Patrick Comerford
This blog continues to reach more and more readers, and for the second time this month it has passed a half-million marker, reaching the staggering total earlier yeseterday of 16.5 million hits since I first began blogging back in 2010.
I almost missed the significance of the 16 million figure which was passed two weeks ago (6 September) while I was on a weekend visit to York and Durham. Since then, there has been another half a million hits in the space of a fortnight.
After I began blogging in 2010, it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. It was over a year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013. It climbed steadily to 2 million, June 2015; 3 million, October 2016; 4 million, November 2019; 5 million, March 2021; 6 million, July 2022; 7 million, 13 August 2023; 8 million, April 2024; and 9 million, October 2024.
But the rise in the number of readers has been phenomenal this year, reaching 9.5 million on 4 January 2025, 10 million over a week later (12 January 2025), 10.5 million two days after that (14 January 2025), 11 million a month later (12 February 2025), 11.5 million a month after that (10 March 2025), and 12 million early in May (3 May 2025).
The figures claimed steadily throughout June, July and August, from 12.5 million early in June (6 June 2025), 13 million less than two weeks later (17 June 2025), 13.5 million a week after that (24 June 2025), 14 million a week later (1 July 2025), 14.5 million ten days later (11 June), 15 million two weeks after that (25 July 2025), 15.5 million less than a month later (23 August 2025), then 16 million earlier this month (6 September 2025), and 16.5 million in the early hours of Friday (19 September 2025), hours before I had awoken.
So far this month, this blog has had almost 830,000 hits by noon today, and it looks like having over 1 million hits by the end of the month for the fourth time.
In July, for a third time, this blog had more than a million hits in a single month, with 1,195,456 hits in July; June 2025 was the second month that this blog had more than 1 million hits in one month, with 1,618,488 hits by the end of that month. These figures follow January’s record of 1 million hits by the early hours of 14 January, and a total of 1,420,383 by the end of that month (31 January 2025).
So far this year, the daily figures have been overwhelming on occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in June, four were in January, and one was in July:
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2025)
• 100,291 (10 January 2025)
• 82,043 (23 June 2025)
• 81,037 (21 June 2025)
• 80,625 (22 June 2025)
• 79,981 (19 June 2025)
• 79,165 (20 June 2025)
• 69,722 (18 June 2025)
• 69,714 (30 June 2025)
• 69,657 (1 July 2025)
This blog has already had over 7.1 million hits this year, over 44 per cent of all hits ever.
With this latest landmark figure of 16.5 million hits this week, I once again found myself asking questions such as:
• What do 16.5 million people look like?
• Where do we find 16.5 million people?
• What does £16.5 million, €16.5 million or $16.5 million mean?
• What would it buy?
The UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria, Dr Adam Abdelmoula, said earlier this month that about 16.5 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Syria. He added that more than 6 million Syrians remain internally displaced, while more than 6 million others live as refugees around the world. He noted that about 24% of the country’s housing stock has been damaged or destroyed in recent years. The number who ever get to the UK is tiny within the overall, overwhelming enormity of this dire situation.
The overall population of the city of Lagos in Nigeria was estimated at 16.5 million last year (2024).
There are 16.5 million people of Italian ancestry living in the US.
An oft-quoted statistic says 16.5 million tourists visit Greece each year, more than the country’s entire population. But the actual figure for tourists in Greece each year is now almost double that, with over 30 million visitors a year.
Tourism visits to Northern Ireland have doubled since the Good Friday Agreement from 7.5 million in 1998 to 16.5 million.
China Eastern Airlines and its subsidiaries Shanghai Airlines and China United Airlines carried almost 16.5 million passengers during the annual Spring Festival travel rush last year.
The Irish tech founder Niall Crosby left a will valued at €16.5 million after he died in a helicopter accident last year (July 2024).
Oxfam GB put 265 jobs at risk of redundancy earlier this year after it faced a forecast £16.5 million deficit in unrestricted funds.
When Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort went on trial on tax and bank fraud charges, it was revealed he had $16.5 million in unreported taxable business income between 2010 and 2014. The US Internal Revenue Service revealed in court how Manafort’s unreported income included foreign wire transfers to US vendors like landscapers and clothiers, wire transfers to buy property, and income improperly reclassified as loans.
Manafort was jailed twice on multiple charges – and he was then promptly pardoned by Donald Trump.
Stephen Calk, former chair and CEO of the Federal Savings Bank, was an economic adviser to Trump during the 2016 presidential election campaign. He was jailed in 2022 for bribing Paul Manafort with $16.5 million in high-risk loans ‘to try and buy himself prestige and power.’ Calk was convicted of financial institution bribery and conspiracy to commit financial institution bribery.
A Reuters report last year revealed that Timothy Mellon, heir of the Pittsburgh-based Mellon banking family, had given the pro-Trump MAGA Inc at least $16.5 million since 2022. He also gave at least $20 million to the pro-Trump America First Action Inc during the 2020 presidential election.
So, 16.5 million buys a lot of votes and a lot of influence, and seems to even buy a way out of jail for some people.
Once again, this blog has reached another humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and once more I am left with a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.
A continuing and warming figure in the midst of all these statistics continues to be the one that shows my morning prayer diary reaches up to 80-85 people each day. It is 3½ years now since I retired from active parish ministry. But I think many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches averaged or totalled 560 to 580 people a week.
Today, I am very grateful to all 16.5 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the small and faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.
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