Barometer

Of no account  Nigel Farage claimed that his bank has told him it will be closing his accounts, without giving him a reason, although he suspects it is because of his political views. Is it possible to live without a bank account? – According to the Financial Conduct Authority, there are 1.3 million adults in Britain who are ‘unbanked’. – A third of them do not want to have a bank account, sometimes because they have got into trouble with debt in the past. – There are 7.45 million ‘basic’ bank accounts designed to offer essential functionality for handling payments, without offering credit and other services. Around the houses How is the volume of housing sales holding up across the UK?

On the warpath Yevgeny Prigozhin’s aborted coup saw his mercenary army, Wagner, advance three-quarters of the 596 miles from Rostov to Moscow. How far did other coup leaders have to travel? Distance in miles 49 BC, Julius Caesar: Rubicon river to Rome 152 1799, Napoleon: Paris to Saint-Cloud 7 1815, Napoleon: Elba to Paris 564 1922, Mussolini: Naples to Rome 117 1936, Franco: Gran Canaria to Seville 851 1973, Pinochet: Valparaiso to Santiago 63 Commencing the Tour The 120th-anniversary Tour de France departs Bilbao on Saturday when 176 riders will compete for the yellow jersey. It’s the second time the race has started in Spain, having set off from San Sebastián in 1992.

Shortest knight Martin Amis was knighted the day before he died last month. Has anyone else had so little time to enjoy an honour? Wilfred Stamp, 2nd Baron Stamp, officially holds the record as the shortest-serving peer. He died with his father, Josiah, the 1st Baron Stamp, when their home in Beckenham, Kent was bombed in April 1941. Because no one could be sure in which order father and son had died the law decreed that Wilfred has survived a split second longer than his father. It meant that he would forever be remembered as Lord Stamp – but forced his family to pay death duty twice. By the by Has this parliament had an unusual number of by-elections?

No platformed What effect have strikes had on rail travel? – In the first quarter of this year, some 389m journeys were made on the rail network, up on 2022 but only 88% of the number of journeys made in the same period in 2019, before the pandemic – Ticket revenue was £2.2bn, 70% of the same period in 2019 – LNER (111% of 2019 levels), East Midlands (101%), Hull Trains (122%) and Grand Central (111%) all managed to increase passenger numbers on 2019; all other franchises saw a decline – Passenger numbers fell the most on the Transpennine service (60%), which was recently relieved of its franchise Source: Office of Rail and Road  Crowded house Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list was published, minus several expected peers.

Sofa so good Phillip Schofield has said that his career on the TV sofa is over. Who first sat on one?  – BBC Breakfast, first broadcast on 17 January 1983, famously featured a red leather sofa which presenter Frank Bough told his audience was the ideal way to present a news programme. But the history of the TV sofa goes back a lot further. The Tonight Show, first broadcast on NBC in 1954, featured one from 1964 onwards – a surviving clip from that year shows presenter Johnny Carson standing in front of a blue cloth-upholstered sofa. Death and taxes How much does inheritance tax raise, and how many people pay it? – In 2021/22 the tax raised £6.1bn. This is double what it raised a decade earlier.

Terf wars Who was the original Terf (trans-exclusionary radical feminist)? – The practice of some women’s groups in excluding trans women began almost with the advent of trans women themselves. In 1978, the Lesbian Organisation of Toronto refused membership to a trans woman who identified as a lesbian – saying it would only accept ‘womyn born womyn’. – The term ‘Terf’, however, dates only from 2008, when it was used in a blog post by feminist writer Viv Smythe in response to a ban on trans women attending the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (a ban which had been in place since 1991). – The festival, which had been going since 1976, was boycotted by some and was last held in 2015.

Fine lines Would Suella Braverman be more likely to stick to the speed limit had she chosen to go on a speed awareness course instead of being fined? A government-commissioned study in 2018 looked at the reoffending rate among 1.4 million drivers who had accepted the offer of a speed awareness course and compared it with that of drivers who opted to take three points and pay a fine instead. Within two years of taking the course, around a quarter of drivers had reoffended. However, the rate was lower than it was for motorists who had chosen to pay the fine. The relative reduction of reoffending was put at 12-23% after six months, 9-17% after one year, 9-11% after two years and 6-13% after three years.

