Financial news

• Thousands could get up to £500 in free supermarket vouchers - are you eligible?

  25-01-2023 17:08 via express.co.uk
  
  The scheme provides support to vulnerable households who may be struggling with living costs.
  
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• The Guardian view on the cladding scandal: tough talk must be matched with substance | Editorial

  05-02-2023 19:30 via theguardian.com
  
  Michael Gove’s admission of failures is welcome, but leaseholders need certainty they won’t be on the hook for any fire defectsFor those who bought flats in tower blocks built with flammable materials, the dream of home ownership has become a nightmare. The Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 revealed that thousands of people in Britain were living in flats which were wrapped in unsafe cladding. Five-and-a-half years later, only 7% of dangerous homes have been fixed. Leaseholders have been s
  
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• Billionaire investor Křetínský and trader Vitol eye fortune in British power plant subsidies

  05-02-2023 17:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Exclusive: Looming auction to earmark £1.5bn to put power generators on standby and keep the lights onThe billionaire West Ham United investor Daniel Křetínský and Swiss commodities giant Vitol are among bidders hoping to land hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies to keep the lights on in Great Britain.National Grid’s electricity system operator is preparing to announce successful bidders in a “capacity market” auction this month for 2026. Continu
  
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• Haiti garment workers share $1m payout after factory closure a year ago

  05-02-2023 16:28 via theguardian.com
  
  More than 1,100 workers who were left destitute to be compensated by owner of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin KleinMore than 1,100 garment workers in Haiti are sharing $1m (£830,000) in compensation from the owner of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein after being left destitute by the closure of a factory.PVH, which was one of several brand owners sourcing from the Vald’or factory in the Caribbean country, agreed to pay the sum to cover missed severance pay, pension contributions directly to
  
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• City watchdog may ‘ease rules’ in order to secure $40bn Arm listing

  05-02-2023 16:08 via theguardian.com
  
  Officials locked in talks with tech firm’s Japanese owner, SoftBank, according to Sunday Times reportThe City watchdog is considering easing rules in an attempt to win the $40bn (£34bn) listing of Cambridge-based technology firm Arm Holdings, it has been reported.Officials are said to be locked in talks in a last-ditch attempt to persuade the semiconductor chip-maker’s Japanese owner SoftBank to consider a dual listing on the London Stock Exchange alongside New York’s Nas
  
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• Will the egg shortage spell the end for brunch? For the sake of the chickens, I hope so | Emma Beddington

  05-02-2023 16:00 via theguardian.com
  
  The reality of intensive egg production is grim, with hens subject to all manner of inhumane conditions. We must face up to the unacceptable costs of our current food choicesIs brunch over? I hope so – like afternoon tea, it’s a stupid meal, sabotaging two perfectly good ones. Then there’s the queueing, all that sourdough massacring your soft palate, and dribbles of hollandaise, horribly reminiscent of baby posset. None of this has stopped people, but perhaps egg shortages will
  
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• Truss tax cuts were ‘not right approach’ before tackling inflation, says Shapps

  05-02-2023 12:14 via theguardian.com
  
  Business secretary responds to former prime minister’s article about her decisions in No 10Liz Truss’s tax-cutting agenda “clearly wasn’t the right approach” before the government had tackled inflation, the business secretary, Grant Shapps, has said in a retort to an essay by the former prime minister.Truss, in her first major intervention since leaving office, wrote that she had “not [been] given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful econ
  
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• Boring can be good. How modest Clement Attlee’s unflashy ideas changed Britain

  05-02-2023 12:14 via theguardian.com
  
  Attlee was a gifted manager, who showed it possible for modest politicians to be successful if they have decent ideasWinston Churchill once described Clement Attlee as a modest man with much to be modest about – and up to a point he was right. Attlee was in many ways the epitome of bourgeois respectability: he was privately educated, had a house in the London suburbs and liked nothing better than to occupy his spare time by cracking the Times crossword or catching up on the cricket scores.
  
