I *love* this list. Get well soon!
Seb On 23 March 2010 17:11, Francis Davey <[email protected]> wrote: > On 23 March 2010 14:33, Russ Garrett <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> If you just want number of acts, searching by year on >> http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk will tell you how many pieces of >> legislation there were which matched your query (although it will only >> display the first 500). > > And alas only those in force when the database was set up - lots of > repealed legislation will not turn up. Although a surprising amount > does remain if only in small part - for example the Copyright Act 1911 > still exists in 3 substantive sections (albeit one of them gives its > short title). > > You would want to consult a chronological table of statutes to really > check. The only database of statutes- as-passed going back that way is > (a) paid for and (b) the most annoying website I use with any > regularity (Justis) and with the most irritating sales force (I once > explored how much extra I'd have to pay them never to have to speak to > a salesperson again to no useful effect). > > Justis is probably painful to scrape and almost certainly contrary to > whatever agreement one has going with it to do so. > > On the plus side - its so awful that it won't let you search for an > act. It returns all "parts" of an act that satisfy the search > criteria, including the preamble and a title page, so for any year it > would return: total no of sections+2 * no of acts for that year. > > I am *way* too unwell to explore this very far, but to give some > numbers of hits (for specific years): > > 1911: 780 > 1921: 948 > 1931: 635 > 1941: 639 > 1951: 978 > 1961: 1287 > 1971: 2132 > 1981: 2183 > 1991: 2184 > 2001: 2337 > > The 20th century (i.e. using Dionysius Exiguus' origin, so 1900-1999): 146,037 > 2000-2010: 40,222 > > So about 28% of the total of output of primary legislation in the 20th > century. That's a lot but not nearly as fast a growth as one might > imagine - and after all they did have a few wars and things early on > in C20 that might have distracted a little. > > Yes: I'm not counting statutory instruments and rules - I'm not sure > that I can easily do that. But the more recent figures will probably > include Acts of the Scottish Parliament, which may bias things the > other way (easier to produce more legislation when you have more than > one legislature at it). > > Also while acts tended to be shorter in the parts, *sections* tended > to be longer to the point of looking like winners of obfuscated C > contests. > > Justis has records for 211,318 separate bits of "legislation" in the > 20th century, and 65,433 bits in 2000-2010 (where a bit is a section, > preamble, paragraph of schedule, title etc). That will underestimate > the older stuff which was not always passed in a regular way - whereas > *almost* everything now is an SI or SR. > > Conclusion: whoever contacted Seb has been sold a line of nonsense. > >> >> It would be an interesting site to scrape, although the legislation >> itself is all Crown Copyright. > > I did write a scraper (which is somewhere around) for the old opsi > site, that managed a great deal of legislation and tried to parse it > down to the section etc level. It was a ghastly thing because the html > produced was truly dreadful, inconsistent and in some cases not even > vaguely html. I mentioned this to a girl working for opsi last year > and she rolled her eyes at the prospect. > > I'd quite like to see something like that done (or do it) for what we > have now but I'm waiting while opsi people do the work they are doing. > An increasing amount of stuff is going to be available in sensible > formats without us having to scrape anything. Seems sensible to see > what it is. > > -- > Francis Davey > -- skype: seb.bacon mobile: 07790 939224 land: 020 8123 9473 _______________________________________________ Mailing list [email protected] Archive, settings, or unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public
