 11th century united Deheubarth as a Proper Thing, but then he divided it between his sons despite the fact that the Welsh clearly needed permanent and united political structures to counter the Anglos - blame the partible inheritance set out in the Laws of Hywel Dda. For this, I'm just handwaving everything and it survives with the original borders but with the modern ward boundaries shut the fuck up.

In truth, Deheubarth was just an agglomeration of different regions: the predecessor kingdoms of Ceredigion and Dyfed, and the contested region of Ystrad Tywi. I've therefore subdivided it into regions conforming to those Kingdoms: Ceredigion, as far as I can make out, conforms to the current borders; Dyfed is modern Pembrokeshire plus the western bit of Carmarthenshire (Cenarth, Llangeler, Cynwyl Elfed, Trelech, Llanboidy, Whitland, St Clears, Llansteffan, Laugharne Townships, and Carmarthen itself); and Ystrad Tywi is the rest of modern Carmarthenshire, plus the Swansea unitary authority. Although Pembrokshire and Gower were almost immediately detached from Deheubarth by the English.

Cymru1D.png

The party analogues should be pretty easy to work out (is it a country is it a generic northern european country).

The results are therefore:
Ceredigion
Centre Party - 10,070 (38.3%) - 19
Independents - 7,710 (29.3%) - 15
Chwith - 6,547 (24.9%) - 7
Christian Democrats - 1,064 (4.0%) - 0
Moderates - 884 (3.4%) - 1

Dyfed
Independents - 27,171 (57.6%) - 48
Centre Party - 8,414 (17.8%) - 14
Christian Democrats - 5,413 (11.5%) - 3
Moderates - 4,888 (10.4%) - 9
Chwith - 661 (1.4%) - 1
Others - 628 (1.3%) - 0

Ystrad Tywi
Moderates - 44,415 (37.5%) - 72
Independents - 29,751 (25.1%) - 23
Centre Party - 21,569 (18.2%) - 19
Chwith - 10,478 (8.8%) - 12
Christian Democrats - 9,045 (7.6%) - 4
Others - 3,234 (2.7%) - 1 (People First)

TOTAL Deheubarth
Independents - 64,632 (33.7%) - 86
Moderates - 50,187 (26.1%) - 82
Centre Party - 40,053 (20.9%) - 52
Chwith - 17,686 (9.2%) - 20
Christian Democrats - 15,522 (8.1%) - 7
Others - 3,682 (2.0%) - 1 (People First)

Which pretty much has to be a Centre-Independents coalition.

Due to the preponderance of Independents, re-doing this but with PR doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but here goes. The 86-seat legislature (cube root rule) is filled with deputies elected by the three regions in accordance with population, with Ceredigion electing 12 MPs, Dyfed 21, and Ystrad Tywi 53 by standard d'Hondt.

TOTAL Deheubarth
General Electoral League - 28 (3+12+13)
Moderates - 22 (0+2+20)
Centre Party - 18 (4+4+10)
Chwith - 8 (3+0+5)
Christian Democrats - 8 (1+3+4)
People First - 1 (0+0+1)

It looks like this is going to be my hobby for the weekend - roll on, Gwynedd and Powys.
 
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Continuing Cymru 2: Perservering Powys

The ancient kingdom of Powys was supposedly founded by King Arthur's uncle Vortigern, and originally included a lot of the West Midlands. Then the Angles came, and their obtuse leaders pushed the Britons back into the mountains of mid-Wales, where they suffered an acute shortage of arable land. Powys carried on as a distinctly minor power, with a few exceptions. Harold Godwinson's last item on his CV before becoming King was a long-running guerilla war against Gruffydd ap Llywelyn in the region, Gruffydd being literally the only Welsh person ever to rule the whole of modern Wales. This leads to interesting questions about what would have happened if Harold had survived the big pitched battle at Hastings and returned to a style of fighting he was good at.

Anyway, Powys was on the front line of post-Conquest English incursions, and was fatally weakened in 1191, when it was split in two by two members of the ruling family - Madog got the northern bit, around Wrexham, and Gwenwynwyn got the southern bit, roughly the historic county of Montgomeryshire. These polities were known as Powys Fadog and Powys Wenwynwyn, and I'm using them as logical subdivisions - Fadog contains the entirety of Wrexham Council, four wards along the southeastern edge of Denbighshire, and Llanrhaedr in Powys. Wenwynwyn follows the boundaries of modern Powys as far south as Newtown - the Powys council area contains a bunch of places which were never integral parts of Powys, and excludes almost all of Powys Fadog, which was.


