That ship has sailed
The BBC children’s television programme Blue Peter will no longer be broadcast live. Why did it go by that name? – Blue Peter is the nickname of the international maritime signal flag for the letter ‘P’, consisting of white square inside a blue square. When displayed on its own it means ‘all persons should report on board because the ship is about to sail’. In 1958, a predecessor programme, the Children’s Television Club, was broadcast from the Mersey ferry. Watching was Owen Reed, head of children’s television for the BBC at the time, who wanted to launch a new show for five- to eight-year-olds and was taken by the name of the flag that was displayed as filming got under way.
Civil question
Who works for the civil service?
– There were 515,000 civil servants in the third quarter of 2024, up from a low of 384,000 in the second quarter of 2016. It had fallen from 492,000 in 2009.
– In 2023/24 63,330 joined the civil service and 39,585 left, a net gain of 23,745.
– 54.5% are women, 16.6% are from an ethnic minority, 16.9% have a disability and 6.9% are LBG.
– The biggest employers of civil servants are the Ministry of Justice (95,990), the Department for Work and Pensions (93,815) and HMRC (69,655).
Source: Cabinet Office/Institute for Government
Teenage killers
The Netflix series Adolescence has highlighted cases of teenage boys who kill girls. How many under-16s are convicted of homicide? (The statistics are silent on who their victims were.)
Boys Girls
2013-14 12 0
2014-15 11 2
2015-16 4 0
2016-17 14 1
2017-18 24 1
2018-19 12 1
2019-20 13 0
2020-21 13 2
2021-22 36 1
2022-23 15 1
2023-24 13 1
Source: Home Office
Price of a place
How affordable are house prices now compared with in the past?
– In 1997 the median-priced home in England cost 3.54 times the median salary. That ratio rose steadily to reach 6.97 by 2008, before falling back to 6.40 in 2009. It then rose again to reach 7.91 in 2017 before dipping slightly to 7.86 in 2020. In 2021 it surged to 9.06 but by 2024 had fallen to 7.71, mostly on account of salaries rising by 20% while house prices remained static.
Source: ONS
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