News

News 30^th November
Remember last week that Boris refused to sack Patel when the report said she was bullying staff?  The senior people resigned.  The new top civil servant had a zoom meeting with other senior staff.  Not good.  They were all upset and angry about what had happened and said they had no faith in the Home office department which allowed the Minister to get away without punishment.
Here are some sums for you (from the Sunday Times).
Total cost of Covid so far (in UK) = £283,915,000,000 That is quite a lot.  What could we buy with that?
PPE cost £15 billion = you could build the rail link across London for that.
Getting vaccines £2.7 billion = buy an aircraft carrier.
Furlough programme £43 billion = 300,000 new homes
Test and Trace £22 billion = organise two Olympic Games
Test and Trace smartphone app £35 million = 1,000 police for a year
The Government paid out £1.6 billion to private hospitals (many owned by foreign companies) this was for 8,000 beds and 20,000 staff.  In the end only 108 Covid patients were kept in private hospitals.
This is interesting…. Bank of England says it cannot find £8 billion of notes and coins.  They know how much money should be out there, because they print it.  But they cannot locate a lot of it since the virus started.  People are not using cash in shops and the cash machines are not giving out much money.  The best guess is that people are keeping money at home in case of emergency.  Like the old days when people put the money under the mattress.