How to query the Sky-Tortoise Westminster database
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The Westminster money database was published by Sky and Tortoise and brings together money going to parties, to all-party parliamentary groups and directly to MPs.
Blog posts
2024
Algorithm to suggest food inspections abandoned
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UK food inspectors have abandoned plans to use an algorithm in part of their food hygiene rating system after a £100,000 trial.
2022
Mapping Council wards for 2022 local elections
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Local elections are coming so we need maps.
2021
Google Sheets walkthrough
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How to get a CSV (comma separated values) file into a spreadsheet using Google Sheets and get working with it.
A(nother) month of traffic counted
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The We Count Project started in Belgium in 2019 and a year ago it expanded to several other European countries. My sensor in Cardiff now has two months of data gathered by looking out of my house onto a quiet residential street while there’s daylight, in one-hour slices.
A month of traffic counted
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The We Count project distributes simple photo sensors for people to put on their street-facing windows so a computer can count how many vehicles, bikes and pedestrians pass by every day. Cities across Europe have people monitoring their streets. I got my sensor running at the end of November so I now have my first complete month of data.
2020
Money for … something
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It’s a part of the UK’s political system that is badly designed according to the critics: it doesn’t have the expertise the country needs, it’s much bigger than it should be, and it appoints people at best because of who they know and at worst because of financial donations. Everyone says that something needs to change but little does. It’s the House of Lords.
New York Times subediting quizzes
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This is a collection of all the wonderful New York Times subediting quizzes, mostly so I can find them when I need them.
The dirtiest air in Wales is a lot cleaner
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A few months ago I looked at levels of Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) in Cardiff - in the pedestrianised city-centre and on the busy Newport Road. Now it’s time to see what’s been happening during the lockdown in the Welsh village of Hafodyrynys, famous for having some of the dirtiest air in the UK because of the heavy traffic that runs through it.
The books the Church banned (and Voltaire in trouble again)
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The Index Librorum Prohibitorum was for centuries the list of books that the Vatican declared off-limits for Catholics. They are listed on the freedom of expression website beaconforfreedom.org along with many other books condemned by censors at various times and places.
A long list of interesting datasets
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The ‘bin’ into which I regularly pop interesting online datasets has been overflowing. So I’ve sat down and sorted it out and popped it online.
How many gloves is that?
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Arguments about protective equipment for NHS workers won’t go away. A BBC documentary this week said the government’s claim to have distributed one billion items of protective equipment was based on counting each pair of gloves as two items.
The NHS refuses to put a number on its dead workers (more)
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UPDATE May 24 My list of UK health workers who’ve died with Coronavirus is now well out of date. The best monitoring being done on this at the moment is by @NursingNotesUK.
What your mobile phone app tells us about the shutdown
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Google, Apple and Citymapper have each released data they collect from users’ mapping or location apps. The data shows that the public started to stay home well before national lockdowns were ordered.
Cardiff pollution halves, as people stay home
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Three weeks into the UK’s shutdown, levels of Nitrogen Dioxide in Cardiff have almost halved compared to a year ago. The city’s two stations for measuring air quality – on the central pedestrianised Queen St, and on the busy Newport Road – both show that levels last week were close to half what they were for the same week last year.
Welsh case numbers the worst in UK
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Almost as soon as you look at the latest UK figures on cases of Coronavirus, the numbers shift again. On Friday the centralised UK figures put the figure for Wales at 4,591, almost twice what they were a week earlier. But according to Dr. Robin Howe of Public Health Wales “the true number of cases is likely to be higher”.
The NHS refuses to put a number on its dead workers
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UPDATE April 14 My list of UK health workers who’ve died with Coronavirus is now at 43, all sourced from press reports. Not all of these people definitely died because they were working with Coronavirus patients. The deceased ranged in age from 23 to around 80. The next question is how many NHS workers are sick?
Coronavirus stories
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Something must have been left unaffected by Coronavirus and the associated shutdowns around the world, but it’s hard to see what it might be. Commerce, religion, schooling, sport, employment, air quality and many others. This is an ongoing list of interesting Coronavirus-related stories.
Irish Coronavirus figures
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Figures from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) show a drop in Irish cases as of the morning of Sunday April 5. They dropped from 424 the day before to 321. In the past, short-term drops like this have simply been a temporary blip in an otherwise uninterrupted upwards trajectory.
2019
The Crown drives viewers to Wikipedia in search of history
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When the latest series of the TV series The Crown was released in late 2019 one episode was set against the disaster that occurred in the Welsh mining town Aberfan in 1966. And everyone turned to a rarely-visited page on Wikipedia.