Financial news

• Britain’s tired old economy isn’t strong enough for Brexit | Phillip Inman

  20-01-2018 18:00
  Leave campaigners’ visions of national renewal depend on a level of commercial vibrancy that the UK can no longer musterBrexit, at its heart, is a recognition that Britain has become steadily weaker since it spent much of its empire wealth fighting two world wars – too feeble in the years before the 2016 referendum to sustain an exchange rate of $1.60 and €1.40, just as it was too poor to cope with $4 to the pound in the 1950s and $2 to the pound in 1992.Manufacturers were unabl
  
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• Boohoo says its ‘sale’ will end in minutes – why is it back in a couple of hours?

  20-01-2018 15:10
  Countdown clocks and phrases such as ‘hurry now’ are used to to panic shoppers into buyingOn Monday night I saw that the Boohoo fashion website was having a fantastic sale – “20% off everything”. But I had to act pronto: “Hurry ends 11pm!” it shouted at me, or more accurately, the millions of 16- to 24-year-olds it targets. A countdown clock on screen warned that the sale would be over in just 54 minutes and 59 seconds. “Hurry ends soon!” mes
  
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• Milton Keynes: UK capital of ‘right-to-buy-to-let’

  20-01-2018 13:13
  More council houses have been sold to private landlords in the town than anywhere else – then rented at up to triple the priceThe floor in Elina Apse’s house on the Netherfield council estate in Milton Keynes is so cold that when one of her four children spills anything it freezes by the morning. She cannot phone the council to complain because she is renting from one of the town’s many private landlords, who have taken advantage of the right-to-buy policy to hoover up social h
  
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• Tickets: is this the system to finally beat the touts?

  20-01-2018 10:00
  Ticketmaster’s new software will trawl Facebook and Twitter to check if you’re a ‘genuine’ fanYou might think you’re a real fan of an artist or show, but how far would you be prepared to go to get your hands on tickets to see them?Would you be willing to hand over your personal information – name, phone number, email address and so on – to a faceless third party, and let someone nose around your Facebook page and Twitter feed, so they can try to establis
  
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• Where to move for wellbeing

  20-01-2018 09:00
  Where’s the best place to live in the UK if you want to be well? (Hint: it has green hills, decent house prices and lots of sheep) I’d like to be well, wouldn’t you? Well, well-er. I’m OK. Midlife dampens expectations, and I’m easy to please. But where could I be well-er?Quality of life indices boomed in late-70s America, as a way of charting – and promoting – places after the urban crisis when New York nearly went bust. They arrived in the UK during Dav
  
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• How to make a big career change

  20-01-2018 09:00
  First, develop an unwavering self-belief, says Sharmadean Reid. Then swot up - you need to know your stuffSometimes the hardest part is getting everyone else on board with the idea that you want something new. It’s not an intrinsically British thing to encourage people who want to do something different; there’s a reason we have the phrase “above your station”.First, you need to develop an unwavering self-belief. You’re going to smash it – and you should say t
  
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• Should I shred my old bank statements?

  20-01-2018 08:00
  I’ve got years of old paperwork – I’m not sure how to dispose of it or notEvery week a Guardian Money reader submits a question, and it’s up to you to help him or her out – a selection of the best answers will appear in next Saturday’s paper.This week’s question: Continue reading...
  
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• Why do supermarkets sell organic products wrapped in non-cyclable plastic?

  20-01-2018 07:59
  We find organic mushrooms in non-recyclable trays next to plain veg in compostable wrappingMy environmentally conscious wife Clare is the keenest recycler possible. She even collects and recycles the silver milk bottle tops that I tend to chuck out. But when it comes to organic food she’s furious. Why? Because she finds it is the worst culprit for wrapping almost everything in plastic and polywrap that cannot be recycled. How, she asks, did we reach the situation where the most environment
  
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• The Amazon worker: paid £18,000 a year to shift 250 items an hour

  20-01-2018 07:30
  Aaron Callaway is 24 and works four nights a week alongside robots in the retailer’s warehouseIf I’ve learned anything from doing this job, it’s that money can’t replace time. I work four nights a week in an Amazon warehouse near my home in Southend-on-Sea. It’s quite a cold place to work and, apart from two half-hour meal breaks, I’m on my feet for 10 and a half hours. I scan the items the trucks bring in from distributors and place them into the right cart f
  
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