Are Afghan nationals more likely to be convicted of sexual offences?

Summary

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More or Less: Behind the Stats

Episode: Are Afghan nationals more likely to be convicted of sexual offences?

Host: Tim Harford, BBC Radio 4
Date: September 10, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of “More or Less” investigates several high-profile statistical claims circulating in UK public debate. The team, led by Tim Harford, scrutinizes recent news stories, including:

• The true cost – and meaning – of the UK’s “national debt”
• The accuracy and context behind claims that Afghan migrants are far more likely to be convicted of sexual offences than British nationals
• The claim that 1 in 10 women leave work due to menopause
• A playful examination of how the Russian army's progress in Ukraine compares to the pace of a snail

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. How Costly Is the UK’s National Debt?

With Economist Duncan Weldon
[00:00 – 08:48]

• June’s Per Capita Interest Payment: In June, the UK paid about £240 per person in debt interest, but this was unusually high due to the timing of annual interest payments. The average monthly figure is closer to £135 per person.
• Gold-Edged Bonds (Gilts): The UK borrows via “gilts” (bonds)—currency jargon with no impact on the fundamental borrowing process.
• International Comparisons: Comparing UK and German borrowing costs is tricky due to different currencies and economic contexts; German bond yields are lower mainly because of persistent lower growth and inflation.
• Trust & “Moron Premium”: The idea that the UK pays a ‘premium’ due to government policy decisions, especially post-2022 (Liz Truss era), with borrowing costs rising more compared to France or Germany. Inflation and certain government choices increase UK costs.

Notable Quotes:

• “Interest rates in general are much lower in the Eurozone ... because growth is weak, because inflation is weak, interest rates [are expected] to remain very low over the longer term.”
  — Duncan Weldon [04:28]
• “It might be unfair to call it a ‘moron premium,’ but ... some of this is to do with the actions the government has taken.”
  — Duncan Weldon [08:28]

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2. Are Afghan Nationals 22 Times More Likely to be Convicted of Sexual Offences?

With Madeleine Sumption, Director, Migration Observatory, Oxford
[08:48 – 17:11]

• The Claim: A commentator on BBC’s Today programme claimed, “Afghan nationals are 22 times more likely to be convicted of a sex offence” than UK nationals, citing government data.
• Data Source & Method: The claim is based on Ministry of Justice figures obtained via FOI request—dividing recorded convictions for Afghan nationals by census-based estimates of Afghan residents, and comparing rates with UK nationals.
  • Potential Data Issues: Nationality reporting is self-declared and contains outdated or incorrect country names; small errors can be significant due to small sample size.
  • Actual Conviction Numbers: 2021: 20 convictions; 2022: 26; 2023: 31—totalling 77 over three years.
  • Not Individuals: Number counts convictions, not convicted people; repeat offenders count multiple times.
• Population Uncertainty: Unreliable estimates exist for the number of Afghan nationals, especially post-2021 (after Kabul’s fall and increased asylum applications).
• Ratio Uncertainty: Different denominators (population figures) produce ratios anywhere from 14 to 22 times higher.
  • Madeleine Sumption’s estimate: 14.5 times, not 22.
• Small Numbers, Big Variability: With just a handful of cases, small data errors can dramatically shift headline ratios.

Comparability & Demographics:

• Younger Population Skews: Migrant groups tend to be younger (20–40), the group most likely to be convicted of any crime. Comparing all ages between migrant groups and national population is misleading.
• When Adjusted for Age:
  • Overall, migrants are not overrepresented among prisoners, and may even be underrepresented for their age bracket.
  • Specific nationalities do show variation. Some Eastern European and Albanian nationals have higher conviction rates; Indian and Chinese nationals are far lower than British rates.

Notable Quotes:

• “It’s really hard to say. We don’t have a precise estimate of how many Afghan citizens live in the UK ... so you can make different decisions and come up with different numbers.”
  — Tim Harford [13:28]
• “When we look at these larger populations, it is clear that the rates at which people are convicted of crimes or incarcerated does vary quite a lot by nationality...India has less than half the rate as British citizens.”
  — Madeleine Sumption [17:11]

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3. Do 1 in 10 Women Leave Work Due to Menopause?

