There is a formula for how many people should be allowed to stand on trains. It works like this: for journeys of more than 20 minutes, no one should need to stand for more than 20 minutes. For journeys of less than 20 minutes, up to 30 per cent of passengers can stand. During the morning and evening rush hour, London and Edinburgh operators work to different standards. At peak times, the average number of passengers carried should not exceed more than 4.5 per cent of the “nominal capacity . . . in either peak taken in isolation, or more than 3 per cent for both peaks combined”.
In the five years from 2000 to 2004, 9,821 permits were issued to import primates for biomedical research or scientific purposes.
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You get £5 an hour if you clean the Houses of Parliament, though it rises if you clean sensitive areas (£6.81). The main cleaning contract for both Houses of Parliament is worth about £2.2 million a year, of which 60 per cent (£1.32 million) is spent on the House of Commons.
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In five years, 100 public libraries in London have disappeared. In 1998-99 there were 495; in 2003-04 there were 395.
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Radioactive waste is stored in 34 locations around the country. They include: Amersham, Berkeley, Cardiff, Clyde, Culham, Devonport, Donnington, Drigg, Dungeness, Eskmeals, Heysham, Hinkley Point, Hartlepool, Harwell, Oldbury, Portsmouth, Rosyth, Sellafield/Calder Hall, Sizewell, Stafford, Torness, Vulcan, Windscale, Winfrith and Wylfa.
The Department for International Development bought 57 laptops in 1995-96. In 2003-04, it bought 900. Since 1995, the department has lost two, and 38 have been stolen.
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Last year there were 942,000 flights into and out of the four London airports (Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and City). Almost half of these (470,000) were at Heathrow.