Britain's Finances Explained

Extracts from an email from the TaxPayers Alliance, describing their 'Debt Clock Tour':

"After driving around Westminster, the Clock headed to the Bank of England, which holds £21.669 billion in gold bullion and foreign currencies as the national reserve. The Government borrows that much money every seven weeks."

"The Debt Clock then made its way up the M40 to Oxford. Again it made a big impression – Oxford is famous for its world class university, and at the end of 2008-09, students owed a total of £25.96 billion in debts to the Student Loan Company. That entire debt, built up over a number of years, is equivalent to just 8 weeks and 2 days of government borrowing." 

"The Clifton Suspension Bridge cost £9.6m in today’s money to build. That means you could build a new Clifton Suspension Bridge using just 31 minutes of the Government’s new borrowing this year. Alternatively, if you used the whole national debt (£776.6 billion) you could afford to build a new version of the Clifton Suspension Bridge 33,490,874 km long."

And Gordon Brown is begging to be left in charge of Britain's finances?