Posts by David Bradbury

The ONS reaches its silver jubilee

Categories: Office for National Statistics, ONS

Created in April 1996, the Office for National Statistics is marking its 25th birthday this month. The anniversary comes after a year in which our statistics have featured in the media and public debate as never before. Here David Bradbury, who joined the organisation soon after its formation, explains how the foundations for our ability to deliver reliable and timely data at a time of national crisis were laid over previous decades.

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The wait is over!

Categories: ONS
Image shows the cover of the book with a quote from Ian Diamond

Today marks the publication of The Official History of Britain: our story in numbers as told by the Office for National Statistics. Described by the Sunday Times as an “early stocking-filler” and “future quizzers’ manual”, the book celebrates the richness and detail of ONS and Census statistics down the years. In this post ONS co-author David Bradbury tells readers what to expect.   

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Valuing John Harrison’s work – how much is that £20,000 longitude reward worth today?

Categories: ONS

John Harrison is famous for inventing the marine chronometer as his answer to the problem of finding longitude at sea, for which Parliament had in 1714 offered a reward of £20,000. One of the odder questions with which the ONS media relations office was recently faced was how much that would be worth today?

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