This year only, garden gnomes are allowed at the Chelsea Flower Show. Some other places to see them:

Germany. The home of the gnome, where the first batch were manufactured in 1841, has an estimated 25 million.

European Gnome Sanctuary, Barga, Italy. A town whose parks and gardens have become a dumping ground for stolen gnomes, promoted by an underground Gnome Liberation Front.

Bed of Wast Water, Cumbria. In 2005 the North West Police Underwater Search Unit removed a gnome on the lake bed blamed for luring several inexperienced divers to their deaths. More gnomes promptly appeared — this time below the depth limit at which police divers work.

Taxing calculations

David Cameron wrote to British dependencies asking for more help fighting tax avoidance. How well do tax havens balance their budgets?

Space nations

The government is to spend £16 million sending a British astronaut to the International Space Station. Number of people sent to space by nationality:

Unwedded bliss

Some statistics on civil partnerships.
Mean age: 40.1 (men) and 38.3 (women)
Total partnerships since 2005: 53,417
2.2% of male and 4.6% of female civil partnerships have been dissolved

Source: ONS

The post 25 May 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

A bill for an in-out referendum on the EU seems doomed to be killed off by a ‘filibuster’ — a campaign by opponents to keep on talking until it runs
out of time.

— The filibuster is often assumed to be an invention of Westminster, yet its first recorded use was in the Roman senate in 60 BC, by Cato the Younger against an attempt by private contractors to renegotiate deals for government work.

— The publicani were businessmen who bid for the right to collect taxes in the provinces on behalf of Rome. Many, however, got their sums wrong and were losing money. Cato was having none of it, and kept on killing off debates on the subject for months until they backed down.

Little platoons

Lord Young championed the role of small businesses in creating jobs. Is it small or large businesses who have created the most jobs over the past decade?
 
TOTAL EMPLOYMENT BY SIZE OF BUSINESS

Source: ONS

Part-timers

Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce were released from prison after serving eight weeks of their eight-month sentences for perverting the course of justice. How much of their sentences do prisoners generally serve?
 
% served by length of sentence

Source: Ministry of Justice

Too unlimited?

Germany’s Social Democrats hurriedly retracted a proposal to introduce a 75mph motorway speed limit; at present, half the network is without a ‘hard’ speed limit. On UK motorways, by contrast, there is a speed limit of 70mph. England versus Germany in motorway safety:

Source: OECD

The post 18 May 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

Lord Lawson accused Nick Clegg of talking ‘poppycock’ on Europe. What are we really saying when we accuse people of talking nonsense?
Poppycock From old Dutch word for ‘soft dung’.
Codswallop Unknown, but said by some to come from a non-alcoholic beer (or ‘wallop’) brewed by Hiram Codd in the 19th century.
Balderdash Unknown, but already in use in 17th century as a term for a poorly mixed cocktail of drinks.
Bunkum From Buncombe County, North Carolina, on whose behalf Felix Walker made a poorly delivered speech in the House of Representatives in 1820.

Class divide

Lord Winston said he prefers to employ people with upper second-class degrees than with first-class degrees. Does getting a first help your career?
Compared with someone with two A-levels:
— A graduate with a first is 2.8% more likely to be employed and will earn, on average, an extra £143,997 in their career.
— A graduate with an upper second is 4.4% more likely to be employed and will earn £127,777 more in their career.
— A graduate with a lower second is 3.2% more likely to be employed and will earn £79,755 more in their career.
Source: London Economics

Weather eye

Most of Britain enjoyed a sunny bank holiday. Has the weather in London been particularly bad on the May Day bank holiday over the past decade?

Source: weather online

Dangerous childhoods

A media executive and his daughter were killed, and other members of the family seriously injured, after being thrown off their speedboat in a Cornish estuary, then struck by the craft. How is a child’s risk of accidental death related to social class?

Source: Unicef

The post 11 May 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

Dots on the map

An Edinburgh man is planning to stay 60 days on Rockall, a rocky island in the Atlantic 200 miles off the Western Isles — the longest-ever stay. Rockall was claimed for the United Kingdom in 1955, but it is far from our remotest colonial possession. Other islands include:

Oeno A 120-acre island set within a three-mile-wide atoll in the Pacific 89 miles northwest of Pitcairn. It is known as the place Pitcairners go when they want to get away from it all. And unlike Rockall, it has a tap.

Ducie Island For those who find Oeno too busy, there is always Ducie Island, a 1.5 square mile island 290 miles east of Pitcairn, discovered during an expedition to capture the mutineers from HMS Bounty.

Inaccessible Island Luxurious in vegetation compared with Rockall, it is nonetheless more remote — lying in the South Atlantic 28 miles south-west of Tristan de Cunha.

Gough Island More remote still is Gough Island, which lies 245 miles south-east of Tristan de Cunha. It does, however, have an inhabited weather station.