Pig out Marks & Spencer wrote to an ice cream parlour in Hertfordshire demanding that it stop calling one of its products ‘Perky Pig’ on the grounds that it infringed the chain’s copyright of Percy Pigs, which it has been selling since 1992. Some more onomatopoeic porcines: – Pierre Pig: collectible plastic figurines introduced by Fabuland in 1984. The characters in the series also included Pat Pig, Peter Pig and Patricia Piglet. – Peppa Pig: children’s TV series first broadcast on Channel 5 in 2004, and favourite of former PM Boris Johnson. – Percival Pig Finds His Manners: children’s book published in the US in 2014. – Percival, the Performing Pig: children’s play by Dilys Owen. – Perry Pig Jump: Nintendo game brought out in 2019.

Machine learning Who came up with the phrase ‘artificial intelligence’? – The term was coined by US computer scientist John McCarthy in 1955, arising from a summer school held at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. The blurb for the project declared: ‘the study is to proceed on the basis of the conjecture that every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.’ However, McCarthy seems to have had a slightly loose concept of what constitutes AI. He once had a debate with a colleague in which he asserted that even a thermostat could be said to have ‘belief’ on the grounds that it believed a room should be set at a particular temperature.

Uneasy lies the head In a 2018 BBC documentary Elizabeth II commented on the weight of the crown at her coronation, complaining that if you wore it for too long ‘your neck would break off’. What will be the burden on Charles III’s head? – At the moment of the coronation Charles will wear St Edward’s Crown, made for Charles II in 1661. That weighs 2.07kg. Prior to 1911 it weighed 2.6kg – although both Victoria and Edward VII were spared having to wear it. – However, for his departure from Westminster Abbey that crown will be removed and he will wear the Imperial State Crown instead, which weighs 1.06kg.  – By contrast, most full-face motorcycle helmets (just about the heaviest thing people wear on their heads in day-to-day life) weigh between 1.

By George Keir Starmer was mocked for showing footage of Glasgow in a video he made to celebrate St George’s Day. But the legend of St George (who is, after all, also the patron saint of Georgia and Ethiopia) did not leave Scotland untouched.  – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and Stirling all have churches dedicated to St George. St George’s Cross is an area of central Glasgow which gives its name to an Underground station and also boasts a statue of St George and the Dragon. Central Glasgow also had a St George’s Place, outside St George’s Church, but it has since been renamed Nelson Mandela Place.

Putting out fires The Brecon Beacons National Park Authority said it was renaming the park because the word ‘beacon’ implies carbon emissions and ‘does not fit with the ethos’. — Many hills in Britain carry the name ‘beacon’ thanks to chains of fires which were lit up to warn of approaching invasion. In Devon alone, 39 beacon sites have been identified. Most famously, beacons were lit in July 1588 to warn of the approaching Spanish Armada after it was spotted off Land’s End, although there is no record of how many fires were lit nor how quickly it took the message to reach London. — Not that the name of the Brecon Beacons really appears to be changing at all.

Conditions of carriage The King and Queen will travel to and from the coronation in a carriage which boasts heating and electric windows. Are these uncommon luxuries? Popular Mechanics magazine in the US reveals that the King is not alone in expecting mod cons in his carriage: even the Amish employ various modern technologies in their horse-drawn buggies. Their $8,000 vehicles have had brakes since the 1960s, originally salvaged from scrapped Volkswagens. Now, 10% have disc brakes. Most have bodies made from fibreglass and all those in use in Ohio and Pennsylvania have headlights and tail lights by demand of state legislation. Many also have interior lights, usually powered by batteries used in cordless tools.

