Patrick Comerford
At some point late last night (12 February 2025), this blog reached yet another new peak, with 11 million hits since I first began blogging almost 15 years ago, back in 2010.
Once again this is both a humbling statistic and a sobering figure that leaves me not with a sense of achievement but a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.
After I began blogging, it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million hits. It was over a year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013; 2 million in June 2015; 3 million by October 2016; 4 million on 19 November 2019; 5 million on 27 March 2021; 6 million on 1 July 2022; 7 million on 13 August 2023; 8 million by 30 April 2024; and 9 million on 21 October 2024.
But the rise in the number of hits has been phenomenal in recent months, reaching 9.5 million on 4 January 2025, 10 million over a week later (12 January 2025), and 10.5 million two days after that (14 January 2025).
Indeed, January 2025 was the first month this blog has ever had 1 million hits in a month – or even within a fortnight – with 1 million hits by mid-January, in the early hours of 14 January, and a total of 1,420,383 by the end of that month (31 January 2025).
In recent months, the daily figures have been overwhelming on occasions, and nine of the 10 days of busiest traffic on this blog have been in January 2025 alone, with the tenth busiest day within the past nine months:
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2025)
• 100,291 (10 January 2025)
• 64,077 (14 January 2025)
• 55,344 (25 January 2025)
• 52,831 (27 January 2025)
• 42,946 (26 January 2025)
• 35,574 (24 January 2025)
• 35,452 (28 May 2024)
With this latest landmark figure of 11 million hits by last night, over 1.4 million hits in January alone, and over half a million hits within the past month, I once again find myself asking questions such as:
• What do 11 million people look like?
• Where do we find 11 million people when it comes to wating lists or refugees?
• What would £11 million, €11 million or $11 million buy?
• How far away would 11 million miles be?
Cathedrals in England receive over 11 million visitors each year. This includes tourists, worshippers, and schoolchildren on educational trips.
Countries with a population of about 11 million people include the Dominican Republic, Cuba, South Sudan and the Czech Republic. The figures for the population of Greece fluctuate, but some reports estimate 11 million people of Greek descent live abroad – the same as the entire population of Greece.
The total population of Paris is now estimated at 11,276,700, and the French capital welcomed 11.2 million tourists during the three weeks of hosting the 2024 Olympics, reaching the set target, despite previous concerns. By way of comparison, the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya in Turkey attracted 11 million foreign tourists last year.
Other cities with a population of about 11 million include the urban area of London, Delhi and the Chinese cities of Guangzhou, Tianjin and Wuhan. The populations of both Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are around 11 million people.
About 11 million Uyghur people live in China, mainly in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in north-west China. They are a Turkic ethnic group originating in Central Asia and East Asia and they are one of China’s 55 officially recognised ethnic minorities. Since 2014, the Chinese government has been accused by many organisations, such as Human Rights Watch, of subjecting Uyghurs living in Xinjiang to widespread persecution, including forced sterilisation and forced labour.
A recent World Bank report shows 11 million more people are living in extreme poverty, revising the number of people in extreme poverty up from 648 to 659 million.
More than 11 million working-age people in Britain do not have basic ‘rainy day’ savings of at least £1,000, according to a report last year that warns that the poorest households are struggling to build up financial resilience amid the cost of living crisis.
The Resolution Foundation says people across Britain face a ‘triple savings challenge’ of insufficient savings, an inability to cope financially with major life events such as family breakdown, and inadequate retirement incomes.
It estimates 11.2 million people live in households that have savings of less than £1,000, accounting for about one in three working-age households. As many as half of these people live in the poorest third of households in Britain.
The report fears the UK population has a £74 billion shortfall of funds saved for emergencies and for retirement, suggesting every family needs at least three months of income kept in precautionary savings.
Residents in Milton Keynes are said to use 11 million single use recycling sacks annually.
In one minute, light travels 11 million miles (18 million km) – or 186,000 miles (300,000 km) a second.
The distance 11 million miles is mentioned in the television series, The Twilight Zone (season 1, episode 14, ‘Third from the Sun’). There, two families escape from their planet before destruction and find an inhabitable planet called ‘Earth’. It made me wonder whether there could be life 11 million miles away from us.
But it is highly unlikely that you would find anything 11 million miles from Earth. Solar distances are astronomical. The Earth is about 96 million miles from the Sun. The moon, our closest neighbour, is 238,900 miles away. In short, at closest pass, 11 million miles would not reach Mars or Venus. Venus, the closest of the two, is 162 million miles away.
One of the most warming figures personally in the midst of all these statistics is the one that shows how my morning prayer diary reached by an average of 80-85 people each day in January. It is almost three years now since I retired from active parish ministry. But I think many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if thet congregations in their churches that averaged 560-590 people a week.
Today, I am very grateful to all 11 million readers and viewers of this blog to date, and for the small core group among them who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.
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