Things That You Probably
NEVER 
 Wanted To Know
 
Back to MiscellanyBack to Front Page
 

  • As a result of the impact of a switch to internet sales, 20% of High Street stores will be converted to homes in the 5 years between 2013 and 2018.
  • The "Stitch Up A Celeb" Operation Yewtree is on course to land the taxpayer with a bill for £2 million during 2013.
  • 200 coppers per year leave the police "service" to avoid investigation for corruption, violence and other serious misconduct offences, and the nation's chief police officers have no problem with letting them escape justice.
  • The annual cost to the taxpayer of employing an MP is currently £573,431. That's £400,000,000 per year for the lot of them.
  • Notes for modern living: XVC – Don't let the vultures get too close!
  • Lord Bichard, who reckons that pensioners should do voluntary work to "earn" their pension, retired at 53 on a civil service pension of £120K, and he does absolutely nothing to earn it.
  • Dave the Leader is encouraging binge-drinking by giving the Old Soaks at the Houses of Parliament a 50% discount on pub prices in their bars.
  • RBS -- state-owned, failed bank -- lost £2,000,000,000 in 2011/12 but can pay out bonuses of £400,000,000. Where does the money come from?
  • Lloyds TSB -- bailed-out failed bank -- lost £3,500,000,000 in 2012/13 but managed to find £375,000,000 for bonuses. Where does the money come from?
  • Any member of the staff of a BBC local radio station, who has been deemed unworthy of promotion for a period of 5 years, is automatically entitled to a Uselessness Bonus of £4,600.
  • The Audit Commission, the alleged government spending watchdog, was given the chop in 2010 because it blew £5.5 million on junkets for its own staff and managers over the last 3 years.
  • Dave the Leader has given Pakistan £950 million to educate terrorists.
  • Unreliable electrics cause 25% of car breakdowns.
  • New Labour's Swine Flu panic in 2009 cost the nation £1.2 billion and saved about 26 lives—that at a cost of £46 million each! No wonder Gordon Brown left the country broke.
  • Comparing 1981 and 2010:
         The National Debt is 9.5 times higher;
         Britain's GDP is 6.1 times higher
         VAT is 1.2 times higher;
         The Average Wage is 4 times higher;
         The cost of Petrol is 3.5 times higher; and
         The Unemployment rate is about the same.
  • 2010's total of 218 retiring MPs, including those sacked for expenses swindles, are splitting £10,000,000 in "golden goodbyes".
  • In June 2010, 69% of Americans were unhappy with President O'Bummer's dithering over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster – equalling President Bush's disapproval rating after hurricane Katrina.
  • 232 MPs swindled the taxpayer by flipping their main and second homes during the New Labour era.
  • In 2010: Gordon Brown's decision to sell off half of the nation's gold reserves at a Brown Bottom in the market has cost the nation £11 BILLION and Tony Blair's foreign wars have cost the nation £18 BILLION.
  • Changing price labels and reprogramming shop tills before the VAT decrease in December 2008 cost £177 million. Reversing the change in January 2010 cost £127 million. So that was £304 million of shoppers' cash wasted by G. Brown & Co.
  • The benefits associated with the European Union's single market add up to £180 BILLION per year. The cost of the bureaucracy that goes with that single market is £600 BILLION per year.
  • November 2009: The train company CrossCountry charges an eye-watering £1,002 for a first class return from Newquay in Cornwall to Kyle of Lochalsh at the top of Scotland. The trip is 1,700 miles and customers have to change five times each way.
  • The Royal Mail got 85,000 applicants for 30,000 temporary jobs intended to take the sting out of the strikes at the end of 2009.
  • Following the success of Jeff Hardly's installation Emptiness In A Dark Room, which was shown in the Romiley Forum Annex, a Polish imitator staged a similar project at the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall 5 years later in 2009.
  • The world's shortest teenager became the world's smallest man on his 18th birthday in 2009. Khagendra Magar from Nepal is just 2 feet tall.
  • 40% of the British population will be terminally obsese by the middle of the 21st century, according to the latest government forecasts.
  • It takes 600 average grapes to make a bottle of wine.
  • 20% of the entries on the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) computer contain wrong information.
  • There were 387,966 British casualties in the first 4 years of World War Two, including prisoners of war and people missing in action. In the same period, 588,742 people were killed or injured in road accidents.
