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15 February 2014 |
British politics |
Heraldry Location photography |
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Veteran II with Extended confirmed access |
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Kingston Upon Hull |
British |
University of Hull |
Personal [4] Project [5] |
I have been on Wikipedia for the last seven years, making approximately five edits per day (on a broad average). Initially my work was mainly on the honorifics and post-nominals of British officeholders. Later I branched out to uploading images for pages without them, and recently I have created a few armorial list articles.
Another page of mine can be found on Wikimedia Commons. [6]
Though my career path has been aimed towards the formal and natural sciences, my edits to this encyclopedia have generally avoided pages on those topics as I do not consider myself to have reached the necessary level of expertise for making contributions on those topics which would not be instantly reverted. Instead my edits have focused on my side hobby - British officeholders.
I have made many hundreds of small edits to the biographies of British politicians, especially the infoboxes at the top and succession boxes at the bottom. I have been keen to make sure that the honorific prefixes (mostly the presence or absence of The Right Honourable) and suffixes (MP, PC, AM, MLA, MEP, MSP) were accurate. Later I branched out to expanding the infoboxes themselves - adding offices previously not mentioned - and finally to creating whole new infoboxes from scratch in articles which previously lacked them. I was especially active during the United Kingdom general election, 2015, when I dedicated a great effort to remove the MP post-nominals from every politician who had them immediately following the dissolution of the 55th parliament. On election night, I of course had to go around putting most of them back again.
I had to repeat this effort during the United Kingdom local elections, 2016 when the Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales and Northern Ireland Assembly all dissolved and a great many pages had to be modified to remove suggestions of incumbency.
My file uploads are increasingly numerous. I made several attempts to find a usable picture of Betty Boothroyd and have found my attempts to illustrate other articles ended in vain. Some of my other uploads have included a portrait of Philip Norton and a diagram of the empty Northern Ireland Assembly during its 2017 election period.
On occasion I have also turned to heraldry (a topic which tends to converge with politics quite frequently). I am well below the league of the great Sodacan but I have had a few minor achievements (Ha!) in this field. The summer of 2018 was a particularly productive period, with more than a hundred new emblazonments.
My Ideas Which Succeeded
Pages
Templates
- By-elections caused by the Speaker's resignation
- Duchesses of Gloucester
- Duchesses of Kent
- First House of Lancaster
- Labour Party (UK) leadership election, 2020
- Second House of Lancaster
- The Independent Group
Policies
Putting collapsible sections into the infoboxes of politicians who held a large number of discrete offices - such as Clement Attlee, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Ken Clarke, Harriet Harman and Theresa May.
My Ideas Which Failed
Pages
- Duchess of Gloucester [[7]]
- Armorial of Speakers of the Canadian House of Commons
Templates (backups saved in navbox below)
- British life barons
- Husbands of British Princesses
Policies
Putting the names of senior ministers in the infoboxes of their junior ministers [[8]], and the names of real ministers in the infoboxes of their corresponding shadow ministers [[9]].
Illustration
It is always better for an article to have a likeness of its subject than not to have it. Obviously a clear high-resolution photograph is best, and preferably from the time of the events for which the subject is most notable. The image should be placed in the infobox or, for short articles, on the top line of code. In particular:
- Where a photograph does not exist of a person, it is acceptable to substitute a painting or drawing - even a satirical caricature - providing the likeness is good.
- When a person is deceased and no free images apparently exist it should be acceptable to add a non-free image through fair use, and editors should not have to wait for arbitrary time periods or jump through onerous administrative hoops to justify this.
- Free images of fictional characters from even remotely recent media obviously cannot exist, so fair use of one image in each respective article (or even sub-article) should be granted as a matter of course. For literary characters it is advisable to use images from film and television adaptations even if those are not the main focus of the article, for it is easier to justify fair use on those images than on book illustrations.
- If a phenomenon is strongly associated with a particular image then that image - in minimal necessary resolution - should be granted fair use on its article.
- In the absence of any likeness, it is acceptable to use a person's arms, cognizance or other recognisable insignia as the primary image.
