Interesting Facts

According to research carried out by website uSwitch.com , 9 out of 10 landline-users in the UK are bombarded by cold calls – despite half of them being ex-directory. (8 out of 10 mobile phone users suffer too, and two-thirds also blitzed by spam text messages. One call centre in the UK has been sending out 6 million unsolicited calls a day, even British Gas made 7,000 cold calls to 900 homes over the course of 2012, about 8 calls to each household. I got one last night from a company conducting "surveys". I just said, politely, but firmly, "No thank you." Hung up, and then blocked that number.)

According to a study conducted by the University of California, in the US, people, especially young people, are so engrossed in their phones, they are unable to accurately read how people are feeling in real-life. (According to psychologists, this is the result of less face-to-face time interaction.  Children in particular are glued to electronic devices for nearly five hours each day, and this could leave them emotionally stunted in the future. I do hope you're not reading this on your phone.)

According to official police crime data 1.8 million people in the UK were victims of street crime. (As more and more people are carrying expensive gadgets like phones and iPads, criminals are now targeting victims in the street. Surprisingly one in five of all incidents occur early on a Saturday afternoon. London, Leeds and Nottingham are the street crime hotspots.)

Villagers from Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset, England, can use the library around the clock, selecting books, DVDs and CDs. (What's so interesting about that? Well the "library" in questions is a traditional red phone box, one of those things that you imagine when you think of England, which has been recycled into one of the country's smallest lending libraries - with over 100 books, CDs and DVDs.)

According to the ministry of information in China, almost one in two Chinese people now has a mobile phone. (In a nation of 1.3 billion, the number with mobiles stood at 592 million. Interestingly the number of fixed-line subscribers has fallen. I don't plan to get rid of my normal phone just yet. Why? Because I never remember to switch my mobile on.)

According to a study commissioned by the Campaign To End Child Poverty, 19% of British children think that not owning a mobile phone is a sign of being poor. (Personally I think that thinking people are poor because they don't have a mobile phone is a sign of being stupid.)

The world’s most famous clock, The Tower Clock, which houses Big Ben, checks its time with the BT Speaking Clock. (Many other major organisations have permanent feeds of the clock from BT into their private internal phone systems so employees can check the time without making an outside call. Just as well Big Ben doesn't speak though. "Bong bong b-o-n-g!!!!!")