Lloyds swings to loss as it sets aside extra £2.4bn for bad loans July 30, 2020 UK banking giant Lloyds swung to a £600m pre-tax loss for the first half of the year today as coronavirus cost it an extra £2.4bn. The provision for loan losses was bigger than the £1.5bn analysts had anticipated. It took total provisions for the first half of the year to £3.8bn. Read more: Barclays braces [...]
Does Covid-19 mark the beginning of the end for cash? July 29, 2020 Many European countries were already moving away from cash transactions and the pandemic will only speed up this trend. The Covid-19 crisis has changed our daily lives in multiple ways and accelerated a number of trends that were already in place. For many of us, one obvious change is that the need to use cash [...]
Lose five pounds for the government? It’s thanks to the government I gained it in the first place July 29, 2020 I cannot be the only person who has gained five pounds during lockdown. I am still far from overweight (the NHS BMI calculator helpfully tells me that I am in the optimum range for my age and height), but the government’s sudden fixation on slimming down the nation has not exactly been great for my [...]
Sky Arts to become free to air channel in bid to boost culture sector July 28, 2020 Sky Arts will become free to air for all viewers in September, as the broadcaster attempts to boost the sector in a “vital time for culture” during the pandemic. Britain’s only TV channel dedicated solely to arts and culture is currently only available to paying customers. However, it will become free to air for all [...]
DEBATE: Is the government right to focus on obesity as its top public health issue? July 28, 2020 Is the government right to focus on obesity as its top public health issue? Dr Keith Klintworth, managing director at VitalityHealth, says YES. The pandemic has made the case for action on obesity stronger than ever, with research showing that it is the second biggest risk factor for hospitalisation from Covid-19. Not only that, but [...]
A property wealth tax is the only fair way to pay for the Covid-19 crisis July 28, 2020 Two years ago, the director of the Office for Budget Responsibility wrote the following: “Broadly speaking, the fiscal position is unsustainable if the public sector is on course to absorb an ever-growing share of national income… The baseline projection in each of our reports — since the first was published in 2011 — has pointed [...]
After a year in the job, Boris Johnson is a disappointment to even his biggest fans July 24, 2020 On the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Live With Littlewood show this week, I was asked to score Boris Johnson’s first year as Tory leader. I am accustomed to being the token left-winger (relatively speaking) on the IEA’s show, which tends to feature economists and journalists who identify firmly on the Conservative right. I was therefore [...]
Counting the human cost of Covid — and of leaving small business owners behind July 23, 2020 The daily lists of cases, tests and R numbers tell a tale of the scale of the Covid-19 crisis, but they don’t always explain the full story of the cost on people’s lives. ACCA and the Corporate Finance Network (CFN) are running a tracker poll among accountancy firms representing more than 22,000 small businesses to [...]
BBC reaches record global audience in 2020 despite cash crunch July 23, 2020 The BBC reached its highest ever audience in 2020, the broadcaster announced today, as it faces the most serious financial difficulty in its 97-year history amid the coronavirus pandemic. The public service broadcaster announced it reached 468.2m people a week in 2020, with BBC News scooping up the bulk of the share with 438.3m weekly [...]
Time for an energy revolution? Creating opportunity after a crisis July 16, 2020 The Covid-19 pandemic is a tragic event we hopefully will not see again in our lifetime. The human destruction and the strain on global healthcare systems have been devastating. There are no winners from this crisis. Still, it was Winston Churchill who said “never let a good crisis go to waste”. That certainly rings true [...]