Of particular interest to @electionmaps.uk @ballotbox.scot and all psephologists, campaigners, and election nerds!

Our submission to the Representation of the People Bill committee has been published: bills.parliament.uk/publications...

Bluesky Isn't a Bubble. It's a Containment Dome. Pray that Bluesky doesn't die entirely — we need it so the worst liberal posts are kept in a place where the broader public won't ever see them.

Did you read www.joshbarro.com/p/bluesky-is...

Hmmmm

Did they rename it? I think that's just an advert?

What's up for election in 2026? Everywhere in Scotland and Wales, along with large areas of England, will be going to the polls on 7 May.

🗳️ 📆 The Scottish Parliament, the Senedd Cymru and 136 English councils (5,013 councillors and six mayors) are holding elections on 7 May.

👇 Get all the details from our latest blog. 👇
democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2026/03...

Representation of the People Bill-
Gov commits to repeal entirely the power to set a Strategy & Policy Statement for the Electoral Commission.

I guess it's still early days, pleany of time to make hay

Yes, I thought that was a fairly major announcement, buried in an odd way

Lovely shoutout to our election leaflets database from Prof. Rob! You can upload leaflets yourself at: electionleaflets.org

The elections bill is excellent for data on elections The elections bill has the possibility to transform the way that election data works in the UK.

Where I talk about the good things in The Elections Bill for @democracyclub.org.uk, and some areas I think need work in order to de-risk the legislation being too ridged

democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2026/02...

Asking for a friend - amazing social CIC doing good things in nature.

Looking for a South West (ideal) based fractional CTO who can also get their hands a bit dirty, and help a volunteer model of developing their platform

They have a backend dev, and hiring a front end.

Any ideas/connections?

Yeah, I think that's the same CGR process as we talk about here. Can be changing names and or boundaries. In theory this is tracked by OS, but they do miss some

"Data" is seen too much as "publishing a book" rather than "running a service". Thinking it's something that can go in a "library" shows how deep this thinking goes.

We're really lucky in this country that gerrymandering is basically not a thing

Very doubtful: they are minor enough changes. You're right that it's hard to prove, but I would bet that the changes have never altered the outcome of a local election.

Community Governance Reviews Community Governance Reviews keep parish and community councils in line. But they are hard to keep track of.

Did you know that councils can change their own ward boundaries? And sometimes, no one really notices?

democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/08...

New post from @democracyclub.org.uk talks about how this is tricky for us to track, and what we think could improve the process

Three masts and one foremast

🤯

"The term soap opera originated from radio dramas' original sponsorship by soap manufacturers.

The term was preceded by horse opera, a derogatory term for low-budget Westerns."

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_op...

Ariel Kalma - Open Like A Flute View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 2015 Vinyl release of "Open Like A Flute" on Discogs.

www.discogs.com/release/6617... has been my focus music of late

Where I have some thoughts on digital improvements that can follow from The Elections Strategy. I think the "digital notices" thing could be a really interesting pattern in legislation

a group of people eating ice-cream in front of the tower in Mechelen, Belgium

Finally got my film developed - wish I could time travel back to eating icecream in mechelen with the amazing #tictec crew!

@democracyclub.org.uk @symroe.bsky.social @myfanwytristram.bsky.social @zarino.co.uk @dracos.co.uk
@mysociety.org @societyworks.org

Thoughts on the Elections Strategy Earlier this month the government published its '*Strategy for modern and secure elections*'. We outline some of our ideas for digital implementation of this strategy.

Some great practical extensions of the election strategy by the election data experts at Democracy Club.

Includes a good write-up of @symroe.bsky.social's "hang on, can we just define 'giving notice'" argument. democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/07...

Parish councils and political parties: some initial findings A dive into the politics of England's first tier of local government.

New blog!

Political parties won 12.9% of English town and parish council seats in 2024/2025. But party involvement at this level is controversial. We take a look at what the data can tell us about partisanship in England's first tier of local government.

democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/07...

DocSend - Simple, intelligent, modern content sending DocSend helps you communicate more effectively by telling you what happens to content after you send them and letting you keep control in real time.

My friend Hatty has written a detailed plan for the implementation of votes at 16: docsend.com/view/9nnhamt...

Effective end to the open register (good! It's a weird legacy of when voting rights were restricted and was open so you could challenge. Now just a weird privacy thing that has a lot of outputs)

Does the business of spamming random CVs to people really work? If I get an unsolicited "we found a dev you might want to hire" email, it doesn't matter if they're excellent, I just focus on the fact the recruitment company is spamming me. They must make money somehow, though?

“AI Overview The solution to the clue “dark drink (cap to be removed)” is SPIRE. The “cap” refers to the top letter of the word “drink” (the letter K). Removing that letter from “drink” leaves you with “d rin”, which when rearranged, spells “spire”.‘

Google query: “Order one to have new union” First result is the Private Eye website listing the crossword itself. Under that is the AI Overview, stating: ‘The answer is SPIRE. This is a classic crossword clue, playing on the phrase “order one” which refers to a spire, and “new union” which is a clever way to describe the joining together of elements to form a new spire.’

Finding the Private Eye crossword tricky this week. Resorted to googling a clue, to be greeted with this. Googled another just to see (I’d worked out that one), got... the same answer. The most average answer to all crosswords!

The team are in London in accommodation that's not suited to the heat. Anyone have cool working suggestions for 5 people in the Shepherd's Bush area?

I’ve put an HTML version of Volume 1 of the Post Office Inquiry report up at postofficeinquiry.dracos.co.uk/report/

Footnotes all present, internal links to inquiry documents not there yet, but hopefully will be straightforward to add in a bit.