6 . . . and statistics' 'THE Times once had a
correspondent . . . [whose] stories tended to . . . [be] too long. One day he overdid it from Crete. The foreign manager cabled . . •: "An average . . . Times contains about
160,000 words . . . if you send • 1,400 words on Crete you are proposing to . . . [occupy] 1/115th of our space for that insignificant island, whose . • • population is . . . 1/136th of . . . the British Isles." '
(Financial Times, 28 July)
IT depends on the story. Would one have allotted only 3/55,000,000ths of a newspaper to the Moon landings in 1969 on the grounds that only three humans were involved, whereas Britain con- tained around 55 million people? £20 goes to Harry Tabeart, of Canvey Island.
`THE European Common Agricultural Policy is another predictable source of price increase and trade deficit. It . . • raises the RPI by about 10 per cent, with dire effects on competitivity.'
(Sir Alfred Sherman, Sunday Tele- graph, 28 August)
Send examples (with date) to • and statistics'; £20 for the best pub- lished; £10 for every other published.
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