Carl Baker

this year’s Wildlife Photographer exhibition is astounding, if you haven’t had a chance to see it yet

No official official list that I'm aware of

2005 notional general election results now live:
electionresults.parliament.uk/general-elec...
Another brick in the psephological wall.

The Commons Library is recruiting a housing policy researcher!

As ever: highly recommended workplace, great people, interesting work, etc etc. Apply!

housesofparliament.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...

What is the Budget? https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/what-is-the-budget/

Constituency data - Indices of deprivation https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency-data-indices-of-deprivation/

House of Commons Library Open Day We are pleased to invite librarians, library staff and information officers to the House of Commons Library Open Day 2026.

The House of Commons Library Open Day returns in 2026!

Come and learn about what we do to inform democracy and take advantage of a rare chance to tour the Commons Library space.

Full details are on our website and applications close 24th November commonslibrary.parliament.uk/training-and...

3.5. Council Tax Stock of Properties Added September 2025 The VOA has been moving its Council Tax work onto a new, modern, operating system. The data provision for statistics is also being updated and iterated as part of this work. As a result, we plan to release a shorter publication containing key headline stock figures for each billing authority, broken down by band, during autumn 2025, rather than the full suite of official statistics we typically publish. This means that tables on insertions, deletions and time series, will be available later, once the data provision updates are completed and assured for official statistics production. We will provide a further update on the timeline for publishing insertions and deletions, as well as plans for changes and improvements to the overall publication, in due course.

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...

Image of a poster to be presented at the Royal Statistical Society conference in Edinburgh, September 2025. The main point is to generalize the idea of a ternary plot to handle 4-part compositions, by showing views through the triangular faces of a tetrahedron. The data shown are vote counts from England, Scotland and Wales in the UK General Election of July 2024.

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.

How do leasehold transactions vary by constituency? An annotated map of the percentage of sales that were leasehold by constituency in 2024 in England and Wales. Annotations explain: 23% of residential property sales were leasehold in England and Wales in 2024. 98% of flats were sold leasehold, compared with only 6% of houses. There was also a lot of variation between constituencies. There were some leasehold 'hotspots' in areas where it's more common for houses to be sold leasehold, including parts of the North West and Yorkshire. Other hotspots are areas where flats make up a large proportion of overall sales, like central London.

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.

Leasehold housing in England: Statistics This briefing explores statistics on leasehold housing stock and transactions, in the context of ongoing reforms to the leasehold system.

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

County council have now sent round a leaflet about this - almost entirely promoting their preferred two-council option, with only a cursory mention of the rival three-council option which is also being consulted on (that most districts support)

Today we launch an internal expression of interest for this new Permanent Secretary role. It closes on 21 July. This will be open to existing Directors General and Permanent Secretaries. This vital role will be responsible for leading the ONS' operational business and restoring much needed trust and confidence in the department. In parallel we have also begun the process to find the next National Statistician and will shortly appoint a search partner to support us on this critical appointment leading our national government statistical service. Last month Sir Robert Chote informed the Cabinet Office of his intention to step down as UKSA Chair in the autumn to take up the role of President of Trinity College, Oxford. A campaign to appoint his successor will be launched within the next few weeks.

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...

Graphic of a search engine promoting House of Commons Library research. Text reads: Where can I find data statistics about my local area? There’s a Library briefing for that. Get the facts at commonslibrary.parliament.uk

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.

"A swamp of muck and crap": Martin Lewis on how journalism is broken Plus: Is London getting new Bakerloo line trains after all and the property billionaire's £3m scaffolding bill.

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...

Proposals for local government reorganisation in Surrey

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:

Working: "yes and I use one" on p161 divided by weighted base on p158. Base on p161 is just those who had a mobile in the household.

www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/r...

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...