Is 2023 a bad year for forest fires in Europe?

Boss pay

Julia Hoggett, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, complained that FTSE 100 bosses aren’t paid enough, and suggested that the gap between UK bosses and US bosses needs to be closed if the London market is to prosper. How much are FTSE 100 bosses paid?

– The median earnings in 2021 for a FTSE 100 boss was £3.41m and the mean £4.26m. Three were paid less than £1m, 57 between £1m and £4m, 35 between £4m and £10m and three more than £10m. Two changed jobs during the year and so aren’t included in the figures

– But the best-paid FTSE chief executive wasn’t even in the FTSE 100. That was Frederic Vecchioli, CEO of FTSE 250 company Safestore, who earned £17.06m.

The next best-paying companies were:

Endeavour Mining (FTSE100) £16.85m

AstraZeneca (FTSE100) £13.86m

CRH (FTSE 100) £11.68m

Carnival (FTSE 250) £11.31m

Anglo American (FTSE 100) £9.83m

Up in flames

Is 2023 a particularly bad year for forest fires in Europe? According to the European Forest Fire Information System, between 2003 and 2023 an average of 346,294 hectares of land in the EU was burned by fire. This is approximately 0.08% of the total area of the EU.

– The average area of land burned up to 22 July is 128,000h. This year, up to that date, 173,000h had burned. In the worst year, 2022, 561,000h had burned; in the best year (2008) 19,000h had suffered that fate.

– Greece has now had its worst year for fires since 2003, with 35,000h burned by 22 July, compared with an average of 26,914h in the previous worst year. Greece’s whole-year average is 43,000h.

Breast vs bottle

How many babies are breastfed?

Nationally, 48.8% of babies were being breastfed at six to eight weeks in the third quarter of 2022/23. The districts with the highest recorded rate (although the data doesn’t cover all of England) were:

Lewisham – 81.