Interesting Facts

Police in the UK only solve 1 in 10 burglaries. (According to crime statistics, £2 billion worth of goods have been stolen over the past 6 years, but only £137 million worth recovered. Some newspapers are blaming the cuts in front-line-officers over the past 6 years, but there is no surprise for me here. We were broken into 4 times, and no one ever got back to us on any of the cases, including the one where the burglars left a knife covered in oily prints. (We also lived just down the road from a police station.) People being quoted in the press are saying things like "They just don't seem to care", well my friends, they didn't care in the past either.)

In a survey that examines the good each country does for humanity as well as what it takes away, Britain has ranked 4th. (The Good Country Index placed Sweden first, Denmark second, and the Netherlands third, but the UK came above France and Germany because Britain does more “good” and less harm than more than 150 countries around the world. Britain came top for its global contribution to science and technology, thanks to the high number of journal exports, Nobel prizes and international publications it has produced,  was ranked 2nd on its global contribution to health and wellbeing, but it scored poorly on international security and peace, coming 64th out of 163 countries. Simon Anholt, who created the Good Country Index, said that while countries must serve the interests of their people it should not be at the expense of other populations.  I think we could apply that to ourselves as individuals too.)

According to the British Coffee Association around 2,000,000,000 cups of coffee are consumed worldwide every day. (According to market researchers, Mintel, in the UK we drink over 70 million cups a day, but 3/4 (74%) of all UK adults drink instant coffee, compared to around 1/2 (48%) who drink fresh coffee. I stopped drinking instant when I left England, and I've never wanted to go back to the brown sludge.)

After nearly 25 years, the Carry On film franchise is about to return to British cinema. (The last film to be made was Carry On Columbus in 1992, it was the 31st film made.   Carry on Films are part of British Culture, and they turned actors like Sid James, Kenneth Williams, and Dame Barbara Windsor into household characters. In 2007 the line "Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!" was voted the funniest film one-liner: Kenneth Williams uttered the words as Julius Caesar in the 1964 romp Carry On Cleo. Film company, Hereford Films, are behind the project, and the first 2 films in the pipeline are Carry On Doctors, followed by Carry On Campus. Co-writer Tim Dawson paid respect to the previous writers of the Carry On series: "These films are a part of British culture and to be carrying on the legacy of Norman Hudis and Talbot Rothwell is a thrill and a responsibility. We intend to be sympathetic to the heritage whilst being unafraid to modernise th...

If we ever needed proof that Brits are getting bigger, here it is:  High street retailer Debenhams is now stocking clothing in sizes up to XXXXXL. (Debenhams say they have begun to stock the 5XL size in male ranges to meet demand.  The new big and tall range goes up to a 64-inch chest and a 20-inch collar. The previous largest size was 3XL, but demand for larger sizes of shirts, suits, tops, casual jackets and trousers has soared by 170% over the last 2 years. If you go to their Big and Tall website, they even list XXXXXXL - 6XL! Now all I can think about is what clothing size the Hulk is.  Does anyone know?)

When Queen Elizabeth was born she stood third in line of succession to the throne after Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII), and her father, The Duke of York. (She has 9 royal thrones - 1 at the House of Lords, 2 at Westminster Abbey, and 6 in the throne room at Buckingham Palace. It was never expected that she would become Queen.) 90 pictures

I decided this one is perfect on International Women's Day: Acccording to the UK Government’s own figures, women working for the Conservative minister responsible for closing the gender pay gap are paid an average of around £2 per hour less than men. (The department, which is responsible for matters covering equality, recently announced plans to “name and shame” companies who did not pay men and women equally. In the UK male civil servants earn £22.30 a hour on average at the Department of Education but women make just £20.54. Yet another case of "do as I say, not as I do".) https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-equalities-office

