Barometer | 23 April 2011

Easter day


The late date of Easter this year has rekindled one of Britain’s lengthiest political debates: the implementation, or rather non-implementation, of the Easter Act 1928. The act was to fix the date of Easter on the Sunday following the second Saturday in April — meaning that it would wander between 9 and 15 April rather than between 22 March and 25 April.

— The act demanded that before it could be implemented ‘regard shall be had to any opinion officially expressed’ by a Christian church. That has been the stumbling block. In 1966 the Church Assembly of the Church of England passed a motion in favour. The Catholic Church in Britain also approved. But the Orthodox Church, which has a different date for Easter as it is, did not.

— Greg Knight, Conservative MP for East Yorkshire, has brought up the subject twice in recent years, eliciting an identical prepared response from the government: there are no plans to implement the Act.

Hourly wage

Forty workers facing redundancy at Orange Customer Services in Darlington have been offered the chance of alternative employment in the Philippines. Should they accept, they will face lower wages but also lower living costs. Will they be better off?

Time it takes average worker to earn…

UK                                Philippines

8mins        1 kg rice       38mins

10mins    1 kg bread      84mins

13mins       Big Mac       88mins

11hrs        iPod Nano    128.5hrs

Source: UBS


TV times


The royal wedding can expect a large TV audience, but will struggle to exceed the record audiences for live broadcasts, many of which are more than 30 years old:

World Cup final, 1966 32.3m
Princess Diana’s funeral, 1997 32.1m
Splashdown of Apollo 13, 1970 28.6m
Chelsea v. Leeds, FA Cup, 1970 28.5m
Prince Charles’s wedding, 1981 28.