  • By the end of September 2006, the bungled anti-terror raid in Forest Gate, London, on 2006/06/02 had cost the taxpayer £2,211,600 – which includes £1,843,400 for police salaries & overtime. The compensation to be paid to Mohammed Kahar and Abul Kyair has yet to be negotiated.
  • The cost to the taxpayer of Tony Blair's TV makeup = £350 per year.
  • Correction: The true height of Nelson's column has been changed to 169 feet from the offiically quoted figure of 185 feet following measurement during the 2006 refurbishment campaign.
  • Under New Labour between 1997 & 2005, homicide went up 25%, fatal stabbings rose by 9% and fatal shootings went up by 18%. Deaths by poison, drugging and violent assault without a weapon all went up while deaths by strangulation and being beaten to beath with a blunt instrument both went down. The clear-up rate for homicides is 90%.
  • 929 of 8,200 troops who went AWoL since the Iraq war in 2003 are still at large and in a state of desertion.
  • Cost to the Labour party of Cherie Blair's hair-dos during the 2005 general election campaign = £7,700.
  • 200,000 roubles = £41.
  • Liberal PM Lloyd George sold 36 peerages. By April 2006, New Labour PM Tony Blair had created 292 peers.
  • The Average rise in Council Tax for 2006/07 = 4.5% after Chancellor Brown reduced direct government support to councils.
  • Mobile phones per 100 head of population in early 2006: Sweden = 98.1; Czech Republic = 96.5; Spain = 91.6; United Kingdom = 91.2; Denmark = 88.3; Irish Republic = 88.0; Austria = 87.9; Belgium = 79.3; Germany = 78.5; France = 69.6.
  • Number of building defects found during a February 2006 inspection of the Scottish Parliament = 890. The thing cost £431 million to put up and the contractors are no longer liable to fix defects for free – including the cosmetic beam which collapsed out of the roof in the debating chamber.
  • Number of foxhunters prosecuted in the first year after the ban = zero.
    Number of police hours wasted investigating spurious complaints = 11,000 (estimate).
  • British personal debt for 2005 was £1,158,000,000, which is greater than the amount earned by British industry during the year – £1,127,000,000.
  • In the first week of February 2006, the population of Britain exceeded 60 million.
  • Over 230,000 failed asylum seekers have just disappeared from the Home Office's ken – that's the equivalent of the population of Derby, Southampton or Wolverhampton, and over twice the number of people in the 3 armed services.
  • The British pensions deficit in January 2006 was £93 billion, which is about the whole of the South African economy.
  • The totals for unpaid fines owing in England & Wales were £350 million at the end of 2003; £390 million at the end of 2004; and £416 million at the end of 2005.
  • Between April 2005 and March 2005, 32.7 million crimes were committed in England & Wales, and 317,000 criminals were sentenced. Which gives a punishment rate of 1%. No wonder everyone thinks New Labour is soft on crime!
  • The police are currently failing to identify a suspect, never mind catch the perpetrator, in 80% of all burglaries and car crimes, and 25% of all young people between 10 and 25 committed at least 1 crime in 2004.
  • In 2005, 20% of motorists didn't know how to change a wheel; 14% had put the wrong type of fuel in their car at least once; 7% didn't know how to check tyre pressures; 4% didn't know how to work the horn and 1% didn't know how to open the bonnet.
  • Binge drinking in 2005 – one-third of all men do it and one-fifth of all women.
  • The number of identity fraud cases has risen 675% under New Labour from 20,000 cases in 1999 to 135,000 cases in 2005.
  • Cabinet Office spending on taxis was £25,535 in 1997/98 and it rose to £354,285 in 2002/03 as New Labour became more comfortable with abusing the public purse.
  • A list of THE ODDS AGAINST:
    a fatal injury while skiing or riding a motorbike are 1 million to 1;
    a fatal injury while riding a bike are 4 million to 1;
    winning the national lottery are 14 million to 1;
    being fatally injured as a passenger in a car are 20 million to 1;
    being killed by lightning in a storm are 30 million to 1;
    dying in an aeroplane crash are 44 million to 1;
    winning the Euromillions jackpot are 76 million to 1;
    drowning in the bath or being killed on a pedestrian crossing are 200 million to 1
  • The water companies lost 802 million gallons per day through leaky pipes in 2003/04, which equals 34 gallons per day per property. One average consumer uses 34 gallons of water per day. The industry has a leakage target of 734 million gallons/day in 2010.
  • The number of crimes committed in the UK in 2002 was 11,700,000. 23% of total crimes were solved but only 13% of burglaries.

