A first step towards freeing London’s data

Personally I prefer http://data.london.gov.uk/datafiles/health/alcohol-indicator... and its amazing <Persons_aged_under_18_years_admitted_to_hospital_with_alcohol_specific_conditions_Crude_Rate_per_100000_population_Numbers_-_2005-2006_to_2007-2008> element.

But, as their title suggests, this is a first step.

I noticed this too. As a Londoner, I am pretty excited by this release of data, but, seriously, could they not use attributes for things like the year?!

you could send them a tweet http://twitter.com/londondatastore and ask them to fix it

I've sent them a couple of bugs / broken links and they've fixed & replied within a few minutes.

edit: they've just tweeted about the xml structure so hopefully will sort it out soon.

There's also things like this: http://data.london.gov.uk/datafiles/crime-community-safety/a...

  <Ward_Code>00AAFB</Ward_Code>
  <Ward_Name>Aldgate</Ward_Name>
  <District_Code>00AA</District_Code>
  <District_Name>City of London</District_Name>
  <Count_12-2007/>
  <Count_1-2008/>
  <Count_2-2008/>
  <Count_3-2008/>
  <Count_4-2008/>
  <Count_5-2008/>
  <Count_6-2008/>

So... is that zero (a safe area) or no data (an unknown quantity)?

It is good that mobiles do not work in the tube, as real-time position information is a security concern.

I did expect him to do a decent job, precisely because everyone was expecting him to be useless, and I've come to realise that the world tends to mess you about that way. Although I'm not a London resident, so I didn't get to vote on him, nor am I (directly) affected by things he does.

It's interesting to see the difference in terms of corporate culture. Ken Livingstone saw himself as hugely important, he would fly his entourage (always first class) to Latin America and sign "treaties" with foreign governments when he should have been, I dunno, running London like he was elected to do. He was completely out of touch, like the CEO of a huge company that's lost it's way. Like the Detroit automakers flying a private jet to DC to ask for a bailout from the taxpayer.

Boris doesn't make a fuss, he flies in cattle class, he rides his bike around the city (and around city hall!) and always seems to be in a good mood, and he gets stuff done at an incredible rate, precisely because he's not spending all his time making sure everyone knows how important he is. He's the startup mayor.