Patrick Comerford
This blog continues to reach more and more readers, and for the third time this month it has passed a half-million marker, reaching the staggering total earlier early this morning of 17 million hits since I first began blogging back in 2010.
The 16 million figure was passed earlier this month (6 September), while I was on a weekend visit to York and Durham, another half a million hits were noted in the space of a fortnight (19 September 2025), and, as this month comes to an end the 17 million mark was passed early this morning (30 September 2025).
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 July), 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), 16.5 million less than a fortnight later (19 September 2025), and now 17 million this morning (30 September), even before I had awoken.
So far this month, this blog has had more 1.3 million hits by late this afternoon, the fourth time there have been over 1 million hits in a month: in July, this blog had 1,195,456 hits, in June 2025 there were 1,618,488 hits, and thore were 1,420,383 visitor in January.
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 September:
• 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)
• 73,244 (24 September 2025)
• 69,722 (18 June 2025)
• 69,714 (30 June 2025)
This blog has already had almost 7.6 million hits this year, almost 45 per cent of all hits ever.
With this latest landmark figure of 17 million readers today, I once again found myself asking questions such as:
• What do 17 million people look like?
• Where do we find 17 million people?
• What does £17 million, €17 million or $17 million mean?
• What would it buy?
The 17 million-year-old fossil remains of an extinct large flightless bird have been discovered in Australia’s Boodjamulla National Park in Queensland. The ground-dwelling species – menura tyawanoides – is an ancient ancestor of Australia’s native lyrebird, according to a news release from Queensland’s Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation earlier this month (17 September 2025).
Lyrebirds have the remarkable ability to imitate almost any sound, even ‘chainsaws, horns, alarms and … trains,’ according to wildlife experts. Scientists believe the mimicry helps them to vocally establish their territory and ‘defend it from other lyrebirds,’ according to experts. They say the fossil wrist bone of menura tyawanoides is between 17 million and 18 million years old.
Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud and cybercrime reporting centre, says victims in the UK lost more than £17 million to pension fraud last year (2024). The scams are varied and sophisticated: some involve high-pressure sales tactics promising incredible returns, while others rely on impersonation and account takeovers to steal retirement funds. For many victims, the losses are life-changing, wiping out years of careful saving.
In Ireland, SMEs lost over €17 million in the last two years through email-related scams, according to figures published by FraudSMART in April .
Taking into account all of the victims of persecution, the Nazis systematically murdered an estimated six million Jews and millions of others during the war. The historian Donald Niewyk of Columbia University suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths, would produce a total of 17 million victims.
The 1918-1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it the deadliest pandemic in history.
The earliest documented case in March 1918 was in Kansas in the US, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected.
In the US, because of Trump’s so-called ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ and other policy changes, the number of people without health insurance is expected to increase by about 17 million.
Among 289 million adults in 18 European countries, nearly 17 million years of life were lost from 2020-2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study. The study, in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine, shows a stark picture of the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on both total and disability-free years of life lost, with researchers able to identify different factors at play as the pandemic progressed.
The study was led by Dr Sara Ahmadi-Abhari of the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. Rates of diseases, such as heart disease and dementia, disability, and death were tracked and used to estimate the effect of the pandemic between 2020 and 2022.
Many people who died during the pandemic would probably have lived longer if the pandemic had not happened. The study quantified these ‘lost years’ and found that, in total, 16.8 million years of life were lost due to the pandemic across 18 European countries. In addition, more than half of those years would have been lived independently, even among people aged over 80.
More than 17 million people in conflict-torn Yemen are going hungry, including over a million children under the age of five who are suffering from ‘life-threatening acute malnutrition,’ according to Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Dr Fletcher, who is the Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, has told the UN Security Council that the food security crisis has been accelerating since late 2023 in Yemen, which is the Arab world’s poorest country and which is beset by civil war.
About 17 million people live in Senegal and in Zimbabwe; Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo has around 17 million residents, making it the 13th largest city in the world in terms of population; and there are 17 million voters in Sri Lanka.
There are an estimated 17 to 25 million Muslims in China, where they are less than 2 per cent of the total population.
Dublin’s successful hosting of the 2024 UEFA Europa League Final brought a €17 million boost to the Irish economy, according to a new impact report. The comprehensive analysis, prepared by EY, underscores the substantial economic and societal benefits generated by the event.
The report reveals that the final contributed €17 million in Gross Value Added (GVA), fuelled by a total spend of €10 million by visitors to Ireland. On top of that, the event supported almost 300 full-time equivalent jobs.
Lichfield Southern Bypass was completed at a cost estimated at £17 million.
Over 17 million people voted for Brexit in 2016.
Dominic Frisby is presenting ‘An Evening Of Comedy, Songs and Satire’ at the Lichfield Garrick Theatre on 13 March next (2026). His show is a collection of right-wing political anecdotes, jokes and music and he is accompanied by the jazz pianist, Chad Lelong.
His song ‘17 Million Eff Offs’ took its name from the votes in the Brexit referendum. Frisby started a campaign in 2020 to get his ‘17 Million’ song to No 1 in the UK Singles Chart. Thankfully, during the run-up to the day of Brexit, pro-EU activists started a counter-campaign for people to buy copies of André Rieu's performance of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, which has become the EU anthem. When the charts were released, ‘Ode to Joy’ reached No 30, but Frisby’s ‘17 Million’ song trailed far behind and only reached 43.
So, that was a joyful reversal of the Brexit vote in some ways, I like to think.
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 the 17 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.
