TfL Tube strike 2015: London mayor Boris Johnson admits Night Tube might miss launch date July 9, 2015 Boris Johnson has admitted the Night Tube may not start on time, on the day of the biggest London Underground strike in more than a decade. Speaking at City Hall this morning the London mayor refused to commit to the 12 September launch. “I'm not hung up on the date”, he said, adding: “We'll [...]
July Budget 2015: Chancellor George Osborne hits back at “anti-business” critics July 9, 2015 The chancellor has hit out at claims yesterday's Budget will hit small businesses, saying it offered the UK a "new contract". Read more: At a glance – July Budget 2015 In an interview on Radio 4 this morning, George Osborne said the new Living Wage was a "fair deal" for taxpayers. Labour has slammed the Living [...]
July Budget 2015: George Osborne pledges lowest corporation tax in G20 but new bank tax hits UK small lenders July 8, 2015 Chancellor pledges lowest corporation tax in the G20 – but casts punitive net over the UK’s small lenders Chancellor George Osborne ushered in a new tax regime for British banks yesterday, dialling down the controversial bank levy while introducing a new corporation tax surcharge for the entire lending industry. In a summer Budget that the [...]
July Budget 2015: Are you an entrepreneur, an apprentice or a single parent? What does George Osborne’s statement mean for you? July 8, 2015 THE SINGLE PARENT Catherine Gannon, 51Managing partner at law firm Gannons Gannons Commercial Law continues to do well, with profits and earnings up on last year. Catherine is commercially savvy and has restructured the business from an LLP to a limited company, illustrating that she is a smart operator in a segmented legal [...]
July Budget 2015: George Osborne cuts benefits and the family tax credit July 8, 2015 Chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne announced major cuts to welfare spending yesterday, using the summer Budget to set out how he planned to save the Treasury a further £12bn in the next three years. The chancellor said that his Budget was designed to take Britain "from a low wage, high tax, high welfare [...]
July Budget 2015: George Osborne embraced political cunning at the expense of economic prudence July 8, 2015 On the one hand, this was the first fully Conservative Budget in nearly two decades. On the other hand, it is effectively George Osborne’s third Budget in just eight months. He has become a master magician at the politics of presentation. Almost every sentence was crafted to confound and confuse the Labour opposition or to [...]
July Budget 2015: Will George Osborne’s new national living wage hit the number of people in work? July 8, 2015 Sam Bowman, deputy director of the Adam Smith Institute, says Yes. There is lots of research into what the minimum wage does to jobs. Of the 103 papers reviewed by economists David Neumark and William Wascher in a 2006 study, most of them showed that raising the minimum wage reduces long-term employment. Of the 33 [...]
July Budget 2015: Shares dive for green energy firms as Osborne scraps tax exemption July 8, 2015 In today's Budget, chancellor George Osborne announced that the government is scrapping a green tax exemption enjoyed by renewable energy companies since 2001. Read more: George Osborne cuts corporation tax and bank levy as he tells firms "Britain is open for business" Currently, tax is not paid on renewable electricity supplied to businesses under renewable [...]
July Budget 2015 summary: All the personal finance measures announced by George Osborne during his speech July 8, 2015 Today's Budget may not have included as many measures aimed at pensioners and first-time buyers as last time; today, George Osborne seemed more intent on telling firms that Britain was "open for business". Osborne's headline grabber this time around was inheritance tax and the creation of a family home allowance which will help people "pass on [...]
Return of the Mack: How Barclays chairman John McFarlane earned his reputation as “Mack the Knife” July 8, 2015 John McFarlane has barely been in situ three months as Barclays’ chairman, but this morning he claimed his first scalp: Antony “nicest guy in banking” Jenkins, the man appointed three years ago to bring out Barclays’ cuddly side, will step down at the end of next week. Read more: From the Libor scandal to the [...]