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Hello and welcome to a brand new series of more or less, a show that offers a medley

relay of statistical feats. This week MacDonald's is reported to have run out of milkshakes

and nando's out of chicken, but the underlying cause is that the UK is running out of

lorry drivers. Is there any way of measuring the shortfall?

The Metropolitan Police say they're facing a bill of tens of millions of pounds for

policing extinction rebellion protests. A big bill for the old bill, but we get out

our pencil and notebook and get an expert witness to evaluate that claim. Speaking of big

bills, the UK government has been spending freely to deal with the pandemic, so we tot

up the national debt and put it into historical context, and disturbing evidence that Star Trek's

Mr Spock may actually be terrible at logic. But first, correlation is not causation, but

I note that Covid deaths are rising and that Kate Lambel is back. Hello, Kate.

Hello Tim. We just need to get you a horse and a slide rule, and you can be one of the

riders of the statistical apocalypse. That's my Halloween costume sorted.

Glad to be of service. So Kate, our last episode was on so-called Freedom Day in late

July when the government relaxed a lot of the remaining anti-COVID measures in England.

So I think we need to dig into what happened afterwards.

Before we do, though, let's remind ourselves about what was happening back in July just

before restrictions were relaxed. On the 11th, England reached the final of the year.

Yes, yes, move on. Before promptly losing to Italy on penalties.

I'm sure most of our English listeners could have done without being reminded of that.

But actually, it is quite important, Covid-wise, because England, Scotland and Wales were all

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