    Odds against being locked up

    1954

    2002

       for robbery

    1 in 3

    1 in 22

       for burglary

    1 in 18

    1 in 60

       for wounding

    1 in 5

    1 in 12

    Number of serious crimes

    85,000

    1,027,000

    Prison population

    24,000

    72,500


  • 2005 General Election Result : Labour 22%, Conservative 20%, Triv-Dem 13%, Others 6%, None of the Above 39%.
  • Smoking reduces the average life expectancy from 86 down to 79 for females and from 82 down to 77 for males.
  • The size of the black hole in the Rover car company's accounts on April 18th 2005 was £554 million.
  • By 2005, New Labour had created 111 quangos costing £36.5 billion per year and it was paying £1.3 billion per year of public money to management consultants. New Labour grew the wealth-consuming public sector by 1,4 million jobs while the wealth-creating private sector expanded by just 481,000 jobs.
  • In the UK, one million kids under ten had a mobile phone (in early 2005) despite persistent health warnings. Curiously, their parents campaigned against phone masts sited near schools when mobile phones exposed their kids to 10,000 times more radiation.
  • Drivers paid £42.2 billion in taxes in 2003 but the government spent just £6.7 billion on roads. The tax haul included fuel duty of £22.1 billion, VAT on fuel of £5.6 billion, vehicle excise duty of £4.6 billion, VAT on vehicles of £6.8 billion and company car tax of £3.1 billion.
  • The Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh had a budget of £40million and went 11 times over-budget at £431million. The Millennium Dome at Greenwich had a budget of £399million but cost £750million. The Jubilee Line extension to connect the London Tube system with the Dome went £1.4billion over budget and the Channel Tunnel went £5.2billion over its budget.
  • The cost to the taxpayer of MPs' expenses went up by 35% from 2001 to 2003 (from a total of £49M to £75.4M) and MPs' pay went up by 38% from 1997 to 2003 (from a total of £28.8M to £35.1M).
  • How the National Lottery jackpot of £5,932,962 was split up after the March 6th 2004 draw:

