Interesting Facts

According to the TUC (Trades Union Congress) 5.3 million people in the UK work an average of 7.7 hours of overtime a week. (Chief executives topped a list of those doing the most unpaid overtime, at an average of 13.2 hours a week, followed by teaching staff (12.1 hours), finance managers (11.3 hours) and managers in production and health care workers (10 hours). The TUC has called on people to take their full lunch break and go home on time, asking managers to set an example by leaving on time too. Oh dear, I never leave a session on time, but then I don't get paid either. The TUC would hate me.) Source

According to a survey by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) 1 in 10 Brits are walking from home - in bed! (19% work from the sofa on their laptop, but now chiropractors are warning against the impact this could be having on the health of their back. Now, as some of you know, I work from home, but I get up and go into the office when I'm running sessions.  PS - I am writing this on the sofa.) The BCA have put together a video on computer posture: http://www.chiropractic-uk.co.uk/For-You-89-Computer-Posture-119-ms.aspx

According to a survey conducted by uSwitch.com, 7 out of 10 Brits say they are middle-class, with a strong belief that middle-class people are more likely to be successful. (Only 53% think their parents were white-collar workers, and 6 out of 10 say their grandparents were working class. Fewer than a third of those who called themselves middle class were in a profession — such as lawyer or doctor, even though 3/4 of people believe being a professional is the top reason for being middle-class. The poll also showed that less than a 1/3of us believe our parents’ class or family wealth determines our status, which is just as well in my case, I'd have to go back down t' mine.) Search for "Class" if you want to learn more about the Class system in the UK.

The next English £5, £10 and £20 banknotes will be printed on plastic. (The fiver will be issued first in September 2016, followed by the tenner, which will be issued in 2017, but the £20 note will have to wait until 2020. Their appearance will change too. Sir Winston Churchill will feature on the £5 banknote, replacing Elizabeth Fry, ​​Jane Austen will replace Charles Darwin on the £10 banknote, and artist J.M.W. Turner will feature on the £20 not, replacing economist Adam Smith. Nothing has been said about the £50 note, which features the engineers Matthew Boulton and James Watt. Historical characters have only appeared on bank notes since 1970.  Other people depicted on previous notes have been: Sir Edward Elgar (composer) Michael Faraday (scientist) Sir John Houblon (first Governor of the Bank of England) Sir Isaac Newton (scientist) Florence Nightingale (nursing) William Shakespeare (poet/playwright) George Stephenson (engineer) 1st Duke of Wellington (gener...

According to a study conducted by TopCashback website, on average, in 2015 pedestrians in the UK picked up £5.45 each in dropped change, and one in 20 managed to find £20. (However, millions of Brits would not stoop to pick up anything less than 50p dropped on the floor: only 4 in 10 people would bother to bend down to pick up a penny, and most would ignore anything that wasn't silver.  1 in 3 people said they would not pick up any cash dropped as in their eyes it would be stealing, however 8 in 10 Brits applied the finders-keepers rule, but they were unsur about how much they would pocket if no-one was around.  Most agreed that anything over £10 and they would hand it into the police, or give the cash to charity or a homeless person. 6 in 10 would hand in money left at a cash point by mistake, but only a fifth would run after the person who absent mindedly walked off without it.  Scarily 1 in 10 would quietly pop it into their purse or wallet. I will admit, I pi...

According to neuroscientists from the Salk institute, the human brain has 10 x more memory capacity than previously thought. (They measured the storage capacity of each synapse - the connections within the brain that are responsible for storing memories - and discovered that, on average, one synapse can hold about 4.7 bits of information. This means that the human brain has a capacity of one petabyte, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. One petabyte is about the same as about 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text or about the same as 13.3 years of HD-TV recordings, or 4.7 billion books.   One big problem here: I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday. It all sounds very exciting, until you realise that Google handles 20 petabytes of data every day. And a mere 50 petabytes can hold the entire written works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages. I think we need to be able to upgrade our brains, or add bits, like...

