Barometer

Bonus cultureSome have called for an end to a ‘bonus culture’ in banks and big firms. But bonus culture has been around a long time… — Around the year ad 70, Roman legionnaires received bonuses of 25 denarii to supplement their salaries of 225 denarii. — Bonuses were recorded by 14th-century Florentine banks, with one employee of the Peruzzi Company receiving 40 lire to supplement a salary of five times that sum. — In 1965 India passed the Payment of Bonus Act, which entitled employees to a bonus of 8.33 per cent of their salary, and at least 100 rupees, providing they worked for more than 30 days in a year. Who’s unbalanced?Nicolas Sarkozy says ‘Britain has no industry any more’.

Lords spiritualThe bishops in the House of Lords, who led a successful rebellion against plans for a benefits cap this week, are a remarkable survival of Lords reform. — While most hereditary peers lost the right to sit in the Lords as part of the House of Lords Act 1999, the number of bishops remained at 26, the number fixed by the Bishopric of Manchester Act 1847. — The archbishops of Canterbury and York, plus the bishops of Durham, London and Winchester, are automatically granted seats; the remaining 21 are drawn from the longest-serving bishops from the other 39 dioceses of the Church of England. — Lords spiritual serve until the age of 70, after which they may be made life peers. There is no representation, however, from the Welsh and Scottish churches.

CondemnedA Norfolk woman was given the honour of pressing a button to demolish a tower at the Campbells soup factory where her father was scalded to death in 1995. Here are some other buildings demolished to expunge bad memories: — 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, former home of Fred and Rose West — 5 College Close, Soham, Cambridgeshire, house where Ian Huntley killed two ten-year-old girls in 2002 — Beb al-Azizlya Compound, Tripoli, former home of General Gaddafi — Muiredge Cottage, Buckhaven, Fife, bungalow where Rab Thomson murdered his two children — 12205 Imperial Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, house where Anthony Sowell raped, murdered and buried 11 women All at seaThe cruise ship Costa Concordia capsized after striking rocks off Tuscany.

War horsesSteven Spielberg’s film War Horse was released this week. How many horses were killed in British Army service during the first world war? — According to the Official History of the War Veterinary Services, it was 484,143. — Michael Morpurgo, on the other hand, says he asked the Imperial War Museum before writing War Horse in 1982, and was told ‘at least a million’. — And on the German side? 9,586,000, according to the dedication of a German history of the war published in 1929. Sick buildingsHammersmith Flyover has been closed because it has a form of corrosion known as ‘concrete cancer’.

100 candlesSome of those who are due to be celebrating hundredth birthdays in 2012: 3 February Mary Carlisle, US actress who starred alongside Bing Crosby in Doctor Rhythm 8 April Alois Brunner, assistant to Adolf Eichmann, never brought to justice and still believed to be living under the name Dr Georg Fischer in Damascus 28 April Kaneto Shindo, Japanese film director best known for making films about the bombing of his home city, Hiroshima 4 July Said Akl, Lebanese poet and nationalist 1 October Kathleen Ollerenshaw, mathematician who overcame deafness to become head of mathematics at Manchester University and education adviser to Mrs Thatcher 17 December Ted Short, former education secretary and deputy leader of the Labour party Titanic connection1912 has.

Let the Games beginThe budget for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics has been doubled to £81 million, the government has announced. The move has ignited fears that the ceremony could prove an expensive disaster — but there is no guarantee that things will go well even when kept simple.   — The London games in 1908 saw the first Olympic opening ceremony, consisting of a gym display by the Ladies London Polytechnic and a procession by the athletes, bearing the flags of their countries. — The Finns sulked because they had been told they must march under the Russian flag. The stars and stripes was by accident flown from a stadium flagpole at half-mast.

Gross domestic productsThe Office for Budget Responsibility downgraded UK GDP growth for 2011 to 0.9 per cent, down from 1.7 per cent. How many extra manufactured products does a 0.9 per cent growth in GDP — £12.56 million — translate to? 4.6bn 250g jars of Marmite60m Dyson vacuum cleaners34m pairs of Church’s shoes1m Mini hatchbacks1,200 Rolls-Royce jet engines Counting spermWi-Fi zones became the latest culprit to be named in scientific literature as a possible contributory factor in falling sperm counts – which have dropped from around 100 million to 60 million sperm cells per ml in developed countries over the past century.

