A Manchester business owner was left facing a £42,000 mobile phone bill after his daughter streamed TikTok on holiday in Morocco, a charge he said nearly pushed his small company into financial crisis. Andrew Alty, who runs a curtains business, discovered the scale of the bill while on a family trip to Marrakech after receiving an initial £22,000 invoice from O2. A second bill for around £20,000 followed shortly after their return to the UK....
Britain recorded its largest monthly budget surplus on record in January as rising tax receipts and a sharp fall in debt interest costs boosted the public finances. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show government revenues exceeded spending by £30.4bn in January, the highest surplus since monthly records began in 1993 and well above City forecasts of £23.8bn. January is typically a strong month for receipts because of self-assessment tax payments, but this year’s...
Quentin Griffiths, the British co-founder of online fashion retailer Asos, has died after falling from a high-rise apartment building in Pattaya, according to local reports. Griffiths, 58, is reported to have fallen from the 17th floor of his condominium. Emergency services attended the scene and confirmed his death. Thai police said there were no immediate signs of disturbance inside the apartment but added that investigations are ongoing and foul play has not been ruled out...
For years, security programs have relied on point-in-time snapshots to prove control effectiveness. They’ll run a quarterly audit here, a monthly scan there. They’ll rely on spreadsheets frozen at the moment it’s exported. That approach might satisfy an auditor, but it fails the reality of modern infrastructure. Cloud environments change by the hour, identities sprawl, and controls drift quietly between checks. By the time a snapshot tells you something is wrong, the risk has already...
Recently published figures for Q3 of the 2025-26 financial year revealed gross gambling yield (GGY) for UK online casinos of £1.5 billion. Will they be able to continue posting such results amid rising costs in the coming months? The cost of a UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) licence is likely to be increased later this year. It’s the latest piece of bad financial news for UK online casinos. Although the online gambling industry continues to post...
Advances in digital health have transformed fertility awareness from traditional methods into precise, personalized monitoring. Today, individuals have access to tools that provide real-time insights into their reproductive cycles, helping them make informed decisions about conception and overall reproductive health. Central to this evolution is the ovulation tracker, a device that measures key hormonal changes to identify fertile windows with high accuracy. For many women, pinpointing ovulation is essential. The fertile window is brief, often...
UK businesses remain broadly confident in Britain as a base for growth, even as rising costs and economic uncertainty weigh on margins, according to new research from Barclays. The bank’s latest Business Prosperity Index, analysing anonymised data from around one million clients alongside a survey of 1,000 business leaders, reveals a two-speed economy emerging at the end of 2025. Larger firms are pushing ahead with long-term borrowing and investment, while smaller companies are turning to...
In today’s market, every single company is a technology company. It does not matter if you sell clothing, offer financial advice, or run a local delivery service. Your customers find you online, they buy from you through digital platforms, and they expect your services to be available 24 hours a day. Because of this massive shift, the pressure on business owners has never been higher. Consumers today have zero patience. If your mobile application is...
Youth unemployment has surged to its highest level in more than a decade, raising fears of a “lost generation” and intensifying expectations that the Bank of England will cut interest rates next month. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in the three months to December 2025, the unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds climbed to 16.1 per cent. That equates to nearly 740,000 young people out of work, an increase of around...
Nearly nine in 10 higher-risk pension funds have failed to match the performance of the FTSE 100 over the past five years, according to new analysis that raises fresh concerns about retirement outcomes for millions of savers. Research by Investing Insiders examined almost 13,000 personal and workplace pension funds holding more than £1tn in assets between December 31, 2020 and December 31, 2025. Funds in the medium-high and high-risk categories were benchmarked against the FTSE...
