Flextensions

Some organisations which may have benefited from Donald Tusk’s offer of a ‘flextension’ to Article 50:
— Adidas, which has marketed a ‘Porsche Design Sport Flextension Easy Trainer’.
— DB Flextension, a South Africa company which makes commercial signage systems.
— Flextension, a Dutch charity which supports the development of wheelchairs and other equipment for boys and young men suffering from muscular dystrophy.

Worse than smoking?

A University of Washington study claimed that poor diet kills more people globally than smoking does. Other things which have been claimed to be worse than smoking:
Stress (Columbia University Medical Center)
Not exercising (Cleveland Clinic)
Sitting down (Mayo Clinic, Arizona State University)
Shisha (Brighton and Sussex Medical School)
Cleaning the house with common cleaning products (Bergen University)
Loneliness (David Cameron’s Behavioural Insights team)
High protein diet (University of Southern California)
Vaping (University of Athens)

The gender pay gap

The gender pay gap was reported to have increased. Here is a random selection of employers and their pay gaps (in median wage terms) — giving the sums earned by women for every pound earned by men:

Conservative Campaign HQ
£1.16
Commission for Equality
and Human Rights
£1.03
Carlton Clubs Ltd
£1.00
Labour party
97p
TUC
94p
Unite the Union
72p
Marie Stopes International
65p

Source: gov.uk

Election clusters

If we have a general election this year, we will have had three such events within the space of five years. But this has happened before, on five occasions:

— 22 July 1802, 17 November 1806, 22 June 1807
— 13 February 1906, 15 February 1910,  31 January 1911
— 15 November 1922, 6 December 1923,  29 October 1924
— 18 June 1970, 28 February 1974,  10 October 1974
— And (worst of all): 9 August 1830, 25 July 1831, 29 January 1833, 19 February 1835