Interesting Facts

According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics, we Brits are ill for one fifth of our lives. (Women suffer the most, being sick for 19 years on average, compared with men who are poorly for 16 years. The most worrying aspect is that healthy life expectancy — the time spent feeling well — is growing at a slower rate than actual life expectancy, which means we are facing old age and ill health. )

According to the Office for National Statistics, we Brits are no longer that keen on going to night clubs or buying CDs and DVDs. (The inflation basket, which is used to calculate the cost of living in the UK, analyses the cost of 704 items.  It is an interesting look into trends in the UK, and seemingly many nightclubs in the UK are facing closure, and more and more people download their music and films online so these items have been removed. However, the inflation basket will now include coffee pods and downloaded software, along with women's leggings, and strangely, cream liquers like Baileys, which must be a sign of an ageing population with very little fashion sense.) Here is a list from the Guardian newspaper of what is "In" and what is "Out":- In: Pouches of microwave rice: Joins a range of prepared foods, emphasising our love of ready meals. Multipacks of meat: The ONS has spotted a boom in cooking cuts of meat and presenting them buffet...

20th October World Statistics Day 

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, on average British mums spend 3 hours a day on housework and cooking, whereas fathers spend an average of three quarters of an hour. (In 8 out of 10 couples, women do all the washing and ironing, but things are changing, a magazine survey in 1999 revealed that among the over-60s age group, none of the men surveyed ever did the washing! Of course in 1980 only 31% of women had a full-time or part-time job compared to 55% today. According to therapist Julia Cole, most men still expect women to do the housework, and if men do it, they act as though they are doing their partner a favour; saying things like: 'I've done the washing up for you' instead of regarding it as something which benefits both of them.)

According to figures, from the Office for National Statistics’ the number of married couples with 1 child grew from 37 per cent to 40 per cent from 2003 to 2013. (A sociologist at Kent University, Professor Frank Furedi, has worked out that if this trend continues, by 2022 half of families in the UK will only have 1 child.)

The YouTube video Gangnam Style has forced YouTube to upgrade their viewing statistics to handle 64 bit numbers. (The number of views for the video steadily increased since its release in 2012, until it hit a critical 2,147,483,647. Why critical? Well, the largest number that can be represented by a 32-bit integer is 2,147,483,647. As a result, YouTube have upgraded their view counter to handle 64 bit integers, which means that they can sit back and relax, unless the video clocks up 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 views.  There's not much chance of that, because every human being on earth would have to watch it 1.29 billion times to reach that number.)

According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, the level of recorded crime in England and Wales has fallen to a 34-year low. (The figures from the Crime Survey for England and Wales estimated there were 7.3 million crimes in the year 2013/14, 14% fewer than during the previous year and the lowest since 1981. Does this mean there's less crime, or people just aren't bothering to report it, because they never get solved? (See previous fact))

According to statistics published by the American Social Security Administration, in the US more babies are being named 'Khaleesi' than 'Betsy' or 'Nadine'. (Khaleesi means Queen in the fictional Dothraki language from Game of Thrones. The character is actually called Khaleesi — Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, of the blood of old Valyeria, mother of dragons. Twenty-one babies were named "Daenerys" in 2012. I bet at least one has been called "Mother of dragons".)

According to figures released by the Office for National Statistics, in the UK, the number of women who don't have children has almost doubled over the past 30 years. (The most common family size in Britain is two children, but nearly one in five of women who had reached the end of their child-bearing years last year had no children, compared with just over one in ten of their mothers. On average a woman born in 1940 had 2.36 children, while her daughter’s generation had 1.91. No jokes about .36 and .19 of a child please.  That's just the joy of averages.)

