Interesting Facts

How many Heathrow workers does it take to change a light-bulb? (The answer is - none, because since opening in 2008, not a single bulb has been replaced in terminal 5's departure lounge at Heathrow. In some areas up to 60 per cent of the lights have blown, but they haven't been replaced because there is no safe way to reach them. The people who designed the terminal, which cost £4.5billion, appear to have overlooked basic maintenance, light-bulbs need to be changed, and some of them are positioned 120ft above the ground. I would have thought pulleys and lifts would have been on the specs, but seemingly not. They have tried cherry-pickers and hydraulic boom lifts to replace the downlighters, but none were deemed to be practical or safe enough, and now, a team of specialist wire walkers has been given the job of stopping the lights from going out completely. It will take four months and cost millions of pounds. I wonder if they will play circus music whilst they

The BBC paid out £60m in severance payments in eight years. (This bonanza included £1m to former deputy director general Mark Byford and £486,500 to George Entwistle, who quit as director general at the height of the Jimmy Savile scandal, after just 54 days in the job. I know people are sometimes surprised when I am less than enthusiastic about the institution that we call the British Broadcasting Corporation, but this kind of "snouts in the trough"* culture is one reason.) *Not my words - Graham Norton's - He actually works for them and earned around £2.6m in the year to the end of July 2012 . :)