JOHN GUMMER IS STILL AN MP!

News just in. More details here.

The UK's 10 busiest and least busy stations

Back in 2005 we looked at these with data from 2004/2005 (and read comments for an explanation of how it is done), this has now been updated to 2007/2008. I expect methodologies have changed slightly as well and so the figures can't really be compared, but here they are. The raw data is available here.

London Waterloo	London	50,161,215
London Victoria	London	38,357,578
London Liverpool Street	London	29,024,930
London Bridge	London	26,993,824
London Charing Cross	London	19,383,274
London Euston	London	14,735,665
London Paddington	London	14,734,923
London Kings Cross	London	12,391,967
East Croydon	London	11,629,312
London Cannon Street	London	11,028,516
Crosskeys	Wales - Cymru	3
Llanhilleth	Wales - Cymru	4
Denton	North West	18
Dorking West	South East	18
Tees-Side Airport	North East	22
Reddish South	North West	22
Coombe Halt	South West	29
Doleham	South East	36
Buckenham	East	50
Barry Links	Scotland	69

Wine prices again

The Economist has an article on the British and Claret, and gives us this paragraph:

Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister, used navy ships to smuggle his favourite wines from France. The most expensive one he bought was old burgundy, but that—as now—was available only in tiny quantities. So he relied largely on claret, buying four hogsheads of 24 dozen bottles of Margaux and one hogshead of Lafite every three months. In a single year his wine bill amounted to over £1,200 (£100,000 today).

As Felix notes, assuming the Economist's conversion is correct this comes to about £17/bottle (24 * 12 * 4 * 5 = 5,760 bottles), yet to buy it today will set you back about £300/bottle. Interestingly £17/bottle is not that far off the £22/bottle (in today's money) that I found Berry Bros. & Rudd were selling Lafite for in 1909.

In fact if you take it back into money of the day, we have five shillings in Walpole's time (the early 1700s), six shillings in 1909, and 6020 shillings today.

London in 2010 from 1990

Over here.

tax freedom day

Ive not done detailed calculations but looking at a chart of tax as a percent of gdp I think tax freedom day will be earlier in 2010 than it has been in decades.

Tax Returns

I have to say the Inland Revenue's online tax return filing system is really quite impressive for a piece of government software - simple to use, robust, and easy to understand. I'd set aside a whole morning and it took 10 minutes!

[I'm in a good mood as they owe me tax]