Indefinite delay to the next release of detailed tables in the Valuation Office Agency's Council Tax Stock of Properties statistics – a valuable source of small area attributes for housing stock in England and Wales www.gov.uk/government/s... #UKhousing #govtech #proptech #opendata

In which we bid farewell to Professor Michael Rush. A kind, generous and gentle man. More notes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I: ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

At next week's RSS conference I'll be presenting a poster (a first for me...it's about time!) "Tetraplot displays of UK General Election results" shows how to graph GE 2024 vote shares across 4 parties in a useful way. Full PDF poster at: github.com/DavidFirth/t...

Our psephological efforts now come complete with by-elections from Parliament 56. Or the one following the 2015 general election, as normal people might say electionresults.parliament.uk/parliament-p...

New bot alert: if you’re the kind of person that likes @commonslibrary.bsky.social, you may also wish to spend a follow on @post-parliament.bsky.social. All the latest research from the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology

Who is responsible for public services in my constituency? https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/public-services-in-my-constituency/

Huh. Just discovered that a photo of mine (of the University of Michigan) is used on 6 English Wikipedia pages and a dozen in other languages. I forgot I ever uploaded it.

I first did the constituency analysis quite a few years ago, but it's been good to bring it up to date. Some interesting patterns.

I've published a new briefing bringing together the stats on leasehold housing in England (and a bit in Wales). Featuring: - MHCLG data on leasehold stock - Trends in transactions over time and for constituencies - Experiences of leaseholders commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

I've now written a piece about why the internet hates my apostrophe, which you can read here: www.ft.com/content/48d4... Huge thanks to everyone who replied to me about it!

Very off-topic - but worth noting that this kind of granular local authority data is not long for this world, with county/district areas set to merge up into larger unitaries. North Yorkshire/Cumbria LAs likely to be more typical of the future size. Has an impact on our local understanding.

Using time series graphs to make causal claims be like

I don’t get much engagement on my posts about stats but I’ll press on as I think its important. So it seems that we are about to have a lot of leadership churn with Robert Chote stepping down early as chair of the Stats Authority whilst they also appoint other key roles 😬 www.gov.uk/government/n...

Looking for information about your constituency? The Commons Library can help. Get the facts on key data for your local area, including population, house prices and broadband speeds. 🔎 Explore now: commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency...

More than a quarter of people think MPs expenses are one of the top three costs for government. A higher % than think the same for pensions or education.

One of the strangest death rattles of corporate local newspapers has been the teams of “local journalists” employed to churn stories about Martin Lewis. So I gave Martin a ring to discuss the state of British news, plus where to buy chicken wings in London. www.londoncentric.media/p/martin-lew...

Others may (like me) have missed that there is now a consultation underway on new local authority boundaries in Surrey. www.gov.uk/government/c...

From the England and Wales census, largest ethnic group by country of birth:

Ofcom's Technology Tracker 2025 survey suggests that 78% of those aged 65+ said there was a smartphone in their home that they personally use. Those suggesting we are "near 100%" are exaggerating.

The loud drumbeat that companies should "embrace AI now or be left behind" has more in common with high-pressure sales techniques than biz strategy. And that's fine - tech firms have something to sell. But the rest of us needn’t confuse it with anything more profound. www.ft.com/content/4688...

It's far too hot to leave your sofa. Why not empty a sack of ice into your nan's Radol Footspa and treat yourself to ten minutes with more weeknotes from @anyaso.bsky.social and I ukparliament.github.io/ontologies/m...

Well, this is exciting - I've been grumbling for *years* about how figures at Budgets and Spending Reviews are only given to the nearest £100 million, which makes data analysis needlessly difficult. And the Treasury have just gone ahead and published the unrounded data! www.gov.uk/government/p...

Fans of calculating scrutiny periods for instruments - statutory and treaty-like - will be delighted to learn that our beloved egg timer is reborn, this time with much improved information architecture api.parliament.uk/egg-timer

I thought the suggestion might be "don't drive", but my bad. I'm sure it's the pedestrians.

