I’m currently working on a project together with Stephen Greasley on the life and death of UK quangos. One of our USPs is the extent of our data — we’re looking at quangos from the first Public Bodies yearbook in 1982, onwards. We’re getting the data into shape. We’ve scraped later online versions, and we’ve [...]
… or ask your local librarian to purchase it for your institution’s library! You can see the publisher’s page, the book on Amazon .com or .uk. Usual academic hardback prices apply. Review copies are also available.
… was on the Today programme this morning, repeating the discredited claim that people named Dennis are more likely to be dentists. Brooks played up the suggestive power of names and occupation/hobbies. The only person who emerged with credit was Damon Hill, who appeared on the next segment, asking: “What does that say about people [...]
Is the title of this excellent looking conference at which I’ll be presenting.
This upgrade was much smoother than my upgrade to Maverick. Only problem concerned the notification for the dropbox daemon, but following the tips in the comment page here sorted that out. Not sure what I think about Unity, and I haven’t worked out where the setting for the number of workspaces is (it’s not in [...]
I haven’t been blogging much about public broadcasting recently. I’ll be blogging more as and when my book comes out. But here’s a tit-bit from Italy: Lorenza Lei has been appointed as first female director-general of Rai. Reasons to be cheerful: Lei replaces Mauro Masi, who had an unhappy and brief (two-year) tenure. Lei was [...]
In this Thursday’s referendum on voting reform, I’ll be voting Yes to a change in the UK’s electoral system. I’ll probably be in a minority. Polls show consistent double digit or greater leads for the No campaign. But I thought it might be useful to say why I’m voting Yes to the Alternative Vote.
My contribution to the Mammone/Veltri edited collection, “Italy Today”, is referenced obliquely in Tim Parks’ write-up at the New Yorker: Many of the essays in “Italy Today” describe situations that tend to support Graziano’s gloomier analysis. One focusses on an aging political élite that “is indecisive and creates obstacles,” and “hides itself cynically in nepotistic [...]
I’ll be acting as an ‘expert witness’ in an AV debate on Tuesday 3rd May, 6pm, at the Curve Auditorium in the Forum, Norwich. Here’s the event flyer
A couple of weeks ago I posted about an analysis of Senatorial candidates’ ideology using their Twitter accounts. The analysis was done by Aaron King, Frank Orlando, and David Sparks. There’s a write-up here. I thought the paper was so cool that I replicated the analysis for the UK context. The note is available here, [...]