Financial news

• UK ministers look to install highly paid boss to spearhead rail reform plan

  03-03-2024 17:25
  
  Salary of new senior post could dwarf DfT pay scales in effort to speed up troubled Great British Railways projectMinisters are trying to install a highly paid rail industry figure in the Department for Transport to entrench plans to create Great British Railways (GBR) before the general election.The DfT could break Whitehall’s pay structure to create the senior post, in an attempt to accelerate changes for a new public body managing the country’s rail transport – although the
  
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• For years, the Tories said austerity was over. But look around: it’s getting worse, and there’s more to come | John Harris

  03-03-2024 15:00
  
  This week’s budget is certain to bring more cuts. Westminster is missing the stark fact that people simply cannot take any moreA few days before Rishi Sunak emerged from 10 Downing Street to warn of forces “trying to tear us apart” and his belief that our streets have been “hijacked”, there was a news story about a national emergency that has yet to spark any such theatrics. The Guardian reported the findings of a new study by the children’s charity Kindred2,
  
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• Fewer than 20% of levelling up projects completed in England, figures show

  03-03-2024 15:00
  
  Exclusive: Plans either shelved or stalled despite being part of flagship policy promise at last electionFewer than a fifth of the projects approved by Michael Gove to improve towns across England have been completed, the government has admitted, in the latest sign of the problems facing his levelling up agenda.Responses from Gove’s department to freedom of information requests show that fewer than 20% of the projects sanctioned under the £3.6bn towns fund were on track to be finishe
  
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• Jeremy Hunt will try to talk a long game while scrambling to fund pre-election tax cuts | Larry Elliott

  03-03-2024 12:36
  
  The chancellor should stress tax cuts are neither affordable nor a priority to UK votersWhat Hunt needs to do – and the pitfalls he must avoidHunt’s local voters put NHS ahead of tax perks‘Chancellor knows Brexit Britain can’t afford to cut taxes’When Clement Attlee took soundings from his cabinet on the timing of the 1950 election, the then chancellor, Sir Stafford Cripps, was adamant. The Labour government had to go to the country before the budget so that voters
  
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• Conductor Simon Rattle says cutting UK tax relief for orchestras would be a catastrophe

  03-03-2024 11:00
  
  Plea to protect arts funding as a growing number of city and county councils face bankruptcySir Simon Rattle, the world-renowned British conductor, has urged the government not to slash crucial tax relief for orchestras, after the collapse of regional funding for the arts.Speaking to the Observer this ­weekend, Rattle, who made his name with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in the 1980s, is calling on Westminster ­politicians not to allow classical music and the wider arts to be
  
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• Millennials will be the richest generation ever, but who gets that wealth is down to luck | Martha Gill

  03-03-2024 10:30
  
  While some will profit from inheriting their baby boomer parents’ property, others face an ever more unequal societyWhat have millennials been complaining about? Far from languishing in poverty as society’s lost stepchildren, they are on course to become the richest generation in history. That’s according to a report from the estate agent Knight Frank, which tells us that in the next 20 years there will be a “seismic” transfer of wealth assets from older cohort
  
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• Entrance fees, visitor zones and taxes: how Europe’s biggest cities are tackling overtourism

  03-03-2024 10:08
  
  From Seville to Venice to Amsterdam, Europe is learning to improve locals’ lives by curbing tourists’ enthusiasmOriginally built for the grand Ibero-American Exposition of 1929, Seville’s ­flamboyant neo-Moorish Plaza de España has for nearly a ­century been one of the city’s major ­attractions, an ornate ­showcase for Spanish architecture and ­decorative tiling.But the several thousand visitors from around the world who throng the pla
  
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• Hit shows such as Mr Bates could bring a dramatic improvement in ITV’s fortunes

  03-03-2024 09:00
  
  With results due this week in a sinking ad market, the show was a timely reminder of what broadcast TV can doWhen Alan Bates took his campaign for justice to Westminster again last week, it would not just have been the hundreds of post office operators he represents who would have been pleased by his persistence. Carolyn McCall, chief executive of ITV, will doubtless be delighted at the wide-ranging political impact of the broadcaster’s hit drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which ignited
  
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• Consumer debt in the UK is down 10%. The bad news? Utility bill arrears are up | Torsten Bell

  03-03-2024 08:30
  
  Britons have been borrowing less since Covid, but people on lower incomes are falling behind on the rentIt’s important to worry about the right things. Interest rates are up, sparking worries about our debts – in my case, the mortgage. Consumer debt (credit cards, overdrafts and personal loans) is surging, we’re told. But the truth is, consumer debt levels are down. New Resolution Foundation research shows them at their lowest since at least 1999, down from 23% of household dis
  
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• Jeremy Hunt knows Brexit Britain can’t afford to cut taxes

  03-03-2024 08:00
  
  The chancellor is prepared to inflict yet more austerity to pay for a budget bribe. But the UK needs more spending, not less“When I was young, it grew on me by the minute
  That we were outside Europe and should be in it
  Now I am old and we are back outside it
  I simply can’t abide it.”This clerihew was sent to me out of the blue by Martin Bell, the celebrated former BBC foreign correspondent who became known as the Man in the White Suit during his 1997-2001 spell in parliament as
  
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• Rubymar ship attacked by Houthi rebels finally sinks in Red Sea

  03-03-2024 04:46
  
  US military warns of environmental and transport risks after sinking of UK-owned cargo ship that was hit as part of militants’ campaign over war in GazaA UK-owned ship attacked by Yemeni Houthis has sunk in the Red Sea after days of taking on water, the first vessel to be fully destroyed as part of the rebels’ campaign over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.The sinking of the Rubymar comes as shipping through the crucial waterway for cargo and energy shipments moving from Asia
  
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