Cox’s codpiece

Attorney general Geoffrey Cox returned from Brussels without even a ‘codpiece’, the name used by some Tories for the concession on the backstop which he was hoping to win from the EU.

— Why is a codpiece called by that name? The expression is traced by the Oxford English Dictionary to the year 1460, a pivotal year in the Wars of the Roses, when the Battles of Northampton and Wakefield were fought
— It has survived in spite of the fact that the word ‘cod’, to indicate scrotum, has since fallen into disuse. This itself can be traced back to Old Norse, which used ‘kodd’ to describe something distended
and unevenly shaped.
 

All over the world

An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 crashed shortly after take-off on a flight from Addis Ababa, killing all 157 people on board. The victims were of a remarkable 35 nationalities — among them:
 

Kenyan
32
Canadian
18
Ethiopian, British
9
Chinese, Italian, American
8
French
7
Egyptian
6
German
5

Water, water, everywhere

Ed Sheeran’s neighbours in Suffolk complained that his nature conservation pond was really a swimming pool in disguise — a purpose for which it doesn’t have planning permission. How many UK homes have a swimming pool?
 
— There are 240,000 residential pools in Britain, as well as 7,000 commercial pools.
— 85% of the residential pools are outdoor and 15% are indoor.
— 60% of them are in southern England.
— 50% are built with concrete and 50% use a liner, most commonly plastic.
— 1,500 new pools a year are being built.
— Outdoor pools cost an average of £5 a day, in energy and chemicals. Indoor pools cost £7.50.
Source: Swimming Pool and Allied
Trades Association
 

Get away from it all

Will fears of a no-deal Brexit help you get a cheap flight? Cheapest flights to European cities on forthcoming Fridays: 22 March, 29 March, 5 April, 12 April:
 

Frankfurt
£8, £8, £63, £18
Paris
£56, £56, £65, £74
Rome
£86, £75, £97, £48
Barcelona
£31, £41, £65, £39

Source: skyscanner.net