Barometer

Lonely fortress Weoley Castle in Birmingham was revealed to be the least-visited tourist attraction in England, with 5,205 visitors last year. What is there to see? — It is described as the ruins of a fortified manor house built by the Lords of Dudley as a hunting lodge in the 1270s. Visitors can view the ruins from a platform most days, but can access the stones by special arrangement or for events such as the Easter egg hunt. — It is also possible to hire the Event Space for conferences and corporate events — described as an ‘open-plan multi-functional space with a digital projector and screen, and with room for 30 people’.

You can’t do that there ’ere Some of the things which have been banned under Public Spaces Protection Orders, according to a report by the Manifesto Club: Kettering More than four people standing within vicinity of a motor vehicle. Guildford Shouting. Hillingdon Gathering in groups of more than two unless waiting for a bus. Blackpool Engaging in card tricks. Birmingham Wearing face coverings. Shepway Sleeping in a public place. Brent Offering casual work. Shop talk The British Retail Consortium has claimed that 900,000 jobs could be lost by 2025 thanks to the minimum wage and the shift to online sales. Who are the 2.9 million people who work in the retail business? — One third are under 25. — Half work part-time. — 58% are female, 42% male.

Selling with honesty An Essex estate agent sold a flat in Westcliff-on-Sea for £22,500 over the £125,000 asking price after advertising it with the words: ‘Wipe your feet on the way out…this property is full of rubbish, there is mould on the walls and I think there may even be fleas.’ The original honest estate agent was Roy Brooks, who operated from Chelsea in the 1960s and won fame by describing properties he was selling with such accolades as ‘erstwhile house of ill-repute’, ‘rather theatrical — in keeping with the pretentious style of the owner’ and ‘ten rather unpleasant rooms with slimy back yard’. The latter property, advertised for £4,650, would now be worth 1,000 times that..

Matters of life and death Lord Lucan is now officially presumed dead. How do you have someone declared dead? In England and Wales, under the Presumption of Death Act 2013… — Anyone can apply to have anyone else declared dead, but if the applicant is not a spouse, civil partner, parent, child or sibling of the presumed deceased they must show they have a significant interest. — The person should have been missing for at least seven years, but it is possible to have someone declared dead earlier if the court is convinced they have died. — It costs £480. — An order can be revoked if the person later turns up alive, but that will not reinstate a marriage or civil partnership. — The act cannot be used in the instance of a missing monarch.

So near and yet so far Henry Worsley died in a Chilean hospital of peritonitis after being airlifted from Antartica, 30 miles short of what would have been the first solo unaided crossing of the continent. How does this compare with Britain’s other heroic failures? — Scott and his two surviving companions died 11 miles short of their one tonne food depot, but were still 140 miles short of their journey’s end, having travelled just over 700 miles from the South Pole. — George Mallory was last spotted 800 vertical feet from the summit of Everest in his 1924 expedition. It is possible he reached the summit, but even so would have failed in what many regard as an essential part of conquering a mountain:  getting back down again.

Roll out the barrel The price of crude oil dropped below $30 a barrel. Why do we measure it in barrels? — A standard barrel for the purposes of measuring oil is 42 US gallons or 35 imperial gallons. This was the size of a ‘tierce’, a unit for measuring wine in medieval England. — When demand for kerosene provoked an oil rush in Pennsylvania in 1859, producers were so desperate for vessels that they used all kinds of containers. — In August 1866, however, producers met in the town of Titusville to agree on a standard measure. A 42-gallon barrel of oil weighed 300lb:  just enough, it was found, for one man to manoeuvre on his own.

In with the new How the new year is being celebrated around the world. From 1 January… BRITAIN: Annual Investment Allowance for businesses cut from £500,000 to £200,000. Deposit Guarantee Limit for savers — the sum which the government will refund to savers after a bank collapse — is cut from £85,000 to £75,000. Drink industry workers face a fine unless they sign up with the Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme. RUSSIA: Food imports from Ukraine banned. SWITZERLAND: Cost of private language schooling no longer tax-deductible. SOUTH AFRICA: Carbon tax introduced. Out with the old In 2015… — 142m people were born and 56m people died, making for population growth of 83m. — 2,030m tonnes of grain were harvested.

The first warmist The first attempt to quantify the link between CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperatures was attributed to Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, in a paper in the Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science in 1896. He was working on a theory to explain the oscillation between ice ages and interglacial periods. He calculated that increasing the concentration of carbonic acid (as CO2 was then known) in the atmosphere would result in a global temperature increase of 8 to 9˚C. — His extrapolation was not that man-made carbon emissions were dangerous; but that the rate of coal-burning was cancelling out the process of CO2 absorption caused by limestone weathering.

Friendly words England football fans sang ‘La Marseillaise’ in a friendly match at Wembley. The anthem has not always been so popular. In 1992 a Committee for a Marseillaise of Fraternity was founded to campaign for a change to the words, written as a war hymn by an army captain while French troops were besieged by Prussians at Strasbourg 200 years earlier. The campaign failed, despite the support of Danielle Mitterrand, wife of the then president. The suggested new lyrics began: Arise you children of the Motherland Let’s sing together for Liberty Liberty, oh dearest liberty Your bloody ramparts have fallen The brothel demographic Cynthia Payne, who was jailed for keeping a brothel where elderly men paid for sex with luncheon vouchers, died.

A marathon of cheats Russian athletes may be stripped of the medals they won at the 2012 Olympics, but what of the earliest-known drug-taker in the modern Olympics? Thomas Hicks won the 1904 marathon in St Louis after taking two doses of brandy laced with strychnine. —Hicks collapsed on the finishing line and had to be revived. There being no rule at the time against drugs, he was allowed to keep his gold medal. — Not so a man who reached the finishing line ahead of him, fellow American Fred Lorz. He was disqualified after admitting that he had taken a car most of the way. Police, camera, revenue The police and crime commissioner for Bedfordshire is thinking of turning on speed cameras on the M1 24 hours a day. On which roads do most fatalities occur?

Killer facts The World Health Organisation added processed meats to its list of ‘known’ carcinogens.

Bigger Bens Big Ben will have a £29m refurbishment. Who has the biggest clock tower? Kremlin Clock: Installed on the 232ft Spasskaya Tower. Clock has a diameter of 20ft. Big Ben: Installed on 315ft Elizabeth Tower. Clock faces are 24ft across. Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, New York: 700ft high (although the clock is only two-thirds of the way up). Clock is 26ft 6in in diameter. Abraj Al-Bait Towers, Mecca: Clock is on 1,972ft tower and visible from 15 miles away. Clock faces are 151ft in diameter. Brussels clout How important is the EU as an export market? Britain’s top ten export markets by value in August this year: Value US £3.2bn Switzerland £2.3bn Netherlands £1.5bn China £1.4bn Ireland £1.

Bang goes the plan The demolition of six tower blocks in Glasgow failed when the top half of two of the blocks settled upright on rubble. Some more demolitions which went wrong: — A girl of 12 was killed and several people injured in 1997 when the Royal Canberra Hospital toppled rather than collapsed in on itself. Debris, which was supposed to stay within a 50-metre zone, spilled over more than 200 metres. — A 300ft power station chimney in Springfield, Ohio, toppled onto power lines, cutting off electricity to 4,000 people. — A 80ft flour mill at Cankiri, Turkey, toppled onto its roof and came to rest against a block of flats. No one was hurt.