Cymru2P.png

There are a lot of unopposed independents in Wenwynwyn, and the only seriously organised party is the Social Democrats. And even they very rarely stray beyond the confines of Wrexham.

Powys Fadog
Social Democrats - 14,069 (38.1%) - 23
Independents - 9,900 (26.8%) - 20
Conservative People's Party - 5,286 (14.3%) - 7
Radical Party - 4,204 (11.4%) - 4
Centre Party - 3,033 (8.2%) - 4
Others - 388 (1.1%) - 0

Powys Wenwynwyn
Independents - 6,904 (56.5%) - 24
Conservative People's Party - 2,945 (24.1%) - 5
Radical Party - 2,027 (16.6%) - 3
Centre Party - 87 (0.7%) - 0
Social Democrats - 85 (0.7%) - 0
Others - 173 (1.4%) - 0

TOTAL Powys
Independents - 16,804 (34.2%) - 44
Social Democrats - 14,154 (28.8%) - 23
Conservative People's Party - 8,232 (16.8%) - 12
Radical Party - 6,231 (12.7%) - 7
Centre Party - 3,120 (6.4%) - 4
Others - 561 (1.1%) - 0

And, with PR, the cube root rule gives us a legislature of 37 seats - 28 for Fadog, 9 for Wenwynwyn.

TOTAL Powys
Farmer-Civilian Front - 13 (8+5)
Social Democrats - 11 (11+0)
Conservative People's Party - 6 (4+2)
Radical Party - 3 (3+2)
Centre Party - 2 (2+0)

Under both systems, it looks like the Independents have a choice of partners.
 
Continuing Cymru 3: Growing Gwynedd

Gwynedd was the most defensible kingdom in Wales, guarded by the natural barrier of Snowdonia and possessing a fertile island which could feed the population with little possibility of attack. It is therefore no wonder that, after the English started to press into the accessible bits of Wales, Gwynedd became the pre-eminent polity in the region, eventually gaining the fealty of the other surviving Welsh states in order to become Princes of Wales. IOTL, this late flowering was snuffed out by Edward I in the 1280s, but let's just ignore that and get electioning.

I've taken a few liberties here because for most of its later history, Gwynedd's eastern border was the river Conwy. I've given them everything up to the modern Welsh border - land which they held at one stage or another. As Gwynedd wasn't united from previous kingdoms, like Deheubarth, or split up into equal successor states, like Powys, there weren't really any obvious regional borders to go with other than the cantrefs, which don't really fit onto the modern ward boundaries. However, Meirionydd was a parcel of land which was treated as an entity and gained as a unit by various parties after various wars, so I've split that off. The same goes for the land between the Conwy and the Clwyd, which was often given as an apanage to younger brothers (and given to Dafydd ap Gruffydd by Edward I in return for betraying his family), so that's a region of itself which I'm calling Rhos. Where the Clwyd stops being a ward boundary, I follow the historic county boundaries of Denbighshire. And the land east of the Clwyd I've grouped together as Tegeingl. I've also put Anglesey and the historic core of Gwynedd together and called it Snowdonia.

Cymru3G.png

Anyway. Parties should be quite easy to work out, apart from maybe the Llŷn Coalition, which is IOTL a Plaid splinter called Llais Gwynedd but there's no easy continental analogues to that so ITTL the Llŷn peninsula has been disputed between Ireland and Gwynedd and is now a self-governing territory of the latter and elects a coalition of local parties to represent it and look just google the aland islands.

Snowdonia
Centre Party - 19,696 (31.3%) - 36
Independents - 16,334 (25.9%) - 27
Llŷn Coalition - 10,435 (16.6%) - 12
Social Democratic Alliance - 10,047 (15.9%) - 10
Pro Patria - 3,714 (5.9%) - 1
Progressive Party - 2,619 (4.2%) - 3
Red-Greens! - 175 (0.2%) - 0

Meirionydd
Centre Party - 3,887 (58.0%) - 15
Independents - 1,372 (18.7%) - 6
Llŷn Coalition - 1,338 (18.2%) - 1
Social Democratic Alliance - 404 (5.5%) - 1
Pro Patria - 307 (4.2%) - 0
Progressive Party - 32 (0.4%) - 0