With Dr. Gillian Paul, London School of Economics
[17:11 – 23:33]

• The Claim: News outlets and the Equality and Human Rights Commission stated that “1 in 10 women have left work due to menopause,” based on a Fawcett Society survey.
• Survey Flaw #1: Sample Bias: Only women experiencing menopause symptoms (often severe) were surveyed, leading to overrepresentation of those adversely affected.
• Survey Flaw #2: Ambiguous Question: “Have you left a job due to menopause symptoms?” does not specify leaving the workforce altogether—could include simply changing jobs.
• Stronger Data: Only 3% reported “retiring early” (i.e., leaving all work) due to menopause symptoms. Even this is likely an overestimate due to sample selection.
• Labour Force Comparison: More robust data suggest about 7% of women aged 45 in paid work are out of work at 56 due to any long-term sickness or disability—not just menopause.

Notable Quotes:

• “Compared to other surveys, these women seem to have a particularly high number of symptoms that they're experiencing. So it's suggesting not only is this a sample of women who are experiencing symptoms, but they seem to be particularly adversely affected.”
  — Dr. Gillian Paul [19:11]
• “There’s no way of knowing how much of that 10% of survey respondents were simply moving between jobs or leaving paid work altogether. And that’s quite a big difference.”
  — Dr. Gillian Paul [20:09]
• “So we've got very good reason to believe that it's not the case that 1 in 10 women leave work permanently because of menopause symptoms.”
  — Tim Harford [22:41]

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4. Is Russia’s Advance in Ukraine Slower Than a Snail?

With Lizzie McNeil and Prof. Angus Davidson
[23:33 – 27:11]

• The Claim: Ex-Chief of Defence Staff Sir Tony Radekin claimed that a literal snail, leaving Russia’s Rostov-on-Don at war’s start, would have reached Poland by now—implying Russia’s advance is just as slow.
  • Fact-Check: For a snail to “make it”—1,500km from Rostov to Poland in about 1,300 days—it would need to move 50 metres per hour non-stop.
  • Reality Check: Fastest recorded snail covers about 10 metres per hour at a sprint; snails are not continuous travelers and rarely exceed 5 metres in a straight line.
• Bottom Line: The metaphor is greatly exaggerated, though the underlying point—that Russia’s advance is glacial—is valid.
• Wartime Reality: Recent Russian advances (Kupiansk, 2024–2025) average about 50 metres per day, slower than at the Battle of the Somme.

Notable Quotes:

• “The general's imaginary snail is five times faster than the fastest actual snail at a sprint.”
  — Tim Harford [26:11]
• “The recent Russian advances since January 2024 have been some of the slowest that we have identified since World War I.”
  — Seth Jones (cited) [27:01]

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Key Timestamps & Segments

• [00:00 – 08:48]: National debt, bonds, and cross-country interest comparisons
• [08:48 – 17:11]: Analysis of sexual offence conviction rates among Afghan nationals vs. British nationals
• [17:11 – 23:33]: Claim that 1 in 10 women leave work due to menopause symptoms—scrutinized
• [23:33 – 27:11]: Comparing Russia’s Ukraine advance to a snail's pace

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Memorable Moments

• The “moron premium” and its political baggage around UK borrowing costs.
• The distinction between convicted offences and convicted people in Ministry of Justice data—crucial for interpretation.
• Humorous yet factual debunking of the snail metaphor by actual snail-racing data.
• The repeated reminder that ambiguous survey phrasing leads to misleading headlines.

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Summary: Facts Behind the Numbers

This episode typifies More or Less’s commitment to demystifying statistics driving headlines. Across topics—from government debt, crime rates, workplace gender claims, and even snails—the team demonstrates:

• Numbers may be accurate, but interpretation and context are everything.
• Small datasets and unclear denominators can produce wildly exaggerated ratios.
• Seemingly robust “data-driven” headlines often mask more nuance (or ambiguity) than they reveal.

Whether you care about public debt, immigration policy, women’s workplace experience, or the fortunes of slow-moving molluscs, this episode offers a masterclass in skeptical, compassionate statistical thinking.

