What differences are there between a normal and landslide majority?
A large landslide is better for a party than not having a large landslide - but has its own challenges.
Blog posts
Nuance isn’t important - accuracy and clarity are
Appeals to complexity are for the writer's benefit, not the reader.
House of Review - A synthesis option for Lords reform
The problem? Three approaches to Lords reform. The solution? A fourth.
Why MPs shouldn’t decide their leaders, and we should do something more interesting
The case against members deciding is compelling, but so is the case against MPs - we need new approaches!
Starter python library template
Solving very meta problems
It’s weird when we pick prime ministers without elections
Picking a PM is obviously what elections are about, but it turns out that was optional? Weird!
Function pipes in Python
Different approaches (and why I'm adding a new one)
Mutable function defaults
Defaults should be the same every time.
Connecting a BBC Micro Keyboard to a Raspberry Pico
Taking a long time to learn how one of the simple bits of a computer works.
Week notes 20 Feb
A technical notes week
Week notes 13 Feb
The lure of counter-intuitive effects, and inevitably being wrong about things
Week notes 6 Feb
When transferring lessons between places, the optimal policy depends where you're starting from
The harder problem than votes for children
If accepting that anyone who wants to can vote, what about people who can't understand that choice?
Week notes 28 Jan
What is the book project anyway
Overdispersion and variants
Very overdispersed viruses have interesting population dynamics, but how this applies to the real world is unclear.
Voter ID discriminates against older voters
Arguments that the government should not implement Voter ID should focus on harm to the government's supporters.
Improving old work
Updating political advertising notes
Different ways of equalising constituencies
Equalising on population, registered voters and eligible voters leads to different outcomes.
Un-straightforward lessons from history: reading about Cable Street
Using history in our modern arguments brings a lot of baggage
Reporting neighbours: what to make of covid reporting forms
Creating new forms of anti-social behaviour means scaling up old forms of reporting - how should we feel about this?
Political animals
The changing face of the political chicken.
Being generous to petititons
Motives for signing petitions are complex, whether about a TV show or brexit.
Research Notes: Continued Prosecutions for Attempted Suicide
In some circumstances legal punishments for attempted suicide remain.
Factual content in political advertising should be regulated — or we need posters telling people it’s not
Regulating truth in elections may have limited returns, but it's a problem people don't know what the current arrangement is.
Retrospective on lettingfees.co.uk
Experiences of using crowdsourced data for research and activism.
The free speech game
If your limit on free speech can be summed up in a tweet, it can be turned against you.
Measuring the politics of Eurovision with data
Sometimes it's all about the music.
Voter ID and administration
Practical questions about how ID will be used in voting.
Votes for children
The most convincing reason to extend the vote to minors is their difference, not similarity, to adults.
Four short stories about sovereignty
How the term is used to claim (and criticise) rightful power.
How suicide became legal
The broad history, and very specific events, that led to legal change.
Gerrymandering in the Public Interest?
Patching the electoral system through boundaries is more complicated than it seems.
The unclear history of pregnancy tests
Following a phantom citation trail.
The limits of Latin
What's the evidence for the benefits of Latin education?
Process and risk of boundary reforms
Reducing the number of MPs creates internal opponents to Conservative boundary reforms.
Reporting on suicide notes
There are considerations beyond fear of contagion.
What is 'excessive detail' in suicide coverage?
How regulators give insufficient thought to descriptions of 'common' methods.
Going home to different places
Players and characters in ‘Gone Home’
Dimensions of power in the modern screenplay
Industry conventions are rooted in historical battles over control of the story.
Democratic games
From Pong to Pokémon.
The Strange Asymmetry of Curling
How curling does the opposite of other sports to keep matches interesting.
PCC elections: Some loose thoughts on authorisation in elections
If elections have an authorising role then turnout has to, at least sometimes, be practically significant.
The Strange Maths of Mandates
Giving practical (rather than political) consideration to manifesto promises leads to strange places.
Facebook and the legible person
As Facebook grows, it blunts expression to make it easier to understand.