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EVERY WEEK, TheJournal.ieoffers you a selection of statistics and numerical nuggets to help you digest the week that has just passed.
12,233 – The number of tweets posted, per second, at the end of last Sunday’s Super Bowl. Outside of Japan, that’s an all-time record for an event. The previous record had been set about an hour earlier, when there were 10,245 tweets-per-second posted during Madonna’s half-time show.
€3,100.05 - The amount received in expenses by Pat Moylan, the Fianna Fáil Cathaoirleach of the last Seanad, after the Seanad of which he was chairman had been dissolved. He received the expenses even though there was no role he could possibly have fulfilled.
20 years – The time since the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in the X Case, when it said the Irish constitution permitted abortion in circumstances where the mother’s life was at risk, which included the threat of suicide. Protests this week noted that no government has passed legislation to this extent in the meantime.
6.32 million – The number of people in the UK who tuned in to watch last Saturday’s episode of Mrs Brown’s Boys on BBC1. That’s 2.4 million people more than tuned in to watch David Beckham’s appearance on The Jonathan Ross Show on the same evening. Truly, there is nothing the world loves more than an Irish mammy.
21,920 days – The length of time, as of today, that Queen Elizabeth has been on the throne of the United Kingdom and her other countries. During her reign – which completed its 60th year on Tuesday – has seen her serve as sovereign of 32 different nations.
2,263 – The number of workers stepping down from the health service before the end of this month, to reap the benefits from the government’s incentivised retirement deal. Under that, workers retiring before February 29 receive pensions based on their pre-cut salaries.
120 - The number of staff who have been replaced at one primary school in Los Angeles. Every single member of the staff at Miramonte Elementary School has been put on leave while police investigate accusations that two teachers sexually abused children there.
88 minutes – The amount of time spent in the air by Thomas Cook airlines flight CX8126, bound for Tenerife, before it returned to land at Belfast’s Aldergrove airport on Tuesday morning. A technical fault on the plane caused it to return to Belfast but the plane spent almost 90 minutes circling before it landed safely with 175 passengers on board.
0 – The number of previous cases in which whales have successfully sued a corporate entity. That’s a record which five killer whales – being represented by PETA – failed to amend in a case against SeaWorld. The whales/PETA said they deserve protection from slavery – but a federal judge disagreed, saying the US constitution’s provisions about slavery only applied to humans.
€1.9 billion - The amount of Irish government bonds held by Michael Hasenstab, of Franklin Templeton Investments. The New York Times reported this week that Hasenstab had hoovered up the bonds as investors tried to offload them last summer. Now, with the government pledging to honour its national debts, Hasenstab is in line for a tidy profit.
€1,330 – The average debt on each credit card in Ireland at the end of 2011, according to the Central Bank. That’s down (ever so slightly) from €1,350 each at the end of 2008, when the total debt on Irish cards was at €3 billion. Although the total debt is down to €2.6 billion now, the average remains higher because there are fewer credit cards in circulation.
€130 million – The amount being invested in Ireland by three US multinationals which are creating around 500 new jobs here. Hewlett Packard, Abbott and Big Fish Games are all putting more money into Ireland, with the assistance of the IDA.
€14,566,262 – How much the Gardaí have spent in the policing operation at Rossport in Co Mayo between 2006 and 2011, where protesters have been trying to stop the construction of the Corrib gas pipeline. The figures include overtime, travel and subsistence, and miscellaneous expenses – but don’t include the standard salary earned by each officer in the first place.
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so the Irish people that were trafficked weren’t trafficked…gotcha , I was beginning to wonder had that well known Leitrim to Donegal route kicked off again….
Keep allowing them in and soon enough it will be your daughters and granddaughters that Thell be grooming for sex. Not just yet, it’ll take more of them to live here before they get the courage, but it’s on its way, keep watching.
The people involved in this should be locked up for life ie 30 years plus
@Fjordie, the people involved in this will be out as soon as possible, this allows the legal industry to make more money off them the next time their caught, when again, they will be promptly released, and the legal industry continues to rake in the money, look at what happening now, people with up to 100 prior convictions being given suspended sentences, why, so the legal industry can make money from having their product in circulation.
Suspended sentences all round
change the record
Must have heard about the gravy train the you can go on after exploitation. #inbeforetheracists.
And the prize for most obnoxious troll goes to…
not to mention incoherent
What is conspicuously missing from this story is a very important question;
“How many of these children were in State “Care” when they were trafficked?”
We’ve had this conversation before, when it emerged that 500 went “Missing” from “Care”, but when the truth emerged it was found that the entire thing had been covered up by Gardai, the HSE and the government. The truth was that that we only found out because Wikileaks released diplomatic documents from the American Embassy in Dublin. While the government said they were “Missing”, the US State Dept. showed that most had been accounted for and were trafficked. Many of the children were found in brothels or enforced slavery.
You’ll have to pardon me for using quotation marks on the word “Care”. I wonder will Wikileaks have to step in again to find out how many of these children were in State “Care”?
So true.
Ireland is not known as the Hub of child trafficking for nothing.
Yes children in care are prostituted out- but the state never prosecutes itself.
No one in power wants to know and use excuses like – secret court rules, blahhhhhh,blahhhhh
The Immigrant Council yet again calling for ”the criminalisation of the purchase of sex”, completely ignoring the fact that coercive trafficking and commercial sex work are entirely different things. Amnesty, UNAIDS, The World Health Org and as of today the UK Home Office Select Committee all advocate decriminalisation but apparently the ‘experts’ of TORL, ICI & Ruhama know better.
Thanks lily ☺
Not a bother. Negative attention is still attention right? Lap it up pet.
your talking to me aren’t you? you realize you don’t have to? lol
@Lily, their beliefs and culture are not compatible. What would you say to anyone of the women who were abused/raped in Europe, or to the countless children, what you say to the mother of the young boy who was raped in a public swimming pool in Europe only to be told that the reason was the immigrant had a “sexual emergency”. And yes, our own countries have our own issues, but it’s committed by perverts, whereas it’s the accepted culture where these people come from.
Conri, Nowhere did I make any comment to suggest I condone violence or assault. You have done a marvellous job of reading subtext where there was none.
@Lily, As you have, no where did I say you did condone violence , you also have done a marvellous job of reading subtext where there was none, we’ve so much in common you and I. Actually I was just stating (as a comment in response to yours) that this is an incompatible culture and will lead us down a very dark path if something is not done to stem the flow, it’s been described as an invasion, I agree with this. Can you please respond to the following question: do you want to see some of our towns and cities end up like some of Britain’s, unrecognisable to English people, unsafe for them to venture into ?
have your say