iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

I thought the suggestion might be "don't drive", but my bad. I'm sure it's the pedestrians.

Help Omiš beat its traffic problem by not crossing the street unnecessarily.

Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Found my undergraduate transcript today. I loved my philosophy degree but being reminded of course titles like "The Structure of Reality" and "Being" definitely raised a smile.

excerpt from degree transcript showing course names including advanced topics in philosophical logic, being, the structure of reality, and philosophy and literature

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Nice note in the acknowledgements highlighting my predecessor's notable contribution to this field over many years:

We also acknowledge the contribution of Richard Cracknell as he retires as Head of Social
and General Statistics at the House of Commons Library. During his tenure the Library
expanded its coverage of election statistics, producing invaluable reports and data sets of
each general election and elections for the devolved institutions amongst others. In recent
years, Richard has forged stronger links between the Commons Library, Exeter University
and the Elections Centre, a relationship we expect to continue into the future

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Lucky enough to visit map HQ today 🗺️

Collection of mapping displays in Ordnance Survey HQ

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

Thoroughly enjoyed Pentiment, a medieval murder mystery set in Bavaria - exceeded expectations for sure

Cartoon style Bavarian medieval village square, lots of villagers, man in the middle says "Everyone, listen!"

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 21/10/2024

We loved our time in Taiwan - here are just two posts of some memorable places and times. 1/2

Kaohsiung music centre at night, reflected in the river

Jiufen, scenic view of the sea and temple

Dome of light in Kaohsiung's Formosa Boulevard metro station

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 28/09/2024

My Grandad was part of the Salvation Army's response in Aberfan. Going through his things, my family found these newspapers from the time. Thought they may be of interest.

Rhymney Valley and Merthyr Express, listing those who died at Aberfan

Daily Mail from shortly after Aberfan, headline "Ten trapped children saved after 12 hours"

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 24/09/2024

I was particularly interested in putting together this part - comparing Labour and Lib Dem performance to their previous recent highs in 1997 and 2005. Both parties won a larger proportion of available seats in the south this time round.

Chart showing countries and regions of the UK with the percentage of seats won by Labour in 1997 and 2024. Compared with 1997, Labour won a larger proportion of seats in the south of England in 2024

Table showing areas that Labour won in 2024 but not 1997 (and vice versa)

Chart showing countries and regions of the UK with the percentage of seats won by Lib Dems in 2005 and 2024. Compared with 2005, Lib Dems won a larger proportion of seats in the south of England in 2024

Table showing areas that Lib Dems won in 2024 but not 2005 (and vice versa)

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 20/09/2024

I see there are direct flights from London to Tbilisi on sale for next year - both BA and Easyjet. Makes Georgia much easier to access from the UK than it has been for a while (it's usually required a change). I thoroughly, heartily recommend a trip. (Not pictured: the wine. And the food.)

Tbilisi at night, with churches lit up in different colours, and a hot air balloon

Mountains near Stepantsminda, with a river, and brown autumn colours,

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 15/09/2024

The tournament was great, and I didn't press this button, so a big success all round.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

Here's one of our 2019 maps. These are more complex than simple hex maps but, in some ways, more informative. The main barrier to recreating this for 2024 was that constituencies can now cross county boundaries. So the whole concept came undone. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

2019 general election results map. Each constituency is a square, and squares are grouped by county or conburation.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 17/08/2024

This week my colleague published an updated briefing on UK defence personnel statistics - an excellent overview commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

Area chart showing the change in the number of army, royal navy/marines, and royal air force trained and untrained strength in the UK since 2012. Overall, the numbers have fallen from around 180,000 to around 15,000 over this period

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 27/07/2024

I am, already, so tired of this nonsense on every website

A lot to digest? Read an AI-generated summary of recent traveller reviews.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 25/05/2024

Tashkent's metro stations are something else. We found the country as a whole to be much easier for independent travel than we thought (and seemingly easier than it was a few years ago, according to the internet). Ubiquitous ATMs, card payment, taxi apps, English fairly widely spoken.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 24/05/2024

Uzbekistan was wonderful - unlike anywhere we've been before. Already feels like a long time ago, having returned straight into the peak of pre-election fever.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 14/05/2024

Today: train 126 from Khiva to Bukhara, 7 hot hours through the desert, complete with some Uzbek food in the dining car 🇺🇿

Man with two plates of food in a train dining car

Two plates of food in a train dining car

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 10/05/2024

Comfortably the largest denomination note I've ever seen. It's worth the grand sum of £6.30.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 19/02/2024

I feel like it might be reasonable to expect an international airline to know about time zones

Airline itinerary, leaving a place in UTC time zone at 08:00 and arriving a place in UTC+1 at 11:30. The airline says this flight will last 3 and half hours.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 16/02/2024

OpenRailwayMap is great for seeing how the British rail network compares to neighbours. Left is speeds (orange/red=highspeed lines), and right is electrification (black=not electrified). openrailwaymap.org

Map of western Europe showing the line speed of rail lines. Most countries shown have red highspeed lines linking major cities. HS1 is the only such route in GB.

Map showing electrification of rail routes in western Europe. Much of the GB network outside of the mainlines is not electrified, in contrast to some other countries.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 14/12/2023

A data wrangler's nightmare, this spreadsheet.

NHS urgent and emergency care daily situation reports spreadsheet. Each day of data is divided into 13 columns. The ICB names are abbreviations (but at least codes are present, so that's something).

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 14/12/2023

The headline cancer waiting time performance measures in England have been altered. The first data was released today. The charts below show how the change affects performance on the 31-day and 62-day measures. 62-day performance is slightly higher on the new definition.

Two line charts showing time series performance on the old and new measures. The 31-day measure sees little change after the adjustment to the definition. The 62-day measure sees an improvement of a few percentage points.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 09/12/2023

Making a start to this excellent birthday present from the family.

First step of Lego "the globe" - the base

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

New article from my colleague Mark Sandford on English devolution deals. I contributed a map. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/english-devo...

Map of English devolved bodies by 2024-25

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

Our updated map and dashboard provides constituency data on road casualties in Great Britain, based on DfT data: commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency...

Interactive dashboard screenshot, showing a map of casualties in 2022 for car occupants in Thirsk and Malton constituency. The map shows 4 fatal casualties, 29 serious casualties, and 137 slight casualties.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 24/11/2023

NHS Digital hitting it out of the park on timeliness these days

Patients registered at a GP practice, November 2024 - published in November 2023?

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 23/11/2023

How has NHS staff nationality changed since 2020 (as self-reported by staff?) Asian nationalities: 66k people in 2020 ▶️ 122k people in 2023 African nationalities: 29k ▶️ 54k EU: 70k ▶️ 74k UK: 1.094 million ▶️ 1.151 m More in our briefing paper: commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

Line chart showing the percentage of NHS staff reporting nationalities from certain country groups. The percentage reporting Asian nationality has increased from around 4% in 2016 to 8.6% in 2023. The percentage reporting African nationality increased from around 2% in 2016 to just under 4% now. The percentage reporting EU nationality fell from around 5.6% in 2016 to around 5.2% in 2023.

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Carl Baker @carlbaker.bsky.social · 10/11/2023

Enjoyed making a map of Wales for colleagues.

Map of the south of the Bannau Brycheiniog national park and the north of the Welsh Valleys, showing settlements, roads, rail, terrain elevation, and water.

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