It was no surprise to hear Radio Five cover the AV debate this morning (starts at 7:10 am – one hour in probably). It was surprising to me though to hear what a poor, destructive and destroyable argument that Matthew Elliott of the No Campaign put forward. If my memory Read more…
Last Friday Sophia and I finally made it to Oxford to have dinner with Dr Mark Roberts, winner of the Fluorine Zone in June 2010. Mark and his girlfriend Elsa had joined us for our post-event party in Bristol. As a way of saying thank you for a night out Read more…
We're hiring again. We're calling the job Project Executive and the role is to make our projects happen and to help us improve them. We want someone who is organised, very web-literate, passionate about democracy and engagement. Someone who is curious and pays attention to detail (curious and attentive enough Read more…
Throughout the Science is Vital campaign I was aware that whilst we were fighting to retain science funding, no-one really had an accurate map of current funding. We managed fine because we concentrated on funding through BIS and that was reasonably clear. If we had to enter into a wider conversation Read more…
According to the IPSA site (no deep-linking so click on News) Sir Ian Kennedy has decided not to proactively publish the receipts for MP expenses. He says that IPSA will not be publishing receipts proactively –the cost of preparing tens of thousands of receipts for publication would be more than Read more…
Last Thursday was exactly a year since Sophia and I presented our plans for I'm a Scientist to the Society Award Grants Committee at the lovely Wellcome Trust. It felt appropriate that exactly 365 days (almost to the minute) we should start a presentation at the Science Council about how Read more…
On the afternoon of September 8th Dr Jenny Rohn set something off that has developed into something beyond her expectations. The Science Is Vital campaign has gone from 0-35,000 supporters in a very short time with almost zero resources. Richard Grant and I have tried to give you some of Read more…
A couple of months ago I wrote how I was disappointed about the lack of ambition in the science communication world. Things move quickly. First the ScienceIsVital campaign has emerged and I've been lucky enough to be able to help and advise on that. The second thing is that the Read more…
We’re looking for an admin assistant, ideally for the next four weeks, to work on I’m a Councillor, Get me out of Here! You would be overseeing part of our (innovative! groundbreaking!) online event where teenagers talk to real live councillors. You can find out more about the event on Read more…
Last Saturday I listened to Evan Harris talk about some failures, in his keynote at the Science Online London conference. He wasn’t trying to be negative, just making very valid points about the complexities and subtleties of changing government policy. Two particular gems stood out: Simon Singh failed paradoxically because Read more…