I took the decision to avoid writing about opinion polls etc in the run-up to the local elections. Then the snap election was quickly called, meaning that it’s been several months since I put words on the screen here. I think that the quality of the opinion polls isn’t that bad, but I think that the pollsters are really struggling to capture the changes in who will turn out. I am sure that there will be a more formal reflection by the polling companies on this over the next few weeks.
In that time, I’ve been trying to buy a house… which hopefully will be completed in July. Dealing with estate agents etc takes a lot of time! In other news, I attended Bungay Balls Up this year, as it nicely fell just after the exam period at UWE. This consisted of a week in a field full of buttercups, glorious sunshine, a trip to the seaside, a dip in a river (wild swimming is great if the water quality is up to it); some G&T’s, a pizza night and generally very little juggling with a lot of socialising with old and new friends.
I’ve also been working with our Equality and Diversity team to try to make the production of statistics and graphs for Athena Swan Self-Assessment Teams a lot more efficient.
And to top it off, I’m involved in a project that means that we will be onsite in Glastonbury next week. Hopefully I’ll have some interesting stuff from that. UWE are involved in a number of projects that are trying to improve the long-term environmental impact of the festival; specifically relating to waste management and recycling; processing urine into power and also power management for the production areas (with an aim to reduce the amount of diesel being used onsite to power generators). I’ll be there as a team leader supervising a number of students, none of whom are mathematics or statistics students, but there is definitely room for some in future (but obviously not next year). The current weather forecast is for a dry Glastonbury. cooling off over the next few days.
To be decided 