Alex Parsons

Starting a game of thrones read and there's not a lot about Robert's tax policy even when it'd really be useful to understand that.

Move to next day counting balanced out by mystery candidates, gunge tanks if you don't make the deposit threshold, etc

Think we should put "mystery party" on the ballot. A pro election drama reform.

Like nothing gives it away as people triangulating between things as "ok, I'm not willing to say climate change isn't real, but doing anything about it just isn't something serious people talk about". Political philosophy of babies.

Realism as a vibe rather than any suggestion of being connected to reality (what could be more 'realist' than "extracting oil and burning it makes the big co2 line go up")

Yeah, there's stuff around written questions for instance that only make sense as "I ask a question that gets an empty answer and got a nice ticket out of it, I'm savvy" - but the value in the long run to the industry is relational rather than transactional.

While we're doing gambling chat this morning

New to TheyWorkForYou: Signatures Building data pipelines for better information about MPs interests.

The thinking behind this www.mysociety.org/2025/10/21/s...

A reminder we now catalog open letters for TheyWorkForYou profiles

It's a small part of the issue, but that the Palestine Action vote was combined with the proscription of two other organisations harmed parliamentary scrutiny of the SI. One lesson from this should adopting the Bingham Centre recommendation for one-org-per-order.

Fascinating- under current rules, all ministers' meetings should be registered. And all consultant lobbyists, like Global Counsel, have to register with the official Registrar and declare all instances of lobbying ministers and perm secs.

So is this acceptance that the current schemes don't work?

Government hits back at Tony Blair Institute call to ditch clean power targets Think tank calls for 'energy strategy reset' to permit more drilling in the North Sea and drop clean power by 2030 goal, sparking criticism from government and analysts

The Tony Blair Institute out there today calling for more oil and gas drilling in an absolute gift for Farage and Badenoch. Government will be forgiven for thinking, with friends like these... www.businessgreen.com/news/4525624...

I think about how it's weird there wasn't an episode where the gang goes bowling. Wouldn't be a great episode, but a solid 6/10. Chandler's never done it, etc

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...

Excerpt from: Beyond Transparency Practical steps to improve data quality and fix the wider environment

And my view is the donor cap discussion gets blocked a bit around what it implies about public funding (which is several big things to add to the scope!). But also if you don't fix the problems, you still have the problems.
research.mysociety.org/html/beyond-...

So one of the dynamics here is a) it's good to add bits to this bill to reduce foreign influence and b) it's very hard to *effectively* reduce foreign influence without much stronger controls on UK money in politics.

The draft significant control test for companies making political donations is set out from page 73 onwards publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbi...

I'm open to there being principled reasons why MPs should have looser rules - but it does need someone to actually say what those reasons are.

It'd be useful if MPs wanted to articulate "legitimate hospitality" a bit more. Otherwise it kind of seems like "MPs need to visit local businesses sometimes" in practice is justifying "foreign gambling companies can give you nice days out".

These new rules will apply to all monetary donations, as well as all in-kind donations above £2,230. Existing rules will continue to apply to in-kind donations below £2,230 to ensure legitimate hospitality, for example a MP visiting a local business, can continue.

So this is interesting in being a defence of "legitimate hospitality" and how laxer rules around gifts for MPs can be justified - part of their community role www.gov.uk/government/p...

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I think the reading of this is it's closing the new loophole you'd get if you banned donations but *not* hospitality over the declaration threshold - but doesn't really change that Parliament has a very weak approach to regulating gifts and hospitality.

Where a ban from foreign *states* giving hospitality would have impact is the visits outside the UK section - but it's unclear if that's covered here (will update later) data.mysociety.org/datasette/?m...

So this is not a "it's bad when MPs take money from foreign gambling companies" rule change bsky.app/profile/alex...

Here is the current register (things declared in last year), for non-UK gifts and benefits, where a) there aren't many of these b) very few are above the threshold data.mysociety.org/datasette/?m...

So what would be caught by this? There are two relevant sections in the register of members interests, "gifts and benefits from sources outside the UK" and "visits outside the UK" (which is often, but not always a foreign source).

Excerpt from: Beyond Transparency Practical steps to improve data quality and fix the wider environment

In any other part of the public sector, the idea that you might personally be able to receive a gift from a foreign company up to £2,000 and that's *fine* would be comically lax. research.mysociety.org/html/beyond-...

The bill will also stop foreign companies offering high-value gifts to MPs, who will not be able to accept them unless they are below £2,230. There have been multiple instances of politicians accepting luxury gifts or hospitality worth significant amounts from foreign states or businesses. “The flow of foreign cash into British politics ends here,” a departmental source said. “Politicians won’t be able to take gifts above a very low threshold. This will protect our democracy from interference and make it more transparent than ever.”

This is obviously better than nothing, but is not a "very low" threshold! www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

FOI Fest 2025 19th February, Birkbeck University of London + online

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Did Foxtons try to charge me an illegal £200 check-out fee on my flat? The thing is, such charges are unlawful, and have been for the last six years, since the Tenant Fees Act of 2019 was implemented.

6 years since letting agents were BANNED from charging renters admin fees, Foxtons is still 'accidentally' charging £200 for checking out.

Read what we thought of this below:

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/buytol...