What else has had the Roald Dahl treatment?

That’s another story

Roald Dahl’s books have been edited to make them less offensive, with references to ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’ people removed. Other children’s media that has been revised:

– The Noddy books originally featured golliwogs, which were removed in 2009.

– Six Dr Seuss books were withdrawn from sale in 2021, one for featuring a Chinese man with chopsticks for eyes, another for depicting African characters in grass skirts.

– Dumbo was taught to fly by crows with exaggerated southern US accents. One was originally called Jim but has been renamed Dandy, and a content warning added. 

– Peter Pan refers to ‘redskins’, also now with a content warning.

Turning profits

How has the profitability of UK firms changed in the past decade? Net rate of return for non-financial sector companies:

Q3 2013 11.3%

Q3 2014 12.8%

Q3 2015 11.6%

Q3 2016, Q3 2017 10.5%

Q3 2018 10.1%

Q3 2019 10.2%

Q3 2020 10.4%

Q3 2021, Q3 2022 9.7%

Source: Office for National Statistics

Gloomy forecasts

How good is economic forecasting? Some forecasts made in the fourth quarter of 2022 for UK growth (which in the event turned out at 0 per cent):

CEBR (Nov) -1.1%

British Chambers of Commerce (Dec) -0.9%

J.P. Morgan (Dec) -0.6%

Bloomberg Economics (Dec) -0.5%

Barclays Capital (Dec) -0.4%

Citigroup (Dec) -0.2%

Capital Economics (Dec) -0.1%

CBI (Dec) 0.1%

NIESR (Dec) 0.5%

Source: HM Treasury

Meal plans

Sadiq Khan wants free school meals for all children at London primaries, at a cost of £130 million. Who gets them now?

– Across England, 1.9m (22.5%) got free school meals in 2021/22. It grew from 13.6% in 2017/18 to 15.4% in 2018/19, 17.3% in 2019/20 and 20.8% in 2020/21.

– Children qualify if they live in a household which receives a welfare benefit and with an income (after tax but excluding welfare benefits) of less than £7,400.

– In 2021/22, the highest proportion getting them was in the north-east (29.1%), and the lowest was in the south-east (17.6%).