Financial news

• Budget will show how shallow Liberal party's 'debt and deficit disaster' really was | Greg Jericho

  05-05-2018 23:58 via theguardian.com
  This is what happens when the budget policy is framed more by politics than economicsSign up to receive the latest Australian opinion pieces every weekday
  This budget looks set not only to be replete with spending commitments and tax cuts, but also to be the final nail in the coffin of the Liberal party’s scare mongering about the evils of debt and deficit. A few weeks ago, I suggested that because of unexpected increases in taxation revenue and with an election due in the next 12 months,
  
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• Macron’s reforming zeal will be a test of France’s appetite for change

  05-05-2018 17:00 via theguardian.com
  To the left he’s a union-bashing president for the rich, but the 40-year-old’s agenda also confuses rightwingers – which could work in his favour‘The left and the right don’t know how to respond to President Macron’s reform agenda,” said a former senior trade union official. “What he’s doing doesn’t fit with the way we think about politics. It’s not like the third-way politics championed by Tony Blair.“It is based on empower
  
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• A new reality: could VR revive the amusement arcade?

  05-05-2018 16:59 via theguardian.com
  Dedicated virtual reality installations offer an experience you can’t recreate at home – like in the early days of video gamingThe rise of the gaming console has left its mark on living rooms and bedrooms around Britain – but it has also hit the high street. There were around 1,000 amusement arcades in the UK in the 1980s, but that number had halved by 2011, according to the amusements industry trade body, Bacta.Now, the next generation of gaming – virtual reality –
  
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• Build your own Adjaye: starchitects design catalogue homes

  05-05-2018 11:37 via theguardian.com
  Want a home designed by a top architect on an affordable budget? Entrepreneurs Cube Haus may be moving in on your neighbourhood, with the help of David Adjaye and moreWhat if buying a house were more like buying a car? Could the process of choosing between a Ford, Volkswagen or Nissan ever translate into picking between an Adjaye, Rogers or Assemble? Beyond the dream of ever being able to buy a house, the prospect of commissioning an architect-designed home is an impossibly remote prospect for m
  
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• Should I get rid of my Isa and buy Lloyds Bank shares instead?

  05-05-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  I get 0.35% interest on my savings, while shareholders get 4.7% – surely it’s a no-brainerEvery 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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• Pensions: is it right to charge 45-55% tax on incomes above £26,000? | Patrick Collinson

  05-05-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  High earners get 40% relief, lower earners 20%, so the poor get much less tax relief than the well-offThis is going to be a difficult column to write. I’m about to make a plea for tax changes on behalf of people with £1m-plus pensions. Why? Because our tax system has created perverse incentives that are forcing high earners such as doctors, dentists, lawyers and accountants to save less, invest unwisely and engage advisers to try to work around the rules, when simple reforms can achi
  
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• Is this bike really theft-proof?

  05-05-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  A Dutch manufacturer is the latest to claim its bike can beat thieves – as insurers warn of a new robbery epidemicIt’s an £800 “bicycle with a brain” that locks itself as soon as its owner steps away and alerts them if a thief tries to tamper with it, while an in-built tracker tells a roving team of “bike hunters” how to retrieve it if it is nicked. Is the Van Moof “smart bike” the answer to cycle thefts – or will determined thieves fin
  
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• British cheese boom driven by stilton – and mozzarella

  05-05-2018 08:00 via theguardian.com
  Value of exports soars 23%, with UK-made mozzarella and fresh cheese growing fastA British cheese boom is under way, driven by changing tastes in Asia and soaring demand for UK-made mozzarella, cottage cheese and stilton as well as traditional cheddar.The value of cheese exports soared 23% to £615m in 2017, according to the latest HMRC data. Sales to the Philippines rose 27% while the amount exported to China has rocketed from 49 tonnes in 2015 to 786 tonnes last year. Continue reading...
  
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• Overdrafts: can you cut the cost of yours?

  05-05-2018 07:59 via theguardian.com
  A quarter of UK adults have been overdrawn in the past year, paying out a total of £1.2bnLabour this week pledged to cap overdraft costs for millions of hard-pressed bank account holders, promising an average saving of £86 a year. However, there are things people can do right now to reduce their overdraft costs.Official figures show that 25% of all UK adults have been overdrawn in the last 12 months, and the charges levied add up to about £1.2bn a year . Continue reading...
  
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• ‘My salary nosedived after I moved to Orkney, but I’m happier here’

  05-05-2018 07:29 via theguardian.com
  Cathedral custodian and writer Fran Hollinrake on how she makes ends meet after she swapped city life for an island homeWe moved to Orkney for the good life 15 years ago. It was a bit of a leap in the dark, for we’d only experienced the island from our honeymoon and holidays and we knew it would be a one-way trip because we could not now afford a home on the mainland. My husband and I had been renting a tiny flat in Edinburgh and we swapped that for a three-bedroom, 18th century house on t
  
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