This week on the podcast, Ed Humpherson of the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) talked to me about a crisis in UK statistics which has not only hit data quality but damaged public trust. Find the full episode here on Spotify (also available on Apple podcasts) as...
I’m thrilled to announce that Talk Data to Me has now moved into the world of podcasting, with the first episode available now!Each week, I’ll be interviewing a guest on an important issue to do with data and current affairs. For this first episode, I was...
Five and a half years might seem like a long enough time to plan a census, especially since we’ve been doing them (almost) every ten years for over two centuries. But statisticians don’t like to be in a rush. The census is the oil tanker of surveys - the...
Last week I featured on David Aaronovitch’s Radio 4 programme The Briefing Room, in an episode which asked the question ‘Is the UK in a data crisis?’. My role was to talk about the history of data collection up until the post-war period when mass...
Image credit: News Thump.This week I’ve been reading a lot of speculation about what UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves might do after being handed a gloomy new forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) last Friday. This was an internal forecast which...
The arc of history spirals around on itself once again, this time bringing us in parallel with 2006. Time’s sickle may have trimmed away the skinny jeans, terrible eyeliner, and appeal of Russell Brand, but the mid-noughties are back in one potent way, with the...
Unite the kingdom marchers meet a counter protest in London, September 2025Where do our opinions come from? What are they really based on?It would make sense that we form them by taking in information and thinking it over: reflecting on what we see, feel, hear, read,...
Not too long ago I had a strange conversation with someone about immigration. Seeing as I’m someone who talks about data and statistics a fair amount - particularly the dodgy kind - they were asking me if I could confirm their suspicion that some figures...
There’s an article that’s been getting a lot of attention on Substack called The death of the corporate job (there’s also a part 2). It keeps popping up on my feed and although it’s an eye-opening read, I can’t shake off some serious...