Walked past Michael Palin filming New Europe in the basement of Budapest's House of Terror museum. Too taken aback to say hello.

RSS feeds were good weren’t they

"Additional funding has been provided primarily to allow UKSA to start preparatory work for Census 2031, subject to the government’s decision on the census, expected this summer." www.gov.uk/government/p...

I simply do not concede that any of your cookie vendors' interests are legitimate.

🧑‍💻 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...

Feel well old saying this, but I was surprised how many emojis were involved in the process of registering for a new GP practice The email line telling me my new GP's name was followed by a star-eyes emoji...

How have statistics producers engaged users, & the wider public, in their work? I've had a go at finding out for @connectedbydata.org, from the UK Stats Assembly, to user forums, & more Let me know what we've missed! (We will have definitely missed things!) connectedbydata.org/resources/pu...

Hey, 90s kids! Your bedroom is now in a museum! (Prague's National Museum, if you want to make a complaint.)

Victorian tiled railway maps restored at London’s Victoria Station www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/vic... Two nearly 130-year-old railway maps at Victoria station have been restored by Govia Thameslink Railway, with funding from Network Rail and a grant from the Railway Heritage Trust.

Take a look at this really important role in the Office for National Statistics, including leading on international migration estimates. Deadline Tuesday 3rd June. Locations Newport, Titchfield (Fareham), Manchester & Darlington. Please share! www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cg...

I see some ice-cream van jingle discourse. I feel it would make the UK happy to know that in Taiwan, bin lorries play a jingle while doing their rounds, at the same time almost every day. youtu.be/vwCvmm0OZxs?...

Big news 👇 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

This reminds me, I haven’t done a “buy I Was A Teenage Exocolonist” post for a while. One of the best games ever I think, really fun and clever use of the artform, runs on everything, dirt cheap.

Georgina has made such an impact as a statistician in the Commons Library and we are very sorry to lose her! Best of luck for the future.

Sorry for venting but another example today of how What3Words have engineered an over reliance on their platform in UK emergency services. Came across a car which was up on the verge at a strange angle, obviously not parked - 3 cars ahead of us drove past it but experience makes me always check.

ONS, NRS, and NISRA plan to create a set of data tables at UK and country level, to show how a range of UK statistics may have looked if the national censuses had all been in March 2021 www.ons.gov.uk/news/news/co... (Scotland's last census was in March 2022 due to Covid.) #Census2021 #opendata

The House of Commons Modernisation Committee’s current inquiry is all about accessibility, including “access to Parliamentary information for MPs and the public.” A subject close to my heart and maybe to yours. Submit your reckons by 9th May committees.parliament.uk/work/9006/ac...

Office for National Statistics says it will pause or downgrade a whole slew of its data output and services so it can focus on its core economic and population data. Details below:

By-elections for Parliament 57 now online: electionresults.parliament.uk/parliament-p... and queryable: psephology-datasette-f3e7b1b7eb77.herokuapp.com/psephology?s...

🚨 Dream job alert! 🚨 Senior Researcher in statistics (my team) at the House of Commons Library. The team is looking for someone with numeracy skills & research experience. Good communication skills also required. Deadline 31 March 2025. housesofparliament.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

The exciting potential of AI are the two hour tasks it turns into ten minute ones. The horror is the challenge of how you get people to actually *take the ten minute task seriously*.

We in the House of Commons Library are recruiting a senior researcher in our Social and General Statistics team! Come work with us to develop new and improved ways to inform MPs and their staff about data. housesofparliament.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

I saw this oldie-but-goodie in my LinkedIn feed & was blown away. Read more here: nightingaledvs.com/exploring-hu... #dataviz 📊

Found my undergraduate transcript today. I loved my philosophy degree but being reminded of course titles like "The Structure of Reality" and "Being" definitely raised a smile.

We in the House of Commons Library are recruiting a senior researcher in our Social and General Statistics team! Come work with us to develop new and improved ways to inform MPs and their staff about data. housesofparliament.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...