Patrick Comerford
This blog reached yet another new peak shortly after 7 am yesterday (24 June 2025), totalling up 13.5 million hits since I first began blogging about 15 years ago, back in 2010.
Once again, I find this is yet another humbling statistic and a sobering figure that leaves me not with a sense of achievement but with 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 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 over the past few months, 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), 12 million early last month (3 May 2025), 12.5 million a month later (6 June 2025), 13 million less than two weeks later (17 June 2025) and 13.5 million early yesterday (24 June 2025).
Indeed, June 2025 was the second month that this blog ever had 1 million hits in one single month, with 1 million hits by Sunday 22 June. This follows 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).
In recent months, the daily figures have been overwhelming on occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were this month alone, and the other five of those 12 busiest days were in January 2025:
• 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)
• 64,077 (14 January 2025)
• 55,614 (17 June 2025)
This blog has already had about over 2.8 million hits this year, almost 21 per cent of all hits ever, and by 6 pm this evening (25 June 2025) it had over 1.26 million hits so far this month alone.
Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.’ It may only be a hunch, but I have not failed to notice that some of these days were in the week before and after Trump’s inauguration, the others were in the days around his damp-squib military parade in Washington DC on 14 June and his hairbrained decision to attack Iran. Indeed, the overwhelming number of hits are not from Ireland, the UK and Greece, as I might expect, but from the US.
It’s not paranoid to imagine how the bots at work in some ugly, dim basement in Washington are trawling far and wide for anyone critical of the Trump regime. The costs may be minimal, but it’s still money that could be better spent on healthcare, education, rehiring air traffic controllers or reinstating DEI programmes. But I doubt my criticisms of Trump, Rubio, Vance, Hegseth and Musk are going to make it easy to get a visa to visit the US over the next four years, should I ever want to under the present dystopian regime. I’d prefer to boost my ego and convince myself that my popularity is growing and that I have become a ‘must-read’ writer for so many people every day. But, sadly, I don’t think that’s so. And if a minor critic of the Trump regime outside the US such as me is being intimidated at this level, try to imagine how many critics inside the US feel they really are being intimidated and bullied into silence.
With this latest landmark figure of 13.5 million hits by today, over 1.4 million hits in January alone, and 1.26 million hits during June so far, I once again find myself asking questions such as:
• What do 13.5 million people look like?
• Where do we find 135 million people?
• What does £13.5 million, €13.5 million or $13.5 million mean.
• What would it buy?
In Africa, 13.5 million children have been uprooted or displaced due to many factors. They include children living as refugees, who are migrants or who are internally displaced.
Syria once had the largest displacement crisis in the world, With 13.5 million people displaced by over 13 years of brutal civil conflict. But fiigure has since been surpassed in Sudan, which now has the world’s largest displacement crisis, with 14.3 million displaced people.
Rwanda has a population of over 13.5 million people, and cities with a population of about 13.5 million people include Tehran, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Jakarta and Lagos … depending on who does the counting.
Jews were once widely dispersed around the world. But the world’s Jewish population is now concentrated in two countries: the US and Israel. These are home to 13.5 million Jews out of a global total of 15.7 million people.
It is estimated that there 13.5 million Palestinians worldwide, with a significant portion of them living in what is seen as historical Palestine.
It is said that 13.5 million people are stalked in a one-year period in the United States.
13.5 million people amount to 20% of the UK population. Furthermore, the dog population in the UK is estimated at 13.5 million, with 36% of households owning a dog.
Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. It is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora. Greece is almost 13.5 million ha in size, with a total land area of 13.2 ha, and it has a coastline of 13.6 million metres (13,676 km), the ninth longest coastine in the world.
Ellinikon International Airport in Athens, which closed in 2001, had an official capacity of 11 million passengers a year, but served 13.5 million passengers in its last year of operations. A large part of the site was converted into facilities for the 2004 Olympic Games, but much of the site is still derelict, and abandoned old aircraft and airport vehicles can still be seen there. Part of the airport site has also been used as a camp for migrants and refugees.
Patong in Thailand, which pormotes itself as one of Asia’s ‘party capitals’, is visited by more than 13.5 million tourists a year. Tourists spend around £13.5 million a day in Wales.
A £13.5 million Centre for Green Technology was completed at Peterborough College earlier this year. The three-storey, low-carbon facility is planned to provide training in modern construction techniques, alternative heat sources and electric vehicle technology, with officials saying “it will make a real difference to the future’. The 2,435sq metre centre will expand student capacity and support careers in high-growth green industries.
Tom Glanfield, a 46-year-old multi-millionaire, bought what was described as the ‘world’s most expensive bungalow,’ a rundown house in Sandbanks, an exclusive area of Dorset known as ‘Millionaire’s Row’, for £13.5 million in 2023. He had dreams of knocking the cottage down and building a state-of-the-art eco-home, but has faced resistance ever since.
Kris Jenner, the Kardashian family matriarch, has placed her six-bedroom, eight-bathroom mansion in Hidden Hills, Los Angeles, on the market for $13.5 million.
Richard Henry (Prescott) Kerr, a former pupil at Methodist College in Belfast, recently left the school a legacy of £13.5 million in his will.
The world has a population of 8.2 billion people, and 13.5 million people represent only 0.16% of all those people. So 13.5 million hits on this blog is quite a modest number, I have to concede.
One of the most warming figures personally in the midst of all these statistics is the one that shows my morning prayer diary reaches an average of 80-85 people each day in the past month. It is over three 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 to 580 people a week.
Today, I am very grateful to all 13.5 million readers of this blog to date, and for the small and faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment