Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Showing posts with label MPs meme. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MPs meme. Show all posts

Tuesday, 7 July 2009

Can you list all your MPs?

I spent some time yesterday evening trying to work out every MP who had represented me throughout my entire life. Because I have lived in quite a lot of places this was not straightforward. I did not know all my postcodes but with a bit of interwebbing I was able to track them all down and I then used a combination of "They Work For You" with its postcode finder facility and Wikipedia to track the former MPs for the constituencies to see who was MP whilst I lived there. It is also complicated by the fact that one of the places I lived in was affected by boundary changes in 1983 and it proved a bit fiddly to track down who the MP had been when I first moved there in 1982. I got there in the end though.

It threw up a few surprises such as the fact that Runcorn used to have a Tory MP from 1950 - 1983. I had no idea and does not seem to fit the profile of the town. Also I had no idea that from the time I was born until the age of 8 I was represented by Mr Permatan!

Here is my list of MPs (with the constituency in brackets and the party afterwards) in chronological order:

Robert Kilroy-Silk (Ormskirk) - Labour
Mark Carlisle (Runcorn) - Conservative
Gordon Oakes (Halton) - Labour
Robert Litherland (Manchester Central) - Labour
Gerald Kaufman (Manchester Gorton) - Labour
Keith Bradley (Manchester Withington) - Labour
Jane Kennedy (Liverpool Broadgreen / Liverpool Wavertree) - Labour
Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) - Conservative
John Redwood (Wokingham) - Conservative
Jane Griffiths (Reading East) - Labour
John Redwood (Wokingham) - Conservative
Andrew Mackay (Bracknell) - Conservative

Right, well I guess that this is only one for hardcore political obsessives (or those who have not moved very much) but if anyone else who reads this wants to have a crack then please consider yourself tagged for the "My MPs meme"!



UPDATE 1: 7th July 2009 - I originally posted this in April 2009 but having Tweeted about it today it has got a a fair bit of interest so I have decided to bump it seeing as it has got far more interest today than it ever did originally and it is not really topical!


UPDATE 2: Well a few people have taken up this meme. There are some in the comments below and also ones I have come across on other people's blogs:
- Caron's had a crack here (and also Norfolk Blogger has slipped his list into her comments)
- Pete from off of Pete's Politics presents his here
- Stephen Glenn had a quick go here, and a much more detailed go here where in an excellent post he fleshes out each MP's career and life as well as explaining how he has met most of them.
- Jennie Rigg has listed hers here as well.
- Steve Pugh has done his here and has a fair few famous MPs in there including a former Chancellor and Home Secretary. Makes my list look like political pygmies!
- Anders Hanson has also done his here although the fact he lived in another country for a few years complicated things although the fact that it was Sweden with multi-member constituencies gives us a glimpse of what we could have in some utopian future!