As we put the final touches to this special issue we just learned of the re-election of Donald Trump as President of the USA. His campaign was to a significant degree fueled by xenophobic and racist hate, with promises of launching ‘the largest deportation program in American history’ while some of his allies poured vitriol over the inhabitants of Puerto Rico, a US colonial possession. For the Democrats’ part, had Kamala Harris been elected we may have heard a softer tone, but she had also backed the increasing securitisation of the US’ southern border. Moreover, the Democrats active financing and backing of the ongoing genocide in Gaza also cost Harris support.

To say nothing of the UK’s own ‘racist riots’ in July and August of this year, whipped up by far-right agitators, but enabled by the mainstreaming of vitriol directed at migrants, many of them fleeing neo-colonial conflicts in which Britain is an active participant.

Race, racialisation and racism clearly matter and the ‘problem of the colour line’ is as significant to the 21^st century as W E B Dubois presciently predicted it would for the 20^th. As academics and activists, it is incumbent upon us to challenge contemporary racism, and an important component of this is excavating and expunging racism within our own discipline. Given the legacy of statistics and statisticians in transforming race from a social construction to a pseudo-scientific fact, one could argue we have a particular obligation to the work of decolonising.

But this is not simply a question of historical curiosity, there are contemporary forms of data colonialism that to this day play a pernicious role in maintaining social hierarchies in and between the Global South and the coloniser’s heartlands. We hope that this special issue, based on a panel from the 2024 Radstats conference, is the beginning of a much larger conversation.

Bob Jeffery and Sean Demack, Sheffield Hallam University
Steffi Doebler, Lancaster University

Contents of this Issue
In this, relatively short, issue we have two very interesting articles. The first by Chris Tofallis, Thomas Dunk and Neil Spencer from Hertfohttp://journal/issue133rdshire, after a forensic analysis of what MPs should be doing, focuses on constructing a ‘League Table’ of MPs performance in Parliament based on speeches made, written questions submitted and votes attended. The second by Manjinder Jagdev is another forensic examination of how racism permeated the national curricula for primary and secondary schools and how to get rid of it. Because of a an internal mix-up, we have to profusely apologise to both sets of authors, as these articles should have been in RSN 132. Nevertheless, we think that both articles, and especially the first, will have increased interest because of the current chaos in the British government.

Prospects for RSN 134
We are in the very rare position of having two papers already for RSN134 which will come out before the Sheffield Conference in February, one of them following on from the virtual conference that was hosted by the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne on the theme of ‘Taxing Wealth, Reducing Inequality’, held on Saturday 26th February. We- the editors – will be pursuing the other presenters at that conference relentlessly in the next couple of weeks. Our new Review Editor, Irina Motoc, also has several books for review, and is looking for volunteers.

Administrative Issues
Please make sure you have updated your subscription, or make a donation! – by going  to www.radstats.org.uk/membership/ where you can pay by cheque, standing order, PayPal – see p.47.

Editors
Roy CARR-HILL
Sean DEMACK
Review Editor
Irina MOTOC

Contents of this Issue

Following on from the discussions at the London Conference in February 2020, I asked contributors if they would agree to a student converting their power-point presentations into short texts. This has again been partly successful this year. We did manage to get two of the presentations at the 2021 Conference – those of Mike Sandys and Andrei Morgan – converted to text and these are the first two articles in this issue. The third article is an independent contribution by Bache and Burns on Student Loneliness. The final piece is a review by Simeon Scott of two statistical books. View issue 130.

Prospects for RSN 131

We have at least one article promised for RSN 131, but, clearly, we are going to need more and our administrator will put out a call for contributions to the List.

Another proposal for generating material was the relatively recent publication of the third RadStats compendium, Data in Society, which was presented by the books’ editors in 2020.  It is a landmark publication, bringing together many of the crucial issues around the production and use of quantitative information.

The contributors to Data in Society summarise many of the concerns around the accessibility and use of statistics in contemporary society. Examples include the lack of data from banking and financial organisations hides the extent of tax evasion of taxation. Government agencies are reducing the number of data series they make available for public scrutiny. The number of healthcare treatments in Britain provided by private groups is growing steadily.

The book is an eye-opener on the difficulties in holding governments and large organisations to account. Do you agree with the authors’ interpretations?

As the editors acknowledge there are data topics the volume does not cover in detail. These include the use of statistics by legal practitioners, housing and homelessness data and climate change data.

The editors of the RadStats journal have been planning to devote one journal issue to topics raised by Data in Society, and to topics not discussed in the book. Could you write an article for the journal on any of the topics above? Are there are areas of debate missing from Data in Society?

Administrative Issues

The 2022 Conference and AGM will take place on Saturday, 26 February. Radstats has a tentative booking for the day – and probably a bit extra – at the Newcastle Lit & Phil. The Conference will be either in-person OR virtual. If virtual, there would still be preparation and ongoing costs. We would ask for a donation; the suggested amount is £20, however all smaller donations will help cover the costs. Watch for more information soon! To get involved, please contact conf22@radstats.org.uk or the Troika, at troika@radstats.org.uk.

At the 2020 AGM a decision was approved to raise the subscription from £25 to £35 for those wishing to continue to receive print copies (whilst the membership subscription only – with online access – would remain at £25 and £10 for those on low incomes); otherwise they would be taken off the print distribution list.

Make sure you have updated your subscription, and please consider a one-off or regular donation.

See radstats.org.uk/membership where you can pay by cheque, standing order or PayPal.