Interesting Facts

According to a poll commissioned by  ISA and Scottish Friendly, Brits spend nearly 3 years of their lives dithering. (The top 5 reasons to dither were:- Choosing birthday presents. Choosing what to wear on a night out. What to eat for dinner. What to watch on TV. Where to go on holiday. What makes you dither?)

Pretzels are thought to have been invented by Italian monks in the 5th century. (Seemingly, they were made to resemble folded arms and given to children to reward them for good deeds. What happened to, "a good deed is its own reward"?) 

According to a report by Sainsbury's bank, daughters are more expensive than sons. (This isn't due to any costs of getting married, dowries etc., it's purely on the basis of raising the children. Girls cost thousands of pounds more than boys to bring up 0 to 5 boys cost £5,475 a year, and girls £5,767 6 to 13 boys cost £6,414 a year, and girls £7,794 14 to 18 boys cost £7,172 a year, and girls £7,747  The biggest issue is that clothing costs more for girls, so I would say from the ages 0 to 13, it's the parent's fault.  Pink stuff probably costs more than blue stuff.)

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...

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?)

This one could have been labelled under "time" too.  Seemingly the old "5 second rule" is a myth. (For those of you who don't know what it is, the 5 second rule says that if you drop some food on the floor, as long it hasn't beenthere for longer than 5 seconds, it's okay to eat it. In a survey commisioned by a cleaning technology company they found that 37% of Brits would eat food dropped on the kitchen floor. I'm not sure when the so called "rule" came into effect, but scientists are now warning people not to put their lives at risk of contracting E.coli or salmonella poisoning by eating dropped food.  Personally (as a dog owner) if I drop food, I'm not likely to be given the chance to eat it, Laika is much faster than me.)

According to a report by BARB, the official body for collecting TV audience figures, nearly 5% of British homes do not own a television. (That's about 1.3 million UK households with no TV, but that doesn't necessarily mean they don't watch TV: Whilst some people prefer life without the gogglebox, changing viewing habits have led to many watching TV shows on their PCs, laptops or tablets. Nearly half of the households without TVs are people aged 16 to 44. It seems that millenials are increasingly turning to other channels for their entertainment.)

The UK is about to introduce a sugar tax on soft drinks, which will add at least 18p a liter to sweet fizzy drinks. (The tax will be levied according to how much sugar is added to a drink. According to the BBC, there will be two bands - one for total sugar content above 5g per 100 millilitres and a second, higher band for the most sugary drinks with more than 8g per 100 millilitres. Analysis by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility suggests they will be levied at 18p and 24p per litre. It is estimated that it will raise around £520m a year, which the government has pledged will be spent on increasing the funding for sport in primary schools. So, does this mean people will drink less sugary pop? Probably not, they'll just have less money to spend on fruit.) The sugar tax has an interesting history:- First they said they wouldn't, then they said they might, now they have: Talk about flip flopping:- http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-rules-out-s...

Since introducing the 5p levy on plastic bags in England, 520 million of them have been pinched from shops. (When I first heard this, I thought "How?", but seemingly it's at the self service checkout.  When people are asked if they have brought their own bag 50% say, "Yes", even when they haven't. At £26,000,000 that's the biggest heist, ever.)  

According to laboratory tests carried out by scientists at the London Metropolitan University, out of date beauty products can contain deadly bacteria. (Tests on 5 makeup products; mascara, blusher, foundation, lip gloss and lipstick, revealed that makeup is a breeding ground for some really nasty stuff: 6 different types of bacteria were found, including the deadly meningitis bacteria Enterococcus Faecalis/Faecium, and bacteria that can cause acne and even septicaemia, a severe blood infection that can lead to organ failure and death. The research was funded by online beauty retailer www.escentual.com.  I think I'll just go and check my makeup bag now.)

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.)

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization over a billion tourists travelled abroad in 2014. (That's 51 million more than in 2013. The biggest growth destinations were the Americas, with 7% more tourists, followed by Asia and the Pacific at 5%, and Europe with 4% growth. The world is on the move!)

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 carried out by the sustainable food and farming organisation Leaf (Linking Environment and Farming), more than one in three British children have never heard the classic farmyard sounds in real life. (Increasingly, youngsters are only hearing the sound of nature through their computer or TV screen, which means they have never heard a real cow go “moo”, a sheep go “baa”, or a pig go "oink". This means many kids are oblivious to where the food they eat comes from.  25% didn't know the names for baby cows, sheep, pigs or chickens, and more worryingly one in five had no idea bacon comes from pigs, while one in 20 thought we get cheese from them. Pig cheese? Eew! My favourite was that 5% percent of the children surveyed believed strawberries grow inside the fridge.  Which has a certain logic to it.  At least they had thought about it a bit.) 

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...

The top 5 countries in the Global Wellbeing Index, published by the United Nations, are Switzerland, Iceland, Denmark, Norway and Canada. (The researchers believe that the differences in happiness can be explained by 6 factors: levels of gross domestic product (GDP), life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom and level of corruption. The US is 15th, the UK is 21st, but Germany is only 26th.) Source

A dozen roses in the UK could set you back anything from a whopping £44.99, to a mere 3 quid. Here's a list of the War of the Roses:- Lidl - £3 Asda - £5 Tesco - £5 Morrisons - £5 Sainsbury's - £5 Marks & Spencer - £12 Interflora £44.99  (Shall we call that £45?) Gentlemen, if you do go for the Lidl option, might I suggest you remove the price tag? 12 x Fairtrade® red roses from M&S?  £22.00.

It seem that we Brits don't like to be kept waiting. According to research by Interparcel we get grumpy very quickly if we are forced to wait for any length of time. (It seems we will only wait 5 minutes at a bar before walking off, 13 minutes for a delayed train and no more than 10 seconds for a web page to load. It seems strange for a nation renowned for its ability to form an orderly queue, but if you read this, I applaud your patience in waiting for it to load.)

Public Health England is considering including foods which have at least one portion of fruit or veg to their 5-a-day recommendation. (This would mean ham and pineapple pizza could count as part of a healthy diet, along with tinned soups and tinned fruit. I wonder if black forest gateau will count. After all, it has cherries in it.)

We were talking about maternity and paternity / maternal and paternal in today's session, so this little factlet is very fitting. According to a survey carried out by the Family Matters Institute, 12% of fathers in the UK aspire to be like Homer Simpson. A good role-model? (The following "father figures" were most popular:- David Beckham - 21% Jamie Oliver - 14% Homer Simpson - 12% Prince William - 9% David Walliams - 7% Simon Cowell - 5% David Cameron - 4% Wayne Rooney - 1% The typical, modern UK dad was described as a food-loving, health-conscious, house proud family man, but their choices of role models leaves a lot to be desired.  For goodness sake! David Cameron left his 8 year-old daughter in the pub!)