Britain’s aerospace industry used to do a good line in exotic aircraft straight out of an episode of Thunderbirds. There was the Fairey Rotodyne, a big part-helicopter, part-plane with rockets at the tips of its rotor. Noise, apparently, was a problem. The Saunders-Roe Princess was an enormous flying boat that arrived just in time to…
Jon Lee was born in Croydon, south London, but grew up in Devon and won a scholarship to Sylvia Young Theatre School as a teenager after starring alongside Jonathan Pryce in Oliver! at the London Palladium. In 1999 he joined the pop band S Club 7, who sold 14 million albums worldwide and had four…
I have a lasting power of attorney for an elderly relative and they have moved into a residential care home. If their house sells I am told I should split the money between bank accounts, with no more than £85,000 in each. This would mean opening at least four accounts. I imagine this will be…
Landlords and other investors are rushing to sell up because of a widespread belief that the government will increase capital gains tax next month. The urgency is being fuelled by concerns that any tax rise would be ushered in immediately after the budget — as early as midnight on October 30. Estate agents have reported…
One of Britain’s six remaining nuclear power plants closed down for the final time yesterday. EDF Energy has permanently switched off the second reactor at Hinkley Point B near Bridgewater, Somerset, 46 years after it first sent power to the national grid. The French energy group decided to close the plant earlier than planned after…
Ian Cook took his 10-year-old son Gabriel out of their local state primary school a year ago because he felt that he would benefit from smaller class sizes. Cook, a chartered financial planner who lives near Farnham in Surrey, said it was the right decision and that Gabriel is a lot happier. But he is…
In Weybourne, in North Norfolk, work is under way to prepare the route for the second of four connection points that will transport power generated by the Hornsea 3 wind farm, 120km away in the North Sea, to the electricity grid. This part of the process is particularly painstaking. Drilling a 950-metre-long horizontal path for…
The biggest high street lenders are offering rates not seen in two years. NatWest, Barclays, Halifax, HSBC, the Co-op Bank, Virgin Money, and Coventry and Nationwide building societies have five-year fixes at less than 4 per cent and brokers and estate agents are expecting a bumper few months as borrowers make the most of the…
The state pension is set to rise by £460 a year from April after the latest official data showed wages grew by 4 per cent. Under the so-called “triple lock”, the state pension goes up each year by either 2.5 per cent, the rate of inflation or average earnings, whichever is the highest figure. The…