Jonathon Wardman

Psephology: if Calder Valley had voted for an MP in 2014

Despite a swing to the Labour Party, if the pattern of voting seen when comparing the 2010 local election results (a poll taken at the same time as the last UK general election) to the 2014 local election results is applied to the general election results, the bellweather seat of Calder Valley would remain a Conservative seat.

There are of course a number of caveats when making a comparison of this type, but it seems that had the general election been held on 22nd May 2014 then the Conservative candidate would have been returned to parliament, albeit with a substantially reduced majority. Additionally, it appears that all of the indicators agree with this projected outcome. What follows is my long-form statistical analysis of the situation. The calculations from which I draw my conclusions are available for download at the end. If you do not want to read the full analysis then I suggest you jump straight to the conclusion.

Before I get into the numbers, a little background on the UK Parliament constituency of Calder Valley. Created in 1983 the constituency has historically been a bellweather seat, albeit only having seen three MPs in this time. [read more]

Purely Creative and WeWanna: Some Clarifcation

About a year ago I wrote a blog post summing up the results of my experiment to claim a couple of prizes from a Purely Creative scratchcard — the type given away in newspapers and magazines — which I had found discarded on a train. The prizes I won were both ‘experiences’ to be provided through a company called WeWanna.

Over the last year this blog post has had quite a number of comments from other people who had gone through the claim process (either through the post or via the telephone or text route), and had also received experience prizes. Quite a number of these comments said how happy people were with the experiences; from the river cruise and hair makeover experience which I won, to the afternoon tea and balloon rides. However in the last month or so the comments have taken a turn for the worse.

There have been a number of people who have commented recently on an apparent dispute between Purely Creative and WeWanna which has lead to them being told their experiences have been cancelled. Some say that they have been told by both companies that the other is at fault, which has left them feeling they have nowhere to turn. [read more]

Tesco vs Morrisons: Price Comparison

Back in October last year a new Morrisons supermarket opened as part of the Westgate development in Aldershot about three minutes away from my house. Two minutes further down the road is the town’s big Tesco supermarket. With so little between the two shops, I wondered how I could best choose which one I should shop at. I decided that, because they both sell roughly the same things, the only deciding factor for normal shopping (ignoring things like Tesco being 24-hour while Morrisons is not) is price. So I decided to do a comparison.

I know there are plenty of places which do a standard shopping basket comparison and the supermarkets themselves even track each others prices, but given my shopping is generally pretty fixed (and probably slightly unusual) I decided to put together a shopping list which best reflected my own weekly shop. Most items are standard weekly items, while one or two are less frequent (but still regular) purchases. There are a few notes and places where the shops differ, and those are highlighted in the table below along with the prices. Where I have a preference based on factors other than price the favorite’s price is displayed in italics: [read more]

Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013

As I look out of the window and the clouds below us, and the mountains below that, I’m minded to think that saying goodbye to Romania and hello again to England bears a similarity to saying goodbye to the previous year and hello to the next.  Alright, so we did that just under a week ago officially, and of course the flight is from one known to another, but you see what I’m getting at. I would like to say something poetic like how flying makes me reflect on my life — so far above the world, and so personally helpless, that my thoughts are free to turn to how I can improve the things I do have control over — but in honesty that’s not true (besides, with so many screaming kids on this flight, it’s hardly conducive to poetic thinking). It does, however, give me time to write.

I didn’t go into 2012 with big plans which I can reflect on at the end of the year. I thought, perhaps, I might have changed jobs, but in the end things didn’t pan out that way; I suppose, in honesty, I didn’t try all that hard so perhaps the whole situation wasn’t as bad as I thought it might have been at some points in the year. I didn’t think I’d come so close to being upgraded as part of the British Airways Executive club; although I didn’t make it, one economy to business class upgrade on my last flight of the year would have tipped the balance. [read more]

Westgate Aldershot: Spot the Difference

The long awaited Westgate ‘leisure complex‘ in Aldershot officially opened on the 26th October 2012. For the first weekend the only thing open in the complex was the cinema, with Morrisons opening the Monday after.

Having watched the development being built just over the road from where I live and reviewed the planning applications in some detail I was curious to see how close the final product to the promotional pictures actually were. So I went out on the 4th November to try to reproduce the concept images in real life. I’ll add a few updates as the restaurant units fill up over the next couple of months.

See if you can spot the difference…

[read more]

Train Tickets Explained

Read the update to this post to cover the new style (2015/2016) tickets.

Since mid 2008 I have been saving my train tickets. In the last year or so I have collected them together into a database. That meant I had to spend some time working out the data you get on a UK train ticket:

[read more]

London 2012: Photos and Chocolate (and a little money)

The year 2012 saw the Olympics heading for London for the third time in modern Olympic history. For two weeks London was taken over by the games and all the infrastructure which comes with it. Not living in London meant the games didn’t affect me directly (except with the TV schedules, and knowing that the Team GB Synchronised Swimming team train the the pool just down the road), but I still felt that I wanted to at least have a little to do with it — after all I can’t imagine London, or anywhere else in the UK, being awarded the games again in my lifetime. So, last Saturday, I headed into the capital with my cameras to see what I could find down on The Mall where the walk races were taking place.

I took the tube from Waterloo to Green Park and walked down through the park to the exit by Constitution Hill. I spent quite a few hours around the course, snapping away at what was going on before hand, before finally taking a place at the barrier right outside of Buckingham Palace, just in front of the misting shower, to watch the race. [read more]

My Winnings: Not Quite a Million

Update: following a string of comments relating to the relationship between Purely Creative and WeWanna, I’ve asked both parties for a comment. You can read about that in this blog post.

Way back in February I wrote about my attempt to win £1 million from a scratchcard I found on the train without going through the expensive claim lines the try to get you to call. I also wrote about the possible prizes and contemplated what I might do if I won any of them. On the 30th February, only 9 days after I sent off my final claim, I got a letter in the post giving me that all-important information: what I had won.

There were a couple of bumps along the road, such as never getting a postal response to my request for a claim number, and it was a big long-winded, but all in all the process of claiming my prizes by post was remarkably simple. It had also only cost me £1.64 — two first class stamps and two second class stamps — for each prize. (As I said a moment ago I probably didn’t even need to do the first stage, I actually ended up getting my claim number from Purely Creative via email support.) There was one other curiosity about stamps in the final round of the postal back and forth: then never actually used the stamps I sent to them. [read more]

Sunday Bike Ride to Fleet

It’s rained a lot this year so far. While I often ride for work on my bike in the rain, it doesn’t make me very keen on going out at the weekend just for fun. This weekend was a little different,so I took the chance on Sunday afternoon to go out on my first ride of the season. It wasn’t the most challenging ride I have ever done, but it was nice to ease myself back into the habit.

I set off and headed over the MoD land to the Basingstoke canal and along to Fleet. [read more]

The Possible Prizes

With the excitement building to find out what prizes I have won on the Purely Creative “Win A Million” scratch cards, I thought I’d do some research into what the prizes actually are.

I have two winning scratch cards; one with two matching symbols, and one with three. The scratch cards list all the possible prizes, so I should be guaranteed to win one prize from both of the following lists.

Two matching symbols:

• £8,000 – cash prizes are pretty straight forward. The T&Cs on the back of the cards say cash prizes are awarded as a cheques. 1 of these available.
• £5,000 – again a cheque, would cover the Canon 5D MkIII I want nicely. 2 available.
• Family break in Orlando – the back of the card says this prize “includes return flights from UK mainland + 14 nights hotel accomm. for 2 adults and 2 childen.” There is no information about what hotel it would be. [read more]