How violent are our jails? | 24 October 2019

Big Ben protests

An Extinction Rebellion protestor climbed to the top of the Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben, with a bit of help from the scaffolding. Who has achieved this before?
— A Greenpeace protestor scaled the tower in 2004 to protest the Iraq war.
— A protestor was arrested in May last year as he began an ascent. Police did not disclose what he was protesting about.
— Two films have reached a climax with their heroes swinging from the arms of the clock, both successfully preventing the detonation of a bomb. They were Will Hay in My Learned Friend (1943) and Richard Hannay (played by Robert Powell) in The Thirty-Nine Steps (1978).

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Arabella Byrne

Ascot has been ruined by the middle classes

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have put out dramatically different figures for sales in September.
— According to the BRC, the value of retail sales in September was 1.3% lower, adjusted for inflation, than in the same month last year. The organisation claims to represent 70% of the retail industry.
— Yet according to the ONS the value of sales in September was 3.4% higher than in September last year, with the biggest contributions for the rise coming from food (1.5%), non-store retailing (1.4%) and non-food retail stores (0.2%).

Ooh, aah… ouch

Sainsbury’s announced it would no longer sell fireworks. How dangerous are they?
— In 2014/15, reported St John Ambulance, using statistics from NHS Digital, there were 4,506 A&E fireworks admissions.
— The American Pyrotechnics Association publishes a detailed breakdown for injuries in the US. It found fireworks caused 15,600 fires in 2013, 1,400 of them buildings, 200 cars and the rest bush fires.
— 74% of those injured were male, and 35% under 15. The group most at risk are children aged five to nine.
— 6% of injuries are at public displays.
— Most implicated in accidents? The sparkler, accounting for 28% of injuries.