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James Hole

@jameshole02.bsky.social
494 followers 540 following 170 posts

Maths grad doing data science, analytics, and AI governance in aviation. Interested in govt, public policy, polling, epidemiology, sport, music, and coffee!

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Reposted by James Hole
Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Wonderful wonderful stuff. that’s made the game worthwhile.
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Alan Beattie @alanbeattie.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Your reminder that the only half-time show any game needs is a half-arsed penalty shootout with kids from a local primary while a groundsman pokes morosely at the pitch with a garden fork. Also the half-time draw in which someone wins max two hundred quid.
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Ian Moss @ian.allenmoss.co.uk · 18/07/2026
Toney has been terrible though. Proving us all right. Should have taken Brighton's Danny Wellbeck. #thefootball
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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 09/07/2026
One way to put British citizens first might be to not deport, threat to deport, or imply you could at some point in the future deport their spouses?
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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Chances of England finishing this game with eleven players seem low...
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James Chalmers @jameschalmers.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Good news for both of the teenagers using Bluesky, this.
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Thomas I-G @thomasig.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Monaco Grand Prix latest
Rishi Sunak looking at a pothole
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
A guess a lot people will be spending a lot of today checking some slowly changing numbers on a BBC webpage. If you enjoy that sort of thing and want it to be a more than annual occurrence - can I recommend getting into county cricket?
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John Springford @johnspringford.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Strait of Hormuz
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
Nothing like enjoying your slightly cheaper pint while imagining the toddler crying from hunger that paid for it.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
I'm perhaps naively hopeful that big news stories about AI hallucinations wiil make more people check sources.
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Thomas I-G @thomasig.bsky.social · 11/01/2026
Me, sitting on the seafront with my chips.
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Adam Drummond @adamdrummond.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Nothing but respect if Reeves says "shall we all just have the hour back if everyone's read it?"
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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
It's Friday afternoon, so who wouldn't want to enter the weekend with one more round of my patented bubble plots of British politics? In this final (one hopes) of my mini-series I look at who the 'odd ones out' of British politics are. Who is 'out of touch' with the rest of the public. Let's see 1/n
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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
Can we go back to the days when politicians said that they really wanted to help people but it’s very hard and takes time, rather than saying that they want to hurt people and can do it quickly?
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Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 09/10/2025
Just because an LLM can produce a report with various figures & charts doesn't mean it is good at statistics. Because good statistics is not about producing code. It's about deep knowledge of study design & conduct. In my opinion, 95% of all data science problems come from poor questions & design.
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Thomas I-G @thomasig.bsky.social · 11/06/2025
They should really just publish the spending review documents. Not for me to actually read of course, god no, I just want others to crack on with their articles and substacks.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 11/06/2025
Within the last five years the government was capable of making it illegal to have your girlfriend stay over for a night. This talk strikes me as being a cover for (a) a lack of ideas about how to wield power (b) poor ministers, and (c) the very existence of trade-offs.
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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
Iconic tap tackle by Luke Cowan-Dickie in the rugby just now
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Alex Selby-Boothroyd @alexselbyb.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Real "the doge ate my homework" energy
The Savings page of the Doge website: "Receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine's day"The Savings page of the Doge website: "Receipts coming over the weekend!"
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Paula Surridge @psurridge.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
If you want to win an election against far right opposition you need to bring together two groups. The activated liberals outraged by the other side and the more moderate groups who want govt to make their lives less difficult. Not by trying to win the enthusiastic supporters of the other side.
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Alice Lilly @aliceolilly.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
This rugby match is a great answer to the question ‘what would it look like if people played some nice free-flowing rugby while having forgotten how to catch?’
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
New post just out: "Can Labour Fix the NHS?" They've done it before but now there's less money and everything's in more of a mess. So it's going to require a different approach. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/c...
open.substack.com
Can Labour Fix the NHS?
Labour strategists believe two things have to happen if they’re to win a second term.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
Great, intense, first half in Dublin. Love the six nations.
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Nick Davies @njdavies.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
On Thursday, the govt will publish its Plan for Change. This will include key 'milestones' for each of the govt's five missions. Targets such as these have been used extensively by previous govts trying to improve public service performance. But how effective are targets? A short🧵on the evidence:
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Paula Surridge @psurridge.bsky.social · 08/11/2024
This is the important point. Yes all polls within the 'margin of error' but that should be a random distribution of error not everyone wrong in the same way.
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Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 27/10/2024
I have a joke about causality, but I'm not sure what the effect will be.
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Paula Surridge @psurridge.bsky.social · 14/10/2024
Something a bit different to start the week: Looking at the 'two-party' share 2015 - 2024 and Labour's share of that two-party share. 2024 isn't a two party story but adding the context since 2015 shows how it changed from fragmented to two-party and back again.
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Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 13/10/2024
England's criminal courts are in disarray. If you are victim of a crime now, and the police catch the suspect and the CPS charges them, the trial may not take place until 2027. My essay for this weekend's FT on how this happened and what might fix it on.ft.com/401MjpS
