When you write for The Spectator, it’s tempting to stick to the more cerebral issues of the day. As money editor, this can include tracking the progress of Sterling post-Brexit, ruminating on the downward trajectory of house price growth or reflecting on the merits of equity release.
Some days, however, that’s the last thing you want to do – Monday mornings being a case in point. We’re only a few hours in to the working week and already I’ve been invited to breakfast with the Austrian federal minister of finance, Hans Jörg Schelling, to an obesity lecture, a hotel show, and a FinTech launch. Sometimes I wish I’d never gotten out of bed.
As a financial journalist, I’m inundated with press releases, invitations, unsolicited requests for coverage and phone calls. There’s a permanent Post-it on my desk which reads ‘deal with inbox’. It’s a never-ending task that, in my heart of hearts, I know will never reach completion.
Consider some of this morning’s emails. ‘Over 50s enjoy a flutter’ read one. ‘2 million Brits still financially tied to their ex-partner’ said another. Others included ‘Easing L&G back into auto-enrolment’, ‘Comment on the latest insurance premium tax increase’, and ‘The cost of a happy birthday – Brits spend more than £850 each year on gifts and celebrations’.
It’s exhausting and exhaustive. On a typical working day, I estimate that I receive a minimum of 100 emails, often many more, and that’s before I check my junk box, two other email accounts, social media messages, texts and my answerphone. Then there are the follow-up calls, the ‘just checking you have seen my email’. It’s enough to make one long for the days of faxes and snail mail.
So you’ll forgive me if, today, just for a change, I depart from the usual serious fare on Spectator Money and tell you about Lego bricks being flushed down the loo. Yes, you read that right. I’ve got your attention now.
According to new research by Direct Line (you have to admire a PR who can turn a humdrum press release about home insurance into a story about bogs), children under 10 have dropped 2.5 million Lego blocks down the U-bend. As any parent will know, Lego is expensive so that’s a lot of money down the drain.
How on earth did Direct Line arrive at this figure? According to the press release’s ‘notes to editor’, the amount of Lego bricks was calculated by ‘multiplying the base size of children that have dropped an item by the population total. This was then multiplied by the number of items dropped, and were then added altogether for the cumulative total of items dropped.’ To be honest, I’m none the wiser but I don’t care. I like the stats regardless, especially Direct Line’s assertion that these lost Lego bricks could build a tower four times taller than the current world record of 35.05 metres, which was built with an estimated 550,000 of these plastic blocks.
There’s more. The insurer’s study also suggests that kids aged under 10 have flushed 4 million dolls down the loo and dropped millions of phones in the toilet. Pens and crayons have met a similar watery fate, as have house and car keys, credit cards, and board game pieces.
Of course, Direct Line’s point to all this is the damage caused by blocked toilets and overflowing pipes, and the benefits of having a robust home insurance policy in place. But when the alternative to this release is one asking ‘Are billionaires feeling the pressure?’, I’ll opt for Lego down the loo every time.
Helen Nugent is Online Money Editor of The Spectator
Comments