The UK eats a Boeing 747’s worth of cheese every day which helps explain why you can’t find a plumber when you need one.
So firstly, let’s talk about pizza. In an average lifetime, the average Brit will eat 730 pizzas. That’s whole pizzas. And based on the current stats around average lifetime, and the fact that the average pizza has about 100 grams of cheese on it, that means us Brits are getting through 175 tonnes of cheese every day – that’s a jumbo jet.
And the other statistic explains why you can never find a plumber when you need one.
The government has an annual budget of £711 million allocated to its Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG). (For those of you who don’t know, this is a mandatory grant provided by local authorities in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland to help meet the cost of adapting homes for disabled people, to help them live safely and independently.)
With 60% of this being spent on adapted bathrooms, and the average cost being about £7,500, that means government is paying for around 55,000 bathroom adaptations per year in the UK.
But due to means testing, lack of awareness of the DFG grant, and other obstacles, this number is only a fraction of the total, with the remainder being privately funded. Some estimates put the real number 6X higher, at 330,000, which is getting on for 1,000 EVERY DAY!
And that’s why you can never find a plumber when you need one.
(If you work in housing, care, or adaptations, this won’t surprise you.)
