Today’s been pretty great, really - I’ve been at Rewired State in London with some very smart political-programmer types. There’ll, hopefully, soon be links out there to a lot of the things people’ve been making here, but for now here’s what I’ve been up to today…
I’m really into the idea of data journalism. People are justly cynical about statistics, and I reckon part of this is because they can’t see them - the data isn’t put in front of people for them to see, and play with, themselves, so why should they trust it? It’s just another bit of talking-head nonsense if you can’t see and use the facts. And, usually, the facts are in some bunch of Excel spreadsheets on a backwater government website.
But journalists and bloggers shouldn’t really have to be computer programmers to be able to do their jobs.
I live in Cambridge, along with…
other voters. (Where they all went in 2007 and 2008, well, your guess is as good as mine!). Now, probably the number one thing most people care about from their council is how much their council tax is. For an average house - a Band D - in Cambridge, that’s…
around £1350 a year. (I pay a bit less, ’cause I rent a flat, but still.)
You’re better off to live somewhere nice and (relatively) rich, like Cambridge, though…
From bottom to top: the City of London, Cambridge, and Liverpool’s council tax. There must be a story in there somewhere.
There’s a weird spike in the City of London’s council tax around ‘02-’03, too. Wonder why. How many people live there?
Not very many - a few thousand. Is there any connection between the number of people living there and the council tax?
Could be. Correlation isn’t causation and all that, but you can’t rule it out.
That’s all very well, but what’s my point here? I’ve got a couple, really: people shouldn’t have to convert this data every time they use it, and that there’s value in simply collecting all this data into one place - you can start trying out connections and seeing if they work. If it’s too hard to get the data into a form you can use, people won’t bother; it’s a rubbish use of their time, if nothing else.
So I’ve converted the data…
- Total (and new) electorate of each local council region of the UK, 2001—today
- Band D council tax for every council, 1994-today
… and now it’s way easier to talk about this stuff with the facts to hand.
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