Rhos
Independents - 12,566 (31.4%) - 27
Pro Patria - 9,382 (23.5%) - 12
Centre Party - 6,544 (16.4%) - 13
Social Democratic Alliance - 6,384 (16.0%) - 8
Progressive Party - 4,661 (11.7%) - 5
Others - 466 (1.2%) - 0

Tegeingl
Social Democratic Alliance - 22,407 (40.0%) - 48
Independents - 18,301 (32.7%) - 25
Pro Patria - 9,377 (16.7%) - 14
Progressive Party - 4,164 (7.4%) - 7
Centre Party - 1,548 (2.8%) - 2
Others - 198 (0.3%) - 0

TOTAL Gwynedd
Independents - 48,573 (29.2%) - 85
Social Democratic Alliance - 39,242 (23.6%) - 67
Centre Party - 31,675 (19.0%) - 66
Pro Patria - 22,780 (13.7%) - 27
Progressive Party - 11,476 (6.9%) - 16
Llŷn Coalition - 7,326 (4.4%) - 13
Others - 5,286 (3.2%) - 0

And for the PR simulation, the cube root rule gives 82 seats, of which 31 go to Snowdonia, 4 to Meirionydd, 20 to Rhos and 27 to Tegeingl.

TOTAL Gwynedd
Union of Electors - 24 (8+1+6+9)
Social Democratic Alliance - 19 (5+0+3+11)
Centre Party - 16 (10+2+3+1)
Pro Patria - 11 (2+0+5+4)
Progressive Party - 6 (1+0+3+2)
Llŷn Coalition - 6 (5+1+0+0)

These are both what you might call well-hung.
 
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Jealous at the victory of Australia in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest (in which they were included as a one-off, but quite literally stole the show), New Zealand immediately set about one-upping their trans-Tasman rivals, and applied to join the European Union. Brussels made the process very easy for them, as NZ was basically solvent and would improve some of the continental stats.

Although disappointed to hear that there was no way of 'winning' the EU, John Key pressed ahead with the project, and New Zealand joined after a referendum that November, and had an interstitial EU Parliament election along with the local elections in the winter of 2013. Aotearoa was awarded 13 seats, one of which was reserved for the Maori roll - although the Germans muttered darkly about Apartheid, to which the British responded "sorry, no, I didn't sneeze, so, er?".

The first regular European elections to which New Zealand was privy came the following year, in 2014. Although there were parliamentary elections scheduled for later that year, no effort was made to combine the two - a decision which reduced the turnout in both polls and, it is claimed, helped National cross the line to a majority in the domestic election. John Key refused to comment on the tactics of this.

Key's other tactic was to submit a joint list with their small support partners - vote-splitting from ACT had denied National a seventh seat in the general roll constituency in 2013, so they were brought onside by the gift of the second spot on the joint list. This seat was filled by Jamie Whyte, who remains the party leader. However, the National Coalition actually lost two seats overall, partly due to the rise of the right-wing Christians in the Conservative Party, and partly because of the growth of NZ First as a home for Eurosceptic voters.

The Conservatives won a single seat, which went to party leader Colin Craig - he was ousted as leader in the midst of a sexual harassment scandal shortly afterwards, but has controversially remained an Independent MEP within the Tory/PiS ECR group, with the benefit of a decent salary, better perks, and a Brussels address where he can avoid embarrassing encounters with old mates.

Winston Peters found the role he was born to play in the anti-Europe demagogue, railing against the corruption, bureaucracy and humbug of the institution, as well as the unworkability of putting open borders in place with countries with whom New Zealand shares no borders. NZ First therefore topped the poll, which led to some very tepid takes about how they were inevitably going to win the parliamentary election. They did not.

A fair proportion of the NZ First gains came from Labour, which lost them their third MEP - however, this loss was offset by their victory over the Maori Party's Marama Fox in the Maori Roll constituency.

In the 2020 coalition agreement between Labour and NZ First, it was agreed that New Zealand should trigger Article 50 as soon as possible - a policy that enjoys almost unanimous support in NZ now that John Key's electoral magic has worn off and a generation of Kiwi civil servants have had a gruesome taste of the decadence of Belgian life.

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Not a graphical thing, but I don't have a test thread, so

Smith's Dream

It was, perhaps, inevitable that the only command economy in the OECD would shed the trappings of democracy under Robert Muldoon. As democratically-elected Prime Minister, he presided over dawn raids on suspected overstayers, harsh limits on international travel, grandiose public works projects and, of course, the banning of the Labour Party once the Secret Service discovered the organisation's links to the 'terrorists' who had targeted the Springbok Tour of 1981. Muldoon's power over the Finance portfolio and the entire civil service gave him sole command of the New Zealand economy, which he was loath to give up to the Opposition at a time when his wage and price freeze was entering such a tricky phase.

