Legally speaking the trustees are potentially liable for debts incurred by the charity etc, but practically speaking for us the risk is small - we're asset owning, don't have any real liabilities, don't have a physical space, don't directly employ any staff etc.
No, not at all, we mostly meet remotely on zoom.
No, there's nothing in charity law or our governing document that says you have to be UK resident. Before my time, but one of our trustees moved to Australia and remained a trustee.
I became a trustee about a year ago and it has been a really interesting and enjoyable thing to be part of - drop me a line if you've got any questions!
The charity I'm a trustee for is looking for new trustees to join our board.
The McDougall Trust is the independent charity that promotes public understanding of electoral democracy.
See the link for more details and how to apply.
www.mcdougall.org.uk/news/39/38/M...
Now, I'm no foreign policy genius, but surely the EU suggesting EU students should pay the same fees as home students should not have come as a complete surprise given it was the status quo until six years ago...?
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
All of my work will be published in top journals. The only thing prohibiting publication in those journals right now is the reviewers shooting it down. It will be published in those journals should reviewers not do that.
It's from an rmarkdown file, so the writing bit is easy enough to convert, but the figures all look horrible and there a tables and tikz that don't work at all, so going to have to do all that manually... 😔
In the year of our lord, 2026, an academic journal has gone from accepting .tex file submissions, to only accepting word documents...
(Between an original and R&R submission 🤬).
I agree the extra information that 2RS provides is useful for coordination, but while that is a good argument for 2RS vs FPTP, I'm not sure that's a good argument vs AV because in the AV case you don't really need that information, you can just express your preferences over the parties.
Fair - apologies for misinterpreting you!
Obviously that has the pragmatic downside of having been rejected in the 2011 referendum...
But if we're just talking about what electoral systems would be 'best' I think it is hard to argue against AV as the best majoritarian system.
But I would also say that there is basically nothing that a two round electoral system does (e.g. reduce need for tactical coordination etc) that isn't better done by a different system - specifically some sort of preferential voting system like AV.
On the second point - if majoritarianism, then two round elections: I think that FPTP is basically the worst 'majoritarian' electoral system there is (because it is not actually majoritarian), and that two round elections might well be better than FPTP.
More generally on majoritarianism vs PR, I would just say that I'm on team low-magnitude PR and refer people to Carey and Hix: www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2...
More seriously: there isn't actually any mechanism that links *constituency* majoritarianism to majority government. We only get majority governments with FPTP because of the *geographic distribution* of party preferences. If politics becomes geographically fragmented, that breaks down.
A frequent claim of majoritarianism is that it provides more stable governments (because it provides majority governments). In reply I would simply gesture madly at the last decade or so that is the mess of British politics...
David says: 'claims of PR’s downstream benefits (in terms of higher turnout, higher trust, or lower inequality) are often highly overstated'. I think that is fair, but I would reply that claims of majoritarianism downstream benefits are also often highly overstated.
This is an interesting provocation, and I think David is right that electoral reformers shouldn't just assume that the only (or best) electoral reform is PR. There are two parts to the argument:
1. Majoritarianism > PR
2. If Majoritarianism, then two round elections
I disagree with both bits.
Congrats! That's great news and richly deserved.
This undersells the fact that you would sometimes do zoom meetings during the kayak!
UK Poll of Polls, 14 February 2026
Reform: 29% (27-31%)
Labour: 20% (18-22%)
Conservative: 19% (17-20%)
Greens: 14% (13-16%)
Lib Dem: 12% (11-14%)
Other: 3% (3-4%)
SNP: 3% (2-3%)
Brushing up on some reading for a research ethics workshop I'm running in a couple of weeks and perhaps getting a little carried away...
A couple of teas or coffees a day could lower risk of dementia, scientists say
Sounds like excellent research and I will not be asking any probing questions about causal identification at this time.
This is fun, even if the British Media, Politics, and Policy cluster is hanging out on the edge of the galaxy.
More accurate headline:
Assisted dying backers could use relatively recent constitutional innovation to bypass ‘undemocratic’ block by peers
Guardian headline: Assisted dying backers could use archaic procedure to bypass ‘undemocratic’ block by peers Exclusive: MPs backing bill to use ‘nuclear option’ of 1911 Parliament Act if it continues to be blocked by Lords
An 'archaic' procedure such as one of the central planks of the British constitution, which establishes the supremacy of the Commons over the Lords...
I bet the author is a British person living in Australia, because my petty gripe is that in Australia you can get a flat white in many sizes (and could 20 years ago when I started drinking coffee there) whereas in Britain people insist it can only be one size.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...
'Immediate reject' is a new peer review option to me... does it mean 'wow this is bad, don't even read my report just hit the reject button'?!?
Agree with you normatively, but not empirically - if some papers were clearer I suspect they'd be more likely to get rejected because people would realise they're doing silly things, or not doing very much at all!