86 m. ago Voices: Calm down, homeowners – Rachel Reeves’ property tax might be an improvement

The chancellor’s idea to replace stamp duty and council tax with a single charge on homes worth upwards of £500,000 could be more appealing – and more progressive – than the current mess, says Chris Blackhurst

Society

4 h. ago Kirstie Allsopp accuses Rachel Reeves of 'punishing' homebuyers as Chancellor 'mulls new property tax'

The Treasury is reportedly mulling plans to raise money from a tax on the sale of homes worth more than £500,000

Society

5 h. ago Kirstie Allsopp leads fury at Rachel Reeves' new property tax plan 'to punish Britons for working hard': Labour raid on ALL homes worth more than £500k is 'wealth tax in all but name'

The Chancellor has been accused of seeking to 'punish people' for making sacrifices to buy their own homes.

Economics

6 h. ago Fury at Rachel Reeves' new property tax plan to 'punish Britons for working hard': Labour raid on ALL homes worth more than £500k is 'wealth tax in all but name'

The Chancellor has been accused of seeking to 'punish people' for making sacrifices to buy their own homes.

Economics

7 h. ago New stamp duty and council tax rules that would hammer London ‘being considered by Chancellor’

The Treasury is reportedly mulling plans to raise money from a tax on the sale of homes worth more than £500,000

Politics

8 h. ago Rachel Reeves plots a new property tax raid on ALL homes worth more than £500,000 AND a new 'local property tax'

The Chancellor is said to have ordered Treasury officials to examine reforms to the current stamp duty system.

Economics

4 d. ago ‘The Black experience is more than just London’: Chiedu Oraka, the Hull rapper handpicked to support Coldplay

When Chris Martin called, the MC saw an opportunity to rep his city, pursue his goal of being rap’s next ‘king of the north’ – and expand perceptions of Black British identity‘When I say ‘Hull’, you say ‘City’! Hull  ” Chiedu Oraka grins, pointing his mic towards the middle of a near-empty recording studio. Silence – for now, at least. Next week, that pause will be filled by 20,000 voices at Craven Park stadium, where the local rapper will open Coldplay’s latest UK run of Music of the Spheres tour dates. And he is determined to make that crowd his own. “There’s going to be people there who haven’t seen me before, so I want to give them everything – new songs, old ones and a party,” he says. “I’m proper buzzing for it.”Last year, Oraka played Glastonbury, opened for Skepta at South by Southwest and supported the Brit-award-winning rapper Casisdead. But these Coldplay shows are the 37-year-old’s biggest gigs yet – and Hull’s most high-profile music events in years. The gigs ...

Politics

6 d. ago Now Rachel Reeves plots inheritance tax raid on Middle England to plug huge gap in public finances as Tories blast Labour's 'politics of envy'

The Chancellor is said to be looking at tightening rules on gifting of money and assets before someone passes away to address an estimated £50billion spending hole at the next Budget .

Politics

7 d. ago Palletline raises over £24,000 for The Multibank at annual members' awards event

Palletline, the UK’s leading palletised freight distribution network, has reaffirmed its commitment to making a difference in local communities by raising over £24,000 for its nominated charity, The Multibank, during its recent Members’ Dinner and Awards event at Celtic Manor Resort.

Economics

1 week ago Police hunt burglars who swiped gold and jewellery worth £500,000 from south London home

Detective Constable Jamie White said valuables had been passed down through generations of one family

Economics

1 week ago Great Eastern Hotel by Ruchir Joshi review – a panoramic view of India in flux

The political and emotional journey of a young communist revolutionary is brought sensuously to life, in a magnificent epic that took 25 years to writeThe observation by architect Louis Kahn that you “can only really see a building once the building becomes a ruin” runs through this book like the Hooghly river through India’s former capital. There’s no better Indian ruin than Kolkata, a city that still clings to the centrality of its role in the 19th-century intellectual renaissance that buttressed the case for Indian self-rule. The adage back then was that “what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow”.Great Eastern Hotel, the second novel from the author of The Last Jet-Engine Laugh, is 920 pages and well over 300,000 words long. The staff of your local Waterstones will kindly describe it as “an undertaking”. It is set in and around the still-standing, now eye-wateringly expensive Great Eastern Hotel, which is, as the book points out, a model for the city itself: a place t...

Politics

last month ‘Tense calm’ returns to Syria’s Sweida province after week of deadly violence

More than 1,000 people estimated to have been killed after clashes between Bedouin and Druze groupsAn uneasy calm returned to southern Syria’s Sweida province on Sunday, after fighters withdrew following a week of violence estimated to have killed more than 1,000 people.Local people told news agencies the area was calm after Syria’s Islamist-led government said Bedouin fighters had left the predominantly Druze city. Continue reading...

Events