I want to be alone

An animal described as ‘Britain’s loneliest sheep’ was ‘rescued’ from the bottom of a cliff in Easter Ross where it had been living for the past two years, presumably after clambering down the steep coastal slope and finding it impossible to climb back up.   Some other lonely life forms:

– All albatrosses live in the southern hemisphere – except one. ‘Albie’, or ‘Albert’, is believed to have made a navigational error in around 2014 and has since been living in Europe, dividing his time between Germany, the Yorkshire coast and the east coast of Scotland, where he tends to hang out with gannets.

– The greater mouse-eared bat was believed to be extinct in Britain – until a solitary member of the species was found to be hibernating in a disused railway tunnel in West Sussex.

– The Tree of Ténéré, an acacia known as the world’s loneliest tree, used to stand in the Sahara Desert in Niger, 250 miles from the nearest tree – until it was run down by a drunk driver in 1973.

Accounting error

The government is to oblige banks to monitor benefit claimants’ accounts and report any suspicious behaviour which might indicate fraud. How much welfare money disappears in fraud?

– According to the Department for Work and Pensions 3.6% of benefits in the year to April last year were ‘overpayments’ (this includes errors as well as fraud).

– But this is only what is known about. The overpayment rate varied between benefits:

Universal Credit 12.8%

Pension Credit 6.7%

Housing Benefit 5.5%

Employment and Support Allowance 3.4%

Personal Independence Payments 1.1%

Stop press

How many people are stopped and searched by police and how successful is the policy?

– In the year to March this year, 547,003 people were stopped and searched by police forces in England and Wales, a 3% increase on the previous year.

– 63% of those stopped were men between the ages of 15 and 34.

– In the past 15 years, the numbers of people stopped and searched has varied between fewer than 300,000 in 2017/18 to more than 1.5m in 2008/09.

– 74,097 stop-and-search incidents resulted in an arrest in 2022/23 – 14% of the total.

Source: Home Office