The not-so-great escapes

Escapology

This week marked the 70th anniversary of the Great Escape, when 76 Allied servicemen tunnelled out of Stalag Luft III prisoner of war camp in Poland. Fifty of them were executed on recapture. How successful were escape attempts?
— At least 483 Allied servicemen escaped German camps. Only 12 reached home turf, including three from the Great Escape.
— The biggest breakout was of French servicemen from Oflag XVII-A in Austria in 1943: 132 escaped, two of whom made it out of German-controlled territory.
— None of these figures include Horace Greasley, who claimed to have escaped from and returned to a camp in Lamsdorf, Germany, about 200 times to conduct an affair with a German-Jewish girl.

The pensions pot

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Rod Liddle

Sack the judges

The annuity market seems doomed as a result of changes to pension law in the Budget. How big was the market last year?
— 353,000 annuities were sold, worth a total of £11.9 billion, a 6% fall on the year before.
— The median value was £20,000, which would buy annuitants an income of around £80 a month for life.
— 28% of annuities were ‘enhanced’: the buyer got a better deal because of a medical problem expected to shorten their lives.

Shopkeepers’ corner

An engineer has built a vending machine in his Derbyshire village to make up for the lack of a shop. How important are small shops in food retailing? There are 47,090 convenience stores in Britain, with £35.6 billion of sales, about 20 per cent of the grocery market. Of these…

	No. of shops
Independent	18,800
Symbol groups (Spar etc)	16,900
Garage forecourts	7,540
Multiples (Tesco Express etc)	3,320
Co-ops	2,640

	% of total grocery market
Independent	4%
Symbol groups (Spar etc)	8%
Garage forecourts	2%
Multiples (Tesco Express etc)	3%
Co-ops	2%

Source: Association of Convenience Stores

The 100 club

The number of people over 100 in the UK rose from 7,740 in 2002 to 13,350 in 2012. In which countries do you have the highest chance of living to 100?