Britain's retailers have delivered a message to Government which deserves rather more attention than it might initially receive. The British Retail Consortium's new “Buy into Retail” manifesto contains ten demands aimed at creating more jobs, encouraging investment, reducing costs and helping Britain's high streets and town centres.
Brent crude has surged to almost $100 a barrel, with OilPrice.com showing prices around $99 on Tuesday, as the continuing conflict in the Middle East threatens global oil supplies. The immediate concern for Britain is not whether oil briefly crosses the symbolic $100 threshold.
All residents, businesses, community groups and visitors are being encouraged to have their say on a proposal for a tiered fixed-rate amount Visitor Levy in Highland. The public consultation survey is now open (Monday 7 September) for a 12-week statutory period.
Parents and carers will benefit from a new childcare offer aimed at bringing down the cost of living, tackling child poverty and boosting family incomes, First Minister John Swinney has said. As part of the newly-published Programme for Government, the Scottish Government is transforming its childcare offer to ensure greater childcare support is available to families with children from nine months old through to the end of primary school.
London hotelier sentenced for exploiting Covid support scheme nine times to fraudulently claim £450,000. Richard Courtenay claimed £450,000 in Bounce Back Loans across nine fraudulent applications.
A period of intense engagement is underway to ensure streamlined public services are delivered for Scotland, Public Service Reform Secretary Ivan McKee has said. This week’s Programme for Government set out how the Scottish Government plans to deliver stronger and efficient public services that are sustainable for generations to come.
Major lenders have moved to increase mortgage rates to catch up with recent rises to swap rates, according to Moneyfactscompare.co.uk analysis. Over the coming days, more lenders are expected to review mortgage rates in response to higher swap rates, with HSBC and NatWest so far the biggest banks to increase rates since the start of this month.
New roads policing centre helping to track down offenders faster and disrupt organised crime groups that rely on England's road network. government funds new National Roads Policing Coordination Centre, stepping up enforcement on illegal number plates across England.
Open the economic news on any given morning and it can feel relentlessly depressing. Inflation, Energy prices; Interest rates, Government borrowing, Weak growth, Falling vacancies, Young people becoming NEETs and now Jaguar Land Rover announcing plans to cut around 4,000 jobs.
Britain's decision to ban trade in goods produced in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank marks a significant new stage in the country's increasingly strained relationship with Israel but the more unexpected danger may lie across the Atlantic. The Government's move, to be announced by Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, is intended to put pressure on Israel over the expansion of settlements and particularly the proposed E1 development, which Britain believes could undermine the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.
John Healey did not announce a tax rise in his speech yesterday. He did something potentially more significant in that he explained why the Government needs to raise money.
There is a new nuclear race developing around the world, but Britain could be forgiven for not noticing. For years, nuclear power in Britain has seemed like an argument about one enormous project at a time.
Scotland has an energy problem that sounds almost impossible. It produces far more electricity than it needs and it has some of the greatest renewable-energy resources in Europe.
Highland Council has been given a powerful new weapon in its attempt to tackle the shortage of housing. It can now make owning a second home considerably more expensive.
£2.1 billion is a difficult number for most people to comprehend. It is so large that it can make almost any announcement sound impressive.
Sometimes the most interesting way of looking at a week's local news is not to examine each story separately, but to stand back and ask what it is telling us about the place. And this week, Caithness has produced a mixture of politics, fishing, employment, community issues and questions about the future which are rather more connected than they might first appear.
Why has buying a home become so difficult for young people in Britain? In this Funding the Future podcast, I talk to my son James about the extraordinary generational divide in housing. When I was 25, I bought a three-bedroom flat in London for £28,500 with a deposit of just £250.
October has an extraordinary history of sudden financial crashes. Six of the eight largest falls in Dow Jones history happened in October, including 1929, 1987, 1997 and 2008.
Capital Gains Tax is one of those taxes that can produce an argument almost before the first sentence has been completed. For some people, it is an obvious loophole in the tax system.
John Swinney has made it clear that Scotland's public sector cannot continue operating in quite the same way it has for decades. There are too many organisations, too many overlapping responsibilities and, in some cases, too many layers of management.