Jump to content

Talk:Social Democratic Party (UK, 1990–present)

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 81.149.67.208 (talk) at 16:53, 29 March 2019. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Untitled

Have edited the first paragraph to reflect that David Owen's "continuing" SDP is not the same entity as the original SDP formed in 1981. The Liberal Democrats are the legal successor party to both that and the original Liberal Party, and that fact should be reflected in the article. Flagboy 11:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Move this article?

Should we move this article to SDP (UK, 1988)? Despite all the bad feeling along the way, this has turned into a much better article. The extra detail about the Independent SDP is particularly interesting. Mpntod 12:01, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • I think there are good arguments for restoring it to the old breakdown, i.e., the pre-1990 SDP that was a national party, and the post-1990 SDP that is a local grouplet. It would be better to avoid that issue, however, by having the party's history recounted in three articles: one for each phase of its history, i.e., 1981-1988, 1988-1990, and post-1990. I think that a consensus should be determined before further changes are made, however, because of the controversy about this article so far. As well, I plan to do a copyedit soon to ensure neutrality. Ground Zero | t 13:16, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Since no-one seemed to object to my proposal, I have created the third article, Social Democratic Party (UK, 1988)., covering the Owenite party. Ground Zero | t 06:46, 9 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Copyedit

I have undertaken a full-scale copyedit of the article to:

  • try to make it more neutral,
  • bring it into the Wikipeida style (e.g., sub-heading, capitalisation)
  • improve (in my opinion) the writing style and grammar.

If you disagree with any of my edits, or think that you can do even better, please edit individual portions of the article instrad of reverting the whole lot. A complete reversion will restore grammatical errors and things that are not consistent with the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Here are some of the more important edits that I have made and why:

  • The Road To Bootle > The road to Bootle The Manual of Style says that words in sub-heading should not be capitalised, except for the first word and proper nouns.
  • Secondly, they had in Dr David Owen the one thing the Liberal Democrats lacked (until the arrival of Paddy Ashdown) - a charismatic leader that looked & acted the part of a potential prime minister in waiting. > Secondly, David Owen was a charismatic leader who looked and acted the part of a potential prime minister. The Liberal Democrats lacked a leader of Owen's stature until the arrival of Paddy Ashdown. This was an awkard sentence for a number of reasons:
    • "&" is not used in formal writing - use "and".
    • people are normally referred to as "who" instead of "that"
    • "potential prime minister in waiting" is redundant. Did he have the potential to be prime minister, or only the potential to be prime minister-in-waiting?
    • I have broken up the sentence to make it easier to follow by moving the LibDem stuff into a separate sentence.
    • this was the third time in the article that David Owen's name is linked. The Style Manual discourages repeated linking.
    • "the one thing the Liberal Democrats lacked" -- The one thing? I thought they also lacked the financial support of a wealthy supermarket magnate.
  • call it a day > dissolve the party "Call it a day" is very colloquial for an encyclopedia, and may not be understand by a non-native speaker of English. I have changed this to "dissolve the party" to reflect the more formal style of an encycolpedia. If this is not the correct characterisation of what they voted to do, please change it to the correct description.
  • ironically led by the very Jack Holmes > led by Jack Holmes Let's let the readers decide if there is irony here. there is no need to tell them what to think about this. "the very" is unnecessary.
  • The Neath result proved that a greatly reduced SDP could continue to live & fight to another day. > The Neath result proved that a greatly reduced SDP could continue to be a viable party without David Owen. This is pretty florid language. I think that the replacement is clearer, and gets to the real point in a less dramatic way.
  • There has been a recent upturn in their fortunes with the announcement that Councillor Christine Allerston is the new Mayor of Bridlington for 2005/2006. > Councillor Christine Allerston is the new Mayor of Bridlington for 2005/2006. The old version sounds like political boosterism. The new version conveys the same information to the reader without intereting it for her or him.
  • The party also still has councillors > The party has councillors "also still" was awkward and unnecessary wording.
  • The "Newts" seem set to remain a part of British politics for some time yet (deleted) Wikipedia is not a crystal ball.
  • ...but like many minor British parties they are unlikely to contest Parliamentary elections when what resources they possess are more likely to yield results at local council level. > The SDP, like many minor British parties, is likely to focus its resources at local council level were they are more likely to win seats than in Parliamentary elections. I re-wrote this sentence for clarity and simplicity while retaining the key information.

And if anyone is interested in reading about a Canadian version of two parties merging into three parties, see the Progressive Canadian Party article. Ground Zero | t 17:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC) Ground Zero | t 16:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Election box metadata

This article contains some sub-pages that hold metadata about this subject. This metadata is used by the Election box templates to display the color of the party and its name in Election candidate and results tables.

These links provide easy access to this meta data:


Confused?

The hat line on the article indicates "This article is about the party that existed from 1981 until 1988. ..." yet the article has the date 1990 in the title and appears to still be operating. Someone who knows the subject needs to correct the problem.

Keith D 12:37, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:SDPLogo.jpg

Image:SDPLogo.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 04:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 4 external links on Social Democratic Party (UK, 1990–present). Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add {{cbignore}} after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add {{nobots|deny=InternetArchiveBot}} to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 00:11, 31 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

1992 election vote figures

The vote figure and share % for the 1992 United Kingdom general election quoted here seem quite high. They are the same as in the 1992 election article, but as I noted on its talk page I am concerned that they seem to include the votes won by the defeated incumbent MPs Rosie Barnes in Greenwich and John Cartwright in Woolwich. However, neither was a member of this incarnation of the SDP. When the 1988 split occurred they did go with David Owen to the anti-merger SDP, but when it failed in 1990, they sat as Independent Social Democrats and this is the label they used in 1992. Dunarc (talk) 23:52, 4 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hardly centrist

This party is not in the centre of UK politics. Many of the people involved hold strong nationalist viewpoints. Perhaps "nationalist" would be a better description.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Talk:Social_Democratic_Party_(UK,_1990–present)&oldid=890039551"