The best take-away Christmas lunch: From Benugo’s hot roast turkey sandwich to Itsu’s “aggressively disgusting” pot of chicken December 1, 2014 December is upon us and it’s now perfectly acceptable to buy a take-away Christmas lunch – our sandwich committee checked out some of the most popular. Fred’s at Tesco Thanksgiving Sandwich Turkey, vegetable crisps, tomato, lettuce, cucumber, brie ★★★☆☆ Full marks for presentation but zero for practicality; trying to fit this [...]
Not convinced? December 1, 2014 CHECK OUT THESE ALTERNATIVES… BMW 550I M SPORT PRICE: £57,910 0-62MPH: 4.6 secs TOP SPEED: 155mph CO2 G/KM: 206g/km MPG COMBINED: 32.8mpg THE VERDICT: DESIGN Four Stars PERFORMANCE Four Stars PRACTICALITY Five Stars VALUE FOR MONEY Three Stars MASERATI GHIBLI V6 S PRICE: £63,760 0-62MPH: 5.0 secs TOP SPEED: 177mph CO2 G/KM: 242g/km MPG COMBINED: 27.2mpg THE VERDICT: DESIGN [...]
Worker Bees: Cyber Monday piles on the pressure November 30, 2014 Today’s Cyber Monday event could be the biggest shopping day of the year – keeping Amazon’s warehouses packed to the rafters. Amazon, which sold 5.5m items on Friday at a rate of 64 purchases a second, has filled warehouses, such as this one at Peterborough, with 13,000 extra staff to meet pre-Christmas demand. The Centre [...]
Triple lock plan to end fiscal drag November 30, 2014 THE INSTITUTE of Directors has offered up a bold new policy for George Osborne to consider in Autumn Statement week. The business group wants to see a triple lock system for income tax to ensure that the threshold for the higher rate increases each year by either the retail prices index, average wage inflation or [...]
MPs call for more research spending November 30, 2014 AN INFLUENTIAL group of MPs is today calling on the government to spend hundreds of millions of pounds more on research and development, in a drive to capitalise on the UK’s knowledge base to boost economic growth. The Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee wants Innovate UK’s budget doubled from £500m to £1bn. And the [...]
Osborne’s previous budget highlights: November 30, 2014 2010: THE EMERGENCY BUDGET The chancellor announced a range of deep cuts and freezes, including a two-year public sector pay freeze, housing benefit cap and a VAT increase to 20 per cent. The bank levy was introduced and corporation tax cut from 28 per cent to 24 per cent. 2011: THINGS ARE LOOKING TRICKY In [...]
Autumn Statement 2014: George Osborne could pull a small rabbit out of the hat November 30, 2014 STAMP DUTY George Osborne could choose to reform stamp duty on Wednesday – a crowd-pleasing policy that wouldn’t have to hit Treasury coffers hard. The most likely option for the chancellor would be to change the slab-like structure of the tax by only charging a higher rate on the amount spent over each threshold, rather [...]
Chancellor and shadow duel ahead of big day November 30, 2014 CHANCELLOR George Osborne will give his Autumn Statement this Wednesday. It is the last chance before the election for both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to sneak in any crowd-pleasing announcements they want to include in their election leaflets. It will be tough for Osborne to offer much cheer though, with public finances worse [...]
Golds bugs are swatted away November 30, 2014 THE RULE to force the Swiss central bank to hold 20 per cent of its assets in gold was proposed by the Swiss People’s Party. The SWP are sometimes known as “gold bugs” – people who believe gold to be one of the best stores of value and that money should be backed by a [...]
BMW launching London car rental scheme November 30, 2014 BMW will launch a pay-as-you-go car hire scheme in London on Thursday where users can pay on their smartphone to drive an electric i3 or Mini in Hackney, Haringey and Islington. The scheme mirrors those already launched by BMW in San Francisco and Berlin.
