UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak working on a post-coronavirus budget with a smart mug in the background. Source HM Treasury
UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak working on a post-coronavirus budget with a smart mug in the background. Source HM Treasury
UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak working on a post-coronavirus budget with a smart mug in the background. Source HM Treasury
UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak working on a post-coronavirus budget with a smart mug in the background. Source HM Treasury

Why does Britain’s finance minister drink tea from a £180 cup?


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Britain's Chancellor Rishi Sunak will unveil his plan to pull the UK out of what is predicted to be the worst recession for 300 years on Wednesday.

So as he made his preparations, Mr Sunak needed a sustaining drink.

At the centre of his desk, as he finalised details of projects to prevent mass unemployment and reassure people facing a crisis in family finances, sat a coffee cup that sells for £180 (Dh830).

The Ember Temperature Control Travel Mug 2, which appears in photographs released by Mr Sunak’s office before Wednesday’s statement to Parliament, works with an app on his phone that lets the chancellor choose exactly how hot or cool to keep his drink.

The mug, the price of which is equal to more than 20 hours' work for someone on the minimum wage, has echoes of a similar gaffe by one of his predecessors, George Osborne.

In 2013, Mr Osborne was lampooned for eating what the Sun newspaper described as "poshburger" in a photograph he tweeted the night before a spending review.

That image, intended to show him as a man of the people, led to criticism that he was cutting public spending while dining on burgers from Byron, which were seven times more expensive than McDonald’s.

But Mr Sunak’s picture at least shows that he has been busy. A warning light shows the mug’s battery is flat.

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The Sinopharm vaccine was created using techniques that have been around for decades. 

“This is an inactivated vaccine. Simply what it means is that the virus is taken, cultured and inactivated," said Dr Nawal Al Kaabi, chair of the UAE's National Covid-19 Clinical Management Committee.

"What is left is a skeleton of the virus so it looks like a virus, but it is not live."

This is then injected into the body.

"The body will recognise it and form antibodies but because it is inactive, we will need more than one dose. The body will not develop immunity with one dose," she said.

"You have to be exposed more than one time to what we call the antigen."

The vaccine should offer protection for at least months, but no one knows how long beyond that.

Dr Al Kaabi said early vaccine volunteers in China were given shots last spring and still have antibodies today.

“Since it is inactivated, it will not last forever," she said.