Dr Laura James's writings

A fun find (from 2017) - the King's Fund video description of how 'the NHS' works in England . I remember in 2015-16 piecing together much of this at Doteveryone. Still astoundingly complex, and so little known. (Six and a half minutes of video just for a whistlestop tour...) There never was a Labour party "red wall," writes David Edgerton . Highlights mine. The period from 1945 into the 1970s was without question Labour’s moment of success. Not only did it win elections, but it transformed British society. But over the last half century, as Labour’s halted forward march went into reverse, its vote share fell and oscillated wildly. ... At the national level we also need to distinguish clearly between what share of the overall vote a party gets, and whether they win. In 1935 Labour got 38% of the vote but only 25% of seats. In 2019 it got a lower share of votes but a higher share of seats. The perversity does not end there: although Labour was more popular...

The National Food Strategy came out. It seemed like a lot of data folks were upset by the hexagons showing land use (mostly beef and lamb pastures), but there's some other nice visualisations and info in Dustin Benton's twitter thread .  CoFarm colleague Sue Pritchard has many good thoughts on these matters. We've had a lot of great cofarming going on to : CoFarm’s growing area has doubled this year as we aim to produce at least twice the amount of food than last. In 2020, we grew more than 4.5 tonnes of vegetables across 0.66 acres, which was donated to 9 local community food hubs. The remaining 1.3 acres of the market garden contained cover crops, which fix nitrogen into the soil and attract insects that pollinate food crops and eat pests. This year, most of these cover crops have been cleared to make space for growing more vegetables, but there is no shortage of flowers. The market garden’s perimeter, and walkways within it, are bursting with colourful blooms, and the...