• Found in the trashThe Information Commissioner warned Oliver Letwin that he has broken the law by dumping documents, including letters from constituents, into litter bins in St James’s Park.

Another worldSix cosmonauts have completed an experiment in which they were isolated inside a container for 520 days to simulate a voyage to Mars. A similar experiment, the Lunar-Mars Life Support Test Project between 1995-97 isolated crews for 91 days at a time. These were some of the findings: — Without natural daylight, the astronauts found themselves gravitating towards days of 28 to 30 hours, of which they would work nearly 20. — After emerging from the chamber it took hours for astronauts’ eyes to recover vision at distances greater than six metres. — Many reported having trouble adjusting to the variable noise levels outside the chamber, the noise inside being constant. — Several reported feelings of mild depression after leaving the chamber.

• Initial problems The leaders of the eurozone countries have hatched a plan to bundle up dodgy Greek government debt and sell it to the Chinese. Without any apparent sense of irony, the debt will be sold in the form of a Special Purpose Investment Vehicle — known as Spiv for short.

Up in smoke A coroner in Galway has passed a verdict of spontaneous human combustion on a 76-year-old pensioner whose body was found burned in a house otherwise largely undamaged by fire. Not everyone will be convinced, however — any more than they were in 1763, when Jonas Dupont published De Incendis Corporis Humani Spontaneis, an account of numerous deaths attributed to the phenomenon. Among them was that of Nicole Millet, the wife of a Rheims innkeeper who was found burned to death in 1725. Her husband was charged with burning her body, but was saved by the testimony of a young surgeon, Nicholas le Cat, who convinced the court that Nicole had spontaneously combusted.

Objects in space — The six tonne US Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite was due to fall to Earth, with Nasa calculating that it has a one in 3,200 risk of striking a human. It poses less of a risk, however, than the 75 tonne Skylab did when it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere in 1979. In the event, it fell on an uninhabited region of Western Australia. — There is plenty more potential danger from space junk, with an estimated 19,000 pieces of man-made material greater than 100mm across orbiting the Earth, including a glove and a camera dropped by astronauts. Most will burn up in space when they re-enter, but one which could cause problems is Vanguard 1, a satellite launched in 1958 which is expected to fall to Earth in 240 years’ time.

The comedian David Walliams performed the impressive feat of swimming 140 miles of the River Thames from Lechlade to Westminster. That is still a long way short of the swims undertaken by Martin Strel, a 56-year-old Slovenian. — After swimming the length of the Danube (1,866 miles), the Mississippi (2,360 miles) and the Yangtze (2,487 miles),Strel was challenged to swim the Nile but dismissed it as ‘not challenging enough’. — He swam instead 3,272 miles down the Amazon, employing a support team to pour buckets of rancid blood into the water in order to distract the piranhas. — His next project is the Colorado, which is shorter but has faster rapids. What about the workers? Miners and steelworkers once dominated the Trades Union Congress.

A judge has described squatting as ‘good for society’ and called for lists of empty homes to be made available to an agency for squatters, while the Justice Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, is attempting to ­strengthen the law against squatting. How do laws on the subject vary across Europe? Britain Breaking and entering is a criminal offence, but if you can enter a building without breaking in, it is not a criminal offence to occupy it. The owner must obtain an eviction order through the civil courts.      France Squatting is illegal, but squatters can apply to the state to have empty homes requisitioned, and may not be evicted during the winter. Germany Squatting is illegal, and Berlin’s last openly squatted property was cleared last year.

The taxes of sin Bonn has introduced a flat-rate tax of €6 a night for prostitutes working in the city, payable at a ticket machine. Attempts to tax prostitution have been made since at least Roman times: a receipt from Roman Egypt suggested that a male prostitute paid four drachmas in tax for a two-month period.     — Sweden has taxed prostitutes since 1982 at the normal rate; workers qualify for sick leave pay and a pension.     — The Netherlands imposes a sales tax of 19 per cent on each act.    — Nevada has proposed a tax at a flat rate of $5 for every sex act.