So I’m still working on my UK House of Commons map, and I’ve reached the Scottish border! As the map below shows, I have now completed 7 of the 9 regions of England, after just finishing North West. I only have yet to do North East and Yorkshire and the Humber, as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I’ve uploaded the latest version on the maps page.
Hey Ben, what program do I need to open the UK map? I downloaded it but then was unable to open it cause it’s in a different file format.
Cheers mate,
Michelle
You need Google Earth.
I cannot open any of your wonderful looking maps, and I have Google Earth.
Same problem as Michelle.
Any other tips?
Many thanks, Nicholas
It’s a .kmz file. It should work in Google Earth. I can’t imagine why it doesn’t. It’s the same format as all my other maps and I use KMZ files all the time.
Just open the file and it should launch Google Earth automatically and load the map – some of them can take a while to load (mine is slow to launch now with so many maps added).
Ben, I don’t want to be picky but this is one you may want to fix. I’m just changing the colours on seats that’ve changed hands since the versions of the maps that I’m using, and I downloaded your new WA LA map because I was interested to see what colour you used for Fremantle. When I zoomed in to the Perth metro area it was immediately obvious something wasn’t right, and by overlaying the older version I had over the newer one I counted 5 seats that are in a different colour (not counting the 2 that have actually changed status since the last election) – Perth, Balcatta, Girrawheen, Joondalup and Mindarie. You must’ve been playing with it and inadvertently saved the wrong changes.
For the record, what colour do the Greens and Nationals get?
I need to put Google Earth on my computer sometime so I can look at these maps. Even with web 2.0, my browser only goes so far.
There is a Google Earth browser plug in. Hint hint.
Nick, thanks for the note. Please let me know if you ever see any errors, that goes for anyone using the maps. I’ll fix that later in the week when I have the time.
@6, I usually colour the Greens a dark green and the Nationals a pale green (check out the map I posted as part of the recent article on the WA defection). It hasn’t been much of an issue since the Greens only hold one single-member electorate, and it’s in an urban area so there’s no issue of it being confused with Nationals.
But changing colours is very easy and can be done quite quickly, so I don’t worry about it as much, if the Greens ever start to win large numbers of seats I can revisit the colour scheme.
@Oz, I’ve used the GE plugin before during the Queensland election, but it’s quite a lot of work to set it up for each individual map. I’ll do it whenever an election is current.
I checked all your other important Australian maps for any similar errors, but not surprisingly found none. Only thing is that you haven’t updated Frome on the SA maps, but people can do that themselves as I have. I will add the caveat that for the state seats outside NSW and Qld I don’t know who holds what off the top of my head, so was relying on overlaying the older version, so if both versions were wrong somewhere I would’ve missed it, but I know you would’ve been careful to get them right originally so I’m sure they’re all ok.
I intentionally left Frome as it was, since the map is of the 2006 election result. In that case I should probably flip back Fremantle and North West.
And Arafura, Ryde and Lyne as well. That’s why I mentioned it, because you’d changed all the others. I’d stick with changing them – I know there are good arguments for why you should use general election results only, but it’s more interesting this way.
Hah, well Arafura is now one you can flip back as Scrymgour has just rejoined Labor.
Hi Ben,
This is exactly what I’m looking for. I’ve almost given up looking for a constituency map for the UK. I even tried drawing my own boundaries for each of the electoral *frustrating*. Then I found yours. By the way how did you create the boundaries? Did you create it’s own polygon, or do you use a more advanced technique/software?
I’ve created boundaries for some of the region for scotland. I can send them to you if you are interested. It’s not as polished as yours, but it’s a start I guess…
Hi Reza,
Glad you can use it. Yes please send me any maps that might be useful when I get to making maps of Scotland. You can email me at ben[at]tallyroom.com.au