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I am tired. For a couple of years I’ve been blaming it on iron-poor blood, lack of vitamins, diet, and a dozen other maladies. But now I’ve found out the real reason: I’m tired because I’m overworked.
The population of the UK is 69 million1, of which the latest census has 37 million “of working age”2.
According to the latest statistics, 4,215,913 are unemployed3, leaving 32,784,087 people to do all the work.
19.2 million are in full time education4, 856,211 in the armed forces5, and collectively central, regional, and local government employs 4.987 million6. This leaves just 12,727,876 to do all of the real work.
Long term disabilities affect 6.9 million7. 393,000 are on visas that prohibit them from working8, and 108,0859 are working their way through the asylum process.
Of the remaining 339,791 people, a hundred thousand are in prison10 and 239,789 are in hospital11.
That leaves just two people to do all the work that keeps this country on its feet.
You and me.
And you’re sitting reading this.
This joke originally appeared aeons ago. I first saw it in a chain email in around 199612, when I adapted it from a US-centric version to a more British one and re-circulated it among some friends… taking the same kinds of liberties with the numbers that are required to make the gag work.
And now I’ve updated it with some updated population statistics13.
1 Source: Provisional population estimate for the UK: mid-2025, Office for National Statistics.
2 Source: Working age population, gov.uk.
3 Source: Unemployment, Office for National Statistics.
4 Source: Statistica for all the children, plus FE students from Education and training statistics for the UK, gov.uk, with some rounding.
5 Source: Hansard, here, plus other sources from the same time period.
6 Source: this informative article.
7 Source: UK disability statistics: Prevalence and life experiences, House of Commons Library.
8 Source: Reason for international migration, international students update: May 2025, Office for National Statistics.
9 Source: How many people claim asylum in the UK?, gov.uk.
10 Source: Prison population: weekly estate figures 2025, gov.uk.
11 Source: Bed Availability and Occupancy, Hansard Library.
12 In fact, I rediscovered it while looking through an old email backup from 1997, which inspired this blog post.
13 Using the same dodgy arithmetic, cherry-picking, double-counting, wild over-estimations, and hand-waving nonsense. Obviously this is a joke. Oh god, is somebody on the satire-blind Internet of 2026 going to assume any of these numbers are believable? (They’re not.) Or think I’m making some kind of political point? (I’m not.) What a minefield we live in, nowadays.
Went to a West End theatre wearing my “Slamilton” t-shirt.
In this corridor, during the act break, a stranger spotted it and did a double-take.
“Is that…? wait… that’s not Hamilton!”, they said.
I seized my chance.
“It’s Slamilton,” I replied. “You know: ‘Who slams, who jams, who tells their story.'”
And then, after a pause: “What’s ‘Hamilton’???”
Have I posted this joke before? It’s all a Blur.
Accessible description: Dan, a white man with a goatee beard and a faded blue ponytail, stands in a darkened kitchen. Turning to the camera, he says “I get up when I want, except on Wednesdays when I get rudely awakened by the tadpoles.” Then he holds up a book entitled “Pond Life”.
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Here in the UK, ice cream vans will usually play a tune to let you know they’re set up and selling1. So when you hear Greensleeves (or, occasionally, Waltzing Matilda), you know it’s time to go and order yourself a ninety-nine.
Imagine my delight, then, when I discover this week that ice cream vans aren’t the only services to play such jaunty tunes! I was sat with work colleagues outside İlter’s Bistro on Meşrutiyet Cd. in Istanbul, enjoying a beer, when a van carrying water pulled up and… played a little song!
And then, a few minutes later – as if part of the show for a tourist like me – a flatbed truck filled with portable propane tanks pulled up. Y’know, the kind you might use to heat a static caravan. Or perhaps a gas barbeque if you only wanted to have to buy a refill once every five years. And you know what: it played a happy little jingle, too. Such joy!