- If no likeness or insignia can be found at all, it is acceptable to use a photograph of a person's grave, but pointless to use one of their alma mater.
- Where several photographs are available for the same person, a choice should be made to use the one that is the most relevant to each particular usage.
Honorifics
- Styles such as The Honourable, His Excellency, or military ranks should be placed in |honorific_prefix for the infobox but not included in the lede.
- Post-nominals should be listed with commas in the lede but without in |honorific_suffix.
- The titles of Sir and Dame should be treated as part of the name, appearing as the first word in the lede (bold along with the rest of the name) and at |name in the infobox.
- All peers below the degree of marquess have the honorific style of The Right Honourable regardless of privy council membership.
- The post-nominal letters PC should be used for all peers, regardless of degree, who are also privy council members. For commoners they should be used in the lede but not the infobox.
- The post-nominal letters Kt to be used for all peers - and even courtesy peers - who are also knights bachelor.
- Articles for living people should, in both lede and infobox, use their current styles and titles. Articles for dead people should use the styles and titles that applied in their last moment of life.
- References to a person in succession boxes and historical accounts should refer to them by the identity which they had at the time.
Officeholders
- The period for which an MP, MSP, AM, MLA or similar represented a particular constituency should be defined as beginning when the result was declared for their first election - which in most cases is one day after polling - and ending when the legislative body dissolved for the election at which they retired or were defeated.
- If a person has held a large number of offices, their infobox should be split into collapsible sections in order to prevent it running down the whole page.
Navboxes
To be encouraged in most circumstances.
See my main Heraldry gallery.
Notables who knew me
Professor Charles Read was a loose family acquaintance, sharing my father's interest in sailing. As such he visited our house on several occasions in the early half of this decade. In the spring and summer of 2015 he began to incorporate me into his work when he helped me to revise for AS-Level Decision Mathematics, including the Route inspection problem, Game theory, Simplex and the Hungarian algorithm. While on the surface this was to help me pass my examinations with the expected grades, there was also a benefit for himself, for the field of Decision Mathematics was relatively new and Charles had not yet encountered students who had learned it. By tutoring me he was also training himself to work with his next cohort.
Unfortunately he never had the opportunity to use his newly-developed expertise as that August, before the new academic year started, Charles collapsed while jogging in Winnipeg. He was found to have suffered a fatal heart attack. My parents attended his memorial service at the University of Leeds. In 2016 I applied to study there and in November I attended a UCAS day at their School of Chemistry. My father used the occasion to collect some boat components which Charles had left.
Though I am so far yet to attain notability in my own right, I do have one, rather depressing claim to fame: I was Professor Read's last ever pupil. I expect that later in my academic career I will be able to meet many other leading figures in their fields, so I can only hope that Charles' demise is not repeated, lest I be responsible for killing off all of Britain's finest - although it would open up space for me at the top...
Notables who met me once
Name | Portrait | Distinction | What happened |
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The Most Revd. & Rt. Hon. Dr. John Sentamu | | Archbishop of York | His Grace gave an interview to a group of students as part of his pilgrimage of prayer. We were told of how God must make himself known, how the name of marriage would not solve the problems faced by sexual minorities, how religion is so often contrived as an excuse for war and how the traditions of the first century prevented the consecration of women in the twentieth. |
Diana Johnson | | Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull North (Labour) | The honourable lady hosted a talk about youth engagement in politics and the EU referendum. Upon learning that I intended to study Chemistry at university she remarked that I could be the next Margaret Thatcher. She quickly caught herself and clarified that she was not calling me a Conservative. During the 2017 election she appeared at a debate with BBC Look North. |
The Right Honourable Alan Johnson | | Member of Parliament for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Labour) | The right honourable gentleman argued for the Remain side in a debate about the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, 2016, hosted by ITV Calendar. He said that Brexit was not the patriotic British option and that the EU had been a safeguard against war on the continent. He reminded me to watch his appearance on This Week from the night before. |
