What differences are there between a normal and landslide majority?
Photo by Karlie Hubbard on Unsplash A series of polls during this election (and actually, for some time) have suggested the possibility not just that …
Nuance isn’t important - accuracy and clarity are
This is a blog post working through something I want to stamp out of my writing: appeals to nuance. The key points: You shouldn’t care about nuance -…
House of Review - A synthesis option for Lords reform
House of Lords reform is stuck between a few different futures - with a range of groups who can either veto, or strongly slow down, any particular opt…
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! This is a sequel to a previous blog post, wh…
Starter python library template
I’ve got a good working version of my starter python library template. This is both a cookiecutter template and a self-bootstrapping GitHub template. …
It’s weird when we pick prime ministers without elections
Expanding on something from a few twitter threads: Parliamentary Democracy explanations of UK democracy are misleading, and lead people who have been …
Function pipes in Python
Header image: Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash I've released a new package with an implementation of a pipe feature for python - function-pipes. …
Mutable function defaults
I've published a lock-defaults package. This is mostly a little toy function that gets rid of the need for an annoying python pattern. Can be installe…
Connecting a BBC Micro Keyboard to a Raspberry Pico
Compared to a lot of people, I know a lot about computers, but compared to what there is to know, I know very little. The deep magic is a bit lost on …
Week notes 20 Feb
Loose tool notes Since the last time I tried it a few years ago, google translate lets you download a pdf of the translation of a pdf (preserving the …
Week notes 13 Feb
Counter-intuitive effects This week in mySociety work, we published a blog post about Freedom of Information being good. There’s a link in that to a g…
Week notes 6 Feb
General stuff Did some notes reading John Wall’s book on children voting, but they got long enough to be their own blog post. Could polish it some mor…
The harder problem than votes for children
I blogged ages ago on the case for child suffrage, and quite liked John Wall’s argument that children deserved the vote because they were different fr…
Week notes 28 Jan
I saw a comment on twitter that blogging more by lowering standards is good, so I’m going to try writing badly and see if I like it. The book After pu…
Overdispersion and variants
Header image by Josh Appel on Unsplash As the alpha variant has been replaced by the delta variant in the UK, I’ve been trying to think how this fits …
Voter ID discriminates against older voters
Progressive political parties and organisations frame problems in ways that engage their supporters’ anger and attention, and so miss opportunities to…
Improving old work
I’ve had a set of notes for a blog post about developments in political advertising over the last few years, but inspired by this Vox approach of ‘jus…
Different ways of equalising constituencies
With the next cycle of the boundary review argument kicking off, I have made a set of maps visualising if constituencies are currently over and under …
Un-straightforward lessons from history: reading about Cable Street
Header image: Cable Street by angus_ireland Sometimes political traditions tell their story through events that are less stressed (or absent) from the…
Reporting neighbours: what to make of covid reporting forms
In the weeks leading up to the full lockdown, Trainline put up a new form to handle cancellations resulting from Covid-19. What was their motivation f…
Political animals
Image Credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/OOJAUol19oo We live in a world of animal suit politics. Elections are attended not just by chickens, but bad…
Being generous to petititons
Photo by Issy Bailey on Unsplash There’s a petition with a million signatures calling for the last season of Game of Thrones to be thrown out and re-m…
Research Notes: Continued Prosecutions for Attempted Suicide
Photo by Amanda Jones on Unsplash While most legal consequences from successful suicide were removed by the 1870s, alongside this gradual decriminalis…
Factual content in political advertising should be regulated — or we need posters telling people it’s not
On the way home from work I’ve been seeing the Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) new national ad campaign. It’s clear, it’s simple, big black te…
Retrospective on lettingfees.co.uk
A few years ago I spent a lot of time looking at letting agent websites, seeing how much they charged people, and putting that in a different website.…
The free speech game
Photo by Virgil Cayasa on Unsplash There’s a fun game I see people playing on Twitter. Here are the rules: Articulate a definition of free speech tha…
Measuring the politics of Eurovision with data
Photo by Jakob Braun on Unsplash Morning Experiment: Can I find a good way of testing the ‘politicalness’ of Eurovision voting before lunch? To keep i…
Voter ID and administration
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash A few years ago I moved into an area just before the local elections, registered to vote before the deadline, bu…
Votes for children
I went to a #useyourvote event last night that was all about talking to young people about how they felt about political engagement - and that got me …
Four short stories about sovereignty
Photo by David Grandmougin on Unsplash FELLOW COUNTRYMEN, How long will ye quietly and cowardly suffer yourselves to be imposed upon, and half starve…
How suicide became legal
Google scan of 1864 book by Henry Mayhew & John Binny - , Public Domain “Should suicide be legal?” is one of those questions that will get an “err…
Gerrymandering in the Public Interest?
IPPR suggested an interesting idea last year (p7) - in the absence of real electoral reform can we do something about safe seats? What if we gave the …
The unclear history of pregnancy tests
Photo by Michal Janek on Unsplash Quick note on something I found odd in Lambert's 'Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day'. His tend…
The limits of Latin
Photo by Melanie van Leeuwen on Unsplash There’s an argument that comes up occasionally that, in addition to being worth studying for the sheer educat…
Process and risk of boundary reforms
(image via wikipedia) There’s been quick understanding that boundary reform will be a priority of a Conservative government but something that seems t…
Reporting on suicide notes
Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash An article went up on The New Statesman today arguing that people sharing the suicide note of a trans-person were actuall…
What is 'excessive detail' in suicide coverage?
Photo by JJ Ying on Unsplash This is an excerpt from a much longer piece on the history of suicide and journalism. It contains description of suicide…
Going home to different places
Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash In Gone Home, only one thing really happens. You read letters, you put tapes into cassette players, gain access to…
Dimensions of power in the modern screenplay
Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash Scott Myers has been putting up a good series of posts on ‘So-Called Screenwriting Rules’ exploring the dev…
Democratic games
Photo by Conor Samuel on Unsplash It’s 1991. In a conference theatre in Las Vegas everyone has been handed paddles. One side of the paddle is black an…
The Strange Asymmetry of Curling
Image by Benson Kua Asymmetry is an idea more often talked about more in video games but the concept works just as nicely when talking about sports. W…
PCC elections: Some loose thoughts on authorisation in elections
Photo by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash PCC turnout turned out to be a historic low and this is raising some questions about the legitimacy of elections w…
The Strange Maths of Mandates
Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash In the Lords report on the Lords Reform Bill there's some interesting discussion of if a referendum is requir…
Facebook and the legible person
Photo by Ari He on Unsplash I've been re-reading parts of Scott's 'Seeing Like a State' for a class, and it occurred to me his basic frame is somethin…