This is a great report about a desperate and disappointing situation. Extra resources are going in to A&E but improvements are small. The report highlights patient flow throughout the system, incl primary care, community care, and social care. There's no fix to the NHS without a fix to social care.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 3h ago

NHS England has increased resources and made small improvements, but while there has been progress on reducing waiting times, this has been slow and many of the expected benefits from its 2023 recovery plan have not yet been realised - new @nao.org.uk report www.thetimes.com/article/7858...

I'm too sad for a hot-desk lunch. I'm too hunched for a fad launch. I'm too hench for a dadless sot. I'm a husk, I'm a lot. I'm lossless. I'm a sunk lad.

This might explain why the government’s legal advice was that the judicial reviews of their local government reorganisation are likely to succeed, prompting them to pause the programme.

Cllr Ellen Nicholson 🔸🇬🇧 🇪🇺 🌍@ellzsummary.bsky.social · 23h ago

Local Government reorganisation in Surrey 😬 Whole compass points have moved! @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social

Hooray hooray we *finally* have a national statistician! And managed to persuade André Loranger from Canada, which is impressive. Very best of luck to him: he - and we! - will need it, given the size of the challenge. www.gov.uk/government/n...

André Loranger appointed as new United Kingdom National Statistician

André Loranger has been appointed as the National Statistician for the United Kingdom

gov.uk

Chris Giles@chrisgiles.ft.com · 21h ago

Finally, UK appoints a national statistician, poaching André Loranger from Canada... "Gather, guard, grow, give" is his vision for statistics www.youtube.com/watch?v=6720...

The government won a big majority in large part on the promise of fixing the NHS. Their main change to date has been a massive top-down reorganisation with no coherent vision, strong rationale, or detailed plan. And now that reorganisation itself is in deep limbo. I doubt this is optimal.

Institute for Government@instituteforgovernment.org.uk · 2d ago

The Health Bill is back in the House of Commons today. But the intention to abolish NHS England presents a legislative headache for the new government www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/yvet...

Ok so now I have a suspicion that the discourse a while back - that British people were more effective LLM users because our cultural mistrust of obsequiousness made us less vulnerable to contextual collapse from sycophancy - has somehow folded back in to frontier training regimes.

Paul Mainwood@paulmainwood.bsky.social · 2d ago

"It just got more British during training" New scaling law just dropped.

Everyone knows they keep ravens, but the Yeomen Warders of the Tower of London are also highly accomplished apiculturists, tending urban hives at the Tower. They are expert at tricky techniques such as instrumental insemination to propagate traits such as VSH. So nowadays they are bee-featers.

Glennyrodge@glennyrodge.bsky.social · 4d ago

Beefeaters are so-called because their uniforms are made entirely from Bees’ feet. bsky.app/profile/kate...

Goodness me, ChatGPT, Claude and Grok all down at once is curious (Gemini seems fine). Many possible explanations I can think of: some are just how it goes with the internet (eg unexpectedly shared backends or CDNs), some are a little bit more squeaky bum time.

MacRumors.com@macrumors.bsky.social · 6d ago

ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok Are Down

Blimey, Guardian Jobs closing seems like a landmark moment.

Press Gazette@pressgazette.co.uk · 7d ago

The Guardian's recruitment platform Guardian Jobs is closing after more than 20 years in response to a "fundamental shift" in the UK's jobs landscape The jobs helped "fund our independent journalism" pressgazette.co.uk/marketing/gu...

Petition: “Make full eclipses an annual occurrence in the UK and a Public Holiday.” Response: “Why was this petition rejected? It’s about something that the UK Government or Parliament is not directly responsible for.”

Jo Kibble (Political Animal)@politicanimal.bsky.social · 7d ago

C’mon Andy. Block the sun.

When I find a number that looks wrong, and I can safely assume good faith, I am a huge fan of leading with "Am I misunderstanding here?" It makes it much easier for them to back down if they're wrong and also makes it easier for me to do so if I'm wrong. But you can't always assume good faith.

Adam Kucharski@adamjkucharski.bsky.social · last wk.

If a number looks odd to you, there are generally 3 explanations: - you’ve misunderstood something - the number involves a genuine mistake - someone is trying to mislead you And faced with this ambiguity, people often choose whichever option reflects their prior outlook on the world. 2/2

This is excellent data detective work showing yet more spurious findings in a highly-influential paper from Dan Ariely. But very depressing.

Kieran Healy@kjhealy.co · last wk.

Here we go again. datacolada.org/138

He’s off again!

Jo Kibble (Political Animal)@politicanimal.bsky.social · 2w ago

Five years+a few days ago, I set off on a 24-hour bus odyssey that would turn out to be the first of many occasional public transport challenges. (Origin story here for newbies www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl...) Well, I couldn’t let that milestone pass without a new bus jolly. From 4pm, it’s #BusCity24

Shingles vaccination is really good! But perhaps this specific one is not quite as much better as this particular paper suggests. Natural experiments can lead you astray, causal inference is hard. There’s a reason randomised controlled trials are gold standard.

Peter Tennant@pwgtennant.bsky.social · 2w ago

Does the new shingles vaccine (Shingrix) protect against cardiovascular disease (CVD)? Yes, according to a new 'natural experiment' study in @natmed.nature.com. But the truth is sadly far less convincing! Pull up a chair and let's examine another peer review failure in a Nature journal. 1/10 🧵

The NAO is one of the gems of British public life. They are after non-executive directors: hope they can make some strong appointments.

