Covid has means huge changes to the finances of government and the country. What had only months before seemed unimaginable levels of debt, suddenly seemed to become normal, with many calling for even more of it.
The problem in thinking sensibly about government debt, is that it is so large, it bears no connection to the kind of numbers we normally deal with in our every day lives. Indeed not even with large purchases like homes.
So to give a sense of scale, I have converted debt in two ways.
Firstly I have used debt as a percentage of GDP. In that way, the debt is related to the affordability of the economy in the year in which we take the measure.
Secondly I have converted the debt to the weight of an animal - to give us a sense of the relative size of debt in different years. The idea being that we have a much better idea of the difference between a zebra and a spider than we do between different billions - all of which I think just screams "large number" on our head.
So here is an ark of animals to give you a sense of how much debt we are in compared with every decade to the 1940s.
Sources for the data:
Although this partly fun, it also meant to genuinely improve our understanding and engagement with these figures - so I have made the animal comparisons as accurately as possible, but finding the weight of an anteater isn't an exact science.
i) Debt figures are from the wonderful ONS - October 2020. Full source table is attached below.
ii) Animal weight comparisons are from https://thewebsiteofeverything.com/animals/mammals/adult-weight.html
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