11 Things You Could Do With £6.2bn, Rather Than Waste It On A Warship

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has taken to BuzzFeed to talk about their new aircraft carrier, which is predicted to cost the taxpayer £6.2 billion. They've given you "11 Reasons Why Our New Aircraft Carriers Are Totally Awesome". So, in the interest of debate, we have prepared our own list of things that the money could have paid for instead.

1. All the tea in China, six times over.

Flickr: Alan / Via Flickr: rothar

Alternatively you could buy all the coffee in Brazil - worth £4 billion per year – 1.5 times over.

2. The five most valuable football teams in the world to set up a new super league.

Flickr: Prpbek / Via Flickr: probek

3. End homelessness in the UK five times over.

Flickr: LWR / Via Flickr: lwr

4. You could lay a trail of £50 notes that would go around the earth's circumference twice!

Flickr: Images Money / Via Flickr: 59937401@N07

5. Over 25 million tonnes worth of pick & mix.

Flickr: Curt SM / Via Flickr: curtsm

That's almost half a tonne for person in the UK, a lifetime's supply of sweets.

6. Over 300,000 NHS nurses or 80,000 NHS consultants.

Flickr: Clemson University Library / Via Flickr: clemsonunivlibrary

7. Provide three years worth of food for 66 million hungry school children across the world.

Flickr: FMSC / Via Flickr: fmsc

8. Send every child in UK for a week long all inclusive holiday in Barbados.

Flickr: Ben124 / Via Flickr: ben124

9. Scrap student fees in England three times over.

Flickr: Fleshmanpix / Via Flickr: fleshmanpix

10. End the unfair bedroom tax 12 times over.

Flickr: PotatoJunkie / Via Flickr: potatojunkie

11. Construct a brand new space shuttle from scratch and send 75 lucky people to the moon.

Flickr: LethalPossum / Via Flickr: lethalpossum

The MoD would like us to buy another one of these staggeringly expensive, and totally needless, warships. We hope you agree that there really are much better things that the money could be spent on!