Finance
London’s first time buyers will need £106,000 salary to buy average home by 2020
By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor People in the capital will need to earn over £100k a year by 2020 to purchase their first home according to a report by housing and homelessness charity Shelter. First time buyers will need an average deposit of £138,000 to keep up with the staggering rise in house prices in the capital. Campbell Robb, Shelter’s Chief Executive, said: “When house prices are increasing fifteen times faster than the average wage, it’s no wonder Londoners on...
Corbyn fined £100 for filing his tax return late
By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Jezza was slapped with a £100 fine for filing he tax return for 2014/15 on Feb 6th missing the Jan 31st deadline by quite a long time. Corbyn declared an additional income of £1,850 which included earnings from lectures, taking his total pay to £70,795 and he paid a total of £18,912 in income tax. A spokesman for Corbyn blamed a “busy few months” after he was voted in unanimously as opposition leader in September. This...
World’s first local currency cash machine now in Brixton
By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor London leads the way again as the world’s first ever local currency cash machine opened in Brixton, the birthplace of David Bowie. The ATM which can be found in Market Row allows you to withdraw Brixton bank notes, which can only be spent in the local area. Notes can be used in over 300 local independent businesses, including shops, bars, and restaurants. The notes feature images of local heroes, including Luol Deng and David Bowie...
VIDEO – Use ‘clever financial products’, said George Osborne in 2003
By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor Please have a watch of this video of George Osborne's 2003 appearance on BBC2's Daily Politics programme. The future chancellor encourages a caller to look into 'clever financial products' that let homeowners to pass on the value of their home to their children and also get personal care paid for by the state. 'I probably shouldn't be advocating this on television,' he later says during the conversation. Watch Video Here
Amount of bankers earning over €1m up to almost 3,000
By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The City of London has more than three times as many multi-millionaire bankers as the rest of the European Union combined. The number of bankers with a take home pay of over one million Euros (£800k) per annum rose to almost 3 thousand in 2014, one of which made an astonishing €25 million. The UK, which houses Europe’s biggest financial district in London, dwarfs the rest of the EU bankers in terms of large salaries,...
The Myths that Drive Austerity
By Prof Mary Mellor The justification for austerity is that the public sector must live within its means. There is a plausibility in the claim that the state is like a household that should not spend more than it earns. This kind of ‘handbag economics’ draws its analogy from a mythical household. Real households do not live within their means. If they did the economy would grind to a halt. Modern prosperity is built upon debt and the main aim...
Map of companies worth entire countries stock markets
By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The global stock markets have had a tough time of late and the largest corporations in the world dwarf some countries stock market valuation. For example Google and Amazon have a combined worth of $747bn, Netflix is $40bn and McDonald’s is around $109bn. These figures are pretty hard to get your head around, so Bank of America Merrill Lynch has created a map to help illustrate the size of these companies compared to stock markets...
The Financial Cost of Cancer
Lynda Thomas, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, shares her thoughts on the financial impact of cancer and why the charity is launching a guide for the banking industry to help their most vulnerable customers. The cost of cancer Cancer is an expensive disease. Four in five (83%) patients are hit with an average cost of £570 a month as a result of their illness, the same as the average mortgage. This is due to having to take time off...
Number of workers on zero-hour increases 15%
By Joe Mellor, Deputy Editor The number of UK workers on zero-hour contracts is now at 801,000 up 104,000 in only a year. The Labour party tried to outlaw these types of employment deals, but instead they have increased sharply. It could be seen as a blow to job recovery, as verging on a million people are on contracts that don’t necessarily guarantee even one hour’s work in any given week, and can have hours taken away or added at...