Britain's 80,000 homeless children
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2013
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About 80,000 children will wake up homeless on Christmas Day, according to the charity Shelter. What exactly does that mean? Tim Harford explores the statistic. Plus, he fact-checks the news reports of a global wine shortage; and a magician, who exploits the maths of card shuffling, attempts to read his mind. Also, are the four festive football fixtures as crucial to Premier League teams as many claim? And, in tribute to the former BBC economics editor, Stephanie Flanders, listen to what was perhaps her finest broadcasting moment.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for downloading more or less from the BBC. |
| 0:03.2 | This is the version of the programme first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:07.3 | Here's Tim Halford. |
| 0:08.8 | Hello and welcome to a brand new series of more or less. |
| 0:13.0 | The programme which puts the statistics into Christmas. |
| 0:17.6 | This week I'll be running my slide rule over festive football fixtures, |
| 0:21.8 | wine and magic. |
| 0:24.0 | But first, this Christmas morning, 80,000 children will wake up homeless |
| 0:30.4 | This is an advertisement a Christmas appeal from shelter, the housing charity. |
| 0:35.3 | It certainly pulls at the heartstrings. |
| 0:37.6 | Shelter has put a lot of effort into its campaign. |
| 0:39.8 | There are posters everywhere. |
| 0:42.0 | But 80,000 children seems to be an incredibly large number. |
| 0:46.6 | Something one of our listeners, Simon from Lancashire, was unsure about. |
| 0:51.0 | When I heard this number, I was extremely surprised as I don't see children sleeping |
| 0:54.5 | up on the streets very often. |
| 0:55.8 | Is there an explanation to this? |
| 0:57.8 | Is this something to do with a definition of homelessness? |
| 1:00.2 | I think that when we think about homeless people, most of us like Simon, |
| 1:04.1 | first think of people who are sleeping rough. |
| 1:06.0 | But this figure refers to something different. |
| 1:08.8 | This is the government's definition of homeless. |
... |
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