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Transcript

[A]

Hello and welcome to a new series of More or Less with me, Tim Harford. The show that takes the, um, out of numbers. Does that make sense? Doesn't that just leave you with numbers? Not to worry. Let us press on with our usual elan. This week, we try to explain why everyone is suddenly so excited about the national debt. We parse a claim about afghan migrants being 22 times more likely to be convicted of sex offences. Or maybe it's 14 times. Or. Well, we'll get to. We try to make sense of a claim that women are being driven to leave work by their menopause symptoms. But does that mean leave work or leave work? And we compare the Russian army to various kinds of snail. So, first, just how bad is our national debt? Over the summer, there have been a lot of claims flying around about how much we're paying as a nation for the borrowing required to keep our country ticking over. To understand what's going on, we turn to economist, author and friend of the programme, Duncan Weldon, who knows a thing or two about bonds. Let's start with a tweet by Professor Oliver Johnson, also a friend of the programme and a mathematician at the University of Bristol, who pointed out that in June, we in the UK were paying the equivalent of £240 per person to pay the interest of on our national debt. Does that sound right?

[B]

Well, I mean, it's right for June, but June was quite an unusual month because when we're looking at government debt interest payments, they vary quite a bit over the course of the year.

[A]

In June, a load of big annual interest payments happen to turn up on the books.

[B]

So you get a really big number if you're looking at just June.

[A]

But there are months with lower interest payments too.

[B]

So, say in January, when people tend to pay their self assessed income tax returns, you tend to get a big surplus or very low borrowing. If we step back, if we look at the year as a whole, the Office of Budget Responsibility, which calculates these numbers for the Government, reckons that total debt interest spending over this financial year will be about £111 billion. Now, if we divide that by 12 to get a monthly average, if we then divide that by 68 million people, we get a number more like 135 pounds a month. So still a big number, but not as big as that June alone figure would suggest.

[A]

Yeah, I think most people with mortgages are paying a lot more than £135amonth on a mortgage. But it's not a small number just for debt interest.

[B]

No, it's not. And debt interest has been rising as a share of total government spending.

[A]

Ok, so that is the cost of the interest payments on the national debt. Now the national debt is getting bigger because the government is running a deficit, spending more than it collects in taxes. The government fills the gap between spending and revenue by issuing needlessly confusing jargon.

[B]

When the government wants to borrow, it borrows from the bond market by issuing bonds which are essentially a tradable type of loans. And for historical reasons, the bonds issued by the British government are usually called gilts because once upon a time they came on gilt edged paper.

[A]

Now to a question sent in by a loyal listener who signed off only by the name of Colossus Fair, but who wanted to understand a claim made by former Treasury Minister David Gork. Gork said in the Guardian in August that the UK was on the borrowing naughty step and that if we had the same gilt yields as Germany, we'd be paying £50 billion less in debt interest every year. Was that a sensible comparison?

[B]

Well, I think we've got to be very, very careful with these sort of cross country comparisons in borrowing costs. So today the British government pays about 4.6 percentage points in interest on a 10 year gilt. The German government pays more like 2.7 percentage points. So yes, you know, almost 2 percentage points higher in the UK than in.

[A]

Germany and indeed almost twice as high. Not quite twice as high, but not far off.

[B]

Yeah, it's a very, very different number. But what you're doing there is you're comparing borrowing costs in sterling in pounds to borrowing costs in euros. Interest rates in general are much lower in the Eurozone. The European Central Bank's interest rates are much lower than the bank of England's interest rates and have been for a long. And that's because growth in the Eurozone has been a lot weaker. Inflation has been a lot lower and markets expect because growth is weak, because inflation is weak, interest rates to remain very low over the longer term. When we're looking at government borrowing costs, it's not just a case of how much risk do they think there is of the British government defaulting. Very, very few people think there's any serious risk at all of the British government not paying back its debts.

[A]

It's never happened, has it?

[B]

No, it's never happened. And we've had a national debt since the very late 17th century. So there's quite a long track record there of not defaulting. When you're seeing government bond rates, what you're really seeing is where markets expect central bank rates to be over the longer term and they're much lower than in Europe because inflation is lower and growth has been weaker. A better example is to stop looking at Germany and look at a country like Italy. Italy has much higher government debt than Britain does. Its 10 year borrowing costs are around three and a half percentage points. So considerably more than Germany's, but still less than Britain's. But I've yet to meet a bond analyst who thinks that lending to the British government is riskier than lending to the Italian government.

