Permanent occupations
Among the commentary on the Brit election, this map is especially interesting. It's an old 1880-ish map of England's coal-bearing zones, next to this week's map of the few remaining Labour voters. Exactly the same places. Immediate point, of course, is that coal miners are the only remaining Labourites. Unions have faded from all other industries.

There's a larger point. The maps wouldn't have matched if Britain's parliamentary districts hadn't been drawn by Nature. Constituencies are basically the old counties, with some modern adjustments. County boundaries are ancient, and have been pretty much settled since the 1600s. In other words, the boundaries were there before coal was mined.

There must have been something distinct about the surface of coal-bearing areas that shaped cultural and occupational tendencies. The ethnic tendencies have held steady for hundreds of years, acquiring a new association with the occupation of mining. [In the US, coal-bearing areas are sharply wrinkled, which means big farms are impossible and tight little valleys create tight little communities. I don't know if that applies in Britain.]

We don't have ancient boundaries in the Western Hemisphere, where both the original Siberian settlers and the newer Euro settlers have been more nomadic and restless than the Asians who stayed in Asia or the Euros who stayed in Europe. Thus gerrymandering was not very effective ... until recently. It's no coincidence that gerrymandering has become widespread at the same time when geographic wandering AND economic wandering have both stopped. We no longer expect to move upward OR sideways, so our ethnic and political tendencies are becoming more permanent and less mixed.

Just for fun, here's an equivalent comparison for USA STRONG. A 1960 map of coal-bearing areas, from this gov't report, along with the 2012 Obama/Romney vote by congressional district. Clearly our congressional districts are not Natural in the same way that Britain's districts are.



One historical correlation: the coal areas in the middle of the continent, looking sort of like a lion proposing to a hamster, corresponded to the Osage Empire at roughly the same time when the British counties were firmed up. The Osage Empire was decimated and pushed southward by other tribes before the Euro tribe arrived in that area. Turned out to be a good collapse; the exiled Osage later got rich from oil.
  ¶ 4:40 AM