From Grumpy Cat and falling oil prices to Google blackouts and the weather bomb: Here are 10 things we learned this week

It's been another busy week… here's our pick of the things we learned. 

 

1. Grumpy Cat may not look too impressed but for once she certainly had something to smile about. Turns out the feline internet celebrity earned £32m last year. That's more than a host of business bosses, including Sir Martin Sorrell, Jamie Dimon, Marissa Mayer and Carolyn McCall.

 

2.  The weather bomb happened. But despite train companies being on red alert, it was something of a damp squib by the time it got to London.  

 

3. Supermarkets went head-to-head over the cost of petrol in response to the fall in global oil prices. As we were writing it looked like Asda had gone the furthest, dropping by 2p a litre from tomorrow.

 

4. No one likes the Brummies. Or at least, their accent. People aren't too keen on Mancunian, Glaswegian and Cockney either, and the posher and older they get, the more they dislike it.  

 

5. There is going to be a BBC theme park. We made up the rest. 

 

6. The Bank of England has got as bored of the “no change” interest rate updates as the rest of us, and is cutting its 12 annual meetings back to eight.  We can't say we blame them. 

 

7. Wine drinkers are killing the pub industry. As is the cultural shift away from a casual lunchtime pint. Translation: stop going to Pret and start going to the King's Head right now.  

 

8. Cancer is now the UK's most deadly disease, after the mortality rate for heart diseases, strokes and so on fell by 42 per cent. Also, last year 13 per cent fewer people died than in 1983. We're not sure how that's possible, but it's what the ONS said. 

 

9. Microsoft has started accepting Bitcoins, saying the cryptocurrency was “growing beyond the early enthusiasts”. 

 

10. Not learned, so much as imagined with this one. What would a world without Google be like, we thought, when we heard that it was pulling its Google News service from Spain over copyright wrangling. We hope they don't do the same over our impending Google Tax.