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
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