How often do banks fail?

Eyes on the ball

Viewing figures for Match of the Day rose by 500,000 when Gary Lineker was suspended from the show for tweeting about the government’s asylum bill and his fellow pundits walked out on strike in support. 

– First broadcast on the then new BBC2 on 22 August 1964, the show was initially controversial not because of the views of its presenter Kenneth Wolstenholme but because football clubs feared it would discourage fans from attending games. 

– They need not have worried: the first episode, featuring highlights of Liverpool vs Arsenal, attracted just 20,000 viewers. 

– Viewing figures rose sharply, however, after England won the World Cup in 1966 and the programme was moved to BBC1. It gained its famous theme tune, written by Barry Stoller, in 1970.

Hot air

Is the government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme (which offers grants of up to £6,000 for replacing fossil-fuel heating systems with heat pumps or biomass boilers) a triumph for levelling up? Number of vouchers issued by constituency:

Highest

South Cambridgeshire 147

St Ives 133

Truro and Falmouth 95

North Wiltshire; Somerton and Frome 85

South East Cambridgeshire 83

Lowest

Barking, Birmingham Hodge Hill, Blackpool South, Broxbourne, Denton and Reddish, Edmonton, Islington South and Finsbury, Liverpool Walton, Liverpool, West Derby, Wallasey, Wolverhampton South East 0

Source: Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

Don’t bank on it

Two US banks, the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, failed within two days. With a reported $209bn and $110bn of assets respectively, it makes them the second and third biggest bank failures in US history – the biggest being the Washington Mutual, which collapsed in 2008 with £307bn of assets. 

– However, bank failures are not all that uncommon in the US. Since 2001, 563 banks have failed. The worst years, in terms of the number of failures, were 2010 (157 failures), 2009 (140) and 2011 (92).