The European Commission has proposed an experimental ban on three types of neonicotinoids, a class of pesticide, in an attempt to reverse a decline in bee populations. Some other suggested causes of bee declines in Europe and North America:

— Varroa mite; wet summers (National Bee Unit, UK)
— Starvation; hive beetles (Pennsylvania State University)
— Coumaphos and Fluvalinate, two pesticides used to control varroa mite
(Washington State University)
— Israel acute paralysis virus (University of Guelph, Canada)
— Nosema ceranae, a fungus (Centro Apicola Regional, Guadalajara)
— Combination of Nosema ceranae and IIV6 virus (University of Montana)
— Too little variation in diet (Time report on Californian bee-keepers)
— Mobile phone masts (University of Landau, Germany).

It was revealed that 800 teachers in state schools are earning over £100,000 a year. How many other public servants are earning that much?

15,000 GPs
7,800 consultants and hospital managers
5,000 dentists
3,100 council staff
950 legal aid barristers.

The post 4 May 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

A teacher in Harrow complained to his MP that he had been banned from marking pupils’ work in red ink in case it upset them. Some origins of ink:

Black Made from burned bones, tar and pitch in India by the 4th century BC. Made from soot in China by the 3rd century BC.

Red Blood was used in medieval England (red ink from blood is said to have been used by poor monasteries; hence its association with debt). Made with brazilwood from the 16th century in Europe.

Blue Made from various vitreous pigments added to black ink in 11th-century Europe.

Purple Made in ancient Tyre, in the 7th century BC, from a secretion of shellfish.

Epidemic of fear

Eight hundred people in the Swansea area contracted measles in a now rare epidemic of a once universal disease. A measles vaccination was first introduced in the UK in 1968 and the MMR vaccine in 1988. Andrew Wakefield’s paper linking measles with autism — wrongly as it turned out — was published in 1998. The scare, in terms of media reports, reached its peak in 2002, when 1,530 newspaper articles were published on the subject. How have measles cases and deaths reacted to those events?

Deaths include those who died from effects of the disease years after contracting it.

Top floors

A house in Carlton House Terrace, Mayfair, went on the market for £250 million. What are the most expensive properties openly for sale in other British cities?

— Newcastle: £5.95 million (seven-bed house in Darras Hall)
— Manchester: £3.75 million (six-bed penthouse on Deansgate)
— Leeds: £3.75 million (seven-bed house in Scarcroft)
— Edinburgh: £2.9 million (six-bed faux castle, Castle Cogar)
— Birmingham: £2.75 million (eight-bed house in Edgbaston)
— Liverpool: £2.75 million (six-bed house on Woolton Hall Road)
— Cardiff: £2.25 million (six-bed house in Lisvane)
— Glasgow: £1.5 million (five-bed house in Thorntonhall)

The post 27 April 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

Delegates at the National Union of Teachers conference complained about Michael Gove’s ‘pub quiz’ curriculum and suggested that children didn’t need to learn facts any more because they could Google them. Some things you can Google about the NUT:

— The union was formed on 25 June 1870 as the National Union of Elementary Teachers, and was renamed the NUT in 1889.
— It has had only 11 general secretaries since 1870. The current general secretary, Christine Blower, began her career as a French teacher at the ‘socialist Eton’, Holland Park Comprehensive, in 1973. She is reported to earn £142,000 a year.

— In 1996 she withdrew her daughter Sophie from Key Stage 2 tests, in protest against what she saw as excessive testing of children. Sophie went on to study at Edinburgh University.

Low flying

The chief executive of Birmingham Airport says a decline in budget airlines has left Britain with too many lightly used airports. Which UK airports have the fewest paying passengers? (Many have other functions, such as freight and private traffic.)

Source: CAA

Benefit shopping

Iain Duncan Smith was ridiculed for claiming he could live on £53 a week if he had to. Is it possible to do this and have a wholesome diet?

Which leaves £58.76 a year to stock up on clothes at a charity shop (actually, benefit-claimants are entitled to far more than £53 a week when housing benefit and other payments are taken into account).

The post 6 April 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

David Cameron announced that the government would make it harder for migrants to claim benefits, NHS treatment and social housing. Do migrants make a positive contribution to the public coffers?

— A Home Office study using data from 1999-2000 concluded that migrants paid £31.2bn in taxes and used £28.8bn in public services, for a net contribution of £2.5bn
— A paper in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy, using data from 2003/04, found migrants contributed a net £600m
— The Institute of Public Policy Research, using data from 2003/04, concluded that migrants cost the country a net £400m
— The pressure group MigrationWatch, also using data from 2003/04, concluded that migrants cost the taxpayer a net £5bn
— The House of Lords select committee on economic affairs, in 2008, found migrants had a ‘small’ overall effect, which official data was not good enough to quantify.

Lands of plenty

Boris Berezovsky’s death drew attention to wealthy Russians. What nationality are the world’s 100 richest individuals?

Source: Forbes

The millionaires’ club

Which bank has the most staff earning over £1 million a year?

