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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · 20d

Experimenting with 3D datavis in QGIS (this is using the Qgis2threejs plugin). The data shows railway station entries/exits for 2023/24. I'm enjoying the fact that this turns London into a horrifying gothic spire.

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jul 28

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.

Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jul 16

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".

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.

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jun 27

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...

Supporting documents for Spending Review 2025

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

www.gov.uk

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jun 12

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

Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jun 12

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).

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.

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jun 12

Summary briefing on the Spending Review is out!

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

Spending Review 2025: A summary

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

commonslibrary.parliament.uk

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jun 11

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

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

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jun 11

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.

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

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jun 5

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.

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jun 4

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

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

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.

commonslibrary.parliament.uk

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · May 9

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...)

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.

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Apr 30

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.

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Apr 11

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

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).

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Feb 26

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...

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.

commonslibrary.parliament.uk

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Jan 21

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.)

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

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Dec 23

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.)

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.

Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Dec 17

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 the boundaries of the Norfolk Broads National Park

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Dec 17

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

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Dec 17

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 the boundaries of Eryri National Park

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Dec 17

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.

Map showing boundaries of Pembrokeshire Coast National Park

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Oct 14

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.

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.

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Oct 11

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)

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Oct 11

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)

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Philip Brien @statisticalphil.bsky.social · Oct 11

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)

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