Thomas Cook get some facts and history with our free resources

Shocking news about the failure of renowned travel firm Thomas Cook.

The Civil Aviation Authority has set up a site on the administration

The home page of Thomas Cook has been taken down but archived versions including company news and history can be viewed via the Internet archive.

Statista has a clear infographic to the fall in share price of the company from 2010-2018

Thomas Cook history

Interestingly it is tied with temperance as the first tour in 1841 was chartering a train to take a group of temperance campaigners 11 miles from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough, It became a nationalised company in 1948 along with the railways becoming part of the British Transport Commission. not being de-nationalised until 1972. It began promoting foreign holidays (particularly Italy, Spain and Switzerland) in the early 1950s

Historic clippings about Thomas Cook from the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

Examples of historic guide books produced by the Company in the 19th and 20th centuries via Haithi Trust. they include the full text of a guide for the traveller to Venice in the 1870s.

 Foreign Travel- who travels abroad? 

According to Statista most Europeans dont holiday abroad

ONS has data on foreign travel and tourism

it includes annual datasets which show a general decline in foreign travel.

Eurostat has data on tourism trends and destinations of Europeans

Snapshots of international tourism trends can be obtained from the WTO website

Does help to buy - help only the rich?

According to newspaper reports. Help to buy loans have benefited the rich more than the poor. Over 5,000 earning over 80,000 got loans to buy their own home.
Indeed the Public Accounts Committee recent report found  "Around three-fifths of buyers who took part in the scheme did not need its support to buy a property" See also their progress review pages.
NAO has considered whether it pushes up house prices.
for further facts see official UK government statistics.
Which? comment

Shelter housing policy library resources.

New Economic Foundation comment

More generally IFS discusses the barriers to home ownership amongst young people.

it is also worth consulting this data on average earnings to house prices ratio to get insight into potential problems.

some commentators believe it has increased home ownership amongst the young. But also significant is the Bank of mum and dad

 Lucian Cook, residential research director at estate agent Savills, said purchases made with Help to Buy came to about 48,000 in 2018, of which 39,000 were first-time buyers.
The English Home Survey has time series data on home ownership and renting

Which country is the most peaceful?

The 21st September is International Day of Peace. The 2019 theme is climate action for peace and the website has a number of resolutions and other resources relating to this.

but on a more general theme here are some resources on the state of peace in the world.

Which is the most peaceful country in the World?
the Global Peace Index 2019 ranks Iceland. Find out why by consulting its methodology. The index has been produced annually by the Institute for Economics and Peace since 2007. It ranks over 160 nations according to their levels of peacefulness.

What peacekeeping operations is the UN involved in and how effective are they?
Global Peace Operations review
annual survey of UN peacekeeping operations.
Data on UN peace keeping operations including number of personnel, gender and budgets. Maintained by New York University Center for International Cooperation. Also includes analysis articles and news stories.
the official United Nations website has some good infographics on statistics. They include women in peacekeeping. There is also a more detailed data section with  reports on current missions and data on all deployments since 1949.

Historical information on peacekeeping missions

SIPRI Multilateral Peace Operations Database contains information on all peace keeping missions UN and non UN since 2000

Free peace treaties.

Margarita S. Studemeister Digital Collections in International Conflict Management

maintained by the United States Institute for Peace (USIP)containsa  a peace agreements collection which has the text of all major documents ending civil and inter-state wars since 1989; 

UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia
The Uppsala Conflict Data Program offers free access to this searchable database which has detailed descriptions of  armed conflicts, peace agreements, state and non-state violence covering over 40 years . You can  country files, visualise the data and download.

Uk Government spending round - free academic links so you can get the facts

4th September the chancellor announced the latest Uk spending round
HM treasury has the official documents


UK House of Commons Library has an introduction to public spending.

Transcripts will be made available later in the day on Hansard
LSE members can watch archived materials (since 1997) via the Box of Broadcasts service 
The Office for Budget Responsibility has  economic outlooks and analysis of public spending  on its website


News analysis
BBC
Telegraph
Guardian


Analysis
IFS
Institute for Government   they include predictions.
ICAEW


Deloitte spending review analysis
PWC 


Industry briefings
CBI
ADASS social Care

lobby/ stakeholders.
National Housing Federation
St Mungos- homelessness
Local Government Association
Civil Service unions
RCGP doctors letter to chancellor
TUC
women and the Spending review Womens Budget Group
womens organisations letters to the Guardian

Amazon fires get the facts with our free academic research links.

Over the last couple of weeks newspapers have been reporting a dramatic increase in fires in the Amazonian rain forest

Here are some places to get the real facts

The National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) has current satellite images which show an increase of over 80% on 2018

World Resources Institute blog has images from NASA and discussion of the trends.

National Geographic magazine has a good English language article which interprets this and other data in English. It also includes good deforestation maps.

Global Fire Emissions database . It includes explorable maps of wildfire size and duration. check dates and methodology on the website.

Global Forest Watch has excellent maps of deforestation and loss in specific countries. The one for Brazil tracks trends. It also has a blog with comment and analysis of recent events.


The FAO produce a general report on the Global State of the Forests this generally covers issues relating to biodiversity and sustainability and forest management in nations worldwide.

Global Forest Information Service. is a collaborative effort of forest-related institutions very good for keeping up to date with news and lists of lots of publications.