Cookies
Websites sometimes place small data files on your computer. These are known as cookies. Most websites do this.
They improve things by:
- remembering settings, so you don’t have to keep re-entering them whenever you visit a new page
- remembering information you’ve given so you don’t need to keep entering it
- measuring how you use the website so we can make sure it meets your needs
Our cookies aren’t used to identify you personally. They’re just here to make the site work better for you. Indeed, you can manage and/or delete these small files as you wish.
To learn more about cookies and how to manage them, visit AboutCookies.org. Or please read on to find out more about how and where we use cookies.
How we use cookies
We use cookies in several places – we have listed each of them below with more details about why we use them and how long they will last.
Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)
We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting its users’ needs and to understand how we could do it better.
Google Analytics stores information about what pages you visit, how long you are on the site, how you got here and what you click on. We do not collect or store your personal information (e.g. your name or address) so this information cannot be used to identify who you are. We do not allow Google to use or share our analytics data.
The following cookies are set by Google Analytics:
| Cookie | Purpose | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| _ga | This randomly generated number is used to determine unique visitors to our site | Expires when you close your browser |
| _gid | This randomly generated number is used to determine unique visitors to our site | Expires when you close your browser |
| _gat | Used to throttle rate of requests to Google Analytics - contains no Personally Identifiable Information | Expires when you close your browser |
You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies by visiting this page on Google.
Third-party cookies
Some functionality on the website is provided by third-party servers. At time of publication, the only third-party cookie in use is from Disqus, which provides the commenting functionality on each page. For more information, click here