Who could forget the endlessly inventive whimsical schemes of the Alternative Arrangements Commission. If only the obstinate men and women of Ulster had truly believed in the power of blockchain.

tfw you come at the king and forget to not miss

British politics since 2016

A good time to be in the wide-angle lens business

Every General Election, Panini should bring out a parliament sticker album.

The latest population projection for Northern Ireland shows yet another lowering of the expected future birth rate. In the 2014 projection the expected peak population year was 2056; the peak is now expected in 2031.

The Millennials are going to be the single largest generational cohort until they start dying off in significant numbers in the 2060s. They'll probably outnumber the post Gen-Alpha cohorts into the 2070s.

I remember thinking Tom Waits was impossibly old when Mule Variations came out but he would have been the age Shakira is now

Petition for the Alliance Party to rebrand themselves as Wow!

The claim that regional inequality has doubled in Northern Ireland is not accurate. 📈Stats show Belfast’s output per person grew faster than average but that’s not a full measure of regional inequality. Read why here 👇

It's no exaggeration to say that this, the news that stinkbug eggs look exactly like a hape of creamy pints, is one of the most impactful things that's ever happened in the history of Irish posting. A dazzling event. A nuclear level revelation.

The release of ChatGPT is pretty obvious in this chart

How does he sleep at night?

Russia launched its full-scale invasion exactly four years ago. If anyone had told us, during that first month, that this would be the situation four years later, we would have instantly called it a massive Ukrainian victory and a staggering Russian defeat

1400 and bits and pieces of 1300

Do the laser eyes signal a predictable pivot to shilling Bitcoin

It's time to update the chart

I wonder if he still has this shirt, it might have been useful recently

I must say that ski jumping looks like jolly good fun. If I want to give it a go do I need anything else

looks like bridge discourse is back on the menu boys

this is vicious and correct www.economist.com/britain/2026...

8% margin of error with the small sample size

A combined nationalist vote share of 38% would be tied with the 2016 Assembly election as the lowest since 1992 in an Assembly or Westminster election.

From the latest ONS item price quotes data, the price of a kilo of beef mince is up 42% year-on-year to £12. salmonofdata.com/dashboards/u...

It's been over 20 years(!) but this is still the biggest travesty of justice Pitchfork review of all time. A solid 10.0, one of the best albums of the 2000s.

Teleradio-Moldova are streaming their New Year's Eve show on YouTube now and it is incredible

There has been a significant decline in incidents of anti-social behaviour in NI since 2011, with the summer peak in 2025 around 42% lower than 2013.

Electro-diesel Stadler Flirts selected to replace Dublin – Belfast Enterprise trains www.railwaygazette.com/traction-and....

I added another dashboard on my site on Northern Ireland crime statistics. It has data on reported crimes by category for NI, the councils and down to DEA level, since 2011. salmonofdata.com/dashboards/n...

Not something I would have known from media coverage - bicycle theft prevalence in England and Wales for 2024/25 was the second lowest on record in a data series going back to the early 1980s.

I wonder why the OpenDataNI page is partly written in Galician

Something I found in the UK police data - there has been a collapse in the number of burglaries in NI over the last 15 years. There were 192 burglaries in September 2025; the lowest since records began and an 77% reduction from September 2011.

Added another dashboard on my site on PISA data for the UK and Ireland since 2009. NI was ahead of both England and ROI for maths in 2009 and has since fallen behind; driven by a decline in grammar schools from 2009-15, and then another decline in secondary schools. salmonofdata.com/dashboards/p...

I thought this was interesting from the PISA 2022 data. Having more highly educated parents is associated with better performance at school until Master's level. But scores are much lower amongst pupils with a parent that has a PhD.

I made a new dashboard on Northern Ireland election results since 1921. You can explore results by party or community designation and filter by different election types (Westminster, Assembly, etc.) salmonofdata.com/dashboards/n...

how_do_you_do_fellow_kids.gif

Added total spending per capita to the spending dashboard. Northern Ireland had the highest spending per capita in 2024-25, followed by Scotland and then London. The Southeast of England had the lowest. salmonofdata.com/dashboards/u...

I made another data dashboard for my site - this one shows UK government spending per head for the regions and countries of the UK by category. salmonofdata.com/dashboards/u...

There's this weird mindset that voters won't object to a breaking of tax promises is if it's done in a sufficiently convoluted way. Like they're fae creatures impressed you found a way around their contract terms or something.

I've restarted my website and intend to start publishing datasets I have lying around. First - the ONS item price data on average consumer prices across the UK. See how much more pints cost in NI compared with elsewhere. Features small caged mammal. salmonofdata.com/dashboards/u...

The latest UK regional spending data was published this week. Northern Ireland spent £16.1k per head in 2024-25, £3k more than England (£13.1k). Incapacity, disability and injury benefits were the single biggest difference (£941), followed by agriculture (£417).

San Marino scoring after 2 minutes in a game they're trying to lose on purpose

i do not know if this justifies the URGENT