Match

Winners

Payout

6/6

2

£2,966,481

5/6 + bonus

11

£165,957

5/6

473

£2,412

4/6

28,432

£88

3/6

580,225

£10

  • Number of people omitted from the 2001 census of England & Wales = 104,000
  • Supermarket statistics – how the price paid by consumer is reached: the actual food product = 26%; packaging, transportation, advertising & overheads = 29%; profit = 45%.
  • The summer of 2003 is officially the hottest for 500 years. Which could explain why a certain Luddite had to take the side off a PC with a Pentium II CPU during the summer to stop it exceeding the maximum allowed temperature of 64 deg.C.
  • Cost to the nation of the 'compensation culture' = £10billion per year.
  • In 2002, burglars gaoled = 10,178; motorists gaoled = 15,039. Excluding drink/drugged and dangerous driving, vehicular murder and vehicular maiming, 10,269 motorist were gaoled for lesser offences, e.g. not paying fines and careless driving. The detection rate for burglaries was 10%.
  • More than 75% of Britions would like to live a broad, where they expect to get a better quality of life.
  • The most hated jobsworths in the UK are Traffic Wardens. They beat politicians, lawyers, bouncers, estate agents and motorcycle couriers in the poll.
  • 80% of speed cameras were not located at accident blackspots in January, 2004.
  • Cost of benefit fraud in 2003 = £6 per minute.
  • The EU budget in 2003 was £62,000,000,000, of which £62,300,000 will be stolen by crooks aided by the EU's lack of systems for auditing its finances and the unwillingness of the EU Commission to do an honest and proper job.
  • Volume of a wheely bin = 240 litres.
  • Fat people weighing 16-18½ stone are 2½ times more likely to die in a car crash than 9½ stone skinnies – who are at increased risk of broken bones.
  • [07/2003] Cost of PM Blair's jaunts abroad at the taxpayer's expense in the last year = £1 million.
    The bill for his ministers = £5.7 million.
    Cost to the taxpayer of Labour Party spin-doctors = £5.9 million.
    The figures for spin-doctoring in previous years are £4 million for 1999 and £1.8 million for 1997.
  • Number of people killed in the UK per year through mistakes by the medical profession = 30,000+
    Number in the US = almost 100,000, which is 3 times the UK rate for a population 4 times larger.
  • Number of families denied New Labour's Child Tax Credit because the scheme is a shambles = 1 million or 20% of those eligible to receive the credit.
  • Odds against getting 6 Lottery numbers right (average pay-out £2M) = 14,000,000:1.
    Odds against getting 5 numbers right (average pay-out £1,500) = 55,000:1.
    Odds against getting 3 numbers right (pay-out £10) = 57:1.
  • [2003/04] Number of tagged criminals 'unlawfully at large' (on the run) = 416
    Offences committed by tagged criminals = 1,638 (of which 229 involved violent crimes).
  • Number of Afghan 'asylum seekers' sent home under the Home Office's pay-to-go scheme = 39 out of 26,000.
  • Amount of taxpayers' money wasted by the government on the Millennium Bug = £398,000,000.
  • Days lost to strikes in the UK = 235,000 in 1997 in the Tory twilight and 1,500,000 in 2002 after 5 years of New Labour. New Labour 'giving you more of things you don't want'.
  • Annual cost to business sector of New Labour's new taxes and red tape =£15,000,000,000.
  • Number of serious crimes dropped from the official government statistics presented in the 2002 British Crime Survey = 11,000,000. The types of crime omitted included robberies, thefts from businesses and cars, assaults, woundings and murder. The number of cases of thefts from shops omitted was 32,000,000 [DoG estimate].
  • Items lost by the Ministry of Defence over the last 30 years : 500 rifles, 312 pistols, 173 machine guns and 15 mortars.
  • New Labour's ejection rate from the UK of bogus refugees = one in sixteen.
  • Blackpool was first Illuminated on 1879/09/18.
  • In August, 2000, the modernization of the West Coast rail mainline was 6 years behind schedule and the estimated cost of the work had risen from the original £2.1billion to £31billion.
  • Consignia loses 500,000 letters every week, of which 400,000 are never delivered [that's 20,800,000 per year!] and 100,000 are delivered 15 days or more late. The company is losing £1.5million per day.
  • A bung of £200k to New Labour produced a work permit for a Nigerian player signed by Everton FC in a matter of weeks.
  • Summer 2002 : A pint of lager in Manchester and Liverpool costs £1.90 on average, 21p below the national average. The cheapest pint of real ale is available in the North West at £1.69, 23p below the national average.
  • The world will end on Sunday, December 3rd, 2012, according to the Maya.
  • A BEER TAX was introduced in 1643 as a temporary tax to pay for the Civil War.
