Barometer | 13 July 2017

The joy of Sixtus

Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and his wife announced the birth of their sixth child, a son called Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher. But is that appropriate?
— A sixth child ought to be ‘Sextus’. Five popes were called Sixtus but the name is believed to derive from a Greek word meaning ‘polished’.
— Among the living, there is Sixtus Henry of Bourbon-Parma, whom some believe to be the rightful monarch of Spain, and Sixtus Preiss, a Viennese hip-hop artist whose work includes Samba Feelin Beein This, Trilingual Dance Sexperience and, appropriately, given the Tory performance in the general election, What a Fine Mess We’ve Made of This.

Mine decline

Jeremy Corbyn addressed a record Durham Miners’ Gala crowd, estimated at 200,000. How many might have been miners? Coal industry employment over the years:

Source: ONS

Employ yourself

The Taylor Review into work practices was published. Which industries have the highest number of self-employed workers?

Old balls please

The owner of a golfing company was jailed for manslaughter after the death of an amateur diver he had paid between £20 and £40 a day to retrieve golf balls from a lake. (Professional divers would have cost £1,000 a day.) How many golf balls must you find to make a living from it?
—A pack of 40 secondhand Titleist NXT Tour golf balls costs £12.99 online.
—At that rate, ignoring costs, you need to find 23 balls an hour to earn the equivalent of the national minimum wage.
—There are lots to find; US golfers lose 300 million golf balls a year, says CNN.