Popping back here to remind everyone that when the men's football team loses, violence against women goes up. I've just given £300 to refuge.org.uk in the hope of making a small difference

🔏 Polls have closed! ⤴️ We have processed over 10 million postcode searches from the UK public in the last month. Election day: 2,648,429 This week: 4,635,003 Since 1 April: 10,564,221 🤩 Enormous thanks to the electoral administrators and volunteers who made this possible.

🐶 Where is the best place in the UK to see #dogsatpollingstations ? 🐕 Possibly Cowal Dog Training Club in Argyll and Bute, which is a polling place today! 🐾 Find your polling station: wheredoivote.co.uk

New blog: the 2026 town and parish council elections. - 373 town and parish councils are up for election this year. - Due to a lack of candidates in most areas, only 23% of wards will see a poll on 7 May. - 67% of council seats have been won uncontested. democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2026/04...

2026 parish and town elections

A data summary of the 2026 local council elections in England.

democracyclub.org.uk

hey there are parish elections coming up, so I crunched a few numbers blog-shaped-thoughts.blogspot.com/2026/04/2026...

Of particular interest to @electionmaps.uk @ballotbox.scot and all psephologists, campaigners, and election nerds!

Our submission to the Representation of the People Bill committee has been published: bills.parliament.uk/publications...

🗳️ 📆 The Scottish Parliament, the Senedd Cymru and 136 English councils (5,013 councillors and six mayors) are holding elections on 7 May. 👇 Get all the details from our latest blog. 👇 democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2026/03...

What's up for election in 2026?

Everywhere in Scotland and Wales, along with large areas of England, will be going to the polls on 7 May.

democracyclub.org.uk

Representation of the People Bill- Gov commits to repeal entirely the power to set a Strategy & Policy Statement for the Electoral Commission.

Lovely shoutout to our election leaflets database from Prof. Rob! You can upload leaflets yourself at: electionleaflets.org

Rob Ford@robfordmancs.bsky.social · 6mo ago

New Swingometer! Dropping my latest Gorton & Denton update now as I have teaching all morning tomorrow. I take a look at the leaflet wars underway in the seat, and how I've ended up caught in the electoral crossfire: open.substack.com/pub/swingome...

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...

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.

democracyclub.org.uk

Asking for a friend - amazing social CIC doing good things in nature. Looking for a South West (ideal) based fractional CTO who can also get their hands a bit dirty, and help a volunteer model of developing their platform They have a backend dev, and hiring a front end. Any ideas/connections?

Did you know that councils can change their own ward boundaries? And sometimes, no one really notices? democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/08... New post from @democracyclub.org.uk talks about how this is tricky for us to track, and what we think could improve the process

Community Governance Reviews

Community Governance Reviews keep parish and community councils in line. But they are hard to keep track of.

democracyclub.org.uk

🤯 "The term soap opera originated from radio dramas' original sponsorship by soap manufacturers. The term was preceded by horse opera, a derogatory term for low-budget Westerns." en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_op...

Where I have some thoughts on digital improvements that can follow from The Elections Strategy. I think the "digital notices" thing could be a really interesting pattern in legislation

Alex Parsons@alexparsons.bsky.social · last yr.

Some great practical extensions of the election strategy by the election data experts at Democracy Club. Includes a good write-up of @symroe.bsky.social's "hang on, can we just define 'giving notice'" argument. democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/07...

Finally got my film developed - wish I could time travel back to eating icecream in mechelen with the amazing #tictec crew! @democracyclub.org.uk @symroe.bsky.social @myfanwytristram.bsky.social @zarino.co.uk @dracos.co.uk @mysociety.org @societyworks.org

Some great practical extensions of the election strategy by the election data experts at Democracy Club. Includes a good write-up of @symroe.bsky.social's "hang on, can we just define 'giving notice'" argument. democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/07...

Thoughts on the Elections Strategy

Earlier this month the government published its '*Strategy for modern and secure elections*'. We outline some of our ideas for digital implementation of this strategy.

democracyclub.org.uk

New blog! Political parties won 12.9% of English town and parish council seats in 2024/2025. But party involvement at this level is controversial. We take a look at what the data can tell us about partisanship in England's first tier of local government. democracyclub.org.uk/blog/2025/07...

Parish councils and political parties: some initial findings

A dive into the politics of England's first tier of local government.

democracyclub.org.uk

Effective end to the open register (good! It's a weird legacy of when voting rights were restricted and was open so you could challenge. Now just a weird privacy thing that has a lot of outputs)

Does the business of spamming random CVs to people really work? If I get an unsolicited "we found a dev you might want to hire" email, it doesn't matter if they're excellent, I just focus on the fact the recruitment company is spamming me. They must make money somehow, though?

Finding the Private Eye crossword tricky this week. Resorted to googling a clue, to be greeted with this. Googled another just to see (I’d worked out that one), got... the same answer. The most average answer to all crosswords!

The team are in London in accommodation that's not suited to the heat. Anyone have cool working suggestions for 5 people in the Shepherd's Bush area?

I’ve put an HTML version of Volume 1 of the Post Office Inquiry report up at postofficeinquiry.dracos.co.uk/report/ Footnotes all present, internal links to inquiry documents not there yet, but hopefully will be straightforward to add in a bit.

Matthew Somerville@dracos.co.uk · last yr.

Watching Sir Wyn give a speech about Volume 1 of the Post Office Inquiry Report. Not wanting to detract from it at all, but as it’s on a big screen, wondering why the kerning has now gone wrong between the R and the Y

Followed a link in a message on my phone to legislation.gov.uk, and this time got fed up enough of its desktop-only website to do something about it: presenting adlegem.dracos.co.uk which will make a legislation.gov.uk page readable on mobile :)

Followed a legislation.gov.uk link on your phone? Found it impossible to read?

adlegem.dracos.co.uk

Can someone please make this work in Edge!? I love it.

Sym Roe@symroe.bsky.social · last yr.

I've made a browser extension that replaces _that_ dot with a random emoji. github.com/symroe/GOV.U...

I tend to use government by exception. Having quick access to "apply for compensation for a criminal injury" is, hopefully, not something I need 'quick access' to (or at least not quicker than just searching the web for it. I expect others are different and need to use somethings daily/weekly/etc

Sym Roe@symroe.bsky.social · last yr.

Play store: "GOV.UK ID Check" helps me log into "select" services. Then "GOV.UK One Login": "proves my identity" Then "GOV.UK": "Quickly access relevant topics, local services and pages you’ve visited before". I need to use "One Login" to "personalise my experience", but is that the app?

Play store: "GOV.UK ID Check" helps me log into "select" services. Then "GOV.UK One Login": "proves my identity" Then "GOV.UK": "Quickly access relevant topics, local services and pages you’ve visited before". I need to use "One Login" to "personalise my experience", but is that the app?

but the rebrand is a very obvious change, and if those old services weren't being kept up-to-date already they're not likely to switch any time soon. So we're effectively going to end up with two tiers of GOV.UK, lowering users' confidence in the brand as a whole

This is my main concern with the rebrand. There are probably hundreds of services which aren't even using the newest version of the old (black bar) branding - old version of the crown, grey boxes around radios etc. They've kind of gotten away with it until now because it was close enough

I know it feels like “so what, it’s just a font” – but when trust in governments is at an all time low, and the risk of disinformation through “just about good enough” AI fakes is rising every single day, things like consistent branding really really matter. 😞

Matt Eason@matteason.me · last yr.

The GOV.UK app launched today and they're already not following the week-old brand guidelines in this launch graphic - that font is not GDS Transport