How do you breed seventeen octillion rats?
More or Less: Behind the Stats
BBC
4.6 • 3.5K Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Are GPs really working less hours per week? Does Wetherspoons really pay one in every £1000 of tax in the UK? Are more people in the UK economically inactive? How long does it take two rats to produce 17 octillion rats?
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news.
Presenter: Tim Harford Reporters: Natasha Fernandes and Bethan Ashmead-Latham Producer: Nathan Gower Series producer: Tom Colls Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison Sound mix: Sarah Hockley Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Kim Ketrau and I want to tell you about my new podcast a new audio drama telling the history of the CIA from the inside out. |
| 0:09.0 | The United States of America was suddenly its worst domestic attack. |
| 0:14.0 | He's got to convince Congress to give him an open checkbook now. |
| 0:18.0 | America has suffered its worst domestic attack of the 20th century at Pearl Harbor. |
| 0:23.0 | How do we make contact with the NKGB? |
| 0:27.0 | Central Intelligence, starring me, Kim Kertral, Ed Harris, and Johnny Flynn. |
| 0:31.0 | There's $50,000 in it for you if you say yes. |
| 0:35.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:42.0 | Hello and welcome to more or less. |
| 0:45.0 | We're the program that peers intently at the numbers through fashionable new glasses, |
| 0:50.0 | generously donated by our mysterious benefactors, I wish. And I'm Tim Harford by the way. |
| 0:56.0 | Coming up, is general practice now a job for part-timers, and do we have enough geepees to meet demand? |
| 1:03.0 | The Commentariat is worried that millions of working-age adults are dropping out of the labour force. |
| 1:09.0 | Are they? |
| 1:10.0 | Urged on by our loyal listeners, we look at the data. The answer may surprise you. |
| 1:15.6 | Does Weatherspoons pay too much tax? The pub chains certainly think so, but we're just going |
| 1:20.4 | to check. And we'll try to figure out if rats breed like rats. |
| 1:26.4 | Let's start with those GPs. Loyal listener Patrick Welton got in touch to ask about a recent headline from the Telegraph. |
| 1:34.3 | GPs work an average of 26 hours a week. |
| 1:38.0 | Patrick was surprised. |
| 1:40.0 | I would have expected the figure to be more like 56 or even 66 hours a week, he wrote. |
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