The Spectator

Barometer | 13 July 2017

Also in Barometer: who finds all the lost golf balls, and the long, slow death of coal mining

issue 15 July 2017

The joy of Sixtus

Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and his wife announced the birth of their sixth child, a son called Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher. But is that appropriate?
— A sixth child ought to be ‘Sextus’. Five popes were called Sixtus but the name is believed to derive from a Greek word meaning ‘polished’.
— Among the living, there is Sixtus Henry of Bourbon-Parma, whom some believe to be the rightful monarch of Spain, and Sixtus Preiss, a Viennese hip-hop artist whose work includes Samba Feelin Beein This, Trilingual Dance Sexperience and, appropriately, given the Tory performance in the general election, What a Fine Mess We’ve Made of This.

Mine decline

Jeremy Corbyn addressed a record Durham Miners’ Gala crowd, estimated at 200,000. How many might have been miners? Coal industry employment over the years:

1920 (peak employment) 1,190,000

1945 (Labour’s post-war victory) 702,000
1964 (election of Harold Wilson) 502,000

1973 (three-day week) 252,000

1984 (miners’ strike) 139,000

1997 (election of Tony Blair) 14,000

2015 (last UK deep coal mine closes) 200

Source: ONS

Employ yourself

The Taylor Review into work practices was published.

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