Barometer | 14 March 2013

Minority report

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%