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 |
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