David Goldstone to advise chancellor and chief secretary to the Treasury on ways to cut public spending
David Goldstone, the government’s new value for money chair, will receive a daily salary rate of £950, it has been reported.
The position was announced by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, as part of Wednesday’s budget statement. She said Goldstone, who will be in post for a year, would “help us realise the benefits from every pound of public spending”.
Continue reading...Warning from comes after Rachel Reeves’s record tax-raising budget sent tremors through financial markets
Rachel Reeves has been warned an extra £9bn of tax rises may be required to avoid a fresh austerity drive in key public services as her record tax-raising budget sent tremors through the financial markets.
Threatening to undermine the chancellor’s claim that her budget would restore economic stability to Britain, government borrowing costs rose sharply in the City on Thursday as traders turned on Reeves’s tax and spending measures.
Continue reading...Stepmother’s WhatsApp messages read out at Old Bailey in trial over death of 10-year-old in Surrey last year
The father of Sara Sharif forced his daughter to do sit-ups all night because she hid his keys, a court has heard.
Urfan Sharif was also said to have made the schoolgirl put her hands in the air after beating her so badly her stepmother, Beinash Batool, feared he would break her arms and legs.
Continue reading...In Sinaloa state, police have asked for security measure so revelers aren’t mistaken for criminals amid cartel violence
Authorities in the Mexican state of Sinaloa have ordered residents not to don masks or costumes for Halloween to avoid being confused with criminals amid a worsening cycle of cartel violence.
Home to the powerful Sinaloa cartel, the north-western state has been wracked by deadly infighting between factions of the group following the arrest of one of its leaders, drug trafficker Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, in the United States in late July.
Continue reading...Antony Blinken warns that Russia is preparing to deploy the troops into combat ‘in the coming days’
About 8,000 North Korean soldiers are stationed in Russia on the border with Ukraine, the US secretary of state has said, warning that Moscow is preparing to deploy those troops into combat “in the coming days”.
Antony Blinken said the US believed that North Korea had sent 10,000 troops to Russia in total, deploying them first to training bases in the far east before sending the vast majority to the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine.
Continue reading...Labour said it would bring taxation of performance-related pay in the industry in line with others – but the chancellor had a change of heart
It has been almost two decades since Nicholas Ferguson, a grand figure in the private equity business, caused a storm by talking out loud about his industry’s dirty little secret. It could not be right, he said, that highly remunerated private equity executives could pay less tax than a cleaner or other low-paid workers.
Things have moved on a bit since 2007. So-called “carried interest”, or carry – the portion of an investment profit that the private equity managers retain as a bonus for success – is now taxed at 28% under the capital gains regime; in the old days, rates in effect as low as 10% could be secured thanks to various exceptions.
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