Nick Cohen observed in a recent Spectator:
‘The graduates of Oxford’s Politics, Philosophy and Economics course form the largest single component of the most despised generation of politicians since the Great Reform Act.’
Who could argue? However, Oxford does not only lead the UK in punting, prime minister production and sales of academic gowns. Here are four more nightmarish records held by the city of dreaming spires:
1. Oxford is the most expensive locale in the UK outside of London. The average price-tag on a house in Oxford is £340,864 – eleven times average local annual earnings; also, roughly two-and-a-half times the typical house price in the UK’s cheapest city, Stirling, per the figures from Lloyds Bank. A two-bedroom, no-terrace flat in Oxford’s Islington-esque Summertown will set you back roughly £500,000.
2. Oxford is a hotspot… for the homeless. Oxford’s housing crisis means that we have one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country. At last street-count, the government ranked Oxford fourth after Westminster, the City of London and Peterborough for per-capita rough sleepers.
3. Oxford is the bike-theft capital of the UK. Between May 2013 and April 2014, 846 stolen bikes were reported in the OX1 postcode alone. As ever, Oxford competes with Cambridge, which came in a close second with 781 reported bike thefts in its central postcode during the same period.
4. Oxford’s state schools are among the worst in the country. Oxford came 306th out of 326 for GCSE results in 2011. The city likes to boast that it has produced more published writers per square mile than any other in the world; all the more reason, you’d think, to teach the children to read properly.
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