Pecking Order

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By Salient | 8 Oct, 2007

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Number of months the police officer who shot Stephen Bellingham was sidelined for after facing charges of beating prisoners in the back of a police van: 10

Number of convictions the officer received from the alleged incident: 0

Number of Kiwi children aged 10 to 13 who were apprehended for crimes including violence, drugs and burglary last year: 7900

Number of prosecutions for these children: 0

Annual budget of Miami’s police department, expressed as a percentage of the production cost of the film Miami Vice: 83

Ratio of recorded to resolved New Zealand offences in 2006 (respectively): 1:2

Percentage increase in reported violent crime since Labour became Government: 32

Maximum percentage of New Zealanders, promised by Labour in 1999, that will be paying the top tax rate: 5

Percentage that currently do: 11

Number of days a Japanese arrestee can be interrogated without a lawyer: 23

Percentage of Japanese arrestees who confess to crimes: 92

Percentage brought to trial who are convicted: 99.9

Number of homosexual penguins found in Japan’s aquariums and zoos in 2004: 46

Months ago that scientists were conducting experiments which aim to change the sexuality of homosexual sheep: 9

Number of laws defining how much space free-range hens must have: 0

Percentage of free-range farmers who hold RNZSPCA accreditation, which means their farms are audited and meet SPCA standards: 30

Ratio of the number of cicada eggs per 2.5 square kilometers of southern New Jersey to the number of stars in the Milky Way: 4:5

Ratio of civil unions to marriages since the time that civil unions became law: 1:45

Months ago that a study suggested that the happiest marriages are those in which the husband defers all decisions to his wife: 3

Percentage of Americans who say that, given the choice, they would rather hear the bad news first: 63

Average percentage change in the U.S. aid a country receives when it sits on the U.N. Security Council: +59

Percent likelihood that widespread ice sheet loss is an inevitable result of climate change: 50

Amount, according to a United Nations panel, that this would elevate sea levels in the next several hundred years: 5.8 metres

Months ago that Bio-warfare chemicals found at a United Nations office in New York turned out to be cleaning supplies: 1

E-mail Pecking Orders to editor@salient.org.nz

SOURCES: 1, 2, 15, 16. Sunday Star Times, 30 September; 3, 4. Dominion Post, 1 October; 5. Office of Strategic Planning, Budgeting, and Performance, City of Miami/Universal Pictures (Universal City, Calif.); 6. Statistics.co.nz; 7. Simon Power, National’s Justice Spokesperson; 8, 9. Educationcounts.govt.nz, Mason Durie; 10, 11, 12. Foreign Press Center Japan (Tokyo); 13. Uedu Keisuke, Rikkyo University; 14. Daily Telegraph, 2 January; 17. Jeffrey Lockwood, University of Wyoming (Laramie)/ American Museum of Natural History (N.Y.C.); 18. New Zealand Labour Party Media Release, 1 October/ Salient research; 19. www.reuters.com, 7 July; 20. Survey of American Habits, by Barry Sinrodand Mel Poretz (Price Stem Sloan, Los Angeles); 21. Eric Werker, Harvard Business School; 22, 23. www.guardian.co.uk; 24. BBC

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