[A]

And this brings us to the so called moron premium. The idea that we're paying more in the UK for our debt because the government has lost the trust of the markets. That phrase was coined by economist Dario Perkins, although it's often misattributed to more famous economist Paul Krugman. And it refers to a few heady days in the autumn of 2022, a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness when Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng initiated a min financial crisis by introducing a combination of spending increases and tax cuts that the markets thought would lead to serious inflation. Were the high borrowing costs this year a result of something similar?

[B]

It's worth stepping back. And you're comparing what's happened in Britain to what's happened in some other large Western European nations. And borrowing costs in Britain have risen. Looking at the 10 year because it's very comparable, borrowing costs in Britain have risen by about 0.8 percentage points, whereas in France, in Germany they've risen by 0.5. So the interest rate on British government debt has risen by a bit more than it has on other Western European nations. Now that is painful for the government and a problem. What's that about? Well, I think it's partially that inflation in Britain has been higher than in these other countries and financial markets and investors expect that to remain the case. And because Britain seems to have a bit of an unusual inflation problem, the British government is being charged more to borrow money. How much of that is the government responsible for? Well, actually, possibly quite a bit. Some of the steps the government has taken, like putting up national insurance contributions on employers, has meant that employers costs have have risen more than they have in other European countries. And they're trying to sort of protect their profit margins by passing that on to consumers. So we have a bit more sort of government policy induced inflation in Britain markets. Look at that. They think, okay, inflation is going to be higher in Britain, interest rates are going to be higher in Britain and therefore the Government borrowing costs are also going to be a bit higher. Now, it might be unfair to call it a more on premium, but you know, some of this is to do with the actions the government has taken.

[A]

Thanks to Duncan Weldon, the author of Blood and Treasure and the presenter of a rather good program of budgets and bond markets which you can find on BBC Sounds. You're listening to More or Less and our email is more or lessbc.co.uk. immigration hasn't been far from the news of late, with hotel protests, court cases and government rule changes keeping the issue firmly in the headlines. One of the claims floating around concerns the relative danger of immigrants who've come to the UK from specific countries. Here's Reform's Zia Yousuf on the Today programme. Afghan nationals are 22 times more likely to be convicted of a sex offence. This is the native British people. He was super confident in that stat. And so look, that is not us or me casting a subjective aspersion on anybody. That is a data point from the government. So if you don't like the data point, you'd have to demonstrate how it is false. Well, we don't really like or dislike data points here on more or less. We just like to figure out what's true. So where does this claim come from? What does it mean and should we believe it? Who better to ask than Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at Oxford University and, well, yet another friend of the programme, what can I say, got a lot of friends.

[C]

So this is from an analysis of data that was obtained from the Ministry of Justice under Freedom of Information. And what it does is it takes the number of convictions by Afghan nationals that are included in the Ministry of Justice data set and it looks at that as a share of the overall number of Afghans believed to be living in the UK and then compares that to British people. So when we're assessing claims, I guess the two big questions are are those convictions data accurate and are the population data accurate? And we have more confidence probably in the convictions data than the population data.

[A]

Okay, well let's start with that then, the convictions data. So what do we know about that?

[C]

It appears to be self reported nationality data. So for example, some people are included as nationality being England, other people are uk. There are some country names actually in there that don't exist anymore. Some people report being from Abyssinia or from Belgian Con. So there are some issues in the nationality data and it's unclear how dual citizens have been recorded which citizenship was taken. But broadly speaking, for Some high level calculations, you know, I think it's fine to use. Those are relatively small issues probably in the data.

[A]

So it's a little bit messy, this data. And how many convictions are we talking.

[C]

About for Afghan sexual offences in particular? The Ministry of Justice data suggests that in 2021 there were 20 convictions in 2022, 26, and then it went up to 31 convictions in 2023.

[A]

So that's I think, 77 over three years.

[C]

Correct.

[A]

Okay. And convictions, not convicted people. So if somebody was convicted for five offenses, that would be counted five times, not one time.

[C]

That's right. And we don't really know how common that is, unfortunately.

[A]

Well, we think it's okay as a piece of data. It's not the world's best piece of data, but it's fine.

[C]

Broadly speaking. Yes. I think the more challenging piece is actually the population data. So how large is the population? Population of Afghan citizens from which those people convicted of criminal offences are drawn?

