There are seven suicides for every one murder

I sort of knew this statistic already, but was quite shocked when working out the actual numbers:

Number of murders in the UK: 786
Number of suicides in the UK:  5,706

The proportion of murders which get reported in the media is extremely high compared with nearly all other crimes or forms of death. Many of the reasons for that are understandable, but one risk of giving murders such prominence is that it unbalances public perception of how many people are murdered compared with other crimes or deaths. That in turn effects the issues which politicians speak out about.

Having looked up the figures, I do now wonder whether murder features too often in political speeches and suicide not nearly enough.

Murder figures: 2007-8 figures for Scotland, 2008-9 figures for elsewhere. Suicide figures: 2008.