Moneyblog

2018 will be a crucial year for the gig economy in the UK. Only a couple of months ago, the work and pensions, and the business, energy, and industrial strategy committees of the House of Commons jointly presented a new framework for modern employment. This latest report adds to an already wide-ranging set of proposals from different stakeholders on how the gig economy should be reformed. The big question now is whether and how Government will respond. Yet alongside any possible government action, several ongoing high-profile legal cases are bound to have a significant impact. The antagonism inherent to the court room has pitted platforms against workers, and created a

Is the only reason Dry January is so popular because people tend to drink a little too much over the festive period? Or is part of it down to wanting to save money after spending too much on overly pricey last-minute Christmas presents? I wouldn’t be surprised if it were more due to financial reasons than health ones – though I can’t be certain. If much of it is down to money woes, then the news that household bills increased by 13% in 2017 compared to the previous years probably won’t make you feel much better. There are all kinds of factors involved in this statistic, but energy bills play

This week’s Best Buys are high interest current accounts: Data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk

For some reason, I decided to go to the other side of the world for Christmas. I may never do it again. Not because I didn’t like Australia (I loved it) but because it takes forever to get there. And spending 23 hours with your knees under your chin on a long-haul flight to the Antipodes will cure you of ever going further than Calais. When you’re flying economy it’s of paramount importance to choose the right airline. I tried four for size: Cathay Pacific, Qantas, Jetstar and Air New Zealand. Cathay Pacific flew me to Hong Kong. The staff were friendly and smart but, alas, the Boeing 777 was

We are famously a nation of animal lovers, so I suppose it’s not too surprising that one in two British households owning some form of pet. There are an estimated £20 million pets in the UK, so pet-related industries are not a bad area to be involved in. (This number, by the way, doesn’t include horses; there are around a million of those, too). And, as one of the nation’s pet-owners, I suppose I do my fair share of contributing to the pet industry. But there’s one area in particular I’ve been thinking about recently: the area of pet insurance. I recently acquired a puppy, but the question was, should

Over Christmas, Bitcoin has continued to generate crazy headlines — and crazy profits for those smart enough to sell at the peaks. The price tumbled from above $19,000 to below $13,000 but it did not crash out of sight, as sceptics continue to predict. Meanwhile, from Japan we hear that the ‘wealth effect’ of a million Bitcoin holders who believe themselves richer could be the turbo-boost to consumer spending that Japan’s flaccid economy has been seeking for decades. US news sources express concern about the environmental impact of global computer operations related to Bitcoin, which now consume as much electricity as three million American households or the whole of Denmark.

It’s easy to overdo the Christmas spending – but what if you’ve really blown the budget? Here are this week’s Best Buys, of unsecured five-year loans of up to £10,000. Data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk.

The traditional notion of car ownership is under threat. Tech innovation, the sharing economy, and the soaring cost of running a vehicle are giving rise to a new age of driving. Increasingly, drivers are choosing to carpool, share vehicles or borrow from others when they need them. Attitudes are changing from absolute car ownership to a more flexible, fluid approach to driving. The car insurance industry needs to respond to this by becoming more flexible and cost-effective for drivers. There is little doubt that the car industry is in flux. New car sales have fallen for eight consecutive months. We’ve also seen a record decline in teenagers learning how to

With Christmas – and its potential for gifts of money from generous Godparents – fast approaching, now is a great time for children to open up their first savings account. Here are some of the best deals on the market right now, according to data from moneyfacts.co.uk.

And so to my annual awards. Best business recovery of 2017: Lloyds Banking Group, which returned from the bailout sin-bin to full membership of the private sector in May. The year’s most lamented collapse: the upmarket Swan Hellenic cruise line in January. And the least lamented? The devil’s own PR firm, Bell Pottinger, in September. The best business books, by a long chalk, were Till Time’s Last Sand, David Kynaston’s richly entertaining history of the Bank of England; and The Spider Network by David Enrich, which unravels the part played in the Libor scandal by Tom Hayes, the UBS trader who is serving a long stretch for conspiracy to defraud. Prosecutors painted Hayes

Fixed rate ISAs are a good way of making sure you have some cash put to one side for a rainy day – but as with everything, you need to make sure you get the best possible deal. Here are the best one year fixed-rate cash ISAs on the market at the moment. Data supplied by moneyfacts.co.uk

We hear it all the time that millennials are too busy spending to bother saving. Those of us who live in expensive cities like London, spend so much on rent that there’s no hope of ever being able to afford a house of our own. So why bother saving at all? Much better to spend what’s left of your hard earned cash after paying your rent and coughing up for public transport, and have some fun with it on a Friday night out, or a decent avocado on toast for brunch. Well, that’s what people would have you believe. But increasingly, it seems as if those in their twenties are

This is an excerpt from Martin Vander Weyer’s ‘Any Other Business’ column. I don’t know which is more worrying: that the bitcoin market becomes madder by the day, or that it becomes more mainstream. The market price of a unit of the cryptocurrency has spiked above $11,800, up from $750 a year ago, for no reason other than speculative fever. The total value of bitcoins in existence (if that’s the right word) has surpassed the GDP of New Zealand. The first bitcoin billionaires have been announced as Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the American twins who were in at the birth of Facebook. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange is about to launch

The UK has a big productivity problem. Our slowdown since the financial crisis has been more severe than in other developed nations. We rank third-last among the G7 — ahead of only Canada and Japan — and we’re falling further behind our competitors: France, Germany and the USA. This matters, because increased productivity is the key to improving living standards. Without it, businesses underperform, we fall behind competitors and, ultimately, our ability to increase pay, invest in public services and improve living standards is limited. Government sets the agenda for productivity in areas like skills, infrastructure and research and development. We’ve seen encouraging moves in the Budget and an industrial