Just to pause and say thanks again to Steven to his wonderful tables....

(And others too who provide excellent charts etc)

Thanks to which, it highlights that of our top 25 women, 17 are in positive territory this year. Only 8 have gone down. Of those 8, there are 2 that really should not count (Amanda and Laura R) as they have not played or barely played due to injury.
Of course, of the 6 real ones who have dropped, 3 are/were our leading contenders - JoKo, Hev and Naomi.
Which is a major blow for the spearhead of the women's effort.
But the jumps by the others is so significant that it really does look good:
11 have double-digit rises, Katie B's counts the same - one should do percentage rise, of course,
only 3 out of those 17 risers have what you would call inconsequential rises
I know we worry about where the next batch will come from to keep up the numbers but it certainly looks rosy - or in fact not rosy as steven's table has rises in blue and falls in pink (do like that turquoise colour.....)

The top 10 this week is -1 with Katie B +3, Heather +17 and Harriet +1. Jo is then -7, Naomi -3 and Laura and Tara -6. There is no change in the order of the top 10.

This weeks's CHs go to Katie B, up 3 to 103, Lissey up 20 to 533 (and beats her previous CH by 2), Ella Taylor up 11 to 810 and Tiff Williams up 1 to 933.

The other significant mover this week was Sam Murray up 40 to 495 and back into the top 500, following her Chiswick run.

Olivia Nicholls as dropped off the rankings, so now we are down to 29 ranked GB women, the first time to fall below 30 for may years I should think, though I will leave it to others to say when that was.

I have noticed recently that there have been an awful lot of entries by our unranked girls all over europe. Most of them are way down the alt list, and dont stand a chance of getting into the draw. But they are entering the 60k and 25k tournaments as we as th 15ks. As you say, there is a big gap in the 15ks, although some of the more distant countries seem to be able to stage them with very weak fields.

I also noted that Emily and Mandy are well down the entrt list for every rournament they have entered over the next few weeks.

Yes I think various countries and tournaments have taken a bit of umbrage that their tournaments will no longer be part of the main rankings set-up, the Turks certainly seeming being among these that have taken their ball home and aren't playing anymore.

Yes, like Redsquirrel, I don't see the problem.
Peter laments the lack of clay tournaments this week in Europe. But clay is not a given. Anyway, there are tons of 15ks in the next few weeks, as Redsquirrel says. And quite a lot of them on clay.
My understanding from people I know is that the cancellations in Turkey have absolutely nothing to do with the change to the transition tour. It's all connected to the political problems. Don[t know about Roumania.
There is really no change for tournaments next year, same money, effectively the same points, i.e. points that allow you to move up to the next level if you get enough but not points that give access directly to WTA, say, because they don't give enough of them.
I wonder if it's connected to the betting - didn't some official state that betting would not be allowed on transition tour events (and the existing agreements in place would not be valid, hence how the ITF can refuse to honour the old agreements). Or was that just a possibility?

More complicated than this.
If you are a resort, or location and your business model is, at least in part, built around providing entry level events to the tennis tour, well, you no longer do that. You provide entry level to the tour that provides entry level.
You can argue that it's the same thing, but it's not. Or, even if it is, it doesn't appear that way on the surface - the answer will come, "well why isn't it just entry onto the tour like it used to be?". That extra layer of abstraction is enough to be an impediment. Many good ideas, or realities of fact, have been undone by the appearance of something else, at least in the public perception. Sharm, Heraklion, Hammamet, Antalya (even without the political considerations) have all cut their ambitions, and will run fewer tournaments next year, most almost to zero, from a regular 25+ events a year. Other locations that have tried to fill a gap have lessened their ambition, Bol, Nonthaburi, Obidos, all indicated fewer events, and more likely to hold $25K instead. They need to make money, or at least lose little enough money to make the upshot viable.
The ITF/WTA/general powers that be state that a large part of the aim with the changes is to reduce the total amount of professionals (ranked players - professional to me doesn't necessarily mean ranked player, so it's important to note what the authorities are meaning here - ranked players) to ~750 from the current ~1200. That's a reduction of over a third. The market must logically reduce for the resorts that had attracted low level players.
Fewer, but more competitive events is the result, sure. But, that will mean we have fewer players able to meet the new standard, and fewer active each week. Unless they have some sort of outstanding junior pedigree they are not going to be able to fund travel to the few $15K that are left, and even if they do, they won't be able to get in to qualifying for them, as the standard, and rankings of players trying to earn a spot in these now more competitive events will be higher.
So they have to be good juniors, or looking for a spot in GB events - even of they get a spot in GB events, how are they going to compete going in cold? Well history tells us even under the current system they fare poorly. Under a further increased threshold, they'll fail. At some point, someone will say, they're failing so often, so badly, why are we even giving them the chance, wasting the effort and money, and spots on them? That will push people out of the game, by design.
Of the curernt crop, of junior eligible players we'd probably have Raducanu, Jones, maybe one other that got some chances. Ther'll be no Mirabelle's, no Suzy's, probably no Jade Windley's, Lucy Brown's, Maia Lumsden's?
But that is all by design. Tennis only wants players that they believe can play WTA level tennis regularly to have a career, a time, in tennis. It does not want a Little league system anmore, it wants the minor leagues and the major leagues.
As fans of ITF and low level tennis, we suffer, but no one in power cares about that, and in general, tennis doesn't either, we're a vanishingly small minority of the tennis audience, and WTA/ATP & ITF would all rather court new blood in to the game by promoting things like hot-dogs and racquet smashes rather than forehands and backhands, because, it's an easier sell.
There's no anger in what I'm saying, not really, just an acknowledgement that a business decision has been made to ruthlessly weed out everything below a certain level. We'll get less tennis to follow, but it will be a higher quality.
Is the GB tennis infrastructure well placed to accommodate that new landscape and produce a consistent production line of talent able to drop in to the deep end where WR750 is the *starting* expectation? Doubtful. It's hard enough to suppoort a career as is, even if you're WR~250 (ask Lisa Whybourn), now unless you're great immediately, you might not get a ranking until your mid 20s. I doubt anyone, and certainly any tennis association is going to stick with a player that long.

I'm rambling.