More than 2,000 senior public officials in the United Kingdom may have benefitted from a controversial pay deal scheme, which allowed them to lower their personal tax bills, said a report by the Financial Times on Wednesday.
Bank of England Governor Sir Mervyn King has conceded for the first time that U.K.’s central bank should have properly identified and warned about the risks facing banks in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis, and has vowed to take unpopular measures in the future to prevent banking excesses.
“We did preach sermons about the risks. But we didn’t imagine the scale of the disaster that would occur when the risks crystallised,” King said.
Local communities in the U.K. may still be against hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, but the government has once again proven that its interests are more closely aligned with investment bankers in the City of London than those forced to live with the consequences.
Romanian crime syndicates have been transporting busloads of beggars, pickpockets and prostitutes into London every day for the last three months, said officials from the Westminster Council on Tuesday, as the city prepares for a massive influx of tourists ahead of the upcoming Olympic Games.
A Scottish vote in favour of independence in a referendum would end the country’s 307-year intermarriage with England. But it would also have huge economic, political and psychological repercussions for the whole of the UK.
Scotland has always been the most autonomous of the UK’s three Celtic nations – with its own legal and education systems. But despite a 305-year-old political relationship with the U.K., a trend towards a different vision of Scottish politics has accelerated in recent years.
U.K. police were forced to shut down numerous petrol stations across the nation on Thursday, after motorists went into a panic-buying spree – that began on Wednesday – following a strike threat by fuel tanker drivers.
According to the BBC, petrol sales in the U.K. went up by 81 percent on Wednesday, with diesel up by 43 percent, as motorists queued for hours in order to stockpile their gas supply.
The U.K.’s national economic output could shrink between April to June this year, said Bank of England governor Sir Mervyn King, as citizens prepare to indulge in an additional holiday in order to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is currently embroiled in an embarrassing nationwide scandal, after a top fundraiser for his political party was caught on tape trying to solicit for donations through promises of “direct access” to the national leader.
Argentina has vowed to take legal action against any company that wishes to conduct oil exploratory activities off the disputed Falkland Islands, claimed a report by Reuters on Thursday, as tensions continue to build between the South American country and the UK over the region’s sovereignty.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS), UK’s official statistics agency, have included the popular “Twilight” teenage fiction book series, along with the Apple iPad, to its baskets of goods used to calculate the rate of inflation in the country.
