Scotland was one of the big emigrant nations of the 19th century. I look forward to visiting this museum when it’s up and running. www.thetimes.com/article/da91...

In my latest piece for Substack I reflect on new projections which raise the possibility that the UK population will shrink and ask, does a shrinking population mean we 'need' immigration? georginasturge.substack.com/p/does-a-shr...

New projections have the UK population starting to shrink from 2055 onwards. Should net migration drop to zero, the population could be back at its 1880s level in 100 years time. Should we be worried about a shrinking population? Does it mean we need immigration? open.substack.com/pub/georgina...

How does your local area compare with others on migration? With local elections this week, we've just published a new edition of our local data guide. Explore how each local authority profiles on immigration, foreign students, asylum seekers and more. migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/projects/loc...

Immigration has been cited as an important issue for voters in the upcoming Scot and Welsh elections, but nation-specific immigration figures are not that easy to come by. We've gathered some of the main statistics here. Did you realise Scotland hosts more international students than France...?

£70m over *5 years* doesn't seem so crazy, does it? The fact is, trying to get an increasingly-reluctant public to respond to surveys the only way we can find out about unemployment. That costs a lot more than it used to in the days of mostly obedient respondents. www.thetimes.com/business/eco...

Big change today with the ONS's new population forecast. Rather than expecting the UK population to keep growing until 2095, the current projections have it start to decline from 2055 onwards.

ONS significantly downgrades UK population growth forecast on the back of falling net migration - with net migration central estimate reduced from 340k per year to 230k (means population of the UK would hit 71m by 2034, rather than 72.2m, as projected in 2022)

A classic case of statistics becoming sharper with hindsight, requiring a longstanding narrative to be revised.

The number of people crossing by small boat this year compared to last year. The fall is very real and not seasonal. Little difference in numbers during the winter but since numbers increased in spring, half as many people are coming as this time last year. This is mainly because of European trends.

Wow - The Bible Society has retracted its Quiet Revival report which claimed polling showed a surge in UK church-going among the young. YouGov, which ran the polling, now admits that it "failed to activate key quality control technologies" preventing bias. humanists.uk/2026/03/26/b...

The reason is all to do with data linkage - the new name of the game in UK statistics. I wrote about it last week here georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-silent...

Great news: 1.3 million people have been lifted out of poverty this morning! All thanks to a change in the statistics. After changing how income data is gathered, the DWP now believes it was over-estimating 'low income' levels by at least a million people in recent years, including 400k children.

Today a legal instrument comes into force unsealing the NHS records of former GIDS patients, the children's gender dysphoria clinic, because adult clinics had refused to give the data voluntarily. Data linkage is a new frontier - should we be concerned? georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-silent...

New piece on the silent creep of data linkage, the latest frontier for UK statistics. georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-silent...

New Substack post just dropped 🙌 Data linkage is the new name of the game for UK statistics, but what does that mean for us as the subjects of that data? Is there any way that official use of the phrase "alternative to consent" is less sinister than it sounds? open.substack.com/pub/georgina...

This is a very interesting piece from the Race Equality Foundation on the good that ethnicity data does & the complexities of collecting it. Brings up issues I covered in Sum of Us around how we decide on the categories for ethnicity and race. raceequalityfoundation.org.uk/blog/why-we-...

VICTORY! Government to open up the Land Registry - bringing to an end a thousand years of secrecy shrouding who owns England. I’ve been campaigning for this for ten years: the new Land Use Framework, published later today, makes it government policy. 1/ www.theguardian.com/environment/...

This is a good article from @freemovement.bsky.social making the point I've made elsewhere that Denmark's 'huge' reduction in asylum applications is just the fall from a short-lived spike in Syrians during the 2015-16 crisis. UK context is also totally different. freemovement.org.uk/attempt-dete...

Much to my surprise, I have also become a tech sovereigntist. Tech fundamental to public and security systems should be under our control (sometimes in cooperation with similar countries- not US). The current sovereign AI strategy is shockingly weak. open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/s...

New results from @natcen.bsky.social's British Social Attitudes survey show UK attitudes towards immigration are more divided than in the recent past. It's now a clean split where a third of people perceive it as 'bad', a third as 'good,' and a third have a neutral attitude towards it.

Poor ONS, their surveys are already suffering from non-response and now the BBC goes and puts it into our heads that their enumerators could be corporate spies 😅 blog.ons.gov.uk/2026/02/12/s...

Interesting and reminds me of similar findings from a recent study on migration. Using the exact same dataset, researchers who expressed different personal views about immigration came up with different results which tended to support their pre-existing beliefs. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Latest piece by @georginasturge.bsky.social is a masterclass in why we should be cautious with 'trend' headlines. The supposed 'Quiet Revival' of Christianity in Gen Z looks less like a spiritual shift & more like a quirk of polling methodology. georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-gen-z-...