Mike Hookem | | Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber (UKIP) | Mr Hookem argued for the Leave side in the aforementioned debate. He dismissed the romanticism of "Remanians" and warned students about the dangers of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. In 2017 he contested the Great Grimsby constituency and appeared on the panel at a BBC Look North debate. |
The Right Honourable Professor The Lord Norton of Louth | | Professor of Government at the University of Hull Member of the Lords Temporal (Conservative) | The noble lord gave a presentation entitled "What is Politics?" in which he explained the importance of politics and British democracy as well as describing his role in the House of Lords. After the session had finished, he fulfilled my request for a photograph of him which could be used in his own Wikipedia page. At university I attended several talks and gatherings put on by him. |
Doctor Michael Foale | | Astronaut and astrophysicist | Dr. Foale gave a presentation to the college about his career path to NASA and his experience in space. The speech was interrupted by a fire alarm, so we concluded his encounter in the car park. He told me that space travel would really kick off once valuable commodities could be mined from other planets. |
Peter Levy | | Television presenter | Mr. Levy hosted a debate at St' Mary's College with four parliamentary candidates in the United Kingdom general election, 2017. He claimed we were the best audience he'd ever had. |
Victoria Atkins | | Parliamentary candidate for Louth & Horncastle (Conservative) | Mrs. Atkins represented her party at the debate. She put forward Theresa May as an asset in European negotiations and praised her courage in tackling the problems of social care funding. She said she identified with the Conservatives for their support of low taxation and free markets. |
Professor Susan Lea | | Vice-Chancellor, University of Hull | Professor Lea made a brief appearance at a congregation of school and faculty representatives in the student union building. |
James Graham | | Playwright | Mr Graham gave an "Inspired in Hull" lecture about his theatre and televisual career. |
Professor Peter Cameron | | Professor of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews | Gave the 2018 Venn Lecture at the University of Hull, talking about the commutative law, imaginary numbers and public keys. |
The Right Honourable Dominic Grieve | | Attorney General for England and Wales 2010-2014 | Gave the annual law and politics lecture to speak about Britain's history of human rights legislation. |
Dill Faulkes | | Philanthropist | Gave an "Inspired in Hull" lecture about encouraging young people to take up work in the sciences. |
Professor Danny Dorling | | Social geographer | Gave a talk on "What Brexit Tells Us About The British" showing how demographics of the EU referendum had been misinterpreted and how the United Kingdom was in many ways an economic outlier among European states. |
Andy Haldane FAcSS | | Chief Economist of the Bank of England | Gave a talk about the history of economic growth and the future of employment. |
Cllr Lia Nici | | MP for Great Grimsby At the time councillor for Scartho, North East Lincolnshire. | Negotiated with my father to make a documentary series. |
Notables whom I've seen in person
At GCSE Science Live in 2013, I watched presentations by:
- Doctor Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE, on challenges of designing a space toilet.
- Professor Andrea Sella, on how some chemical reactions are like skiing.
- The Right Honourable Professor The Lord Winston FMedSci FRSA FRCP FRCOG FRSB FREng, on getting women pregnant.
- Professor Jim Al-Khalili OBE, though I do not recall his subject.
- Professor Steve Jones, on why only humans could not live without cooking.
Later that year I got a wave from His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales during one of his tours. I'm sure I also brushed past Graham Stuart MP at said event. In November 2017, I got within two metres of Her Majesty The Queen after she opened the Allam Medical Building. In March 2020, Professor Ard Louis presented a public lecture Can Science Explain Everything?.
Notables who follow my blog
- Tim Miller of Word & Silence, since 23 April 2019
Notables I saw on Zoom
- Canon Joseph Morrow, Lyon King of Arms, at several conferences beginning 27 February 2021. On 30 May I finally spoke to him (from my bed, at 2am) to ask about the length of the blazon for the Principal Presbyterian Theological College - which wanted the supporters to represent different races, sexes and academic disciplines. He replied that he had left it short by just saying "representative of inclusion".
- Alexandra Fol also attended the latter conference, though we did not directly interact.
Notables who wrote to me
- The Honourable Dame Mary Anne Morrison, Woman of the Bedchamber, sent me a letter on 28 May 2021 thanking me for sharing my grandmother's anecdotes about Philip, Duke of Edinburgh in Malta in the late 1940s.