    INCOME TAX arrived in 1798 to pay for the Napoleonic War. It was abolished briefly but it was revived in 1803.
    PURCHASE TAX was abolished in 1973 but replaced by the much more pernicious VAT.
    AIR PASSENGER DUTY was imposed in 1994.
  • John "4 Homes, 2 Jags" Prescott's rent rise on his RMT flat = 727%.
  • Cost of running the monarchy = 58p per subject per year.
  • Tony Blair's salary was £102,417 in 1997 and £171,554 in 2002. The increase over the 5 years = 67.4%.
  •   19972000
     Speed Camera Revenue£11,544,000£24,972,000
     Road Deaths & Injuries166,937171,123
    Conclusion - speed cameras kill and maim. Doubling the revenue from fines has increased road casualties by 2.5%.
  • 58% of all weekday vehicle journeys through Romiley are totally unnecessary. The corresponding figures are 63% for Saturday and 81% for Sunday.
  • The amount claimed on expenses for groceries by French President Jacques Chirac during the 8 years when he was mayor of Paris = £1,400,000.
    Many of the invoices were duplicated or blatantly fraudulent, but he can't be prosecuted while he remains in office. Ain't life grand?
  • Britain lost 11 days in 1752 when the country switched from the Julian to the Gregorian Calendar. September 2nd was followed by September 14th.
  • Cost to business of New Labour's additional red tape [1997-2002] = £15,060,000,000
  • National Audit Office guestimate of the amount of tax lost to the Treasury on smuggled goods [2002/03] = £7,300,000,000 - half on cigarettes.
  • Two-thirds of people in the eurozone felt ripped off by the new (rounded up) euro prices in January and February, 2002
  • Amount of taxpayers' cash spent on taxis by the Cabinet Office ministers & their staff (John Prescott & Co.) = £18,572 in 1997 and £135,391 in 2000/2001.
    The increase = 729%.
  • The French franc ceased to be legal tender at midnight on Sunday, 2002/02/17 after 640 years. A survey showed that 61% of French people were not bothered by the franc's demise.
    Franc coins will be accepted at banks until 2002/06/30. The Bank of France will accept coins for the next 3 years and notes for the next 10 years.
  • Loss to the UK due to the Chancellor's policy of selling off our gold reserves = £250,000,000 [2002/02].
  • Change in the number of government regulations issued in 2001 over the number issued in 1997 = +50%.
  • Cost to the participating nations of the switch to the euro in January, 2002 = £1,800,000,000.
    Average cost per euro area citizen = £10.
  • Number of people who voted in the 2001 general election = 26,368,797.
  • Profit which the Inland Revenue expects to make from late tax returns in 2002 = £84,000,000.
  • The Dutch guilder ceased to be legal tender at midnight on Sunday, 27th January, 2002.
  • Arrests for possession of cannabis for April, 2000 to March, 2001 = 81,000.
    Time to handle documenting an arrest and administering a caution under the pre-November 2001 concessions at 4 hours/arrest = 13,500 police officer days.
    Time to handle a case under the 'confiscate and warn' policy at 10 minutes per incident = 562.5 police officer days.
    Saving of police time, which can be re-directed to harassing motorists = 12,937.5 police days.
    Pragmatic policing for the 21st Century, or what!
  • Number of text messages transmitted per day = 750,000,000.
    Number containing any useful or necessary information = 157.
  • Number of mobile phones destroyed in accidents in the UK per week = 10,000. The most common causes of destruction are 1.) being dropped into water and 2.) being run over by other vehicles after the owner left the mobile on the roof of his/her vehicle and then drove off. Adult mobile phone ownership rate in the UK in August, 2001 = 71% (39 million mobiles) [source - The Sunday Post].
  • The Millennium Dome has an outer diameter of 365 metres, an inner diameter of 320 metres, a central height of 50 metres and a working floor area of 80,000 square metres.
  • The ratio of people struck by lightning in the UK to lottery jackpot winners is one to ten.
  • The 1974-vintage Six Million Dollar man would cost 18 million dollars to build in 2001.
  • In the year 2001, Greater Manchester was said to the the UK's most popular tourist destination after London and Edinburgh - and Swansea, not Manchester, was awarded the booby prize for being the UK's wettest city.
  • Estimated IQ values -- Goethe = 210; Voltaire, Isaac Newton = 190; Galileo = 185; Leonardo da Vinci, Descartes = 180; Abraham Lincoln = 150; Napoleon = 145; George Washington = 140; Sir Francis Drake, General Grant = 130.
  • The Niagara Falls will take 22,800 years to eat their way back to Lake Erie and disappear.
  • The Elephant is the only animal to have 4 knees.
  • When officially weighed in 1908, the Leaning Tower of Pisa had a mass of 14,486 tons. When the process was repeated in 1973, it weighed only 14,200 tons.
