Interesting Facts

According to the Greeting Card Association, in the UK we spend nearly £1.47 billion annually on greeting cards. (It might sound like a waste of money, but in the UK more than half a billion charity Christmas cards are sent out each year, raising around £50m for good causes. That said, £1.47 billion is more than we spend on tea and coffee put together! We are a nation of card lovers.) Source - 2010 Greeting Card Market Report,

According to Scottish charity Action on Hearing Loss (AHL) Scotland, thousands of young people are risking irreversible hearing loss by failing to turn down the volume on their iPods and MP3 players. (Many people, especially youngsters, listen to music for up to one third of their waking day, but any noise over 85 decibels can be harmful. The built-in limit to iPods is around 100dB but many people have found ways to override it. The problem is, it's a bit like smoking; the damage is a gradual process, which means that it sneaks up on people and is only noticed when it is too late. So, here's your chance to learn phrasal verbs by doing: Turn it down.)

The average monthly rent for a two-bedroom home in London is £1,360 a month, which is almost two-and-a-half times more than the rest of England (According to the housing charity Shelter, private rents are now unaffordable in 55% of local authorities in England. Homes in these areas cost more than 35% of median average local take-home pay. Shelter found that rents had risen at one-and-a-half times the rate of incomes in the 10 years up to 2007. There is a reason that we scrimp and save in order to be able to buy our house. You just can't trust landlords.)

powered by ODEO According to the Centre on Philanthropy at Indiana University, in 2006 charitable giving by individuals in the US rose to $295 billion. (When it comes to individual contributions, Americans give the highest share of GDP (gross domestic product) at 1.67%. The UK was second at 0.73%. The lowest at 0.14% of national GDP was France. Come on mon amis, you can do better.)

Three separate reports published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Charities Aid Foundation and the London School of Economics say that the poorest donors to charity give away around 3% of their income in contrast to the wealthiest donors, whose gifts might be bigger in absolute terms but which cost a mere 1% of their available income. (I guess that the more you have, the more you want to hang on to it. I wonder if they've ever read the story of Scrooge?) Listen Here.

The total amount given by the 30 people named in the Rich List's "Giving Index" was £1.2bn.) (It sounds like a lot, doesn't it? But according to Beth Breeze, a philanthropy researcher, it's only the contents of the bank account of just 1 of the 64 billionaires named on the list.) Listen Here

Total voluntary income to UK charities from individuals in 2005/06 was £8.9bn. (Seemingly a similar amount was paid out in City bonuses that year.)