Explainer-in-brief: Trying to fill the £50bn blackhole November 7, 2022 Rishi Sunak and his chancellor, Jeremy Hunt have a £50bn hole to fill in the budget. And big infrastructure projects could be on the chopping block, including the new nuclear power station in Suffolk, Sizewell C.
Avoiding a residential permacrisis: House-hunters better buying today than waiting for tomorrow November 4, 2022 The Bank of England has just raised interest rates to three per cent, the highest in 14 years. And this might not be the end of it. Newspapers rightly point to the challenges of such rapidly rising borrowing costs for those looking to buy or re-mortgage at the same time as so many people are [...]
Editorial: Andrew Bailey’s guidance is a sign of just how shaky the economy looks November 4, 2022 The latter is always second guessing where governor Andrew Bailey and the rest of the monetary policy committee will send interest rates. The former rarely provides any clues. Investors’ rate expectations are shaped by thousands of pieces of data, but they essentially boil down to a couple of key themes. Firstly, inflation. Markets make their [...]
Explainer-in-brief: Guess who’s back, back again – it’s the Online Safety Bill November 4, 2022 The online safety bill is back in Parliament this month. Rishi Sunak has vowed to make substantial progress with it before Christmas. The nub of his plan is to scrap the “legal but harmful clause” on the basis that it might impinge on free speech. It was also the more contentious element of the laws. [...]
Our Channel dilemma won’t go away until we overhaul the asylum system November 4, 2022 Over the last few days, we’ve heard incredibly troubling stories coming out of the Manston centre holding migrants who crossed over the Channel. The facility is holding as many as 2,000 more people than it has capacity for, with few coherent plans to deal with the delays. The overcrowding has left families sleeping in marquees, [...]
Scrimping and saving by culling more transport investment will hurt all of us November 4, 2022 If ministers think HS2 doesn’t work in its current planned form, why not work out a way in which it does, rather than simply abandoning it as a white elephant?
Elon Musk’s pay-for-verification model will only scare off advertising money on Twitter November 4, 2022 A chill is in the air in ad land. One of the bastions of the digital marketing mix has gone rogue. Twitter, one of the oldest and still most active of social networks, has taken a sudden turn and the advertising industry is not taking it well. Through a mist of Elon Musk tweets, a [...]
Letters: Keeping the branches up November 4, 2022 As the cost-of-living crisis bites, access to in person advice will likely increase – without it people are at risk of being left behind.
Explainer-in-brief: Politicians dalliance with the celeb limelight November 3, 2022 The scandal of the week seems to be Matt Hancock having the Tory whip removed after announcing he would appear on the reality TV show “I’m a Celebrity”. The ex-Health Secretary is not the first politician to appear on the show – Nadine Dorries went on in 2012, famously eating kangaroo testicles. Boris Johnson’s father [...]
As Octopus reaches its tentacles into Bulb, a new Big Six is on the horizon November 3, 2022 Octopus Energy's takeover of Bulb signals the creation of a new Big Six, and an increasingly difficult market for challengers.