[A]

Which makes a huge difference because if it's only a thousand people, that's a very high offending rate and if it's a million people, it's a very low offending rate.

[C]

That's right. So that's absolutely crucial to the calculation. And perhaps surprisingly, we don't actually know with that much confidence what the breakdown of different nationalities is in the uk, particularly after the census.

[A]

I'm afraid to say I'm not actually that surprised about that. Maybe you aren't either.

[C]

No. Well, I mean, we've had problems for years with accurate measures of the number of people from different countries between census years. The census is considered, broadly speaking, the gold standard. There are still some probably more marginalized groups that are likely to be undercounted in the census. Particularly people who don't have legal status in the UK might want to avoid being counted. But if you want to do a rough comparison, then you could take that calculation for 2021. When at least we have the cens data after 2021, it becomes much trickier because we know in the case of Afghans in particular, that the number of people coming to the UK greatly increased. There was the fall of Kabul in the summer of 2021, and after that we saw a lot more Afghan asylum seekers coming to the UK so those 2021 figures are not going to be accurate for subsequent years.

[A]

The 22 times claim comes from an organization called the Centre for Migration Control. They describe themselves as committed to controlling and dramatically reducing migration to Britain. Is the claim right? It's really hard to say. We don't have a precise estimate of how many Afghan citizens live in the uk, although we do know it increased a lot during the three years in question. Freedom of information requests tend to produce messy or ambiguous data. In trying to figure out this ratio of Afghan migrant sex offence convictions to British citizen sex offence convictions, you can make different decisions and come up with different numbers. Madeleine Sumption isn't saying the Centre for Migration Control made a mistake, but her own estimate is lower.

[C]

You get a rate of about 14 and a half times higher for Afghans. So not exactly the same as the 22 times, but there are lots of different ways to produce these denominators.

[A]

So what I'm hearing is that the 22 times claim is pretty questionable. But it's not unreasonable to suggest that the rate of conviction for Afghan nationals is a lot higher than the rate of conviction for British nationals.

[C]

I think that's right. I mean, because the number of Afghan convictions are quite small, we're looking at 20 convictions. It's going to be very sensitive to even a small inaccuracy in the measurement of that overall population. So just a few thousand more people who hadn't been measured in the census would substantially reduce that that ratio. But any way you cut it, the rate looks like it is considerably higher for Afghan citizens than for British citizens.

[A]

One point to remember here is that comparing a migrant population to the population of British citizens isn't comparing like with like. While we don't know the age breakdown of the Afghan nationals convicted of these crimes, when you look at migrants in general, they are likely to be younger than British citizens.

[C]

Age is incredibly important because if you look at the prison population, where we actually have better statistics, including a breakdown by age, we can see quite clearly that most people in prison are between the ages of around 20 and 40. Now, migrants are much more likely to be between the ages of 20 and 40 as well, because it's a younger population. So actually, if you look at the prison population, if you don't control for age, then we have roughly similar shares of migrants and British people who are incarcerated.

[A]

That is, migrants from the rest of the world to the UK are locked up at about the same rate as the British themselves.

[C]

However, if you control for age, migrants are actually underrepresented in the prison population. So we would expect more non citizens to be in prison given their lower age profile. That's overall for the whole population.

[A]

This is clearer to see with bigger UK migrant populations and looking at all crimes combined with.

[C]

When we look at these larger populations, it is clear that the rates at which people are convicted of crimes or incarcerated does vary quite a lot by nationality. So in 2023 for convictions, for example, the highest rates were seen among certain Eastern European countries. People from Lithuania and Latvia, for example. Albania is also one of the countries that has a particularly high prison population, although they are a smaller population where it's quite challenging to measure them accurately. So they would be also probably be among those groups with higher rates of criminal convictions. And then on the other hand, you have some groups there where the rates at which people are convicted are lower than British India and China, for example. India has less than half the rate.

[A]

As British citizens, thanks to Madeleine Sumption. Is it true that 1 in 10 women have left work because they're having such a difficult time with symptoms of the menopause? That was apparently a finding from a survey conducted for the Fawcett Society released in 2022 and picked up in news headlines all over the place. The Equality and Human Rights Commission even repeated it in their guidance for employers, stating, research by the Fawcett society found that one in 10 women surveyed who were employed during the menopause left work due to menopause symptoms. The implication is clear. These women left work. They stopped working. Or did they? Dr. Gillian Paul from the London School of Economics is one of a team of people who've been looking into the figures as part of a research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The first thing you need to know about the survey was the way the group was selected.

