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Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,soc.culture.europe
From: jack@cee.hw.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Subject: Euro-Fun
Date: Mon, 12 Dec 1994 18:39:57 GMT

bill.duetschler@royal.com (BILL DUETSCHLER) wrote in alt.folklore.urban: > dbd@panacea.phys.utk.edu writes:
>> "Funned". As in "American Fun Units". 100 rumpys = 1 pumpy and all that rot.
> As opposed to "British Fun Units," where
> 12 rumpys = 1 pumpy,
> 20 pumpys = 1 fun,
> and you have harrumpys, sexhumpys, and thruppumpys harrumpy.

I've been keeping a news clipping ("Begorra, the Irish have most fun") from the _Herald_ (Glasgow), 17/11/93, on the offchance that it might come in handy someday. It describes the way Eurostat, the EU's statistics organization, measures spending on leisure activities in its member states as a percentage of household expenditure. The resulting figure is known as the European Fun Index.

Ireland comes out on top (11.1%), Luxembourg bottom (4.3%).

The others the article cites are:

State Fun Comment (not from the Herald...)

Netherlands     10.6    figure includes marijuana and visits to prostitutes
Denmark         10.3    all those bestiality videos can't be cheap
UK               9.9    they go to the bingo _how_ often?
Belgium          6.7    how do they manage to spend that much on fish & chips?
Spain            6.5    the stuff that goes on in Almodovar movies comes free
Greece           5.6    who needs to spend money when you can just lie on the
                        beach and get plastered on cheap retsina?

The year this relates to was 1990. The European average was 8.6%, only slightly up from the 1977 figure of 8.5%.

[ NOTE CROSSPOSTING ]