Quotes by Andrew Simms

* We export 5,000 tonnes of toilet paper from the UK to Germany, but then import over 4,000 tonnes back again
* 4,400 tonnes of ice cream gets exported from the UK to Italy, and 4,200 tonnes is then imported back
* We import 22,000 tonnes of potatoes from Egypt and export 27,000 tonnes back the other way
* 116 tonnes of ‘Sweet biscuits, waffles and wafers, gingerbread and the like’ (the official category for trade statistics) comes into the UK, rumbling passed 106 tonnes headed in the opposite direction.

During the 1980s... from every $100 worth of global economic growth, around $2.20 found its way to people living below the absolute poverty line. Bad enough, but a decade later that had shrunk to just 60 cents - the slice of the growth cake going to the poorest has been getting smaller. Meanwhile the actual mean income of those living under the absolute poverty line of $1 per day in Africa also fell, from 64 cents per person per day in 1981, to just 61 cents in 20011.

There has been, in effect, a sort of 'flood up' of wealth from poor to rich, rather than a trickle down. Perversely, it means that for the poor to get slightly less poor, the rich have to get very much richer. It now takes around $166 worth of global growth... to generate a single dollar of poverty reduction for people living below $1 a day, compared with around just $45 in the 1980s.

• 1. Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion (2004) How have the world's poorest fared since the early 1980s? Development Research Group, World Bank

Before even considering the link to global warming, in the century since the first recorded fatal traffic accident the car claimed 30 million lives. Traffic accidents are now predicted by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to become the world's third most significant cause of death and disability by 2020. The World Health Organisation estimates that 1.2 million people die on roads each year, similar to total fatalities caused by malaria.

British bombing of Hamburg killed more people, mostly women, children and the old, than all German air attacks against British cities put together. In total, towards the end of the war, the Allies dropped around 1 million tons of bombs on 131 German towns and cities killing 600,000 civilians and destroying 3.5 millions homes.

Under the 1907 Hague Convention, 'The bombardment by naval forces of undefended ports, towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings is forbidden.' Yet so called strategic bombing during the Second World War was precisely targeted at German civilians who could not defend themselves. In 1932, 37,000 tonnes of bombs were dropped mostly at night on residential areas in Germany. Official air force plans to escalate bombing in the next two years were expected to kill 1 million civilians, injure 1 million more and leave 25 million homeless.

British Government officials responded: 'It is unnecessary and undesirable in any document about our bombing policy to emphasise this aspect, which is contrary to the principles of international law'1.

• 1. Lindqvist, A History of Bombing

In 2002 Nigeria was producing around 2 million barrels of oil a day. Crude oil accounted for 80% of government revenue and 90% of foreign exchange earnings. The approximate $11 billion earnings from oil sales, shared equally, would give each Nigerian about 27 cents a day. But Nigeria racked up financial debts of $5.6 billion at market rates under its military dictators. Just servicing its debts in 1999 and 2000 cost Nigeria $1.4 billion each year. Several mainstream banks, including Barclays, HSBC and Merill Lunch were censured by City regulators for flouting anti-money laundering rules in relation to accounts linked to Nigerian dictator General Abacha. He stole an estimated $4 billion from his country...

Nigeria, however, still has to keep paying [the debt] with the revenue from its oil.

Beginning from the stroke of New Year, as they sit down to their evening meal on 2 January, a US family will already have used, per person, the equivalent in fossil fuels that a family in Tanzania will depend on for the whole year.

Britain... has an unpaid debt of around $14.5 billion owed to the US from the time of the First World War. The last payment was made in 1934, not a penny has been seen since. Unlike the more recent debts of very poor sub-Saharan African countries, Britain's debt is quietly forgotten. Other European countries including France and Italy owe another $18.5 billion. The English have, in fact, been welching on debts for a lot longer still.

England was one of the first countries to default on international loans right back when Italy laid claim to inventing the precursors of modern banking. In the fourteenth century Florentine banks lent money to the English king to finance his wars against the French. When, in 1327, it was time to repay, Edward I declined. As a result, the Bardi and Peruzzi banks collapsed.