My buddy Cem, who’s reasonably local to the area, told me that this was pretty common practice. The propane man, the water man, etc. would all play a song when they arrived in your neighbourhood so that you’d be reminded that, if you hadn’t already put your empties outside for replacement, now was the time!
And then Raja, another member of my team, observed that in his native India, vegetable delivery trucks also play a song so you know they’re arriving. Apparently the tune they play is as well-standardised as British ice cream vans are. All of the deliveries he’s aware of across his state of Chennai play the same piece of music, so that you know it’s them.
It got me thinking: what other delivery services might benefit from a recognisable tune?
Anyway: the bottom line is that I think there’s an untapped market for jolly little jingles for all kinds of delivery services, and Turkey and India are clearly both way ahead of the UK. Let’s fix that!
1 It’s not unheard of for cruel clever parents to try to teach their young
children that the ice cream van plays music only to let you know it’s sold out of ice cream. A devious plan, although one I wasn’t smart (or evil?) enough to try for
myself.
2 The official line from the government is that the piped water is safe to drink, but every single Turkish person I spoke to on the subject disagreed and said that I shouldn’t listen to… well, most of what the government says. Having now witnessed first-hand the disparity between the government’s line on the unrest following the arrest of the opposition’s presidential candidate and what’s actually happening on the ground, I’m even more inclined to listen to the people.
3 My gas delivery man should also have his own song, of course. Perhaps an instrumental cover of Burn Baby Burn?
4 Perhaps bin men could play Garbage Truck by Sex Bob-Omb/Beck? That seems kinda fitting. Although definitely not what you want to be woken up with if they turn the speakers on too early…
Hanging with my team at our meetup in Istanbul, this lunchtime I needed to do some accessibility testing…
(with apologies to anybody who doesn’t know that in user interface design, a “kebab menu” is one of those menu icons with a vertical line of three dots: a vertical ellipsis)
What do you reckon? Is he trying to go for a domination victory without ever saying “MY THREATS ARE BACKED BY NUCLEAR WEAPONS!”? His track record shows that he’s arrogant enough to think that the strategy of simply renaming things until they’re yours is actually viable!
After I saw Mexico’s response to Google following Trump’s lead in renaming the Gulf of Mexico, this stupid comic literally came to me in a dream.
Adapts screenshots from Sid Meier’s Civilization (1991 DOS version), public domain assets from
OpenGameArt.org, and AI-assisted images of world leaders on account of the fact that if I drew pixel-art world leaders without assistance then
you’d be even less-likely to be able to recognise them.
When you love Jesus but you’re sick of Him blocking your driveway.
In spite of their signage, Costa weren’t happy to take my old jockstrap for recycling.
This is a reply to a post published elsewhere. Its content might be duplicated as a traditional comment at the original source.
In an article about the accessibility of emoji characters to screen readers, Steve Faulkner said:
…
Note that there are differences in how they are described in some cases:
- “grinning face” is also “beaming face”
- “beaming face” is also a “smiling face”
- “open mouth” is described by JAWS/Narrator but not by NVDA/VoiceOver
- “big eyes” are described by NVDA/VoiceOver but not by JAWS/Narrator
- “cold sweat” is “sweat” and also “sweat drop”
…
The differences don’t matter to me (but I am just one and not the intended consumer), as I usually experience just the symbol. Reading the text descriptions is useful though as quite often I have no idea what the symbols are meant to represent. It is also true that emoji’s take on different meanings in different contexts and to different people. For example I thought 🤙 meant “no worries” but its description is “call me hand”, what do I know 🤷
…
What Steve observes is representative of a the two sides of emoji’s biggest problem, which are
But the thing Steve’s post really left me thinking about was a moment from Season 13, Episode 1 of Would I Lie To You? (still available on iPlayer!), during which blind comedian Chris McCausland described how the screen reader on his phone processes emoji:
I don’t know if it’s true that Chris’s phone actually describes the generic smileys as having “normal eyes”, but it certainly makes for a fantastic gag.
