This is a retropost. Written contemporaneously in May 2020 during the height of the pandemic, but published long after the events. The day the EU referendum was announced, the then Prime Minister came to visit our office. We were given a chance to talk to him in front of TV cameras. This was my chance. I could ask a question - the perfect question - which would win the referendum and bring down the government. I spent the morning practising what I would say. I psyched myself up, and…
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This is a retropost. Written contemporaneously, but published long after the events. At the time, I was a Civil Servant in Cabinet Office. Now I am not. But as we're heading for another General Election, I thought I'd share this post. It's the evening of the 2019 General Election. I am plagued by two thoughts. Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. You read the article and see the journalist has…
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The UK is almost certain to have a General Election this year. The Boundary Commission for England has reworked the existing Parliamentary constituencies to make them more fair. As such, constituencies are generally more equal in terms of electorate. But, of course, geography trumps geometry. So the Isle of Wight now has two constituencies of 56k and 54k, whereas the average constituency has 73k. I wanted to know if these new boundaries meant that a political party could win the majority of…
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I'm sure that the Word Of The Year for 2014 will be Polinfographic - a hideous portmanteau I've just constructed of "Political" and "Infographic". Infographics are the content-lite, citation-free, colour-heavy spurts of marketing jizz which have replaced the sound-bite as the political parties' weapon of choice. Voters, apparently, can't remember such complex ideas as "Education education education" or "If you want a [racial slur] for a neighbour, vote Labour". So along comes the political…
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