[D]

So when women were approached to take part in the survey, there was a screening question which basically listed to them menopause symptoms, which went beyond simply your period stopping, but things like hot flushes or anxiety or trouble sleeping, and asked whether if they'd had any of these symptoms or they currently had them or had experienced them, then they were allowed to proceed into the survey. If they hadn't had any of the symptoms, they were not permitted to proceed into the survey.

[A]

It's easy to assume this claim is about all women, but not all women experience these menopause symptoms during the perimenopause, the years before women's periods stop. Maybe 20% don't, although the estimates for that vary widely. So this selection question removed women whose periods had not yet stopped, but who weren't having hot flushes or trouble sleeping. It also potentially encouraged women who were having an especially hard time to fill in the survey.

[D]

Compared to other surveys, these women seem to have a particularly high number of symptoms that they're experiencing. So it's suggesting not only is this a sample of women who are experiencing symptoms, but they seem to be particularly adversely affected.

[A]

The second problem is the specific question that this 1 in 10 figure is based on.

[D]

The question actually asks women whether they have left a job due to the menopause symptoms, not whether they've left work altogether and are no longer working. So, in fact, the women that answered yes to that could in fact just have moved between different types of jobs rather than ceasing work altogether. And that's quite a big difference. Moving jobs, people sort of do all the time for all sorts of reasons. Whereas actually leaving work altogether because of the menopause actually can have a huge impact on your life in terms of income and wellbeing. But the survey, and it says there's no way of knowing how much of that 10% of survey respondents were simply moving between jobs or leaving paid work altogether.

[A]

Yes, I mean, clearly it's no fun if you've been driven out of a job you love because your symptoms make it impossible, even if you have found a different job. But I can see that that is not the same as having to quit all work.

[D]

Yeah, I mean, I think it is an important point. And one concern about moving jobs, of course, is that women might be moving to jobs which pay less or have low levels of seniority or responsibility. But that's a different issue to what this headline number has been saying.

[A]

We hate ambiguity on this program and that's why we don't love the ambiguous phrase leave work, which could mean either leave all paid work or leave the current job. There was, however, a less ambiguous question in the survey.

[D]

The original survey had a question asking them whether they had retired early due to menopausal symptoms. And that's clearly quite helpful because that's clearly asking about leaving paid work altogether and permanently. So in the survey, and again noting that this is women who had experienced menopausal symptoms, 3% replied that they had retired early because of their menopausal symptoms. And obviously that's much lower than the 10% and does give some handle on the number that may have left work altogether rather than moving jobs because of.

[A]

The selection process for this survey. Even the 3% is likely to be too high for the proportion of all women or even all women during their menopause who stop work completely because of menopause symptoms. But do we have any idea what the right number might be?

[D]

We looked at the labour force survey to find some comparisons, and the labour force survey is a very large nationally Representative survey. Unfortunately, the labour force survey does not ask women about the menopause. And that's a question that really should be added to the survey to improve the information in this area. But the closest measure is the proportion that we have is of women who are not working due to long term sickness or disability. And we found that 7% of women were not working due to long term sickness or disability age 45, and at age 56 it was 13%. So given that about 80% of women are in work at age 45, this equates to about 7% of female workers age 45 no longer working at the age of 56 because of long term sickness and disability.

[A]

Right. So that suggests a sort of upper bound on what we might blame on the menopause.

[D]

Exactly. I mean, 7% is a lot less than 10%. And 7% picks up all sources of long term sickness and disability, not just the menopause.

[A]

So we've got very good reason to believe that it's not the case that 1 in 10 women leave work permanently because of menopause symptoms. That's really about as far as we can get. Do we have any good data? Do we have a better number for the proportion of women who are experiencing such severe menopausal symptoms that they've left work as a result?

[D]

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear so. As I said, we're part of a research project that's been looking at the impacts of the menopause on women's work. And so we have looked across all the official data sources and other sources, and sadly, the menopause seems to be sort of absent from those major data collection exercises. And that's in some ways why the Fawcett Society report was so important and why it had a big impact as well. It's just unfortunate that the number has been a little bit misrepresented.

