How many teenagers kill?

That ship has sailed

The BBC children’s television programme Blue Peter will no longer be broadcast live. Why did it go by that name? – Blue Peter is the nickname of the international maritime signal flag for the letter ‘P’, consisting of white square inside a blue square. When displayed on its own it means ‘all persons should report on board because the ship is about to sail’. In 1958, a predecessor programme, the Children’s Television Club, was broadcast from the Mersey ferry. Watching was Owen Reed, head of children’s television for the BBC at the time, who wanted to launch a new show for five- to eight-year-olds and was taken by the name of the flag that was displayed as filming got under way.

Civil question

Who works for the civil service?

– There were 515,000 civil servants in the third quarter of 2024, up from a low of 384,000 in the second quarter of 2016. It had fallen from 492,000 in 2009.

– In 2023/24 63,330 joined the civil service and 39,585 left, a net gain of 23,745.

– 54.5% are women, 16.6% are from an ethnic minority, 16.9% have a disability and 6.9% are LBG.

– The biggest employers of civil servants are the Ministry of Justice (95,990), the Department for Work and Pensions (93,815) and HMRC (69,655).

Source: Cabinet Office/Institute for Government

Teenage killers

The Netflix series Adolescence has highlighted cases of teenage boys who kill girls. How many under-16s are convicted of homicide? (The statistics are silent on who their victims were.)

Boys Girls

2013-14 12 0

2014-15 11 2

2015-16 4 0

2016-17 14 1

2017-18 24 1

2018-19 12 1