UK taxpayers are paying £10 million for a voter registration programme to ensure that credible elections are held in Bangladesh this year.
Local authorities raised £1.7 billion from the sale of council houses in England in 2006-07, less than in any of the previous five years when between £2.1 billion (2001-02) and a peak of £3.5 billion (2003-04) was raised.
England, it seems, is an arty nation. Nearly 77 per cent of adults took part in the arts in the past 12 months: 66 per cent went to an event; 52 per cent took part; and 43 per cent did both, reports the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
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The Environment Agency is winning its battle to prevent flood-risk areas from being developed. While in 2001-02 11 per cent of planning applications were approved despite agency objections, this proportion fell to 2 per cent in 2006-07.
In 2006-07, 14,625 parents were given penalty notices for failing to send their children to school regularly and, in 2006, 2,952 parents were fined for the aggravated offence of knowing that their children were not attending school regularly.
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Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, is urging 18 countries to protect whales by joining the International Whaling Commission.
The Government has bought enough Tamiflu vaccine for 48,000 staff and their families working abroad if there is a flu pandemic. No vaccine has been acquired for home use.
Department of Health statistics reveal that nearly five million prescriptions for Prozac were issued at a cost of £18.8 million to the NHS. And those figures don’t count Prozac use in hospitals.
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Official figures (2006) suggest that there are 73,000 HIV sufferers in the UK. Of these 30,100 men were infected through homosexual or bisexual sex and 36,400 men and women were infected through heterosexual sex.