Hetan Shah@hetanshah.bsky.social · 2w ago

It’s really important that independent organisations can hold Government to account. I’m on the Board of @nao.org.uk which does this and we are looking for two new Board members. Could you help spread the word so we can get the best possible field of candidates roles.saxbam.com/advert-detai...

My heart did sink slightly reading the headline that the beleaguered ONS “is turning to AI”, given their deep data quality issues. But it does seem sensible stuff: as a classifier that outperforms humans, and as coding assistants for data scientists. www.ft.com/content/b153...

UK statistics agency turns to AI to cut costs and improve data

ONS says technology will help save thousands of hours a year as it seeks to strengthen core output

ft.com

Paul Mainwood@paulmainwood.bsky.social · 2w ago

Hmm. Up to a point, Lord Copper.

Huge if true

Robert Wilfort@robertwilfort.bsky.social · 3w ago

Wow that is big

This is the better sort of summer story.

The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL)@themerl.bsky.social · 3w ago

So, we found a live bat in our galleries. 🦇 a thread🦇

Yeah and R. A. Fisher was a founding member of the Cambridge Eugenics Society with Keynes, went on to support the creation of the UK society, and made part of his living reviewing books for the Eugenics Review . Statisticians and data scientists are right in there too. Racism is bad and wrong.

Dan Davies@dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 4w ago

JM Keynes was President of the Eugenics Society, so economists should also feel this duty

Well done everyone, you’ve all done very well this week! With all the heat, achieving anything is a big win. Well done for making it to the weekend without literally melting, and I hope it is at least as good to you as you deserve.

I saw the total eclipse! Fulfilment of a childhood dream. When I learned about the 1999 eclipse as a kid I realised I would be a grownup in that far future and could go to France for it. I did, but it was cloudy for totality. Careful planning for a clear skies location paid off this time. Woohoo!

This is a really excellent summary and analysis of the current state of the art for LLMs doing mathematics. The one nuance I’d dare to add is even greater significance on the fact that dead ends of exploration are massively underrepresented in training data vs human mathematicians’ experience.

Timothy Gowers@wtgowers.bsky.social · 4w ago

I've just written a blog post about whether current LLMs are better at some kinds of mathematics than others, with an emphasis on "current", given how quickly the situation is developing. gowers.wordpress.com/2026/08/12/w...

I’ve had a broad exposure to universities, companies, and charities/third sector, plus contact with health and local/national government. My sense is it’s hard to generalise: there are great and terrible workplaces and bosses across all of them & individual depts can buck the organisation’s trend.

doop@doop.bsky.social · 4w ago

I left academia to work for a large US bank; I remember when at the new place my colleague's jaw hit the floor as I casually mentioned how much less dysfunctional the internal politics was. If anything the most depressing thing is that I don't regret leaving academia at all.

If you want to set up a whole room as a pinhole camera to watch the (partial phases of) the eclipse for yourself, right now, the day before, will be ideal to suss it out - the sun will be at a very similar angle during the eclipse.

Reuben Binns@rdbinns.bsky.social · 4w ago

For the 1999 solar eclipse, my dad taped the living room curtains shut, put a piece of cardboard in the middle with a tiny hole, and stuck paper up on the opposite wall. The room was a giant pinhole camera. We traced the outline of the eclipsing sun on the paper as the sun moved across the wall.

The “Dobby’s Grave vs infrastructure” story is wrong. “the fact that it’s a beautiful beach and tourist asset […] were all taken into account. […] Harry Potter fans didn’t cause anything to be changed. The project got permission really quite quickly and has been in operation for a while now.”

Dan Davies@dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 4w ago

I have written up the "Dobby's Grave" chortle, with my concerns about what it *really* says about the problems with British infrastructure ... backofmind.substack.com/p/chortle-on...

I would be very interested to see if there are any references to the "Dobby's grave forced a cable to be moved" story from earlier than this year bsky.app/profile/dsqu...

Dan Davies@dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 4w ago

It doesn't appear in the feedback statement for Natural Resources Wales, it wasn't mentioned at the Pembrokeshire council planning committee, there was a petition with 5000 signatures which doesn't mention it and it doesn't appear in contemporary press www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/1756489...

I always suspected a UK government would eventually reverse course on "coding in public". So I've been backing up all government code. For six years. Today I finally generated a report on what has been deleted. Its much worse than I realised. github.com/uk-gov-mirro...

With the solar eclipse coming up on Wednesday evening it’s good to draw people’s attention to this useful and timeless* explainer of different astronomical phenomena. * since 2014 in its original Twitter form

Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 3y ago

🌓🌎🌞 <-- lunar eclipse 
🌎🌓🌞 <-- solar eclipse 
🌎🌞🌗 <-- apocalypse

This is why the entire university sector is in dire straits. International students are the only thing that actually makes money: domestic undergraduates and almost all research activities need cross-subsidy, and international students are *the* source (except for a few wealthy colleges).

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · last mo.

Sunday Times research finds universites down £550+ million on international (aggregate across the 55 universities with lower international fee income of 128 surveyed)

… in case there is any unfinished business.’ " ) } ]