Big Ben will have a £29m refurbishment. Who has the biggest clock tower?
Kremlin Clock: Installed on the 232ft Spasskaya Tower. Clock has a diameter of 20ft.
Big Ben: Installed on 315ft Elizabeth Tower. Clock faces are 24ft across.
Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, New York: 700ft high (although the clock is only two-thirds of the way up). Clock is 26ft6in in diameter.
Abraj Al-Bait Towers, Mecca: Clock is on 1,972ft tower and visible from 15 miles away. Clock faces are 151ft in diameter.
Brussels clout
How important is the EU as an export market? Britain’s top ten export markets by value in August this year:
Value
US
£3.2bn
Switzerland
£2.3bn
Netherlands
£1.5bn
China
£1.4bn
Ireland
£1.2bn
France
£1.2bn
Belgium
£896m
Hong Kong
£655m
Spain
£625m
Change sinceAugust 2014
US
+15%
Switzerland
+290%
Netherlands
+2%
China
+35.8%
Ireland
-1.3%
France
-19.4%
Belgium
+7.8%
Hong Kong
+49.3%
Spain
-9.3%
Source: ONS
Steel away
Tata Steel announced 1,200 job losses at its Scunthorpe plant in the latest contraction in the industry. Between 1970 and 2014, UK steel production fell from 27.8m to 9.4m tonnes. The fall in jobs has been more precipitous still.
Workers in UK steel industry
1971
320,000
1978
271,000
1991
44,000
2001
30,000
2014
24,000
Source: House of Commons Library
Jet set
President Xi flew into Heathrow in his jumbo.
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