[A]

Thanks to Dr. Gillian Paul from the London School of Economics, you're listening to more or less loyal listener Nick from Surrey, got in touch after hearing a surprising claim from the recently former Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radekin on the Today programme, talking about quite how slow the pace of the brutal Russian advance into Ukraine is he.

[B]

If a snail had left Rostov on Don in Russia on 24 February 2022, by now it would have crossed all the way through Ukraine and it will be halfway through Poland.

[A]

Now, clearly the war in Ukraine is a very serious matter, but you can't blame us for the comparison. That was all Sir Tone is doing. We are Duty bound to check out the numbers our listeners deem suspicious. So is Sir Tony right about the pace of a snail? Our snail correspondent, Lizzie McNeil, has been looking into it. Hello, Lizzie.

[E]

Hi, Tim.

[A]

Lizzy, under what rigorous process did you become our snail correspondent?

[E]

Ah, well, I have experience. I used to have a pet snail.

[A]

You had a pet snail?

[E]

Yeah, and a spider.

[A]

Did you wear a lot of black when you were growing up, by any chance?

[E]

Yeah. How did you know?

[A]

Just a lucky guess. So, Lizzy, it seems we're looking for a literal answer to a phrase that is not usually used as literally as this. So I am curious, how fast can snails move? What's their maximum speed?

[E]

Well, yeah, I mean, I also wish this wasn't being applied to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but here we are. So, to get from Rostov on Don to the middle of Poland is around 1,500 kilometers, or just over 900 miles. The war in Ukraine has been going on for nearly 1,300 days. And supposing for the sake of the metaphor, that a snail was moving constantly in a straight line for 24 hours a day. It would need to Travel at about 50 meters per hour to cover this distance.

[A]

50 metres an hour. So is that realistic?

[E]

Not even close. Here's Professor Angus Davidson, a malacologist. He studies snails at the University of Nottingham.

[B]

We have good numbers for how fast.

[A]

Snails can race because there actually is.

[B]

A world snail racing competition every year. And then the fastest recorded time for that was about 33 cm and 2 minutes, which works out about 10 metres in an hour.

[A]

Okay. I mean, this is all a little bit odd, but to put a number on it like this, it doesn't really appear to bear much resemblance to reality. The General's imaginary snail is five times faster than the fastest actual snail at a sprint.

[E]

Yeah. And while we're being overly literal, Angus says that no snail would ever travel more than five metres in a straight line.

[A]

Because of the drinking problems.

[E]

Well, that and just a general vibe of trepidation. Instead, they'd probably turn around and follow their trail back to where they started. They're also molluscs, not machines. They don't move all the time. They tend to be active in the hours around dusk and dawn. And a lot of that time would be spent eating, not moving goals. Yeah, and in winter they tend to hibernate.

[A]

But, Lizzie, leaving the amusing snail banter to one side and returning to the rather serious matter of the war. It is true that Russia's advance is very slow, isn't it?

[E]

Yeah, we actually covered this issue a while ago on the Saturday podcast. It's still available on BBC Sounds. We interviewed Seth Jones from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies about counting casualties in war and he told us.

[A]

This the Russian advances in Kupiansk, for example, over the course of late 2024 and early 2025 in Ukraine were even slower than during the Somme and World War I, averaging about 50 meters per day. The recent Russian advances since January 2024 have been some of the slowest that we have identified since World War I. Thank you Lizzie, and thanks to Professor Angus Davidson. That's all we have time for this week, but please send in your questions and comments to more or lessbc.co.uk we'll be back on the airwaves next week. Until then, goodbye. Ever wish someone had sat you down when you started your job and said, by the way, these are the vital do's and don'ts stick with these and you'll be fine? What you need is the When It Hits the Fan Golden Rules of PR with me, Simon Lewis and me, David Yelland. Whether it's how to start a network plan for a crisis or managing a challenging client, it's all in our new mini series, the principles we come back to again and again on this show that apply equally both to Spin Doctors and anyone trying to do any kind of PR for yourself in your community, your work, wherever. Make sure you subscribe to When It Hits the Fan on BBC Sounds.