Chart hit Forget the Tory leadership contest. Forget Boris Johnson’s last days in Number 10 (/at Chequers/on whichever holiday he happens to be on this week). Forget Labour’s picket line problems. This is the political inside read you’ve all been waiting for: the story of the Institute for Government ministerial resignation chart…

Summer 2022. A much-covered chart hit that was suddenly everywhere again, revived by a binge-watchable boxset drama. Not Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, given a new audience by Netflix’s Stranger Things, but the Institute for Government’s chart of ministerial resignations outside reshuffles. …

Summery It’s been a relentless few weeks, heat-wise, work-wise and otherwise, so the thing I wanted to have written — so this wouldn’t be yet another ‘here are some links and things I’ve been up to’ intro — still hasn’t been written. So let’s get straight to some links and things…

Extra bite Next week’s extra special bonus Data Bites should be a good one — join us (in person or virtually) for the launch of a new report by the Legal Education Foundation and Ipsos on attitudes towards court data use, with some further expert contributions on justice data. …

Them’s the breaks Sometimes a picture really can be worth a thousand words: A good stat can go a long way, too. Keep up with the latest from Tim, Philip and team IfG (with the odd bit from me) over on the live blog. …

Bits It was inevitable that the government would publish its response to its Data: A new direction consultation shortly after I pressed send on this newsletter a couple of weeks ago. (Not the Data Reform Bill itself, as some briefing had it — date to be determined.) …

Keep the FOIA burning Four months after asking the Cabinet Office for a list of Cabinet committees and their membership, I finally received an answer. For those of you following the saga, you will be shocked — SHOCKED — to learn that answer was no. My Twitter thread details the whole thing, including the…

Learning to count They say the first rule of politics is learning to count. This usually refers to whether you have enough votes to get something through, and is more difficult than it might appear — the only vote you can ever be absolutely certain of is your own. But it’s also surprisingly…

Open chart surgery I’ve written a few times about people not using 100% bar charts when they should really think about using 100% bar charts. This week, let’s take a look at the opposite — when using a normal bar chart may have been the better choice. I happened to spot this example…