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• Call to sanction cladding suppliers that made £7.5bn profit since Grenfell disaster

  05-02-2023 11:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Manufacturers of insulation installed on the tower have yet to agree a voluntary funding scheme to fix dangerous buildingsCladding and insulation manufacturers whose products were involved in the Grenfell Tower fire face calls for sanctions after failing to pay into multibillion-pound funding schemes to fix the country’s unsafe residential blocks.The building supply firms Saint-Gobain and Kingspan have reported more than £7.5bn in global profits since the fire in June 2017 in west Lo
  
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• TikTok: how the west has turned on gen Z’s favourite app

  05-02-2023 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  US and European fears about China exploiting TikTok’s data harvest and promoting Beijing’s worldview look set to inspire an urgent overhaul in data privacy lawsThe FBI has called it a national security threat. The US government has passed a law forcing officials to delete it from their phones. Texas senator Ted Cruz has denounced it as “a Trojan horse the Chinese Communist party can use to influence what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think”. And in March its CEO wil
  
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• In the global race to dominate green technology, Britain is still tying its shoelaces

  05-02-2023 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  As the US, China and now the EU compete for the fruits of the green economy, the UK is hamstrung by Tory dogma, dither and delayThe United States is out of the blocks. The European Union is hurrying along the track. China is competing too. Here in dear old blighty, we are not even at the starting line. While others are dashing towards the horizon, the UK still hasn’t tied its laces.The government appears to have barely noticed that there is a global race to dominate the green technologies
  
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• Energy prices to soar again as Jeremy Hunt rejects pleas to halt rise

  05-02-2023 10:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Millions will see costs mount by another 40% in April as rebate scheme ends andchancellor lets cap go up to £3,000Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has rejected calls to prevent sharp rises in domestic energy bills for all households in his March budget – meaning millions of users will see costs soar by about 40% from April.Instead, Hunt will emphasise the extra support he is giving to the poorest and most vulnerable households, including those on benefits, in what he will describe as a more fa
  
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• Debt, bad; work, good: ‘pub bore’ beliefs that seal a miserable fate for the poorest | Kenan Malik

  05-02-2023 09:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Politicians and the media often present policies as moral duties, when they are nothing of the sort“I can’t live on the never-never and neither can this country… Austerity was a necessary evil… The unemployed will only work if they are forced to.”No, not the sound of the pub bore, but some of the often unstated assumptions that underlie policymaking and the reporting of such policies. Two very different reports published last week, one from the BBC, the other from
  
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• Trade down, economy sinking, support falling: is the tide finally turning on Brexit?

  05-02-2023 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Three years on, Bregret hits home in Britain. For the EU, though, life has moved onThroughout the turbulent years that Michel Barnier spent dealing with Brexit, the former EU negotiator’s endless talks with British counterparts failed to help him answer the simplest of questions – what did they want Brexit to achieve?“For me, for many of us, Brexit remains a nonsense,” he told the Observer. “Taking into account British national interest, there is no added value to b
  
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• It is hard to admit being wrong. But Brexit voters are doing so in droves

  05-02-2023 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Having been grossly misled in the referendum, Britons’ anger is mounting as the reality of our plight becomes clearCommentators, politicians and economists tend to think they are quoting John Maynard Keynes with: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”I have always been suspicious of the derivation of this putative remark. Even in this modern world of fake news, facts do not change. New information may come to light, but facts are facts. I don’t th
  
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• The Observer view on the shameful premium that the poorest pay for their energy | Observer editorial

  05-02-2023 07:30 via theguardian.com
  
  The forced installation of costly prepayment meters must be stopped. Give low-income consumers a proper safety net insteadThe poverty premium was a term coined decades ago to describe the grim reality that people living on the edge often end up paying some of the highest prices for essential goods and services. And nowhere is that gap more evident than in the energy market, where low-income households are far more likely to be on the prepayment meters that mean they end up with higher energy cos
  
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• Stop UK mobile and broadband firms ‘lining their pockets’, urge consumer experts

  05-02-2023 07:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Companies facing backlash amid warning of mid-contract price rises of up to 17% during cost of living crisisBritain’s telecoms regulator is being urged to intervene over concerns that mobile and broadband operators are “lining their pockets” with £2.2bn of above-inflation price rises during the cost of living crisis.While ministers have urged employees to show pay restraint, the mobile phone and broadband firms are facing a consumer backlash as they announce record price
  
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• We’ve avoided recession for now, but the outlook is one of perma-gloom

