The barely-anticipated Autumn Budget, perhaps predictably, fell by the wayside last week, with the country now heading to the polls next month.
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Whenever discussion turns to Britain’s misfiring property market, the words ‘stamp duty’ are seldom far away. Indeed, over the past two decades, it’s been something of a political football – one which has had a profound impact on both housing transactions, and the coffers at the Treasury.
Last September marked 10 years since the demise of Lehman Brothers, which opened the floodgates for the financial crisis, and the deep worldwide recession that followed.
In the 1970s, it was standard fare for governments to manipulate interest rates, particularly in the run-up to a general election. Lower borrowing costs keep a lid on unemployment, and stimulate economic growth.
When it comes to pensions spending, it's fair to say there are plenty of conflicting reports circulated within the media.
For close followers of financial forums, one oft-trotted line among brokers is that fixing one's mortgage has seldom been to the retrospective benefit of the homeowner in the past 25 years.
The financial crisis is a bitter memory of what can go wrong when regulators lose control of markets. It seems hard to fathom now, but a little over a decade ago, buyers could acquire mortgages to the tune of 125 per cent of the home’s value (the Northern Rock Together mortgage being one of the most infamous), with only the most lax affordability checks standing in their way.
The decline of cash in recent years has been there for all to see, and the sound of a tap of a card seems far more common these days than the shuffling of notes and coins. But even still, the numbers make for remarkable reading.
Common perception these days is that of an inter-generational wealth divide, whereby pensioners are deemed to have it good, while millennials and Generation Z have a hard time making ends meet.
With political parties jostling for position amid a series of Elections, and the ongoing spectre of a snap General Election looming large, the Labour Party put forward a policy last week which has proved to be a talking point: increasing the minimum wage to £10 per hour, and extending this to workers under the age of 18.
