Having it so good
Lord Young was forced to resign as an adviser to David Cameron after claiming that people in Britain ‘had never had it so good’. The phrase is associated with Harold Macmillan, who used it in 1957, but he was echoing the 1952 US presidential election slogan of the Democrat Adlai Stevenson: ‘You never had it so good.’
—The Republican, Dwight Eisenhower, attacked Stevenson’s claim in a powerful TV commercial: ‘Can that be true, when America’s billions in debt, when prices have doubled, when taxes break our backs and when we’re still fighting in Korea?’
—Stevenson lost the popular vote 45 per cent to 55 per cent.
School holidays
A report this week from Teach First suggested that school holidays in England should be shortened. How do British holidays compare internationally? Typical school holiday time a year, in weeks:
8 – South Korea
12 – Australia, Italy, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Singapore, Sweden
13 – South Africa
14 – England, Wales and Scotland, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland
15 – Hungary
16 – Canada, France, Ireland, USA
17 – Japan, Spain
Source: International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks
Murder rates
The killing of a British woman, Anni Dewani, on honeymoon in Cape Town, has led to renewed comment on the level of South Africa’s murder rate. Intentional homicides per 100,000 population, 2008:
Honduras 61
Jamaica 60
El Salvador 52
Venezuela 47
Trinidad and Tobago 40
Colombia (2007) 39
South Africa 37
England and Wales 1.2
Iceland 0
Source: UN Data
Clever creatures
An Oxford study has claimed that the brains of social animals such as dogs have evolved faster than those of more independent animals such as cats. There is no widely accepted measure for intelligence in animals, but the behaviourist Edward O. Wilson has suggested the following ranking: chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, baboon, gibbon, monkey, smaller-toothed whales, dolphin, elephant, pig.
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