Best of the fest: 9 of the best London Film Festival movies to book October 16, 2025 Anemone, After The Hunt, Is This Thing On? and much more: The best of London Film Festival, and when to catch these films in cinemas No Other Choice Dir. Park Chan-wook No Other Choice is a sprawling, pitch-black farce that starts out as a corporate satire and morphs into something so singular and distinct I’m [...]
Premier Inn owner warns of ‘mounting pressure’ of tax rises before Budget October 16, 2025 Whitbred, the owner of Premier Inn, has warned that tax rises are becoming more likely and could pose a serious risk to the UK’s hospitality industry. Chancellor Rachel Reeves faces a £40bn gap in the nation’s finances, which is ever-more likely to be filled by a tax-raising Autumn Budget. The target of those tax rises [...]
What’s the point of AGMs? October 16, 2025 AGMs should be a proper opportunity to engage with investors, instead they have become a pointless compliance exercise. Time to look again, says Emma Burdett So another “AGM season” passes us by with nothing achieved other than a mountain of regulatory work wasting valuable corporate resources. In an ever changing world the conformity of the [...]
The company using AI to keep workers away from NHS waiting rooms October 16, 2025 Simplyhealth has pledged to be a solution to the UK’s productivity crisis, linking rising corporate sick leave, which costs Britain’s economy an estimated £150bn annually, to the NHS’s long backlog of treatments. The health insurer is turning to agentic AI to scale its services, hoping to keep employees healthy and at their desks rather than [...]
Ousted CEO and mounting debts: the lawyers behind £36bn BHP lawsuit October 16, 2025 The law firm behind the most significant litigation to ever hit the English High Court has been lighting up headlines recently due to allegations around internal issues at the group. Back in 2018, in Liverpool, barrister Tom Goodhead and US lawyer Harris Pogust founded a law firm using an alternative business structure that focused on large-scale group [...]
Britain must rediscover radicalism October 16, 2025 There’s plenty of talk about growth from our politicians, but precious little radical thinking about how we unleash innovation, back risk-takers and rip up the planning system, says John Caudwell As party conference season closes, we’re left again with a familiar chorus of promises – growth, reform, renewal. Politicians across the spectrum have dusted off [...]
Leading economist slams ‘myth’ that landlords are under-taxed October 15, 2025 Tax hikes for landlords will be damaging to the economy and are based on a lack of understanding about investors, according to a leading economist. Paul Johnson, the former head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that the UK “need[s] to think very carefully about how to tax housing and how to tax rental [...]
No Other Choice review: Is Park Chan-wook satire a new Parasite? October 15, 2025 You could make a case for Park Chan-wook having the most absurdly varied CV of any living director. Coming to international attention in 2003 with cult classic revenge movie Oldboy, his oeuvre includes steamy psychological thriller Stoker, disturbing erotica The Handmaiden and romantic neo-noir Decision to Leave. Next up is No Other Choice, a sprawling, [...]
UK banks tax rate rises as fears of a budget raid spike October 15, 2025 The tax rate on the UK banking sector rose in the last financial year as the industry braces for a potential hike to its financial burden in the Autumn Budget. A fresh study from banking industry body UK Finance and PwC revealed London lender’s total tax rate rose 0.6 per cent to 46.4 per cent [...]
Andy Haldane elected president of British Chambers of Commerce October 15, 2025 Andy Haldane has been elected the new president of the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), succeeding the serial entrepreneur and business doyenne Baroness Lane Fox. The central banking veteran, who spent eight years on the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, was chosen to head up the business lobby group by representatives of its chamber [...]