The UK economy could receive a boost of up to £1.6bn a year via a trade deal with six Gulf stations. Talks on such an agreement kick off today with a meeting in Saudi Arabia. Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan will meet representatives of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) in Riyadh to begin negotiations on a […]
The United Kingdom will likely host next year’s Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) because of the ongoing war in Ukraine, it has been announced. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) issued a statement this morning saying it will “begin discussions with the BBC” about broadcasting the event from the UK, as this year’s runner up to the […]
The Government could be forced to pay a compensation bill as big as the entire defence budget if a legal challenge launched today over the rejigging of the retail prices index succeeds. Analysts estimate that the Treasury could in theory be forced to pay compensation of as much as £40 billion to holders of index-linked […]
A major outage at content delivery network Cloudflare caused hundreds of websites across the internet to stop working and return a ‘500 Internal Server error’ message this morning. A content delivery network (CDN) is a distributed group of severs around the world that work in unison. Websites use these CDNs to deliver content from the […]
The quadrupling of interest rates since December has tipped thousands of companies into insolvency, with a 30 per cent spike in the last three months. Almost 6,000 firms have gone down according to Mazars, the audit and tax specialists, up from 4,578 inn the previous three months. This comes after the Bank of England raised […]
The Treasury will tighten regulation of “buy-now, pay-later” schemes following warnings that the loans are sending shoppers into debt. Lenders now need to be approved by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and required to carry out affordability checks on customers, who will be able to take complaints to the financial ombudsman service, which settles disputes. […]
Lady Cobham, the daughter-in-law of the founder of the defence giant Cobham, has warned the UK government it cannot afford to allow British defence firms to fall into foreign hands. Cobham was bought by a US private equity firm in 2020, with Lady Cobham at the time warning the government it should have stepped in […]
A Treasury minister has warned employees not to expect their wages to rise along with the soaring rate of inflation. Simon Clarke said that big increases in salaries to meet the rising cost of living could end up in a 1970s style “inflationary spiral”. This happens when wage rises help push up the cost of […]
Monzo is likely to press ahead with its crypto investment plans despite the current crash in the market, its co-founder said today. Speaking at Financial Times Live event, Jonas Templestein, co-founder of the London-headquartered challenger bank, said that the recent crash in the crypto market “probably…hasn’t affected our plans” and the firm would continue to […]
Nadine Dorries has continued to pave the way for the post-Brexit digital landscape this evening, emphasising the UK’s departure from EU bureaucracy. In its fresh consultation released tonight, the government have set out how the Data Reform Bill announced in this year’s Queen’s Speech will strengthen the UK’s data protection standards while reducing burdens on […]