  • Rabbits can reach a speed of 45 mph while a hungry giant tortoise can manage just 0.17 mph [5 yards/minute].
  • People begin to shrink after the age of 30.
  • Cracks in breaking glass move at 2 km/second, i.e. at 7 times the speed of sound in air.
  • 60% of all babies are born before breakfast.
  • Birmingham [England] had more miles of canal than Venice [Italy].
  • An elephant's trunk can hold one and a half gallons of water.
  • There are 850 pounds of Lunar rock, etc. on the Earth.
  • On a clear night, the average person can see 2,000-2,500 stars [or about two dozen in light-polluted Romiley].
  • The last ever sighting of the Mir space station from Romiley was on Monday, March 5th, 2001.
  • A survey by Postwatch conducted in March, 2001, estimated that the Royal Mail mislays or actually loses 975,000 letter per week.
  • The 6 months to February, 2001 were the wettest since records began in 1697.
  • 10% of treatments in UK NHS hospitals go seriously wrong.
  • Human Genome - bargain offer on number of genes involved - originally thought to be 120,000-150,000, reduced to 80,000, now at a rock bottom 30,000 as a clearance offer.
  • Department of Guesswork (DoG) Official Figures: Estimated attendances for Xmas Eve, Year 2000 - Supermarkets 8,000,000; Churches 5,000,000.
    Supermarkets meet Pubs in the next round.
  • We are now living in a promocracy - all that really counts is image and to hell with substance.
  • Average length of small intestine -- Cows = 120 feet; Sheep = 84 feet; Pigs = 56 feet.
  • A Tiger Shark produces 24,000 teeth in a 10-year period.
  • The minimum survivable body temperature [in degrees Fahrenheit] is 65 for Man; -4 for fish; -18 for frogs; -31 for a moth pupa and -184 for land snails.
  • June, 2000: One survey has calculated that the average person spends 1 year of their life looking for things which have been lost or mislaid. Another has worked out that anyone earning £10,000 per year and driving 16,000 miles per year pays more in petrol tax than income tax!
  • In World War I, a Sopwith Camel cost £1,700 and in World War II, Spitfires cost £5,000, P51 Mustang fighters cost £33,000 and a parachute cost £20 in 1940.
  • An ostrich egg weighs 2.5 pounds and takes 1.5 hours to boil according to one source. Another says that a North African ostrich egg takes 40 minutes to boil.
  • A mole can tunnel 225 feet per night.
  • A 25-foot Viking Longship requires 7 tons of ballast.
  • The wingspan of a Jumbo jet is longer than the first flight of the Wright Brothers.
  • During his term as archbishop of York [1514 to 1530], Cardinal Wolsey never visited the city.
  • 10 inches of snow have the same water content as 1 inch of rain.
  • On average, it rains in the UK on one day in three.
  • One bucketful of water could make a fog bank 50 feet deep over an area of 105 square miles.
  • At -10oC, skin turns white as snow.
    At -20oC, fingers can freeze to metal.
    At -25oC, steel can shatter into tiny pieces.
    And at -30oC, the simple act of drawing breath can feel impossible.
  • Average human daily intake of water = 3 litres. Normal daily output of urine = 1.5 liters. So why don't people explode?
  • A jellyfish has a water content of 95.4% but a 3-day-old human foetus is 97% water.
  • 20,000 people disappear for a time, or permanently, every year in Great Britain.
  • A 10 gallon cowboy hat holds three-quarters of a gallon.
  • There were 436,871 Boy Scouts in the UK in 1944.
  • The mutiny on HMS Bounty took place at 5 a.m. on April 28th, 1789.
  • James Usher, Archbishop of Armagh in 1624 [d. 1656], calculated from information in the Bible that the world was created on October 22nd, 4004 BC at 6 o'clock in the evening.
  • Mentions in the Bible -- Dogs = 18; Solo dances = 1 [Salome]; Cats = 0.
  • Someone has estimated that 3-5% of the world's population has psychopathic tendencies - which means that there are 1.7-2.8 million of them in the UK. So if you know 30 people, you know a psychopath; not necessarily an axe-murderer, more someone with that sort of anti-social tendencies to a greater or lesser degree, and probably lesser.
  • The Age of the Universe is officially about 12 billion years [12,000,000,000 years] - announced in May, 1999.
  • The Sherlock Holmes stories - the ones written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - consist of 56 short stories and 4 novel-length stories.
  • An earthquake in London on April 6th, 1580 resulted in 2 deaths and damage to Paul's Church [the one before Sir Christopher Wren's].
  • The skin of a soap bubble is 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.
  • 12 tons of meteorites fall on the Earth every day.
  • Eskimos use refrigerators to prevent their food from freezing.


Back to MiscellanyBack to Front Page

  back to topCreated for Romiley Literary Circle by HTSP Web Division. © RLC, MM13.