Did you know that councils can change their own ward boundaries? And sometimes, no one really notices? democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/08... New post from @democracyclub.org.uk talks about how this is tricky for us to track, and what we think could improve the process

🤯 "The term soap opera originated from radio dramas' original sponsorship by soap manufacturers. The term was preceded by horse opera, a derogatory term for low-budget Westerns." en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_op...

Where I have some thoughts on digital improvements that can follow from The Elections Strategy. I think the "digital notices" thing could be a really interesting pattern in legislation

Finally got my film developed - wish I could time travel back to eating icecream in mechelen with the amazing #tictec crew! @democracyclub.org.uk @symroe.bsky.social @myfanwytristram.bsky.social @zarino.co.uk @dracos.co.uk @mysociety.org @societyworks.org

Some great practical extensions of the election strategy by the election data experts at Democracy Club. Includes a good write-up of @symroe.bsky.social's "hang on, can we just define 'giving notice'" argument. democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/07...

New blog! Political parties won 12.9% of English town and parish council seats in 2024/2025. But party involvement at this level is controversial. We take a look at what the data can tell us about partisanship in England's first tier of local government. democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/07...

Effective end to the open register (good! It's a weird legacy of when voting rights were restricted and was open so you could challenge. Now just a weird privacy thing that has a lot of outputs)

Does the business of spamming random CVs to people really work? If I get an unsolicited "we found a dev you might want to hire" email, it doesn't matter if they're excellent, I just focus on the fact the recruitment company is spamming me. They must make money somehow, though?

Finding the Private Eye crossword tricky this week. Resorted to googling a clue, to be greeted with this. Googled another just to see (I’d worked out that one), got... the same answer. The most average answer to all crosswords!

The team are in London in accommodation that's not suited to the heat. Anyone have cool working suggestions for 5 people in the Shepherd's Bush area?

I’ve put an HTML version of Volume 1 of the Post Office Inquiry report up at postofficeinquiry.dracos.co.uk/report/ Footnotes all present, internal links to inquiry documents not there yet, but hopefully will be straightforward to add in a bit.

Followed a link in a message on my phone to legislation.gov.uk, and this time got fed up enough of its desktop-only website to do something about it: presenting adlegem.dracos.co.uk which will make a legislation.gov.uk page readable on mobile :)

Can someone please make this work in Edge!? I love it.

I tend to use government by exception. Having quick access to "apply for compensation for a criminal injury" is, hopefully, not something I need 'quick access' to (or at least not quicker than just searching the web for it. I expect others are different and need to use somethings daily/weekly/etc

Play store: "GOV.UK ID Check" helps me log into "select" services. Then "GOV.UK One Login": "proves my identity" Then "GOV.UK": "Quickly access relevant topics, local services and pages you’ve visited before". I need to use "One Login" to "personalise my experience", but is that the app?

but the rebrand is a very obvious change, and if those old services weren't being kept up-to-date already they're not likely to switch any time soon. So we're effectively going to end up with two tiers of GOV.UK, lowering users' confidence in the brand as a whole

This is my main concern with the rebrand. There are probably hundreds of services which aren't even using the newest version of the old (black bar) branding - old version of the crown, grey boxes around radios etc. They've kind of gotten away with it until now because it was close enough

I know it feels like “so what, it’s just a font” – but when trust in governments is at an all time low, and the risk of disinformation through “just about good enough” AI fakes is rising every single day, things like consistent branding really really matter. 😞

Are innovators incubated or catapulted? They're quite different approaches

Civic tech isn't dead yet.

This is now on the Firefox Extension's site for easy installation addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/androi...

I've made a browser extension that replaces _that_ dot with a random emoji. github.com/symroe/GOV.U...

Plymouth is currently holding a referendum to create a mayor. Were this to pass, the mayoral election would not happen.

The government has announced its intention to abolish directly elected council mayors in England. While the 13 existing mayors will remain, no new ones will be created. Full statement: questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-stat...

The fact the text isn’t using “GOV•UK” anywhere at all is my favourite bit. Perhaps they’ve found the missing dot from the mySociety logo?

Yeah but what have the Romans ever done for us?

