Crossrail opens its doors to give young Londoners a glimpse of Europe’s biggest construction project March 3, 2015 Crossrail is opening its doors this weekend, offering young Londoners the chance to see what Europe's largest construction project looks like from the inside. This weekend Crossrail is holding a free ticketed Open Doors event, aimed at 11 to 24-year-olds interested in the construction industry, as well as parents and teachers, to visit sites including [...]
Apple’s record earnings: Five things showing just how massive those numbers are January 28, 2015 Apple’s quarterly earnings after the iPhone 6 launch completely smashed expectations. Its profits of $18bn (£11.8bn) are so big, they are officially the biggest quarterly profit of any company in history. Ever. That’s just how huge it is. To put that in perspective… 1. Apple sold 34,000 iPhones every hour, more than 500 every minute, [...]
Regency Mews: Filling in the spaces in Camden Town March 26, 2015 As space becomes increasingly scarce in sought-after parts of central London, Britain’s biggest housebuilders are looking to literally fill the gaps with innovative architecture. This space in the heart of Camden Town was transformed from a makeshift factory site office into two contemporary London homes. The project was taken on by Taylor Wimpey Central London, [...]
Did Israel spy on the US’s private Iran talks? Here are the two sides of the story March 24, 2015 Senior White House officials have accused Israel of spying on talks between the US, Iran and other world powers over the Middle Eastern country's nuclear programme, but Israel denies the claims. The private meetings in question took place last year and involved the UK, Germany, France, China and Russia. The aim was to persuade Iran [...]
Hotel Chocolat co-founder Angus Thirlwell on how he built a chocolate empire July 12, 2015 Europe is awash with chocolatiers and the British consumer is spoilt for choice. So the idea that someone could set up a chocolate company with £10,000 and take it from startup to a market-conquering beast in just a decade seems a little far fetched. But that is what Angus Thirlwell and his business partner Peter [...]
China is not in trouble: Its economic potential is only just being realised April 16, 2015 The question of whether China will experience a hard or soft slowdown from the towering growth figures it has become accustomed to crashed back into the news this week. The latest official figures showed that GDP grew at its slowest pace for six years in the first quarter of 2015, at an annualised rate of [...]
Profits surge at Bovis Homes on record sales February 23, 2015 BOVIS Homes shrugged off fears of a housing market slowdown by reporting a 69 per cent leap in full-year profits as the housebuilder sold a record number of homes. The FTSE 250 company, which builds most of its homes in the south of England but outside London, completed 3,635 homes last year – an increase [...]
Meet Paul Lister, the Laird who wants to re-introduce bears, wolves and forests to the Scottish Highlands July 19, 2015 It says something about the wildness of Alladale that TV adventurer Bear Grylls chose a spot nearby to set up his Survival Academy. It’s a wild place: Paul Lister, the Laird of this Victorian hunting lodge in the Scottish Highlands, might even answer the baronial door wearing a wolf mask. It’s his self-deprecating joke; [...]
Tax fractures in the Labour party: Balls refuses to back Miliband’s “deed of variation” February 15, 2015 Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has refused to condone Ed Miliband's use of a tax loophole to avoid paying full inheritance tax. The Labour leader and his family reportedly adopted the “deed of variation” when posthumously changing the will of Ralph Miliband, Ed's father. This allowed them to not pay full inheritance tax on [...]
Scotland’s prime property market leaps as buyers race to avoid stamp duty increase February 23, 2015 The number of upmarket homes being sold in Scotland jumped 88 per cent between the second quarter and the fourth quarter of last year, and more than double the figure for the first three months of the year, as buyers raced to avoid a hike in transaction costs due to take place later this year. [...]