Interesting Facts

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.)

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.)

France, India and Italy all have laws banning the publication of opinion polls in the run-up to an election. (In France newspapers and media can't publish opinion polls up to 24 hours before an election. In India that is 48 hours, and in Italy, 15 days. Of course the opinion polls published in the UK were so wrong, it would be funny, if they didn't charge £8,000 to £12,000 for the privilege of using them.  The pollsters are blaming the public - for lying.)

Shrinkflation describes the process of items shrinking in size or quantity while their prices remain the same, and according to consumer watchdog Which? a host of products sold in the UK have been undergoing this phenomenon. (Confectionery is often a culprit, with a box of Cadbury's Fingers containing two fewer chocolate finger biscuits, Mars Bars (down from 58g in 2013 to 48g today), Kit Kat Chunky (down from 48g to 40g), a bag of Maltesers (down from 140g to 120g), and of course the Creme Egg scandal. Maybe if they were just a bit more honest and simply increased the price, we wouldn't mind as much.) Here are some more products:-

According to a report by Ofcom, half of all UK teenagers own smartphones. (Yes, the Communications Market 2011 report from Ofcom shows that that smartphone ownership is still on the rise and that teenagers are obsessed with their phones. The report findings show that teenagers are much more likely to own a smartphone than adults and are more obsessed with them. 48 per cent of teenagers own a smartphone compared to just 27 per cent of adults. 60% of teenagers who owned a smartphone described themselves as “highly addicted” to their handsets. Only 37 per cent of adults felt that way. I'm really glad I'm not a teenager any more.)