The number of coffee shops in the UK surpassed 20,000 in 2015, boosting sales by 10pc to £7.9bn.  (Unfortunately this soaring demand means there will be a problem; supply won't be able to keep up, and market experts are predicting a shortage of coffee within the next 3 years.  Strangely the price paid to producers means they aren't likely to want to increase productivity, as according to Mintec, the price of Arabica coffee has fallen by 35pc over the last year. If I run out of coffee, there will be no more sessions.)

A survey conducted by life insurance provider Beagle Street, revealed that young Brits don't feel "adult" until they have reached the age of 29. (Although legally you are regarded as an adult at 18 in the UK, seemingly the average young Brit believes it is another 11 years until they actually reach adulthood. The reasons excuses they give are living at home, playing computer games, watching children's films and a reluctance to settle for a "real job". The top 10 signs of being and adult were considered to be: Buying your first home (64 per cent)   Becoming a parent (63 per cent)   Getting married (52 per cent)   Paying into a pension (29 per cent)   Becoming house proud (22 per cent)   Taking out life insurance (21 per cent)   Looking forward to a night in (21 per cent)   Doing DIY (18 per cent)   Hosting dinner parties (18 per cent)   Having a joint bank account (17 per cent) The top 10 reasons excuses for not feeling like...

According to a survey by The Wildlife Trusts, 4 in 10 British children have never seen a hedgehog in the wild in the UK. (The same survey found that 71 per cent of British children have never seen a lizard in the wild, while more than half have not seen a flock of starlings in flight (called a mumuration). Mrs Tiggiwinkle will be incensed.)  

According to a survey commissioned by broadband provider Plusnet, 1 in 10 people believe that it only takes a small thing to salvage a bad day. (The top 10 things that make us cheerful are:- Doing a good deed for somebody (47 per cent)  Random acts of kindness from strangers (44 per cent)  Stumbling across a bargain (42 per cent) Spontaneous hug (40 per cent) A compliment from a stranger (39 per cent) A car stopping so you can cross the road (36 per cent) Being greeted by a pet (35 per cent) Getting a hand written letter in the post (31 per cent) Your favourite song coming on the radio (31 per cent) A stranger saying hello (30 per cent) Make my day. Try to do / experience at least 5 of these things today.)

According to the website Sporting Intelligence, Manchester United is the most valuable football club in England. (It's worth a staggering £1.8bn. The figures were produced, using a formula involving total revenue, assets, stadium capacity and wage ratio. They are basically a money making machine, with the biggest stadium in the country, and other assets, including the most lucrative shirt sponsorship deal, worth £47m from Chevrolet, a 10-year kit deal with German sporting outifitters Adidas which is worth £750m over 10 years. Would anyone like to sponsor an LEN kit or shirt? Instead of buying overpriced football players, we will employ some lovely English teachers.) 

According to research carried out by the High Pay Centre, among FTSE 100 companies, the average pay of a chief executive is almost £5 million. (They found that average executive pay in the UK jumped to £4.964 million in 2014, compared with £4.129 million in 2010.  The figure was 183 times the earnings of average full-time workers, up from 160 times in 2010. The top 10 highest-paid chief executives (CEOs) were paid over £156 million between them in 2014, prompting fresh calls for action to curb executive pay. We have a minimum wage, maybe it's time to have a maximum wage too.)

If you ever needed proof that remembering lists of words doesn't mean you can speak the language, here it is. 48-year-old New Zealander, Nigel Richards, is the French-language world Scrabble champion, but he can't speak French. (He is 3 times world Scrabble champion, 5 times US champion, and has won 12 titles in the King’s Cup championship in Bangkok, but became world Champion of Francophone Scrabble, after memorizing all possible words in the official French scrabble dictionary, with two to 10 letters. Throw those vocabulary lists away.)

According to a study by the British Heart Foundation, Brits have very ambitious To Do lists.  Unfortunately the top item on most people's list is to win the lottery! (That's not an ambition, it's a wish! So here are the other 9 top items:- Win the lottery (not an ambition) Travel the world See the Northern Lights Experience a once-in-a lifetime challenge See world famous landmarks such as the Taj Mahal or the Egyptian Pyramids Swim with dolphins or sharks Live and work abroad Build your own house Go on an African Safari Start up a dream business and run it What would be on your top 10 things to do? Please don't say "Win the lottery".)

