More than 40 per cent of the UK's working population earns less than £10,000 a year. [Financial Times, 20th November 1997]
Of the 4,500 homicides committed between 1990 and 1995 in England, Scotland and Wales,
10 per cent remain unsolved. During the same period in France, 25 per cent of 8,500 homicides remain unsolved. [Eurofile, BBC Radio 4, 6th December 1997]
Since 1993, consumer spending on pens and pencils of all kinds has fallen by 25 per cent. [Prospect, page 64]
The American version of English grows by about 5,000 words each year. [Anna Soukhanov, The Atlantic Monthly]
Of all British households, 29 per cent have a home computer and one in six are linked to the internet. [Financial Times, 25th November 1997]
Only about a quarter of Britons have any idea what a spin doctor is. [Gallup]
Since 1992, the number of people who travel by air has nearly doubled, reaching 1.2 billion passengers last year. [Wall Street Journal]
In 1990, 13,000 Russians were drug addicts. By the end of the century, the figure is expected to be 7.5m. [Prospect, page 38]
In 1973, agriculture employed 20 per cent of France's working population. In 1994, the figure was 7 per cent. [Granta 59, Autumn 1997]
