Barometer | 13 November 2010

Radical cheek

Phil Woolas, the first MP for 99 years to have his election to Parliament overturned, has fewer supporters than the Radical MP John Wilkes, who managed to have his election overturned four times in the Middlesex election fiasco of 1768.

—Wilkes was first barred from the House of Commons in 1763 after going into exile in France to escape a second trial on a charge of seditious libel.

—He returned in 1768 to stand for election in Middlesex and won, but was then quickly imprisoned over a pornographic poem.

—Four by-elections followed, all won by Wilkes; three times the election was declared void and on the final occasion his opponent was declared the winner. A crowd of 15,000 of Wilkes’s supporters gathered to protest, on which troops fired, killing seven.

—After a spell in jail, Wilkes was elected MP for Middlesex in 1774.

Engine trouble

The engine of an Airbus A380 exploded over Indonesia, leading to a fall in Rolls-Royce shares. The safety of jet engines has increased dramatically over the past 50 years. Average number of hours a jet engine could fly before it was liable to fail:

1965: 2,500

1985: 17,500

1990: 55,000

1995: 100,000

2000: 140,000

2005: 165,000

Source: Federal Aviation Authority


Poverty, culture and exams

It’s a widespread assumption that pupils on free school meals — an indicator of poverty — do worse in exams. Here is the proportion of pupils from various ethnic groups achieving five or more A*– C s at GCSE including English and maths during 2008/9, with and without free meals:

Free school meals No free school meals

78% Chinese girls 79%

64% Chinese boys 65%

25% White girls 58%

39% Black girls 56%

19% White boys 51%

29% Black boys 42%

Source: Department of Education

Boy racers

Three increasingly popular boys’ names are derived from car and motorcycle manufacturers.