Economy

What’s wrong with planning a once-in-a-lifetime holiday? Or dreaming of buying your first home? Nothing, of course – unless it hinges on the death of your elderly mother. Increasingly, it seems, many people’s future plans depend on such family tragedies. The sorrow of losing a loved one, soothed by an inheritance pay cheque. Friends speak openly about moving into a bigger house once their inheritance ‘comes through’ There is something unpalatable about the idea of using a deceased relative’s estate to repay a loan you chose to borrow, or finally booking the cruise that has been sitting in your Tui basket since your father’s first dose of chemo. But more

Until Rachel Reeves tightened the rules in last month’s Budget, Motability customers were able to sink into the leather seats of a top-of-the-range Mercedes. But however luxurious the upholstery, it can’t have been as thick and durable as the rhinoceros skin of Motability boss Andrew Miller. He has just been awarded a 23 per cent pay rise to £924,000. There are no prizes for guessing who is contributing to the largesse shown to him by his board. Nearly half of Motability’s £8.1 billion spending last year was covered by the government’s exploding welfare budget. Motability has been under the spotlight Just how impervious to public opinion do you have to be to accept

For the second month in a row, inflation has fallen. Figures released by the Office for National Statistics show that last month the Consumer Price Index fell to 3.2 per cent from 3.6 per cent in October. November’s reduction is the largest since September 2024. For the government, this is very good news. High inflation over the past six months has intensified pressure on Labour to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. This was clearly reflected in last month’s Autumn Budget, with Rachel Reeves announcing freezes to rail fares and fuel duty, as well as measures to lower household energy bills. If inflation continues to decline at this rate, the Chancellor will

In Colombia’s enormous Magdalena River basin, an ecological anomaly has triggered an extraordinary debate among ecologists. Ought some invasive species – in this case hippos – be tolerated, or even welcomed, for the ecological role they play as proxies for prehistoric keystone species lost thousands of years ago? In the early 1980s, infamous trafficker and kingpin Pablo Escobar smuggled four hippopotami – one male, three females – from an American zoo to his private menagerie at Hacienda Nápoles. Years later, on 2 December 1993, Escobar was shot dead by members of the Colombian national police’s search bloc in a shootout in Medellín. After his death, Escobar’s collection of exotic animals

There were ‘too many leaks’ ahead of the autumn Budget, Rachel Reeves admitted this morning as she faced MPs on the Treasury Select Committee. The Chancellor acknowledged there had been ‘too much speculation’ before her statement last month which was ‘inaccurate [and] very damaging’. Much of the scrutiny focused on reports that the Treasury had considered raising income tax, in what would have been a clear breach of Labour’s manifesto promises last year. In an unprecedented scene-setting speech on 4 November – three weeks before the Budget – Reeves dropped heavy hints about income tax rises. However, nine days later, it emerged this was not in fact going to happen,

God bless Netflix: I’ve just watched all 28 episodes of Foyle’s War, the 1940s detective series set in Hastings and London that first aired on ITV more than 20 years ago. Pedants may have spotted minor anachronisms or been irritated by London scenes filmed in Dublin, presumably for tax breaks. But for me, the whole oeuvre – Spitfires, ration books, moustaches and all – stands as a monument of meticulous and compelling period drama. And as an amateur actor who always struggles to keep a straight face on stage, I’m in awe of Michael Kitchen’s gift of expressing Detective Chief Inspector Foyle’s moral outrage and inner pain by the tiniest