Found this bookmark and two lovely photos in a copy of @nigelslater.bsky.social's Real Fast Food in a book swap box in Pontrieux, France! Anyone up for reviving this thing we used to do on twitter? Can we find these people? Might be someone's Dad and a nice thing to do on Fathers' day!

Starter pack! go.bsky.app/MHgroe4

From Antwerp to Mechelen for TICTeC

One the arguments my co-authors and I make in our recent piece on FB advertising (which used data from @whotargets.me) is academics put their work at risk is they are wholly reliant on the benevolence of self-interested corporations… that data can easily just disappear.

Enjoying the fact that #cbf25 is being used for the Berlin Creative Bureaucracy Festival _and_ Cambridge Beer Festival. Both things I want to go to, but I'm in Berlin by chance today. Anyone reckon I can gate crash the after party?

They are so unbelievably and terribly desperate. You don’t do things like this unless you are scraping the bottom of the barrel for revenue and adoption. This is the ultimate form of the tech industry: a despicable, wretched, entitled, destructive, abusive digital despot that wants to con your kids.

On Thursday evening I'll be in Berlin. I'd like to optimize kebab eating (obviously). Any suggestions near Hbf? @blangry.bsky.social I assume you're the authority on this

This is a really exciting position in the Commission, essentially overseeing the start of a major in-house digital project. Feel free to reach out to me if you're interested in applying

🧑‍💻 The Electoral Commission are hiring a new Head of Digital Communications. The job's perks include working with us! View the details here: ce1002li.webitrent.com/ce1002li_web...

They also say they *have* renamed Tewkesbury Borough Council in the new release – even though the council actually voted to keep the name, back in January. So had to special case that too. mapit.mysociety.org – for all your hopefully correct administrative area lookup needs :-)

It’s May which means... the Ordnance Survey Boundary-Line fairy has come! What have we got this year? In the release notes, they state they haven’t implemented SI 2025/445 which came out a month ago, and won’t do so until October 🤷 I’ve implemented it on mapit.mysociety.org

🔐 Polls have closed! 📫 We have processed almost 5 million postcode searches from the UK public in the last month. Election day: 742,680 This week: 1,587,973 Since 1 April: 4,910,497 🌟 Enormous thanks to the electoral administrators and volunteers who have made this possible. 🌟

This gives the candidates who have stood previously for the major parties, as represented by our database: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

When I met Pope Francis a little while ago, he leaned over to me and whispered in my ear: "If anything happens to me, you must continue the fight. We must liberate the Postcode Address File."

The Electoral Commission have announced that they plan to take the polling station finder in-house, after @democracyclub.org.uk set it up over 10 years ago: democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/04... This is really exciting for us, and I'm looking forward to what comes next!

Long shot, but do I know anyone who knows about cycling in Norway? Specifically, public transport with bikes?

This year's English local elections will be the smallest since 1975, following postponements in nine areas. 1,657 councillors are due to be elected across 23 councils. Six mayors will also be elected. More detail in our latest blog: democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/03...

When fixing the dripping shower turns into plumbing and tiling 😞

hi folks, can I get your help? Where I work, at the Green Web Foundation, we're looking for a #Django developer to join our small but ambitious team working towards a fossil free internet. Job ad below: www.thegreenwebfoundation.org/jobs/mid-sen...

10 years ago, on a Saturday morning, I sat down to write the first code for a UK polling station finder. It's still going today, and it's served tens of millions of people. Here's to another 10 years! @democracyclub.org.uk democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/02...

Trying to write a serious document in Google Docs is almost impossible now they've crammed it full of constant Mr Clippy prompts. This isn't to say that there is 0 value to generative AI, but the barrage of shit popups makes everything slow and frustrating

Much love to everyone who has arrived at #Notwestminster from far and wide. You’re why we do this. 💚

Hello.👋 We have an amazing day of inspiring workshops, lightning talks and activities coming up at #Notwestminster. It’s all about local democracy, citizen power & civic action. Last few free tickets available now. Please share if you can. Thank you 💚 notinwestminster.wordpress.com #ConnectedByHope

We have an odd sock bag that each of us add odd socks to. Every now and then one or other of us goes through and attempts to match them up. This morning we discovered that each of us have a different bag we check, with pairs spread more or less evenly between them. It's sock pairing dividend day!