Nigel Marriott's Blog

An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future

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UK Local Elections #1 – My West England Metro Mayor 2021 Election Forecast

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It will be close but I am predicting that the Conservatives will hold onto the West England Combined Authority Metropolitan Mayoralty on 6th May 2021.  By rights, they should not be winning but the 3 parties opposing them do not seem to understand the subtleties of the Supplementary Vote (SV) that is used in this election and they will end up splitting their votes to their detriment.

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Pay Gaps #21 – No employer has a gender & ethnicity pay gap! Let’s celebrate!

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It’s April 2029 and the government is trumpeting the fact that no employer in the UK has a gender pay gap or ethnicity pay gap.  All employers say that their median woman’s hourly pay is the same as the median man’s hourly pay and their median white employee’s hourly pay is the same as their median non-white employee’s hourly pay.  Would you be joining in the celebrations?

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6 Nations History #1 – The men’s story so far in 2021

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The 2021 Six Nations (Men’s) ended with Wales winning the title after Scotland beat France in Paris to snuff out France’s attempt to win the title for the first time since 2010.  Wales let a Grand Slam slip after conceding a try in injury time and as an England fan who was there at Wembley in 1999 I know exactly how the Welsh feel!

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UK General Elections #6 – Keir Starmer’s train to Downing Street

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Keir Starmer has to match what Clement Attlee did in 1945 and beat what Tony Blair did in 1997 if he wants to form a Labour government at the next election.  To arrive at Downing Street by the end of 2024, Starmer must get his party to board an InterCity 125 train and spend the next 3 years following the tracks I lay out in this article.  As I will show, whichever track they take has to go through 125 English Conservative seats, most of which are in between cities.  Hence InterCity 125 becomes the easy to remember name of Labour’s list of target seats.

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Pay Gaps #20 – Abolish the Gender Pay Gap!

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I call upon Parliament to abolish the Gender Pay Gap by requiring employers to report their Gender Swap Number instead.  When presented alongside an employer’s Gender Pay Fingerprint, the Gender Swap Number tells everyone how much work the employer needs to do to eliminate their gender pay gap and allows for a fairer comparison between employers.

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COVID19 Cases #2 – Is the UK an outlier internationally?

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An unfortunate side effect of COVID19 has been ugly political debates over the best way to tackle the pandemic.  Often politicians will claim because country X does this, the UK should be doing it as well.  I decided it was time to do a proper comparison of the UK with other countries to see what extent the UK is an outlier and whether there are some countries we should be using as templates.

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