Librarian and occasional researcher. Opinions of course my own. Scholarly communications, historic MPs, Wikipedia, inter alia other things. Misplaced Scot.
Joined December 2008
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Anyway, I guess it is good for us to take a step back from the big platforms when we can, sometimes. So I'm going to try leaning a bit more heavily on using mastodon for a while. Let's see how it works out.
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Andrew | @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org retweeted
20 Sep 2024
While previous histories of the 1832 reform legislation have focused on WHO got the vote, Mapping the State instead focuses on WHERE people got it.
Read this new #OpenAccess book, published with @RoyalHistSoc and @ihr_history for free from our website:
uolpress.co.uk/book/mapping-…
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Andrew | @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org retweeted
27 Aug 2024
50 years ago today I joined the Diplomatic Service. On the first day we were given this booklet, which turned out to be rather alarming for someone whose experience of abroad was mainly backpacking. By para 2 of the Introduction it was clear that there were pitfalls everywhere! 1
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before Wikipedia abolished spoiler-warnings, we had them on, in no particular order:
a) The Three Little Pigs
b) The Diary of Samuel Pepys
c) Hamlet
d) The Passion of the Christ (yes, the film)
16 Aug 2024
apparently i’m a literature snob bc i don’t believe spoiler warnings are necessary when talking about 177y/o classic novels… what’s next? spoiler warnings for bible references??
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Andrew | @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org retweeted
25 Jul 2024
My favourite anecdote from the brilliant @DPMcBride book Power Trip
25 Jul 2024
EXC: Damian McBride is going to spad for Yvette Cooper at the Home Office. Will lead on fraud policy, which he had previously overseen in opposition, relations with Labour MPs and Cooper’s parliamentary operation.
Joins media spad Jess Leigh and chief of staff Amy Richards
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Really interesting from an information literacy perspective: people trust the same information more when it's "conversational" than when it's just straight written text.
26 Jul 2024
Study participants perceived the same text as *less* credible when presented as a Wikipedia article than when encountering it as simulated ChatGPT or Alexa output
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Meanwhile, at the other end of things, the first privatised service was ... possibly a rail replacement bus. Start as you mean to go on!
17 Jul 2024
By my calculations, if they don’t change the timetables or throw in the towel first, Britain’s last privatised* train will be the 23:09 Birmingham New Street - Nottingham on 15 October 2027.
Stick the date in your diary and join me for a M&S tinned whisky sour onboard.
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Andrew | @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org retweeted
18 Jul 2024
We have election data! Full datasets with constituency and candidate-level vote shares, electorates, etc are now attached to our @commonslibrary briefing: commonslibrary.parliament.uk…
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five years back I spent some time digging into the career of George Spero, MP for Stoke Newington 1923-24, Fulham West 1929-30, and then ... disappeared.
the internet is very small, & I just had a comment from his great-nephew confirming the deductions! generalist.org.uk/blog/2019/…
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the idea that a sitting MP could just skip the country, move his family to America under a not very subtle assumed name, send a letter to say he'd resigned, and then ignore the London bankruptcy courts... you'd think *some* newspaper would have tried to follow it up, even then.
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gone back and looked at some of the contemporary news stories and absolutely loving this one: by the time the Edinburgh Evening News published this well-informed report (May 1930) he had in fact fled the country and was living in New York.
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Andrew | @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org retweeted
12 Jul 2024
🧵Some thoughts on the 'most non-religious parliament' having watched all 600 swearing-ins...
- overall 40% affirmed, 60% swore an oath. Lab & LD split almost exactly along these lines, but only 9% of Tory MPs affirmed, suggesting it's about tradition as much as religiosity.
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Andrew | @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org retweeted
9 Jul 2024
Reading Tony Blair's views on AI, I remember the story of how the PM who talked of the new high-tech economy only got a mobile phone after leaving Number 10, whereupon he texted Alastair Campbell: ''This is amazing! You can do words and everything''.
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Update on this:
Con - 31/635, 5% lost deposits (26/630 in GB)
Lab - 1/631, 0.2%
LD - 229/630, 36%
Reform - 32/609, 5%
Green - 226/585, 39%
SNP - 0/57
PC - 3/32, 9%
SNP, Sinn Fein (0/14) & DUP (0/16) only parties to contest more than one seat & retain all their deposits.
Provisional numbers: the Conservatives lost 31 deposits last night, though five of them were in NI seats where no-one ever expected them to beat 5% anyway.
But, still... 26 is a lot.
(Labour lost one this time around.)
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Several smaller parties lost all their deposits - the Heritage Party (41/41), TUSC (40/40), Yorkshire (27/27), Rejoin EU (26/26), Christian People's Alliance (22/22), etc.
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In the "not a *complete* wipeout" range, the Workers Party lost 123/152 deposits, and the SDP (Continuity) lost 120/122. The Liberal Party (Continuity) lost 11/12 - the three SDP/Liberal successes all in the 6% range.
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Been thinking about this and just checked: only *fifteen* Conservative MPs were in Parliament during their last opposition. Be a real culture shock to the rest.
7 Jul 2024
There are relatively few Conservative MPs that have been on the wrong side of a large majority. Their impotence - and that of others - will not yet have fully sunk in. What awaits is years of what Austin Mitchell called heckling the steamroller.
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For comparison: I think there are 25 Labour MPs who were around during their last period of government, & four of them now in the Cabinet.
But going from opposition to government feels quantitively different.
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"we could do nothing, and now we can do something" vs "we could do what we wanted, and now we can't stop them" is a very different dynamic
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Andrew | @generalising@mastodon.flooey.org retweeted
6 Jul 2024
Here’s one of my favorite photos I’ve ever captured: the moment the international space station transited the lunar terminator, captured in broad daylight using a 14” scope.
These shots require precise planning and a bit of luck to pull off, and I still can’t believe it’s real!
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