Rob’s Blog

Did you know that in only 4413.662 years time we will run out of National Insurance numbers, assuming that every number is reassigned as soon as the original owner pops their clogs? That works out, roughly, at 13th November 6421. There are a few assumptions to be made here. For example:

• Population growth remains the same as it is at the moment (0.5% per year)
• There isn’t an apocalypse
• There isn’t a massive influx of space aliens requiring NINOs
• The ONS have adjusted their figures to average out over leap years
• There is no air resistance
• The population can be treated as a particle

This just reveals a shocking lack of foresight and logic on the part of the Government.

At this point in time though, the UK would have a population density of 15,240 people per square kilometre. This would only place us third on the world population density rankings, behind Monaco and the Macau Special Administrative Region in China. Furthermore, this would leave each of us with 65.64 square metres of space, assuming we destroyed all services and public buildings, that every square inch of land can be built upon and is inhabitable, and that we did not all start inhabiting balloons or airships in the sky. That space is equal to 2.73 double decker buses, or 0.65 times the surface area of a blue whale. If you chose to cover your precious land in A4 paper, it would take 1052 sheets, just over two reams.

However, having worked all this out, I really don’t need to worry. I’ve got it pencilled in my diary to be dead by the year 6421, making the assumption that we stick with the same calendar we have at the moment, and that the Earth does not pick up speed thereby reducing the length of a year or indeed a day.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 11:40 am and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.