Patrick Comerford
This blog reached yet another new peak at some stage early yesterday morning (6 June 2025), totalling up 12.5 million hits since I first began blogging about 15 years ago, back in 2010.
Yet again, I find 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 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), and 12.5 million about a month later, early yesterday (6 June 2025).
Indeed, January 2025 was the first month this blog ever had 1 million hits in one single 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. Eight of the 10 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in January 2025 alone, and the other two of those ten busiest days were in this month (June 2025):
• 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)
• 44,134 (6 June 2025)
• 42,946 (26 January 2025)
• 39,444 (5 June 2025)
This blog has already had almost 3.1 million hits this year, over 20 per cent of all hits ever.
Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.’ But I have noticed that eight of these days were in the week before and after Trump’s inauguration, and that the overwhelming number of hits are not from Ireland, the UK and Greece, as I might expect, but from the US.
The bots at work in Washington must be trawling far and wide for anyone critical of the Trump regime, but I doubt my criticisms of Trump, Vance 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 regime.
With this latest landmark figure of 12.5 million hits by today, over 1.4 million hits in January alone, and half a million or more hits within the past month, I once again find myself asking questions such as:
• What do 12.5 million people look like?
• Where do we find 12.5 million people?
• What does £12.5 million, €12.5 million or $12 million mean, or what would it buy?
About 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade, between 1526 to 1867. About 12.5 million captured men, women, and children were put on ships in Africa, and of these, 10.7 million arrived in the Americas. The Atlantic slave trade was probably the most costly in human life of all long-distance global migrations.
There are growing concerns that 12.5 million people in the UK have not saved enough or are under-saving for their retirement. Recent research shows that 24% of UK adults, or 12.2 million people, have already missed at least one payment in the last year. More than eight million people across the UK need to get debt advice and more than 12 million more live on the edge.
Yet the Hampton by Hilton at Liverpool John Lennon Airport has been put on the market in recent days with a guide price of £12.5 million.
The Home Office says about 12.5 million people in the UK have a criminal record. The figures relate to the number of criminal records on the Police National Computer (PNC) in April 2024. This means that every year, hundreds of thousands of people face new challenges due to having a criminal record and could be excluded from getting a job, finding somewhere to live or being able to get insurance.
Countries with a population of about 12.5 million include Bolivia, Tunisia and South Sudan. The United Nations has declared South Sudan the site of the world’s largest displacement crisis, with almost 12.5 million people forced to flee their homes, including over 3.3 million refugees who have fled to neighbouring countries.
Cities with a population of about 12.5 million include Guangzhou, Los Angeles and Moscow.
The United Methodist Church, the world’s largest Methodist denomination, has about 12.5 million members.
In the first four months of 2024, Greece’s airports welcomed over 12.5 million passengers. The Greek-owned Aegean Airlines surpassed 12.5 million passengers in the first nine months of 2024, marking a 5% increase compared to the previous year. Greece has received €12.5 million in EU funding to help implement a solar power project on the island of Tilos.
The Ireland-based company behind the Six Nations rugby tournament converted its tournament success into a pretax profit of €12.5 million (£10.5 million) in its last financial year, according to a recent report in The Irish Times. Following a loss of more than £26.2 million in 2023, Six Nations Rugby Limited recorded a profit of £10,500,776 for the year ending 30 June 2024, according to filed accounts.
Aston Villa is monitoring the Nice goalkeeper Marcin Bulka, who would be available for about £12.5 million this summer. Under the guidance of Unai Emery, Villa has secured European football for the third consecutive season, but fell short of a second-straight Champions League campaign on the final day of the Premier League season.
Councillor Sue Woodward, Leader of the Labour group on Lichfield District Council, says the total for work on the failed Friarsgate redevelopment and subsequent work on the Birmingham Road site planning has topped £12.5 million. She says residents in many areas of the district could no longer stomach money continually being pumped into the city alone.
Sotheby’s sold a pair of rare 16th-century Ming Dynasty Chinese jars decorated with orange fish for $12.5 million last November.
The world has a population of 7.75 billion people, and 12.5 million people represent only 0.16% of all those people, a modest number I suppose.
One of the most warming figures personally in the midst of all these statistics is the one that shows how my morning prayer diary continues to reach an average of 60 or 70 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 4200 to 500 people a week.
Today, I am very grateful to all 12.5 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.
The United Methodist Church has 12.5 million members … Barbara Heck from Limerick depicted in a window in the UMC Church in Orlando (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
