The Pope

[Joensuu]

I have no idea - I buy the Guardian so don't look online.

 

It's on page 15 - they have a brief summary of the attendance, number of police, etc. under the heading 'In numbers'.

 

Fair enough. Still seems rather strange. I mean, the crowds in Birmingham who gathered to greet the Pope were estimated at having between 70-100K people. Using the larger figure (to be conservative), every person in that crowd, man, woman and child, must have spent an average of £120 per head on things they would not otherwise have purchased. If it had been an average of £12 extra per head I'd have understood, but £120 each? What were these people spending that money on? Gold-plated plastic Vatican flags? I find the £12.5 million figure very hard to believe. I wonder if the Guardian put the decimal point in the wrong place, £1.25 million would be a lot more believable. Obviously, I could be wrong on this, but I haven't seen the £12.5 million figure mentioned anywhere else.

 

Of course, almost everyone has an amount of disposable cash. If the Pope has caused some of them to splash out, then all that means is they will spend less than they otherwise would have over the next few weeks. Over the course of a month or two, the total high street spending would have been broadly around the same amount with or without the Vatican visitor. Financially, the public purse takes the hit, the shopkeepers break even, and the Pope gets free media attention.

 

The £80k figure for the city council sounds about right, but lets face it, they don't have much to pay for, most of the money comes straight from central government (police etc). Once all the costs have been factored in the total cost of the Papal visit to Birmingham will be a lot higher. My, simple, estimate is that it has to be around £3 million (I reached this figure by simply taking 1/4 of the total estimated cost of hosting the trip).

Edited 20 September, 2010 by Joensuu