The Spectator

Barometer | 26 November 2011

issue 26 November 2011

Cook’s recipe

Shares in Thomas Cook fell 60 per cent after the tour operator entered talks with its banks.
— The company’s name has been synonymous with package tours since 1841, when Leicester cabinet-maker and temperance campaigner Thomas Cook took 500 supporters on a day trip to Loughborough on the newly opened railway line for a shilling each.
— The first Thomas Cook holiday took place four years later: a trip to Liverpool, or for the more active, a steamboat journey on to Caernavon followed by a night ascent of Snowdon.

Incapacity crowd

One in 14 working-age people is out of work and receiving incapacity benefit. Some common conditions among claimants of incapacity benefit and severe disablement allowance:

Number of claimants, August 2010

Depression:  399,000
Back pain: 168,000
Anxiety disorder: 102,000
Alcoholism or drug abuse:  79,800
Schizophrenia: 49,800
Epilepsy: 48,000
Stress or malaise and fatigue: 47,000
Obesity: 1,830

Source: Department for Work and Pensions

Fall and rise

A 1960s block of flats, Glencairn Tower in Motherwell, was demolished, the latest in a number across the country felled in recent months.

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