National statistics

Some lesser-known facts about the National Theatre:
— 26 per cent of its income comes from box office sales on the South Bank, 33 per cent from commercial productions elsewhere and 20 per cent from government grants.
— Attendances at the main Olivier Theatre have fallen year on year since 2008/09, from 402,000 to 342,000.
— Overall attendances including touring productions rose from 817,000 to 1.48 million.
— While Prince Charles likened the building, by Denys Lasdun, to a nuclear power station, Sir John Betjeman, not generally a fan of modern architecture, said he ‘gasped with delight’ when he first saw it.
— Like Tesco, the National Theatre has a problem with waste food, disposing of 39,960kg of it during the past year.

Our electric friends

How do our domestic electricity prices compare internationally (taxes included)

Source: DECC

Missing children

Former children’s minister Tim Loughton called the statistics on missing children ‘raw and erratic’. How many children possibly go missing?
121 children listed on www.missingkids.co.uk, run by CEOP.
561 children abducted in 2009/10 according to the Home Office.
140,000 children go missing each year — figure quoted by PACT (Parents and Abducted Children Together).
327,000 reports of missing children in 2010/11, according to the now-defunct National Police Improvement Agency.

Useless regulations

Some particularly useless EU regulations, as defined by the effect on the UK economy measured government impact assessments (recurring annual cost vs recurring benefit):

Source: Open Europe