- Only one cabinet member represents a southern English seat—John Denham, Southampton Itchen. (Fabian Society)
- In 1958, the Royal Navy had 645 vessels. Today, it has less than 100. (The Times, 14th May 2008)
- The British public gave more in 2006 to a single donkey sanctuary—£20m—than to the country's three largest domestic violence charities—£17m. (New Philanthropy Capital)
- 74 per cent of London's workers think about trying to find a new job every day, compared to 11 per cent of workers in the southwest. (Personnel Today, 18th April 2008)
- A video of Barack Obama's 35-minute Philadelphia speech on race was watched in its entirety by 5.5m people on YouTube. (Gideon Rachman, FT blog)
- 13 per cent of Britons have flossed their teeth while driving. (BBC News online, 20th May 2008)
- In Britain, a quarter of people earning £50,000 a year consider themselves "working class." (Daily Telegraph, 22nd April 2008)
- More than one in ten people in Britain have had an accident while trying to copy cooking techniques used by celebrity chefs. (Housewarelives.net, 25th April 2008)
- The term "Benelux" was coined by the Economist's Netherlands correspondent in 1946. He thought it sounded better than "Nebelux." (The Economist, 2nd May 2008)
- Shell's dividend last year was $8bn. (The Times, 1st May 2008)
- There were 60 rape crisis centres in England and Wales in 1996. Today, there are only 38. (New Statesman, 23rd april 2008)
- Only one of the 345 local councillors in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield is a Conservative, in Manchester. (Harvey Cole)
- Five of the ten bestselling novels in Japan in 2007 were written on mobile phones. (The Economist, 10th April 2008)
- On an average evening, between 30 and 45 paparazzi follow Britney Spears around. (The Atlantic, April 2008)
- In 2007, the average piece of chewing gum cost 3p to buy, but 10p to remove from a pavement. (The Guardian, 3rd May 2008)
- From January to June 2007, treasury staff averaged 166 days off per month owing to stress-related illness. From July to December, after Gordon Brown left, they took an average of 106 days off. (Guido Fawkes, 20th May 2008)
- The "close doors" button doesn't work in most lifts. (New Yorker, 21st April 2008)
- Last year there were 731 crimes per 100,000 people in Glasgow, compared to 631 in New York. (Reform Scotland Report)
- Cycling in London has risen by 83 per cent since 2000. Yet the number of cyclists killed or seriously injured on the road in the capital has fallen by a third in the last decade. (The Economist, 26th April 2008)
- China became a net importer of coal in January 2007. (Agence France-Presse)
- Police officers in Los Angeles are more likely to commit suicide than be killed by criminals. Between 1998 and 2007, 19 officers killed themselves, while only seven died in the line of duty. (Los Angeles Times, 26th March 2008)