The arrest of Helen Clark for sedition was the first stage of the crackdown, which was followed shortly afterwards by the proscription of the Party and the arrests of most of those members who could not prove that they had abjured the terrorists and the Party's links to international disruptive forces. It was claimed later that David Lange had gone down in a storm of bullets, but if so, it was hushed up. In any case, he was never seen again. Those leftists who could not bear the new regime, or knew that they would always be under surveillance and suspicion, fled to the bush to form the HART militia (Halt Aotearoa's Reactionary Tendencies). HART mostly limited itself to blowing up power lines and harassing the Army, following the examples of Land War heroes such as Te Kooti, and as such never gained mass popularity. In the 1980s, it controlled swathes of 'Free' South Auckland as well as its rural bases, but the violence was to no avail and HART quickly became just another gang, at least in the urban centres. In the bush, it continued in strength until the liberals and moderates abandoned the fight in protest at the secret arms deals being formulated with the Chinese state. Nowadays, the semi-mythical figure of Tame Iti leads the Maoist HART guerillas somewhere deep in the Ureweras.

Having vanquished the Left, Muldoon was only opposed by Social Credit and by free-marketeers in his own party. Over the course of the 1980s, these groups were skilfully marginalised by the Muldoonists and their leaders sent to re-education camps. Meanwhile, the New Zealand economy seemed to recover: new aluminium smelters and hydro dams created wealth which was fed back into regional development, with the whole edifice supported by high taxes and by American back-hand subsidies. These subsidies, of course, were merited by the fear that the National Party's regime would fall to the Communist HART cadres.

Entering the 1990s, this model could no longer cut it. Muldoon was increasingly senile and unable to manage the entire country's economy as well as the steadily growing ranks of secret police and informers. Meanwhile, the American subsidies threatened to dry up as HART's power declined and the End of History approached. A volte-face was needed. Muldoon was therefore eased out of office by his loyal deputy, Winston Peters, who became Prime Minister in 1992 and remains in that office to this day. Peters relaxed some of the economic policies of his former master, to allow some form of free market to develop, but to retain power he became an even harsher user of intimidation, surveillance and arrests. Bob Jones, who had been appointed Peters' Finance Minister at first to signal a new openness, used a trade mission to Durban as an opportunity to defect, clinging to Prime Minister Viljoen and begging him for asylum.

In response to the challenge of a very low immigration rate and sluggish-to-nonexistent growth, Peters introduced the Five Child Policy in 1998, thanks to which New Zealand's population has recently reached 4 million. However, Peters' major legacy will be the realignment of New Zealand's foreign policy. Increasing demands from America for economic liberalisation on their own terms forced Peters to turn to the other major power of the Pacific - China. The Chinese are only too happy to financially support the National regime in return for boatloads of New Zealand agricultural products and raw materials. And this, of course, has contributed to the decline of HART.

Elections in New Zealand are most often uncontested. The last boundary review was in 1993, when the Maori electorates were abolished, and nowadays the only opposition to the National Party and its allies are oddball independents who get derisory shares of the vote. National allows its puppets in the Federation of Labour, the Reform Party (sister of the Dutch SGP) and the Liberal Democratic Party "Peter Dunne" to occupy some seats in the House. In the latter case, the common joke runs that the LDP "PD" is neither liberal, nor democratic, nor really a party. However, this is better than the situation in 1988-1993, when Parliament was suspended altogether.

Looking to the future, it is apparent that Winston Peters will not live forever, and will be succeeded by one of his senior ministers - John Key, in particular, has been known to make coded references to his belief in liberal ideals, but it remains to be seen whether this is just a ploy for public support. In general, the public is too worn-down and equanimous to rise against the Nats, so the only real hope is for top-down reform before China loses interest in the South Seas.
 
This isn't me being edgy, btw, it's a sort of updated version of C.K Stead's novella 'Smith's Dream', which was basically an FH scenario about not!Muldoon slowly introducing a dictatorship and nobody noticing until he dissolves Parliament in the wake of an oil embargo. It was adapted into the first NZ-made feature film, 'Sleeping Dogs', which starred a young Sam Neill as a reluctant guerilla fighter and literal cuck.

As you may be able to tell, C.K Stead is extremely edgy.
 
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