News

Viral jacket potato brand SpudBros has come under fire after being accused of “bullying” a small business owner over a name dispute. The Preston-based duo, Jacob and Harley Nelson, who became social media sensations for serving up gourmet potatoes from a tram and have since expanded to London and Liverpool, were accused of threatening legal action against a Portsmouth trader, Rumen Islam, owner of The Spud Father. Islam, 27, opened his stand last month, offering...

The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, must use the Autumn Budget to bolster the UK’s creative industries if she is serious about delivering economic growth, according to leading audit, tax and business advisory firm Blick Rothenberg. Partner Mandy Girder said the creative industries — from film and music to digital media and design — remain one of the UK’s most dynamic growth engines, contributing around £124 billion to the economy in 2023, according to government data. “The...

The new home secretary Shabana Mahmood has admitted that the Home Office is “not yet fit for purpose” and has repeatedly failed to rise to the scale of multiple crises — from illegal migration to asylum accommodation and internal leadership churn. In an interview with the BBC during a police operation in south London targeting illegal workers, Mahmood acknowledged deep-rooted problems in the department she inherited last month, including contract mismanagement, staff retention, and an...

Aston Martin has reported a dramatic escalation in losses as Donald Trump’s new tariffs on UK car imports and weakening demand from China batter the luxury carmaker’s finances. The company posted a £112 million pre-tax loss in the three months to September, compared with just £12 million during the same period last year — an increase of more than 800 per cent. Revenue plunged 27 per cent to £285.2 million, reflecting what the company described...

Former chancellor Jeremy Hunt has hit back at suggestions that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and past Tory tax cuts are to blame for Labour’s worsening fiscal position, calling the claim “ridiculous” and accusing Chancellor Rachel Reeves of presiding over a self-inflicted economic squeeze. The rebuke comes amid reports of mounting anger inside Downing Street after the OBR signalled it would downgrade productivity forecasts ahead of next month’s Budget — creating an estimated £27...

British businesses are wasting more than £13 billion a year in lost productivity as middle managers spend weeks dealing with avoidable, low-value work, according to new research by YouGov. The findings — published in the fifth annual Feedback from the Field report by workplace operations platform SafetyCulture — reveal that middle managers lose an average of 7.3 weeks a year to unnecessary or repetitive tasks, including unproductive meetings, email overload, and correcting others’ mistakes. The...