I actually didn’t realise the Bible Society had doubled down. There may have been a modest rise in young religiosity but we’re talking a percentage point or two. There is just no way the much higher BS poll results are accurate, sorry! BBC More or Less has been on it, case closed.

This is really interesting for polling nerds.

I only recently found out about the Gen Z 'Christian revival,' where seemingly legitimate polls are showing a quadrupling of church attendance among young adults. Naturally, I had to look into the data myself, and found a more mixed picture than I'd expected. open.substack.com/pub/georgina...

Well this is going to kick off, albeit in a nerdy train-spotter way. Dutch Railways have just signed a 12 year contract with an American tech provider, while the rest of the public sector is under strict instructions to ensure digital autonomy for critical infrastructure. www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2026/...

I only recently found out about the Gen Z 'Christian revival,' where seemingly legitimate polls are showing a quadrupling of church attendance among young adults. Naturally, I had to look into the data myself, and found a more mixed picture than I'd expected. open.substack.com/pub/georgina...

Great article by @tomcalver.bsky.social on why income is often a poor indicator of whether someone is in poverty. Income is under-reported in the main survey used for poverty stats. A correction to that could soon shrink our official poverty figures overnight. www.thetimes.com/article/fb88...

Kemi Badenoch's mouse scurrying past live on TV

Looks like we're going with the red, which I do really like. Had some comments that basically all of these could be seen as party political colours but when it's in the bookshop I'm hoping that won't be people's first thought...

You wouldn't think it but a slightly sad basket of tealights and canned sweetcorn in my cellar reveals a lot about the geopolitics of tech. I'm back this week with a piece on Europe's dream of digital sovereignty. Can it happen? And is it what we need? georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-dream-...

I had a good reaction to last month's piece on Dutch digital ID and the risks of takeover by US tech - turns out a lot of people care! In this latest post I look further into whether digital sovereignty for Europe is achievable and what's happening now. georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-dream-...

You wouldn't think it but a slightly sad basket of tealights and canned sweetcorn in my cellar reveals a lot about the geopolitics of tech. I'm back this week with a piece on Europe's dream of digital sovereignty. Can it happen? And is it what we need? georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-dream-...

It’s not too late to advocate for including a question on posh identity at the next census

I had a good reaction to last month's piece on Dutch digital ID and the risks of takeover by US tech - turns out a lot of people care! In this latest post I look further into whether digital sovereignty for Europe is achievable and what's happening now. georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-dream-...

Bumping this to see if anyone else has thoughts because I think I need to make a decision today. Leaning towards keeping the original now...

Got some mock ups of possible new cover designs for the paperback of Sum of Us. Who has thoughts?? Ignore the fact that the map doesn’t blend in properly on some of them, the final design will look neat and perfect. And there are some other tweaks to be made, none of these is the final design.

How do you forecast an election result more accurately than all the professional pollsters? I asked Ben Walker from @britainelects.com and he told me... it's all about using local election microdata. Fascinating stuff in this week's episode of the Talk Data to Me podcast!

I see people reacting smugly to findings like this without necessarily thinking about the fact that reduced trade volumes are also a consequence of tariffs, and still very bad for Europe (and the US). Yes, US consumers absorb price rises but isn't there also a big cost to Europe of lower demand?

Fantastic to have you on the show, Andy! Recommend this as essential listening for anyone curious about impactful ways to visualise data 📊

I asked expert Andy Kirk from @visualisingdata.com about AI and data visualisation and his response was very interesting to hear

This is the tell - polling on digital ID was not in a 'good place.' But quite frankly this government could announce free diamonds for everybody and still be panned in the polls. That digital ID would prevent illegal working was a little shaky - but could well have helped along with other measures.

Digital ID to not be compulsory for any purposes, the government now says. Initial thought is that uptake is likely to be minimal then and the argument for it helping curb illegal working is now DOA. www.thetimes.com/article/0044...

Just to follow up on this for those looking for recommendations of data people in the UK: the starter pack Data and AI Civil Society Network is a really good one to mass follow bsky.app/starter-pack...

The ONS has set out its plans for improving statistics in 2026 which include using more AI and automation for data coding. It also confirms plans to reduce its number of annual outputs by 10% (I take this to include both published datasets and articles). blog.ons.gov.uk/2026/01/12/d...

Have you recently published research that could help shape how migration is understood? 🎙️ If so, we would love to hear your pitch for a slot on the Migration Oxford Podcast. 📅Submit your pitch by 13 February 2026 to be considered. www.compas.ox.ac.uk/article/call...

People often assume there's a right and wrong way to present data in a chart or graphic. But there are many legitimate choices that can mean a telling different stories with the same data. Data viz guru Andy Kirk @visualisingdata.com shared more wisdom with me this week on the podcast this week 📊🔊

I'm super excited to share this video and podcast episode I made with superstar data viz expert Andy Kirk! 🔊🎥📊 I recommend it as a starting point to explore the world of beautiful and insightful data design, which Andy knows everything about. georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-power-...