David Marsden
Writing, investigating, building things and occasionally creating a ruckus.
I write about local democracy where I live in west London, build odd little web projects, make music and restore my old band Hovercraft's lost tapes, and manage a one hundred-strong community of pretend football managers.
My own little world.
01
Reporting & civic work
Independent reporting from Southall and new tools for following how decisions get made across Ealing.
Independent reporting & investigations
Southall Stories
Local democracy, planning, environment, housing and accountability — including the things people would rather you didn’t notice.
Gathering what’s happening across Ealing — and who’s deciding it — in one public, connected civic record.
Incubated by Southall Stories.
Personal writing
Blog
Notes, observations, photos, family life, music, politics, technology and whatever else has caught my attention.
02
Football worlds
I’ve been running online multiplayer football-management communities for many years. These are the worlds, archives and tools that have grown out of them.
Community
Top 100
The original multiplayer Soccer Manager community: five divisions, promotion, relegation, cups, rivalries, statistics and an alarming amount of history.
Community
Top 100 Regen
A second-generation multiplayer football world and community.
In development
The Beautiful Game
A new multiplayer online football-management game.
Data
The Pink Final
The companion club and player database for The Beautiful Game.
From the archive
One Jimmy Carter
My old football blog. Kept online largely because the internet ought to remember things.
03
Music
Punk music · 1995 → now
HOVERCRAFT
A retro-space punk rhythm and blues band formed in Grimsby in the mid-1990s, resurrected thirty years later with songs recreated from dusty old cassette tapes, and hazy memories.
04
Things I build
Human-first publishing tools
Helping Hand
A family of small publishing tools for getting material from paper, tablets and local files onto the web with as little machinery in the way as possible.
05
Now
A few changing glimpses from around the site.
Selected writing
Perceval House W5: Where Local Democracy In Ealing Goes To Die
The Children’s Centres Crusade Chapter 1: The Art of Political Contradiction In the London Borough of Ealing, our elected representatives have perfected something remarkable: the …
Favourite photo See the showcase →
