What's the population of the UK?
I read this week that journalists are not very good with figures. "The great majority come from an arts or social studies background" Guilty, I failed my maths O-Level. The writer went on "most of my colleagues will not have grappled with a differential equation since their early teens. Basic statistical concepts - confidence intervals, standard deviation, probability and so on - are alien to them." Fair enough, but should that stop us asking one of the big questions of day- how many people live here?
The number of people living in the UK seems to vary depending on the paper you read. So who does know? Or who is best placed to know? And who would you trust? All advice welcome and to be clear this not about whether the number is too high or too low or just right - it's about whether it is possible to find a number that we can all broadly agree on.
Some are convinced the UK population is already well over 70 million. iPM has been speaking to one of them, author and business journalist, Martin Baker
Convincing? Or cobblers? Here's something relevant to the above from our friends at Newsnight and 91Èȱ¬ Radio Five Live.
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