Jack, a Yorkshire Terrier, is the oldest living dog in Britain. (At 117 years old (in dog years), he still looks like a puppy.  He will be the eighth-oldest dog of all time if his age can be proven to Guinness World Records. There are different formulas for calculating dog years. Alot of people multiply by 7, but dogs are mature by the age of 2, so some calculate it by allowing 10.5 dog years per human year for the first 2 years, then 4 dog years per human year for each year after that. According to: http://www.onlineconversion.com/dogyears.htm, Laika is a mere 57, but according to http://www.pedigree.com/all-things-dog/dog-age-calculator/ she is 70 years old. Guess which one she prefers?) Source

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 survey conducted by the Daily Mail, in the UK 61,000 patients a day miss their GP appointment. (The lost time costs the NHS over £300 million, which is equivalent to a year's work for 1,300 doctors. Some surgeries run a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy, whereby patients are removed from the list if they miss several appointments. It is a bit of a Catch 22 situation though; many surgeries are so overbooked they can only offer slots two weeks in advance, so often the appointment is missed because the patient is "feeling better".  But if they had the courtesy to pick up the phone and cancel the appointment, there may not be a 2 week queue.)

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!)

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.)

The following celebrities have all been caught in the oldest fib in the world, lying about their age:- ( A number of times Sandra Bullock's age has been up and down like a yo-yo, shaving off years, and then adding years, depending on the role.   Shaving off:- 6 years - a ctress  Katie Redford was caught telling porkies , when eagle eyed fans on social media pointed out that she was 25, not 19 as she had claimed to be during an audition for ITV soap 'Coronation Street'. 2 years - Singer James Blunt. 2 years - Rapper Eminem. 4 years - Paloma Faith And celebs don't always take the years off. To land that dream role, they'll even add a few:- Adding years 2 years - Nadine Coyle 5 years - Whoopi Goldberg In 1949 Time joked:- To find the age of a star, a Hollywood press-agent takes the year of her (or his) birth, subtracts it from itself, and burns the paper the numbers were written on; then adds last week's fan mail to the box-office receipts...

According to consumer research company Euromonitor, the Dutch drink the most coffee per person in the world. (The Netherlands’ are the only country that averages more than 2 cups of coffee per day, with a  per-capita consumption of 2.4 cups a day, which is almost the same as those of the US, UK, Spain, and France combined. The US, who brag that they run on coffee, doesn’t even crack the top 15.)

Over the last 2 days, the Hanson Academy in Bradford, West Yorkshire, has sent 215 pupils home for not adhering to school uniform rules. (The school wants pupils to dress in a blazer, smart shoes, trousers, and shirt with a correctly-tied tie, they also need to wear an id badge on a lanyard around their necks (I wonder if they have risk assessed that). The infringements included - wearing hoop earrings, the wrong kind of trousers / jackets, no tie, no id, dyed hair... Please feel free to join any of our Virtual World English sessions and dress as you like, as long as you're dressed.)

In a survey conducted by Mothercare, British children between the ages of 2 and 12 were asked what was most important in a job, and 34% said that ‘having fun’ and ‘helping others’ was more important than being rich or famous. (Unfortunately that means 66% didn't think that having fun and helping others was more important than being rich or famous.)

According to a study carried out by a team at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) the wealthiest people are those that had the most friends at school. (They studied 10,000 students over a period of 35 years and the results suggest that each extra school friend adds 2% to your salary. I wonder how many friends Bill Gates had.)

According to a survey by the Guardian newspaper 2% of people in the UK consider themselves upper class. (Of 1,011 adults question in the phone poll, 53% said they were working class and 41% middle class. Me? I've been told I have no class.)

A three-bedroom house built today must have at least 38 sockets. (This is more than twice as many as 30 years ago. The number has been set by the National House Building Council's technical standards. They recommend 4 each in the kitchen and utility room, 4 in the living room, 8 in a living/family room with 2 near the TV aerial. Funnily enough they reckon there should be 6 in the main bedroom, and four in other bedrooms. I have no idea why you would need so many sockets in the bedroom. The mind boggles.)

The daily cost of water for the average UK household is 68p - what it would cost to buy a 2-litre bottle of Evian in a supermarket. (Evian spelt backwards = naive.)