Barometer | 26 July 2018

Relax

Asked about her spare time, Theresa May said she liked walking, cooking (she has 150 cookbooks) and watching the US TV series NCIS. How typical is she in choosing how she spends her leisure time?
— A Sport England survey in 2016 suggested that 18.6 million Britons had walked for leisure in the past 28 days.
— An Aviva survey last year claimed Britons had an average of 158 books in their homes. One in ten homes did not have a single book.
— The fifth series of NCIS (which stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service) has an average of 2.6 million viewers when shown on Channel 5. In the US, it has 18.6 million.

Attacks

A three-year-old boy had acid thrown at him in Worcester. Who throws acid at whom?
Last year the Metropolitan Police released a breakdown of 2,196 acid attacks in London over 15 years. They revealed:
— 74% of suspects and 67% of victims were male
— 32% of suspects and 45% of victims were ‘white European’
— 38% of suspects and 25% of victims were ‘African Caribbean’
— 6% of suspects and 19% of victims were ‘Asian’
— 20% of suspects and 2.5% of victims were of unknown ethnicity

Paying tax

The TaxPayers’ Alliance calculated that the UK has the highest tax burden (revenue from taxes as a percentage of GDP) since 1969/70 — at 34.3% for this tax year. Which prime ministers have given us the highest and lowest tax burdens, averaged throughout their terms?