Journey’s end
Holidaymakers are being flown home after travel company Thomas Cook failed. The idea might have horrified the company’s eponymous founder, whose first excursion was a temperance outing from Leicester to Loughborough on 5 July 1841, on a charter train from the Midland Railway Company. All 500 tickets were swiftly sold. A holiday from Leicester to Liverpool and North Wales followed in 1845, including several nights in temperance hotels and a night-time ascent of Snowdon. Thomas Cook went on to organise trips to the 1851 Great Exhibition for 150,000 from the Midlands.
Financial health
A Labour activist and parent of a patient accused the Prime Minister on a visit to a London hospital of ‘destroying’ the NHS. How has the budget for health and social care in England changed since the last Labour government left office in 2010? (At 2018/19 prices)
2010/11 | £117bn |
2011/12 | £118bn |
2012/13 | £119bn |
2013/14 | £122bn |
2014/15 | £124bn |
2015/16 | £127bn |
2016/17 | £128bn |
2017/18 | £130bn |
2018/19 | £133bn |
2019/20 | £139bn |
Source: King’s Fund
Going nuclear
Which European countries generate the highest proportion of their electricity from nuclear?
France | 75% |
Slovakia | 53% |
Belgium | 51% |
Ukraine, Hungary | 46% |
Sweden | 38% |
UK | 21% |
Spain | 20% |
Source: International Energy Agency
Channel bobbing
Sarah Thomas, an American, became the first person to swim the Channel four times in succession.

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