The latest government figures, from the Office for National Statistics, show that on average British wage-earners have taken a £5,000 pay cut over the last five years. (Wages and salaries for the middle fifth of non-retired households fell from £33,100 in 2007-08 to £28,300 in 2011-12. Over the same period original income, which is the income households get from employment and investments, fell from £37,900 to £32,600, while cash benefits rose from £3,100 to £4,600. We can't blame the recession either, as the figures show that the decline predates the big slump. How does that song go?  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. )

Analysis of figures released by the Office for National Statistics shows that workers in the UK are £1,500 a year worse off than they were in 2010. (Statistics show that the average annual increase for the whole of the last decade was just 1.3 per cent, the lowest figure since records began in 1948, creating a toxic combination of poor pay rises or pay freezes and rising household bills. The main burden is on the young, as 16 and 17-year-olds have seen their pay slashed and are more likely to be paid less than the minimum wage. John Willcock, head of financial services at the Post Office, said: 'It is a concern that we are becoming “Pay Day Britain”, just counting down to the next pay cheque.')

According to the Office for National Statistics, the average Brit visits their GP (general practitioner or doctor to you and me) 5 times a year. (I reckon they're lucky to get an appointment.  According to the Patients Association, 60 per cent of patients have to wait two days before they can get an appointment. 1 in 10 have to wait for 2 weeks!)

According to the UK's Office for National Statistics, almost four in ten of all the people born abroad live in London. (In fact the 2011 census showed that people born abroad make up 34 per cent of the capital’s population, but what is really funny is Cliff Richard and Joanna Lumley, who were both born in India to British parents are included in these statistics.)

According to a report by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), 16 to 17-year-olds are, the most optimistic about the future, the least anxious and the “most satisfied” with life than any other age group in the UK. (Despite high youth unemployment and the prospect of tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year young people in the UK seem to be very optimistic.  Well good for them, although I do wonder what they're putting in the water.)

According to the Office for National Statistics, the population of England and Wales has surged by 3.7million in the past decade (10 years). (It's the biggest increase for more than 200 years. The increase has been driven by a number of factors: immigration, increased life expectancy and fertility rates.   The biggest increase was in London, which grew by 12%, gaining more than 850,000 inhabitants and taking its total population to more than 8 million.  Another reason that I never go there.)

The cost of the UK's happiness index has soared to £8 million. (The UK  Government has admitted that the Office of National Statistics has a £2million-a-year budget for it every year until 2015.  Well at least they'll be happy.)

According to the UK's Office for National Statistics,  491,348 people died in the UK in 2009. (Of these 238,062 were male, and 253,286 were female.   The biggest cause of death was circulatory disease, followed by cancer, respiratory disease and digestive disease respectively.  The stats show only 17,878 people didn't die from disease, the highest cause of death in this category was transport accidents.  So, maybe it is safer to stay at home.) Illustration

Staying on the sex theme (see previous post). Psychology professor Terri Fisher carried out a study at Ohio State University that shows that on average men think about sex every 50 minutes. (The researchers worked out how many times men and women thought about sex by giving them a 'clicker' machine to press when they had any such thoughts. The women recorded an average of ten times a day, and the men's total was 19 racy thoughts a day, but it varied from as little as once a day to a rather imaginative bloke who registered 388 sexual thoughts, or one every two-and-a-half minutes. You may have heard that old chestnut that said men think about sex every six seconds, that would mean the average man having up to 10,000 racy thoughts a day, which would be downright dangerous. This new statistic is more realistic, but I would hope that really it depends on what someone is doing.) Source

According to UK crime statistics, 214 people have been killed by a knife this year (2011). (And worryingly 4,606 people have been injured by a knife.  Of course in reality the knife is blameless, it's the hand wielding the knife, and the mentality behind the hand that does the harm.)

According to the Office for National Statistics, us Brits are fatter and lonelier than in the 1970s, (Seemingly, in the good old 70s there were fewer divorces (read people felt obliged to make their beds and lie on them), people were more neighbourly (read nosey) and churchgoing (read sanctimonious). In addition, more mothers stayed at home looking after their children (read became MCPBs). The good news is, that according to the same statistics (and anyone who really knows me knows what I think of them), we also live longer and take more foreign holidays. Whoopee!)