Philip Brien

We're using a new version of Excel at work. Good things:
- The formula bar is finally in monospace font by default! No more pixel hunting!
- The colour picker is huge and clear and includes high-contrast filtering

Less good:
- The chart "Select Data" dialog remains exactly as buggy as ever.

5. General Debate on giving every child the best start in life Until 7.00pm (Standing Order No. 9(3)) The Prime Minister That this House has considered the matter of giving every child the best start in life.

Interesting phrasing on today's Commons order paper. I haven't seen "the matter of" used for a general debate before - maybe it looked bad to say that the House "has considered giving every child the best start in life" as if it might say "nah, won't bother".

Supporting documents for Spending Review 2025 Supporting documents alongside the main Spending Review 2025 document: distributional analysis, policy costings and data sources.

Well, this is exciting - I've been grumbling for *years* about how figures at Budgets and Spending Reviews are only given to the nearest £100 million, which makes data analysis needlessly difficult. And the Treasury have just gone ahead and published the unrounded data! www.gov.uk/government/p...

Chart showing the largest increases and decreases in annual average real terms growth in investment spending across the 2025 Spending Review period.

On the investment side, defence is getting a larger increase than in recent years, but several departments will see fairly large decreases relative to existing budgets.

Chart showing the five biggest increases and decreases in annual average real terms growth for day-to-day spending across the 2025 Spending Review period.

Here's a couple more charts to go with it. Relative to existing budgets, DSIT and the Single Intelligence Account are doing pretty well out of this; the FCDO is decidedly not (because of aid cuts).

Spending Review 2025: A summary A summary of the departmental spending limits and other announcements in the 2025 Spending Review.

Summary briefing on the Spending Review is out!

commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

Chart showing that half of the increase in investment funding over the SR2025 period is going to defence.

On the investment spending side, it's the MOD that takes the lion's share, followed by Transport.

Chart showing day-to-day spending increases in the 2025 Spending Review. Over half of the increase is going to health.

Time for some initial Spending Review analysis!

As expected, this is a very health-centric Spending Review - most of the day-to-day spending increase goes there. Depending how you count it, 20 or so departments will have to share about £5 billion of the remaining increases.

Your post was a very useful resource! Publicly available descriptions of how the process actually works are annoyingly hard to come by, so I was glad to have something like that to cite.

Spending Review 2025: Background briefing Ahead of the Spending Review on 11 June 2025, this briefing looks at the process, the public spending context, and the factors affecting the government’s plans.

It's out! Everything* you ever wanted to know about next week's Spending Review.

*probably not everything
commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

Chart showing the ages at start and end of pontificate for all popes since Innocent VII. In general, papal reigns are getting longer and beginning later in life, although there's plenty of exceptions.

A little pope data for you all this fine morning. I like any dataset that goes back 2,000 years (although the chart only goes back to 1404).

(Source: www.theguardian.com/news/datablo...)

That would be the so-called "Pole of Inaccessibility", which I reckon is just to the north-east of Birmingham (it's the blue flag on this map). There's not a lot in it, but Towcester (green star) is marginally closer to the Wash than the Pole is to any coastline.

A calendar of meetings for Glasgow City Council, from the council website. The year selection at the top is in no obvious order (the first four are 1998, 2004, 2010 and 2024).

Today in Baffling Web Design Decisions: what on earth is going on with Glasgow City Council's year selection for their council meetings calendar?

UK to reduce aid to 0.3% of gross national income from 2027 The UK will reduce aid spending to 0.3% of gross national income in 2027 (the lowest level since 1999) to fund higher defence spending.

We've published a new short article on the aid cut (and defence spending increase) announced by the PM yesterday. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/uk-to-reduce...

Skyline of the City of London. Source: GJMarshy, via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA.

Behold, a 91% rural local authority!

(Why? Because the ONS defines "urban" as "within a built-up area which has a population of 10,000 or more", and "rural" as everything else. And in the 2021 Census, the City of London built-up area had a population of about 7,500.)

Screenshot from HM Treasury's "Forecasts for the UK economy: March 2024", showing odd visual artefacts on capital letters.

Screenshot from HM Treasury's "Forecasts for the UK economy: December 2024", showing no visual artefacts on capital letters.

The big news from 2024 that I missed at the time: HM Treasury have finally changed the font in their "official forecasts for the UK economy" document so that capital letters no longer have little "horns". (First image from March this year, second one from December.)

Map showing the boundaries of the Norfolk Broads National Park

FACT 4 (last one, thankfully): The boundaries of the Norfolk Broads National Park are pleasingly bonkers because water and reclaimed land don't play by your rules.

Map showing Towcester, with a small red star just off Watling Street to the north of the town

FACT 3: The point on the British mainland where you are furthest from any National park is a field just north of Towcester (see red star on this map).

Map showing the boundaries of Eryri National Park

FACT 2: Eryri National Park (Snowdonia, as was) is the only one with a hole in it, because Blaenau Ffestiniog isn't part of the Park.

Map showing boundaries of Pembrokeshire Coast National Park

Here are some National Park Facts (TM), occasioned by my having to look at the boundaries for something for work:

FACT 1: The only non-contiguous National Park in Great Britain is Pembrokeshire Coast, which is divided into four main chunks and a few islands.

Scatter plot showing every time a Test side has scored at least 500 runs in their first innings since 1900. On most occasions, the team scoring this many goes on to win the match; on slightly fewer occasions the match is drawn; in a handful of cases they lose.

Quick chart showing just how extraordinary last week's Test was. There have only been six occasions - ever - where a Test side scored as many runs in their first innings as Pakistan did and then went on to lose the match.

In short, this overview is actively unhelpful, because it's not just wrong, but breezily confident in its wrongness. Please don't trust them for anything that even vaguely matters. (5/5)

Issue #3: No, the memorandum is not "a document that provides parliamentary authority". The Estimate itself is part of the process to do that - the memorandum just provides further context but has no authority in its own right. If you based anything important on this you'd look like an idiot. (4/n)

Issue #2: because Google doesn't understand the contents of these documents, it can happily talk about the "Scotland Senedd". This doesn't exist. (It has, of course, conflated the Senedd - that is, the Welsh Parliament - and the Scottish Parliament.) (3/n)

The first and biggest issue: so far as I can tell, the document I'm looking for isn't actually published online. Doesn't stop Google from confidently asserting things about its contents. As annotation #1 shows, it's basing this on memoranda for two totally different departments. (2/n)

Screenshot of a Google AI Overview for the search term "scotland office estimates memorandum 2024/25". Described in detail in later posts in the thread.

Shall we explore together why Google's "AI Overviews" are, um, somewhat less than helpful when you're looking for something specific?
🧵 (1/n)

As best as I can tell, it is literally just showing the website inside an app container. I uninstalled within minutes of trying it out. (Tried replacing it with Ontime, which seems to be working OK for me so far.)

The home page of the Locating London's Past website, including a map illustrating thefts 1674-1819, and a panel on the right with information about the site and links.

Really pleased to announce the launch of a thoroughly updated version of Locating London's Past: locatinglondon.org - new functionality, better mapping, cleaner data. @ihr.bsky.social @long18thsem.bsky.social @ihrhistorylab.bsky.social

Royal Assent by Commission Act 1541 - Wikipedia

...and THAT was entirely because Henry VIII was uncomfortable with the idea of having to listen to Parliament talking about Catherine Howard's alleged adultery in the bill that led to her execution. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_A...

Related procedural note: the Royal Assent Act repealed the Royal Assent by Commission Act 1541, which first introduced the idea that the monarch didn't have to be there in person to pass an Act of Parliament...