on.ft.com
How the English courts reached breaking point
[FREE TO READ] A record backlog of criminal trials has left lawyers ‘drowning in cases’. Henry Mance goes in search of the answers
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 19/09/2024
New post just out: "The Efficiency Paradox" My explanation for why governments find it so hard to save money and how they could make big savings in the future. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...
open.substack.com
The Efficiency Paradox
Why are governments so bad at saving money?
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Paula Surridge @psurridge.bsky.social · 17/09/2024
There's alot to unpack here but the very high proportions on the liberal left that would vote against Reform suggests that if Reform grow throughout the parliament some of those voters lost to Greens might vote for Labour where they are challenged by Reform.
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Dylan Difford @dylandifford.bsky.social · 15/09/2024
Flow of the vote, 2019-24, revised using @britishelectionstudy.com data. Only a few minor alterations, but the shifts are still striking - without even getting onto non voters and demographic churn, over 10m voters voted for a different party in 2024 than in 2019.
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Dylan Difford @dylandifford.bsky.social · 15/09/2024
Via the newly released @britishelectionstudy.com data, one in eight voters really preferred another party at the general election. When adjusting for who they really favoured, we can create a 'sincere' vote share: Lab: 31% (-4, vs actual) Con: 23% (-1) Ref: 16% (+1) LD: 12% (-1) Grn: 11% (+4)
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Jo Michell @jomichell.bsky.social · 12/09/2024
Thoughtful ‘myth-busting’ AI article. This is a useful and succinct summary of LLM output. Suspect I may end up quoting it.
LLM responses are statistically likely rather than factually accurate.
Sometimes these things correspond, but often they do not.
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Stephen Frost @sfrost.bsky.social · 09/09/2024
File under 'people are complicated'. "...the demographic characteristics of people who are opposed to action on specific inequalities varies quite considerably." Another good read from the @fairness.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/faircomm...
open.substack.com
Who are the 15% who aren't bothered about inequality?
Our polling finds a fairly consistent 15% who are unconcerned about inequality and oppose action to tackle it. Who are these people, and are they always the same people or do they vary by issue?
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Nick Davies @njdavies.bsky.social · 09/09/2024
More good stuff from the Darzi review being pre-briefed. He is absolutely right that the NHS is “undercapitalised” compared with other health systems Since 1970, there have only been 2 years when we've invested more than the OECD average www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcar...
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Ben Zaranko @benzaranko.bsky.social · 03/09/2024
The formulas that determine how much funding goes to different councils are largely based on data from the 2000s and early 2010s. They shouldn't be! Especially if we're going to devolve new responsibilities to local government. New from my colleague David Phillips: ifs.org.uk/articles/dev...
ifs.org.uk
Devolution may be sexier, but updating the local government finance system is vital | Institute for Fiscal Studies
Any plans for devolution need to be accompanied by updates to English councils’ hideously outdated funding allocations.
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Paula Surridge @psurridge.bsky.social · 02/09/2024
A values map of vote intention groups split by their political attention. High attention/Green intention stands out but I'm also intrigued that attention splits left parties on Lib-Auth lines and right parties of left-right lines. Just thinking out loud with this - more investigation needed
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Tom Calver @tomcalver.bsky.social · 01/09/2024
Do you think the world is becoming a more dangerous place? Your answer to this question - and the strength of it - says a lot about your politics… The first of my new weekly column, in today’s @thetimes.com 1/2
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 27/08/2024
My Prospect column this month is about why the OBR isn't a technocratic takeover but rather reveals why trying to control politicians with technocracy doesn't work. www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/dem...
prospectmagazine.co.uk
OBR technocrats can’t prevent bad government behaviour
The Office for Budget Responsibility doesn't have the resources or the clout to act against misleading spending forecasts by the Treasury
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Nick Davies @njdavies.bsky.social · 24/08/2024
Definitely. Much easier to join services up locally. But it depends on central govt not enforcing Whitehall siloes on local govt through extensive use of small ringfenced funding pots and overly prescriptive policies/service design
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James Hole @jameshole02.bsky.social · 24/08/2024
The even happier smile of a Brighton fan who bought Joao Pedro for their fantasy football today, when my sister benched Welbeck and Mitoma
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Jo Bibby @jobibby.bsky.social · 22/08/2024
✨✨New from the Health Foundation How does the UK health system compare internationally? Some positives - but also evidence that the cumulative impact of the pandemic and below average spending has left it more precarious than some other health systems. 1/n
health.org.uk
Feeling the pressure: what the 2023 Commonwealth Fund survey reveals about the state of the UK health system
This analysis presents the findings of the 2023 International Health Policy Survey of adults’ experiences using health care services in 10 countries.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 20/08/2024
Something quite remarkable about hearing a ship called "Bayesian" sank, then learning new information which changes how you think about the circumstances.
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Matthew Price @matthewbprice.bsky.social · 19/08/2024
One of the reasons both Labour and the Lib Dems overperformed their vote share in terms of seats at the general election is that there was next to no competition between them. The correlation between their vote shares in GB constituencies is -0.74. Impressive.
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Jack Newman @jacknewman.bsky.social · 07/08/2024
My new blog with Dave Richards for @ukandeu.bsky.social. Ending the failure of regional policy – why Starmer must avoid ‘hyper-active incrementalism’ ukandeu.ac.uk/ending-the-f...
ukandeu.ac.uk
Ending the failure of regional policy - why Starmer must avoid ‘hyper-active incrementalism’ - UK in a changing Europe
Dave Richards and Jack Newman explore the failure of regional policy in the UK and why Starmer must avoid ‘hyper-active incrementalism’.
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Peter Levell @peterlevell.bsky.social · 18/08/2024
This is the actual IFS account - give them a warm Bluesky welcome (and a follow)! Follow this one and not any imitators.
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Louise Murphy @louisemurphy.bsky.social · 17/08/2024
Teenagers aged 15-16 are now more likely to be receiving disability benefits than adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s… How should we understand this trend? What does it tell us about the design of the benefits system? Here’s a short thread based on my new @resfoundation.bsky.social report
Chart showing the proportion of the population aged 0-64 in receipt of disability benefits, by single year of age: England and Wales, 2013 and 2023
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