  05-02-2023 01:05 via theguardian.com
  
  December’s GDP was boosted by us all cranking up the heating. Actual economic growth has not looked so weak in decadesA glance back at 2022 will show that the economy held up better than some forecasters expected. The Bank of England was among many to expect the second half of last year to see the start of a recession that would stretch into 2023.As it is, it now expects that, when they are published on Friday, official figures for gross domestic product (GDP) in the last three months of 2
  
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• Grant Shapps tells Ofgem to toughen up over prepayment meter scandal

  05-02-2023 01:01 via theguardian.com
  
  Business secretary accuses energy market regulator of ‘having the wool pulled over their eyes’ by suppliersThe business secretary has told the energy market regulator to toughen up on suppliers in the wake of the prepayment meter scandal.Grant Shapps accused Ofgem of “having the wool pulled over their eyes” by taking at face value what the energy company bosses were telling them and not listening to customers. Continue reading...
  
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• Knock, knock… the energy companies are at the door – cartoon

  04-02-2023 19:11 via theguardian.com
  
  Chris Riddell on the revelation that British Gas has been sending debt collectors to break into customers’ homes• You can order your own copy of this cartoon Continue reading...
  
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• Bank raises interest rates on savings account to 3.05%

  04-02-2023 16:21 via express.co.uk
  
  Tandem Bank has announced a further interest rate rise following a decision from the Bank of England earlier this week.
  
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• Woman makes £2.5million after side hustle success: ‘It’s quite a leap!’

  04-02-2023 16:20 via express.co.uk
  
  One woman has seen her side hustle turn into a business with a £2.5million turnover and she is sharing how she did it.
  
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• Nationwide launches savings account with 4% interest rate: 'Another boost' for savers!

  04-02-2023 16:19 via express.co.uk
  
  Nationwide Building Society announced earlier this week the launch of a brand new range of bond savings products.
  
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• Mortgage payments could rise by £200 a month: 'Increase to impact your budget!'

  04-02-2023 16:16 via express.co.uk
  
  Mortgage repayments could rise by over £200 a month following the Bank of England's recent decision regarding the base rate, according to experts.
  
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• Food bills to rise by extra £788 as grocery price inflation rises to 16.7%

  04-02-2023 15:24 via express.co.uk
  
  Households could face paying an additional £788 annually on their grocery bills as the UK's inflation continues to put pressure on pockets.
  
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• Pension expert shares number one tip to avoid paying 55% pension tax

  04-02-2023 08:01 via express.co.uk
  
  A pension expert has shared her number one tip for retirement planning to help Britons avoid being hit with a 55 percent tax on their pension.
  
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• What is the best alternative to a wood-burning stove?

  04-02-2023 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  We look at the best cosy and climate-friendly options that are less likely to land you with a £300 fineAs wood-burning stoves have become a talking point in England after warnings about the pollution they emit, those who installed them and feel guilt may worry about how to replace their beloved burner.However, there are good options that are just as cosy-looking and warm but emit fewer particulates and are less likely to land you with a £300 fine. Continue reading...
  
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• New London Ulez scrappage scheme worth up to £3,000 to low-income motorists

  04-02-2023 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Package for dealing with old polluting vehicles launched in run-up to expansion of zone on 29 AugustLow-income Londoners are being offered a package worth as much as £3,000 to scrap their old polluting cars in readiness for this summer’s expansion of the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to cover most of the city’s roads.Transport for London (TfL) estimates that 30,000 vehicle owners will access payouts from the scrappage scheme. However, there is only £110m up for grabs and
  
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• Cost of living crisis: how to make smart money decisions in tough times

  04-02-2023 08:00 via theguardian.com
  
  Interest rates rose this week, adding to pressure from bills. We look at how to make the best choices in an uncertain worldMaking big financial decisions is tough at the best of times but when, like now the sand is shifting under your feet, the challenge becomes even greater. This week the Bank of England raised interest rates again, adding ever higher borrowing costs to the worry caused by higher food and energy bills.These financial pressures can make it difficult to see beyond the end of the
  
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• Pension and Isa savers make billions as FTSE 100 hits all-time high and 'It's still cheap’

  04-02-2023 07:30 via express.co.uk
  
  The UK economy may be on the ropes but our stock market has rocketed to a new high, boosting the value of everybody's pensions and stocks and shares Isas.
  
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