1 I remember an occasion where a generational divide resulted in a hilarious difference of interpretation of a common acronym, for example. My friend Ash, like most people of their generation, understood “LOL” to mean “laughing out loud”, i.e. an expression of humour. Their dad still used it in the previous sense of “lots of love”. And so there was a moment of shock and confusion when Ash’s dad, fondly recalling their recently-deceased mother, sent Ash a text message saying something like: “Thought of your mum today. I miss her. LOL.”.
To:****@fulwoodacademy.co.ukFrom:“Dan Q” <***@danq.me>Subject:Subject Access Request – Dan Q, pupil Sep 1992 – Jun 1997Date:Tue, 23 Jul 2024 15:18:07 +0100To Whom It May Concern,
Please supply the personal data you hold about me, per data protection law. Specifically, I’m looking for: a list of all offences for which I was assigned detention at school.
Please find attached a variety of documentation which I feel proves my identity and the legitimacy of this request. If there’s anything else you need or you have further questions, please feel free to email me.
Thanks in advance;
Dan Q
To:“Dan Q” <***@danq.me>From:“Jodie Clayton” <*.*******@fulwoodacademy.co.uk>Subject:Re: Subject Access Request – Dan Q, pupil Sep 1992 – Jun 1997Date:Fri, 26 Jul 2024 10:48:33 +0100Dear Dan Q,
We do not retain records of detentions of former pupils, and we certainly have no academic records of pupils going back thirty years ago.
Jodie Clayton | Office Manager with Cover and Admissions
Black Bull Lane, Fulwood, Preston, PR2 9YR
+44 (0) 1772 719060
To:“Jodie Clayton” <*********@fulwoodacademy.co.uk>From:“Dan Q” <***@danq.me>Subject:Re: Subject Access Request – Dan Q, pupil Sep 1992 – Jun 1997Date:Fri, 26 Jul 2024 17:00:49 +0100But, but… I was always told that this would go on my permanent record. Are you telling me that teachers lied to me? What else is fake!?
Maybe I will always have a calculator with me and I won’t actually need to know how to derive a square root using a pen and paper. Maybe nobody will ever care what my GCSE results are for every job I apply for. Maybe my tongue isn’t divided into different taste areas capable of picking out sweet, salty, bitter etc. flavours. Maybe practicing my handwriting won’t be an essential skill I use every day.
And maybe I will amount to something despite never turning in any History homework, Mr. Needham!
Dan Q
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You’ve probably been taught that you can tell the difference between African Elephants and Indian Elephants by looking at their head and ears. The larger African Elephants have a rounded cranium and big ears (with a shape somewhat like the continent of Africa itself!), whereas the smaller Indian Elephants have a two-lobed skull and diminutive ears that tuck tidily alongside their heads.
But suppose you don’t manage to get a glimpse at the front end of the elephant as it passes you. What hope is there of identifying the species? Well: you can look at its back!
African Elephants, it turns out, have a concave back, whereas Indian elephants have a convex back (a bit like a hump)!
I was having difficulty sleeping one night during the UK‘s current heatwave, so naturally I opted to practice my newfound ability to distinguish elephant species by their spines. Indian, Indian, African, Indian, African, African… etc.
And then I came across this one:
African Elephant backs are concave. Indian Elephant backs are convex. But what does it mean when you see a flat elephant’s back?
It turns out…
…
…that’s a grey area.
I’m testing a handful of highly-experimental new features on my personal website using multivariate (“A/B”) testing.
If you visit within the next day or so you’re likely to be randomly-selected to try out one of them. (If you’re not selected, you can manually enable one of the experiments.)
I’d love to hear your feedback on these Very Serious New Features! Let me know which one(s) you see and whether you think they should become permanent fixtures on my site.
I guess installing a sign was cheaper than retraining the helpline operators not to shout at everybody.
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