Off the rails

How have passenger numbers changed before and since the publication of Dr Beeching’s report, which led to the closure of nearly half the railway system?

Source: Association of Train Operating Companies

The post 30 March 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

Birmingham Council asked residents, in a survey on wheelie bins, whether they were gay or bisexual. Some more nosey questions asked by councils:

— Is your gender identity the same as the gender you were assigned with at birth? (Consultation into relief road near Manchester Airport)
— Which of the following describes your religion? (Lambeth council consultation on road humps)
— Which of the following describes how you think of yourself? Male? Female? In another way? (Consultation on super fast broadband for Isle of Wight council)
— What do you think caused your heterosexuality? (Staff questionnaire at Buckinghamshire County Council)

On the way

David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS, said he had to travel first class since it was the only way he could work. What do rail travellers do on their journeys?

Source: Centre for Transport and Society, University of the West of England

Golden ticket

A travel company unveiled a holiday costing £445,000 per person — taking in 962 world heritage sites and lasting two years. How much does the average Briton spend on foreign holidays at 2011 prices?

Source: ONS

Before the floods

— £5.7bn Cost to the economy of green taxes and levies, which the government justifies by saying we must halt global warming for fear of facing increasing risk of flooding and other extreme weather events (Figure calculated by Policy Exchange)
— £29m Amount government has cut from the flood defence budget this year

The post 23 March 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

The Queen signed a new Commonwealth charter denouncing ‘discrimination of all kinds’, leading campaigners to suggest that she was supporting gay marriage. Peter Tatchell asserted that 6 per cent of the population are gay. What other estimates are there?

— 37% by Dr Alfred Kinsey in 1953 (strictly an estimate of men who achieved orgasm with another male at some point)
— 21% by a Gallup survey in 2002
— 10% according to Kinsey in 1948
— 6.1% in a scientific paper by A.M. Johnson et al published in Nature, 1992 (used by HM Treasury and DTI in a study of the effects of the Civil Partnerships Act)
— 4% by the Williams Institute (US) 2011
— 1% from the Office of National Statistics’ Integrated Household Survey in 2010

Equal terms

Chris Huhne and his ex-wife Vicky Pryce were both jailed for eight months for perverting the course of justice. What else could earn you an eight-month jail sentence?

— Verbally abusing passengers, kicking and spitting at cabin crew on a flight to the Dominican Republic (Christopher Rose, 2008)
— Looting jewellery and cigarettes in riots (Anthony Lloyd, 2011)
— Working illegally as a cleaner for Baroness Scotland (Loloahi Tapui, 2010)
— Burglary and dangerous driving (Wayne Bishop, 2011, though he served only one month before being released on the grounds that his children have a right to family life)
— Defrauding the Boris bike scheme by issuing £42,000 worth of false refunds to accomplices (Nana Boateng and Jose Dias, 2012)

An enormous yes

Falkland Islanders voted 99.8% in favour of remaining British. Some other one-sided referendums:

— 99.7%* for Austrian Anschluss with Germany, 1938
— 99.6% for secession of South Sudan, 2011
— 97% for constitutional reforms, including limiting president to two terms in office, Equatorial Guinea, 2011
— 88% for constitutional assembly proposed by Hugo Chávez, Veneuela, 1999
— 87.5% for impeachment of Romanian president Traian Basescu, 2012. Mr Basescu escaped because turnout, at 46.1%, fell short of the 50% required for the vote to be valid.

* coercion involved

The post 16 March 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.

The Five Star Movement, led by comedian Beppe Grillo, won 26% of the vote in the Italian general election. Comedian John O’Farrell competed as Labour’s candidate in the Eastleigh by-election. Some other comedians who have won office:

— Jon Gnarr won Reykjavik’s mayoral election in 2010 with 35% of the vote, on a platform of free towels in swimming pools and putting polar bears in the city’s museum (instead of shooting them). He had previously played a Swedish Marxist in a TV comedy show.
— Al Franken was elected to the US Senate for Minnesota in 2009, after a recount. He had previously been a writer for Saturday Night Live and a stand-up comedian.
— Ian Lang, Scottish Secretary and president of the Board of Trade in John Major’s government, cracked few jokes in office, but he appeared with John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graham Chapman in the first-ever Cambridge Footlights revue at the Edinburgh fringe in 1962.

Moody blues

Britain’s government debt was downgraded by the ratings agency Moody’s from AAA to AA1, the second highest level. How strong is the correlation between the rating which Moody’s puts on gilts and the interest rate demanded by investors (a guide to how certain it is they will get their money back)?

Go east

The Prime Minister of Romania said that his countrymen were too busy rebuilding their own country to want to flock en masse to Britain. Much is made of Eastern European migration to Britain, but how many British citizens have exercised their right to live in EU countries in Eastern Europe?

Source: Institute for Public Policy Research

The post 2 March 2013 appeared first on The Spectator.