WEDNESDAY 29 FEBRUARY 2012
THE FREE DAY THAT COSTS BRITONS OVER ?500 MILLION
BUT WITH AN EXTRA 24 HOURS, WHAT DO WE GAIN FROM THE LEAP DAY?
In a world where time is money and everyone spends their time racing against the clock, Britain gets a whole extra day free this February. Everyone loves a freebie, but what are the hidden costs?
For the Blu-ray release of the film IN TIME, where everyone over 25 has to earn, steal or inherit time to stay alive, a series of facts have been gathered to show the benefits and the hidden costs to the nation. IN TIME rushes onto Blu-ray and DVD on 27 th February 2012.
On February 29 th 2012 the average Briton will miss out on ?118 of earnings (a loss of over ?500 million across the population), and will spend an extra ?7.60 on food and non-alcoholic drinks, ?8.63 on housing and fuel and ?9.27 more on transport.
The British economy will be the big winner however, seeing a big boost for the economy with a whole extra day for people to spend, spend, spend and business to do more business. Text mad Brits will be leading the way sending an extra 265 million texts, keeping mobile phone companies counting their profits, whilst the social media giant Facebook will see 720,000,000 more status updates keeping their advertisers happy as people send an extra 8.3 hours in front of the computer.
Meanwhile this nation of shopaholics will splurge an extra ?77,000,000 whilst maternity wards will see an extra 1935 babies born.
For those with birthdays on February 29 th, this will be one group who will be having reasons to celebrate. If every leap year baby lived to 100 they?d actually be still a youthful 25, the point humans stop aging in the film In Time.
And finally men have something to celebrate; they will have an average of 13.7 more minutes on this day to think about sex.