[thatthatis]

I was pulling reasonable numbers out of the air to do an order of magnitude/what would you have to believe analysis.

It's unclear from that article what "ownership" means, given that a kettle is a household-level item, I'm not sure if it would matter if you did your survey as "do you own a kettle" or "is there a kettle in your house" -- they should sum up to about the same percentage. Maybe a smaller percentage of the population would say they own a kettle than would say they have one in their house due to different interpretations of what it means to "own" something. I'd expect those differences to be within the margin of error of most surveys.

[rmc]

Not to mention work places. If someone doesn't own a kettle at home, but there is a kettle at work that they use to drink tea, then they essentially are part of the UK kettle-culture.