Michael Gove, beloved by teachers everywhere, has issued civil servants working under him in his new role as head of the Department of Justice, with detailed guidance on his idea of what constitutes good grammar. (The guidelines, entitled Ministerial Correspondence Preferences, tell officials to write “make sure” instead of “ensure” and to avoid using the word “impact” as a verb. He is also unhappy with the use of contractions, such as “doesn’t”, and the deployment of “yet” and “however” at the beginning of sentences. It also suggests that “the phrases best-placed and high-quality are joined with a dash, very few others are” and discourages unnecessary capitalisation and repetition. This is two years after he circulated “10 golden rules” to officials in the Department for Education, but it isn't the first time government officials have done this kind of thing: In 2012 the then environment secretary Owen Paterson issued a 10-point list which included a ban on his department’s ...

Camelot, the company that runs The National Lottery in the UK, has reduced the odds of winning the jackpot by 320%. (They have added an extra 10 numbers, which means people will have to choose 6 numbers out of 59 not 49. The odds of matching six numbers from 49 balls was 14 million to one - with 59 numbers those odds jump to a whopping 45 million to one. And there will be no more maximum number for rollovers - which means that jackpots could keep rolling and get bigger and bigger, and people will get greedier and greedier. Another change means that people will get something for matching 2 numbers - a free Lucky Dip ticket for a future draw. Wow!)

There is a language taking over the world, and it isn't English; it's Emoji. (In a survey conducted by TalkTalk Mobile, 8 in 10 people use emoji symbols in emails and text messages, and 72% of British 18 to 25-year-olds said they found it easier to put their feelings across in emoji icons than in text. The 10 most popular emojis are as follows:- 1- Smiley Face 2- Crying with laughter 3- Love heart 4- Blushing 5- Thumbs up 6- Cheeky face 7- Blowing a kiss 8- Winking face 9- Confused 10- See no evil monkey However, different language speakers have their own preferences:- Canadians seemingly enjoy using the smiling poop emoji. The French use four times as many heart emojis than other languages. Flower and plant emojis, particularly the rose, are used at more than 4 times the average rate by Arabic speakers. Russian speakers use 3 times as many romantic emojis. Australians like emojis with a...

According to a poll carried out by Kelloggs, British children as young as 10 worry their SATS results will ruin their future. (The poll revealed that more than half of children surveyed were anxious about not achieving Level 4 in Maths, Science and English - the national standard, and 25% of parents said their child was too nervous to eat before the exams, with 14% saying they had refused to eat, whilst other kids say they take up smoking! SATS (Standard Assessment Tests) are given at the end of year 2, year 6 and year 9 in the UK, and are used to show a child's academic progress compared with other children born in the same month. They shouldn't be confused with the US SAT scores.)

Before you shoot me down in flames and say that < 3  is not a word, read this:- The heart emoji "< 3" has been chosen as the word of the year in the 15th annual survey of the English language by the Global Language Monitor. (If  you are new to these emoji or emoticons, each emoji represents an emotion, expression, state of mind, person, place, or thing.  There are now some 722 characters, with another 250 being made available in 2016, and 37 more due for approval in June 2015. Social media and the internet is driving the emoji language forward, with symbols like hashtag #, photobomb - gatecrashing a selfie, bae - a term of endearment for one’s object of desire, “bash” tag - using a hashtag to undermine your frenemies and clickbait - a link you just have to click on - all making it into the top 10 words. On a sad note, the world’s top phrase was “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” chanted by demonstrators against the police shooting of an unarmed black man in Fergus...

According to women’s car insurance specialist, Diamond, men are more likely to lie about their age than women. (1 in 10 of the men questioned said they have lied about how old they are on their birthday, compared to 1 in 14 women. However, we are less likely to lie about our age the older we get. Men and women aged over 45 are the least likely to lie about their age, whilst those aged 25 to 35 are the most likely to. I don't lie about my age, "I'm as old as my tongue, and a little bit older than my teeth.")