Nigel Marriott

UK General Elections #10A – The Cursed Ratios of British Politics

December 7, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

I used to be a commodity trader in the 1990s. This wasn’t my day job, which was to forecast supply & demand, but I had the statistical skills to develop automated trading strategies for the traders I worked with. These were either based on moving averages of futures prices (known as technical trading) or buy/sell signals based on the underlying supply & demand picture (known as fundamental trading). I don’t trade commodities now but I’ve applied the stats skills I learned then to many time series since including those for elections and voting intentions.

Another trading strategy I could have used but didn’t was Chartism. I vividly remember the training course I did on this and coming away gobsmacked. How on earth were people being allowed to buy and sell millions using nothing more than astrology, spiritualism, numerology and other superstitions?! I immediately swore of from Chartism and have managed to stay away from it until this year. I hope you understand why it’s taken me many months to build up the courage to publish two articles where I use chartist superstitions instead of statistics to interpret long term trends in the vote shares of the major parties in the UK.

For this article, I explain why my charts show the Cursed Ratios of British voters are 52 : 26 : 13 : 6.5. For my next article, I will have you fearing for my sanity…

Electoral Trends #1 – The Fragmentation of the West

December 5, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

Last month’s General Election in The Netherlands was won by a party with less than 17% of the national vote. Dutch voters, politicians and pundits are now discussing what this means for a governing coalition which is likely to take a number of months complete. For myself, the election was yet another data point showing the fragmentation of the electorate in the West is the key trend over the last 40 years. As yet, there is no sign of this trend coming to an end and what the future holds I cannot tell.

**Update 1/10/26 – An updated version of the main chart below can be found at the end of this article**

UK Weather Trends #38 – Autumn 2025

December 3, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

The UK autumn in 2025 was warmer and wetter than usual but not exceptionally so and continues to be consistent with the step change in our autumnal climate seen 25 years ago.

UK Weather Tracker #106 – November 2025

December 3, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

The weather in the UK in November was warmer and wetter than usual but not to an unusual extent.

Pay Gap Case Study #8 – 33 London Councils – We Are One

November 18, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

I am breaking a golden rule of pay gap reporting in this article, I am benchmarking the 33 London Borough Councils on their gender pay gap data!

Before you gasp in horror, let me say straightaway the outcome of this article is complete vindication of this golden rule. Benchmarking of employer pay gap data is statistically worthless. Pay gap data of all kinds is inherently multivariate and cannot be reduced to one number league tables. The story I will tell of the 33 councils of London in 2024 proves this point in spades. In effect, none of the councils have a gender pay gap despite all of them publishing data to the contrary.

UK Weather Tracker #105 – October 2025

November 4, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

Like last month, the weather in the UK in October was unremarkable. I must confess I found myself noticing the cold more than usual but perhaps I was subconsciously noticing the lack of sunshine and the narrow range of temperatures as shown in my refreshed dashboard below?

Pay Gap Data #8 – Where can I find gender pay gap data for 2024?

October 6, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

This post was updated on 6th October 2025. The next update is planned for early January 2026.

The government requires nearly all employers with a headcount of 250 or more on their snapshot date to submit gender pay gap data. All data is available to the public and can be found on the government’s gender pay gap website. I have downloaded this data and created a spreadsheet to present the data in a more user-friendly and visual format.

UK Weather Tracker #104 – September 2025

October 4, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

After the hottest summer on record, the weather in the UK in September was unremarkable. However, my local fishing club has just announced that a lake closed due to low water levels has reopened since water levels are back to normal so the above average rainfall in September has been welcomed in many areas.

Stats Training Materials – Pay Gap Analytics

October 1, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

*** Updated with links B16 and P9, P10 and P11 for 3 presentations I have given recently on gender & ethnicity pay gap reporting. I have also added new sections I & J**

The 5 steps to closing a pay and/or representation gap are –

Define what success looks like i.e. where you want to be in the future
Measure where you are today
Analyse your data to understand why you are where you are today & what the key drivers are of your gaps
Implement actions which move you from where you are today to put you on the path to where you want to be in the future
Control the key drivers to ensure you are on the right track

All steps require the use of statistical thinking and statistical methods. Other skills and processes are also needed but they cannot succeed on their own without the help of statistical thinking.

UK Weather Trends #37 – Summer 2025

September 7, 2025 By Nigel Marriott

The 2025 meteorological summer in the UK was the warmest on record. This came less from heatwaves setting new temperate peaks and more from steady warmth throughout June, July & August. Overall it was sunnier and drier than usual in the UK but not to any significant degree. As a result, whilst the 1st principal component confirms the summer can be regarded as a “good summer”, it was a long way from being an exceptional summer like 1976 & 1995.