More than 20,000 rail workers in England have begun a 24-hour strike that will cancel half of the services on affected lines as part of a long-running dispute with train operators over jobs, pay and conditions.more
Canary Wharf’s credit rating has been downgraded as London companies struggle to draw white collar workers back to the office full-time. Moody’s warned that the office district faced a “difficult operating and funding environment” as it cut its outlook for Canary Wharf Group.more
Households with prepayment meters are being urged to make sure they have cashed in all their energy vouchers before the end of June. The government says that while more than four in five vouchers have been used, £130m is still available.more
Parents on universal credit will be able claim hundreds of pounds more to cover childcare costs from the end of June, the government has announced.
The government will allow parents on the benefit to claim back £951 for childcare costs for one and £1,630 for two or more children - a 47% increase.more
The Bank of England will not get inflation back under control until the end of 2025 because of soaring food prices and a "concerning" rise in wages, according to Goldman Sachs.
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Mortgage costs are rising after higher than expected inflation figures this week raised forecasts of how much UK interest rates will go up. A range of lenders have increased the cost of new deals, with Nationwide the most significant with increases of up to 0.45 percentage points on Friday.more
In the UK, there is a debate on introducing a maximum price cap on basic food products. This is supposed to be a response to the fact that although inflation has started to slow down, food prices are still rising at a record pace.more
Recycling plastic can make it more toxic and should not be considered a solution to the pollution crisis, Greenpeace has warned before the latest round of negotiations for an international plastics treaty.more
British business is looking for a new "safe haven" to stay in the single and rich EU market and avoid significant bureaucratic burdens. According to the data of the German group Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI), Germany is of particular interest to the British.more
The US President assured reporters yesterday that there would be no US bankruptcy and that negotiations with the Republicans on raising the debt limit were productive. At the same time, he acknowledged that the two sides have significantly different visions of the budget.more
Households will be more than £400 a year better off on average from July after the cap on energy bills was slashed following steep falls in wholesale gas and electricity prices.more
China's semiconductor industry fears that Japan's chip export embargo, due to come into force in July, could also affect the production of older generations of chips used in, for example, cars or washing machines, writes the Financial Times.more
The UK's annual inflation rate in April was 8.7 per cent, marking the first time it has fallen below 10 per cent since August last year. - reported the UK's Office for National Statistics (ONS) today. However, food prices are still rising very rapidly.more
The unthinkable is becoming a possibility. The US Congress may fail to raise the debt limit and lead to the technical bankruptcy of the United States. If this happens, every economy will be affected, stock markets will collapse and global markets will panic, warns the Economist.more
Drinkers will get cheaper wine and greater variety under plans to scrap retained European Union laws affecting the British wine industry, the Government has said.more
Despite nearly three million unemployed people in Spain, more than a third of companies are struggling to find workers. Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs complain of a shortage of labour; in the hotel and construction industry this deficit is more than 50 per cent. - according to the latest Business Activity Survey presented by the Bank of Spain.more
According to the Ministry of Development and Technology, in the first quarter of this year 59.7 thousand were entered into the CEIDG register (Central Register and Information on Economic Activity). applications for termination of sole proprietorship. This is 5.6% less than in the corresponding period of 2022, when there were 63.2 thousand such cases.more
Queen Elizabeth II's funeral and related events cost the government an estimated £162m, the Treasury has said. The state funeral, held on 19 September 2022, followed a period of national mourning.more
Let's face it, we are all getting pretty fed up with this cost of living crisis. It's severely impacting many people's quality of life, with many living pay cheque to pay cheque.
It's gone on long enough now that a whopping two in three workers have admitted they are open to moving to a new city after evaluating the cost of where they live and work.more
Strategically located in the middle of the North Atlantic, the Faroe Islands continue to cooperate with Russia in fishing and become independent of Denmark. At the same time, the government, after pressure from Copenhagen, is preparing an analysis of the consequences of a possible termination of the Russian agreement. The islanders are sharply divided on the issue.more
E.On Next, Good Energy and Octopus Energy have paid £8 million over compensation failures after lengthy delays in producing final bills to more than 100,000 customers when they switched suppliers, regulator Ofgem said.more