Falling at fences Activists from an animal rights group were secretly filmed apparently plotting to disrupt the Grand National, protesting in part at the number of horses killed at the event. – Since 1839, 88 horses have died either during the race or were put down as a result of injuries. Four died in the past decade and nine in the decade before that. The deadliest race was 1954, when the event was held on soft ground. Of the 29 horses entered, only nine finished. Four died. The longest periods without a fatality were 1908-22, 1892-1900, 1873-81, 1961-66 and 2013-18. State of the unions How much are public sector unions costing the taxpayer?

Fooling about When did the tradition of 1 April pranks begin? One theory is that it derives from the ancient Roman festival of Hilaria, which involved games and pranks – although that was held on the spring equinox, which falls more than a week earlier than 1 April.  — In Chaucer’s ‘Nun’s Priest’s Tale’, a fox fools a cockerel ‘since March began thirty days and two’. Another explanation is that ‘All Fools’ Day’ referred to backward country folk in 16th-century France who didn’t realise that the adoption of the Julian calendar had moved New Year’s Day from 25 March (a week’s festivities used to end on 1 April) to 1 January. However, the first reference to a ‘poisson d’Avril’ was in a poem from 1508, before the calendar change was made.

Beyond a joke Is it time to rewrite an old joke? A letter published in Time in 1963 suggested that heaven would consist of French chefs, British police, German engineers, Italian lovers and Swiss bankers, while hell would consist of English chefs, German police, French engineers, Swiss lovers and Italian bankers. British police, however, have sunk in the world’s estimation – a poll last year revealed that only 44% of people trust them, which puts us behind France and Germany. The most trusted police are in Denmark and the Netherlands, where they are trusted by 58%. The good news is that British chefs are no longer staffing hell’s kitchens. According to a YouGov survey of 24 countries in 2019, British food came mid-table, with Scandinavian countries filling the bottom places.

Eyes on the ball Viewing figures for Match of the Day rose by 500,000 when Gary Lineker was suspended from the show for tweeting about the government’s asylum bill and his fellow pundits walked out on strike in support.  – First broadcast on the then new BBC2 on 22 August 1964, the show was initially controversial not because of the views of its presenter Kenneth Wolstenholme but because football clubs feared it would discourage fans from attending games.  – They need not have worried: the first episode, featuring highlights of Liverpool vs Arsenal, attracted just 20,000 viewers.  – Viewing figures rose sharply, however, after England won the World Cup in 1966 and the programme was moved to BBC1.

Out of service  Conservative MPs criticise the proposed appointment of Sue Gray as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. It is not unknown, however, for civil servants to switch to political careers, including two prime ministers of recent times.  – Edward Heath began his career in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, having come joint top in the civil service entrance exams in his year.  – Jim Callaghan did not intend a career as a civil servant, but on joining the Royal Navy during the second world war he was found to have tuberculosis, and for a while was seconded to work at the Admiralty in Whitehall, where his duties included writing a guide to the Japanese for the benefit of British servicemen who might come into contact with them. He later saw active service.

Striking out An England vs Wales rugby match was nearly called off after Welsh players threatened to go on strike over the terms of their new contracts. Although rare, industrial action is certainly not unheard of in the sporting arena. – In June last year the Canadian men’s football team went on strike demanding they share at least three quarters of World Cup prize money, rather than the 40 per cent they were being offered. A friendly against Panama was called off. – In August 2020, shortly after the BLM protests sparked by the murder of George Floyd, US basketball, soccer and baseball teams went on strike in protest at the shooting of another black man by police in Wisconsin.

That’s another story Roald Dahl’s books have been edited to make them less offensive, with references to ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’ people removed. Other children’s media that has been revised: – The Noddy books originally featured golliwogs, which were removed in 2009. – Six Dr Seuss books were withdrawn from sale in 2021, one for featuring a Chinese man with chopsticks for eyes, another for depicting African characters in grass skirts. – Dumbo was taught to fly by crows with exaggerated southern US accents. One was originally called Jim but has been renamed Dandy, and a content warning added.  – Peter Pan refers to ‘redskins’, also now with a content warning. Turning profits How has the profitability of UK firms changed in the past decade?