Barometer | 14 February 2019

Places in Hell

President Donald Tusk said there must be a ‘special place in Hell reserved for those who promoted Brexit without even a sketch of a plan of how to carry it out safely’. Yet there are a number of places, as defined by Dante, where many on either side of the Brexit debate could be accommodated. Some groups who have space reserved in the Inferno, in descending order:
Opportunists; Hoarders and wasters; Wrathful and sullen; Fortune Tellers; Hypocrites; Evil Counsellors; Sowers of Discord; Falsifiers.

Lost planes

The wreckage of a plane was discovered off the Channel Islands and the body of the footballer Emiliano Sala recovered. How many planes are there on the seabed off the British Isles? Wessex Archaeology came up with the following figures:
— 11,090 RAF planes were lost at sea during the second world war, along with 904 US planes and 1,008 German planes. The RAF losses include 380 off the coast of Kent, 217 off Norfolk, 216 off Yorkshire, 175 off Cornwall, 170 off Sussex.
— The Air Accident Investigation Bureau records that 150 civil aircraft have been lost in the seas off Britain since 1920.
— The National Monuments Record lists 1,977 known sites of plane wrecks, suggesting that there are around 11,000 planes which remain undiscovered.

Licensed to drive

The Duke of Edinburgh surrendered his driving licence. What percentage of the population have a licence, by age group?

The wealth gap

A German study said that the British are more positive towards the rich than people are in the US, France and Germany. But do we know just how rich they are?
A 2015 Ipsos Mori poll suggested not.
What respondents suggested was the ideal distribution of wealth: Richest quintile would own 32% of national wealth and poorest quintile 13%.
What people believed is the distribution of wealth in Britain: Richest quintile own 39%, poorest quintile 10%.