Financial news

• UK banks face week of hunger strikes and protests

  25-08-2019 18:59
  Action will take place against Clydesdale, Danske and Lloyds over alleged mis-sold loansA number of banks face direct action protests in the UK starting on Monday, including hunger strikes outside Clydesdale Bank’s Glasgow headquarters, Danske Bank’s branch in Belfast and Lloyds’ offices in Bristol.In Glasgow, the Scottish businessman John Guidi, a former property developer, will pitch his tent outside the bank claiming that he is being made homeless after his £16m proper
  
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• British citizens born in US risk having UK bank accounts frozen

  25-08-2019 18:42
  Britons who left US as children being chased by their banks for a US tax ID they do not haveTens of thousands of British citizens born in the US but who left when only a few months or years old risk having their bank accounts in Britain frozen because of intense pressure by US tax authorities on UK banks.In one case, a 74-year-old living in Cambridge has been sent increasingly urgent letters from Barclays demanding her American tax identification number, even though she left the US on the RMS Qu
  
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• David Koch obituary

  25-08-2019 18:38
  US businessman, free marketeer and rightwing activistDavid Koch, who has died aged 79, was ranked as the eleventh richest person in the world. Alongside his older brother Charles, he built his family’s company into one of the US’s biggest conglomerates and each brother’s share was estimated to be worth more than $50bn. They used their fortunes to influence American politics in a rightward direction following their libertarian ideology.Charles wanted to “minimise the role
  
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• HS2 costs and benefits: a search for clear evidence | Letters

  25-08-2019 18:21
  Joan Walley, former chair of the environmental audit select committee, and others react to a government review of the high-speed rail projectPhilip Inman asserts that “HS2 has been 15 years in the making and is the best compromise option the transport ministry and its advisers could come up with for improving the UK’s transport system” (Business view, 22 August). HS2’s problem is that it is uncompromising: it was designed to run very fast, and therefore in an almost strai
  
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• Kevin McCloud and investing in local ventures | Letters

  25-08-2019 18:19
  Judy Eames on the news that investors in the Grand Designs presenter’s property firm could face big lossesYou report (Grand Designs’ McCloud faces property nightmare, 23 August) that shareholders could make big losses after being promised big returns by a property company run by Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud. I’ve lost count of how often this has happened. For some it’s loss of gambling money; for others life savings are involved. In the McCloud HAB case, the risks w
  
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• UK universities brace for strike action in pensions dispute

  25-08-2019 13:10
  Union rejects offer of limited rises in pension contributions in return for strike banBritish universities are heading towards strike action later this year, after employers insisted on requiring staff to pay higher pension contributions despite union warnings that the move would trigger a ballot on industrial action.The University and College Union (UCU) said it had rejected an offer by the employers, represented by Universities UK (UUK), to swap limited increases in staff pension contributions
  
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• Tourists down, costs up: recession looms on Highlands horizon

  25-08-2019 13:00
  In the first part of a series assessing warning signs of economic downturn, the Guardian visits a hotel in Scotland
  Is a recession coming? Seven warning signsTanja Lister is addressing her fears of a looming recession one dinner plate at a time. “We spent about £3,000 on new crockery,” she explains. She has been running the Kylesku hotel, a former coaching inn perched on a wild peninsula in Sutherland, north-west Scotland, with her partner, Sonia Virechauveix, for a decade. &ld
  
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• The west takes its eyes off Africa at its peril | Larry Elliott

  25-08-2019 12:02
  The G7 thought it had solved Africa’s problems, but rising child poverty is a ticking time bombTime was when Africa dominated gatherings of the G7. In the period between two summits held in the UK – Birmingham in 1998 and Gleneagles in 2005 – the talk was of little else. There was public activism and it led to political action.In part, that was because the big developed countries were enjoying a spell of low-inflationary growth and could look beyond their own problems to see a
  
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• Think you paid the congestion charge? That could be a £160 fine anyway

  25-08-2019 10:00
  Despite solid evidence that drivers have paid the £11.50 fee online in advance, they are still receiving penalty charge noticesStudent Liberty Sprackling paid the London Congestion Charge online before driving into the capital. The £11.50 fee, levied during peak hours on weekdays, was debited from her account. Eight days later, it was mysteriously refunded.Sprackling contacted Transport for London (TfL), the government body responsible for the charge, and was told she would have to w
  
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• Four wheels bad, but three sehr gut. Germans climb aboard cargo bikes

  25-08-2019 09:59
  As Berlin tries to switch to greener transport, people are choosing the bike, not the electric car – and it’s becoming a status symbolIn a fashionable corner of the capital of Germany, Europe’s “car nation”, parents picking up or dropping off their offspring have lined the edge of a popular playground with luxury vehicles. There are summery convertibles, wood-panelled multi-seaters and slim racers – but none of them has four wheels.Jan Edler, an architect, has
  
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• Insights... the high price successful working women pay | Torsten Bell

  25-08-2019 08:48
  Research from Sweden shows that career success increases the likelihood of divorce for women but not menThe world of work isn’t one of gender equality. You may have noticed. On average, women earn 18% less than men. Partly that’s because four in 10 of them work part time compared with one in 10 for men, but there’s still a 9% pay gap even just looking at full-time workers.Alongside any (illegal) pay discrimination, much of the gap is driven by women being underrepresented in hi
  
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