Latest news with #GordonBrown
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
The Left has a long history of catastrophic financial errors – Reeves is about to follow suit
Is being Left-wing bad for your finances? Does distrusting markets lead to bad investment decisions? And if so, is this the common thread that brings together the cataclysmic choices of The Guardian, Unite the union, Gordon Brown and Rachel Reeves? The Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust, an endowment now valued at around £1.3bn, whose purpose is to keep the paper going in perpetuity. Much of this money originates from the sale of what started off as a car listings magazine, and then became an online marketplace, Autotrader. The Guardian Media Group sold 49.9pc of Autotrader's parent, Trader Media Group, to private equity firm, Apax, for £675m in 2007 – and the remaining 50.1pc to it for around £700m in 2014. This may at first sound like a brilliant deal. The Guardian's initial decision to invest in Autotrader certainly was a wise one. But the deal looks rather less great if you take a look at Autotrader's current valuation. Apax floated the Auto Trader Group on the London Stock Exchange in 2015 with an initial market capitalisation of around £2bn. It now stands at nearly £7.3bn, and many commentators, including The Telegraph's own Questor column, think the company is still undervalued. It is rather delicious that The Guardian's net zero zealots owe the paper's survival to a site flogging cars – it certainly isn't down to the paper's own profitability. The paper lost nearly £25m in the year to March 2025, and £37m the year before. But just think how much more greenery and tax hiking the paper could push if its endowment was not £1.3bn, but over £7bn. Unite, one of Britain's largest unions with around 1.2 million members and a Labour Party affiliate, has done rather worse with its own assets, as an interim internal report revealed last week. Under its previous general secretary, Len McCluskey – a staunch socialist and champion of Jeremy Corbyn – the union spent over £110m on a hotel and conference centre, the Aloft Birmingham Eastside – but the building is only valued at £35m. The report states that the cost of drilling holes in blockwork walls was estimated at £91,000, but was charged at £1.3m. The union has not submitted a full annual return to the Certification Officer, a legal requirement, since 2020. Unite would perhaps have been better off if it had shunned capitalist enterprise in practice, as well as in theory, and avoided going into business altogether. On a national scale, Gordon Brown's decision as chancellor to reduce the nation's gold holdings was a truly appalling commercial choice. Between 1999 and 2002, the Treasury sold 401 tons of gold, reducing the UK's strategic reserve from 715 tons in 1999 to around 314 tons in 2003. The sale price averaged at $275 per ounce and brought in a total of around $3.5bn (£2.7bn). The gold price, generally quoted in US dollars, now stands at over $3,300 per ounce. The holdings sold by Brown would now be worth over $42bn, or over £31bn – tenfold what Brown brought in.
Daily Record
22-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Record
Ministers must protect value of state pension as it is lifeline for many
The sad reality is people drawing their pension 25 years from now are set to be £800, or eight per cent, worse off per year than their counterparts today. The governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown made huge strides in cutting pensioner poverty. Introducing pension credit helped millions of low-income pensioners and retirement savings were boosted, But every generation faces fresh challenges and this one is no different. The sad reality is people drawing their pension 25 years from now are set to be £800, or eight per cent, worse off per year than their counterparts today. Four in 10 – nearly 15million people – are not saving enough for retirement. Young people are in a bind caused by the cost-of-living crisis. Their incomes are squeezed and they are paying an outrageous amount of their net income on rent. Many people want to save more for when they retire but simply cannot afford to do so. One of the issues the UK-wide Poverty Commission is expected to look at is the challenges facing the low-paid and the estimated three million self-employed people who are not saving into a pension. Labour must take a values-based position into pension reform. Ministers must protect the value of the state pension as it is a lifeline for many people. Labour is right to encourage people to save more for their retirement if they can. But they must also provide greater incentives for people on modest incomes to find the spare cash. Part of this involves turning the corner on the cost-of-living crisis so that people have more money in their pockets. Keir Starmer has the chance to be as bold as previous Labour Prime Ministers and he must seize the opportunity. Join the Daily Record WhatsApp community! Get the latest news sent straight to your messages by joining our WhatsApp community today. You'll receive daily updates on breaking news as well as the top headlines across Scotland. No one will be able to see who is signed up and no one can send messages except the Daily Record team. All you have to do is click here if you're on mobile, select 'Join Community' and you're in! If you're on a desktop, simply scan the QR code above with your phone and click 'Join Community'. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. To leave our community click on the name at the top of your screen and choose 'exit group'. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. Identity scandal The public's right to be protected from beasts like Connor Tait does not end when they are let out jail. The 32-year-old hid in a bush and pounced on the child who was walking home from football training in 2013. He was released from jail in 2023 and has recently changed his identity – using the name 'Connie Duncan' – while advertising himself on social media as a cleaner and dog walker. Ash Regan MSP is right when she says the case underlines a deeply troubling reality that when sexual offenders can change their identity without proper safeguards. How can it be right that a convicted paedophile can simply adopt a new identity and begin advertising services to enter people's homes? Public safety must be put first. Tait should not be allowed anywhere near any family's home. We need robust checks and transparency to prevent offenders from simply reinventing themselves and potentially putting others at risk.
Spectator
21-07-2025
- General
- Spectator
Let's slash the school summer holiday
There are three little words that strike horror into the heart of every parent of school-age children. They are the words that cause you to break out in a cold sweat or let out a moan in your sleep in the dead of night – even in the middle of winter. They are 'school summer holidays'. Hear those three words and you may very well envisage jubilant children spewing from the school gates and then remember the dim, distant sun-kissed summers of your own youth. But mention them within earshot of a parent of appropriately aged offspring and you'll see the light go out in their eyes. Oh yes, the kids are happy – just like the waving teachers who weep with joy to see their charges depart. But now it's time for the parents to weep. Were you fortunate enough to be able to take the whole of the month of August off to 'summer' somewhere – perhaps a holiday home near Padstow in Cornwall or an Italianate villa in some dreamy olive-grove in Tuscany – then it would be a different story. Similarly, if you're one of the privileged few who enjoy a '1950s settlement' – where one spouse does not work (for money) – then I'm sure everything would be rosy or rather, rosé. But if, like most of us, you are a 'hard-working family' as Gordon Brown liked to put it, then the six-week school summer holidays are a living hell, one which makes August feel like a Godot-esque month without end. Six weeks. I would rather run the London marathon backwards dressed in a chicken suit in a heatwave than do it all again. And yet here it is. For working parents this is the ultimate test in work-life-imbalance. It's six weeks of ferrying your children between endless camps, time-absorbing playdates, sailing lessons, swimming lessons and multifarious 'multi-sports' activities – none of which seem to start before nine or ten in the morning and all of which then finish in the middle of the afternoon – all while trying to fit in actual work and things like meetings and conference calls, while also remembering which child has which packed lunch or what snack, and repeatedly re-coating them in sunblock because despite the usually crapness of the British summer, the sun's lethal rays will still zap the little dears' flesh to pieces even when it's overcast. So as well as doing enough mileage to qualify for a free Yorkie and forking out a fortune on childcare activities – £75 a day for two would seem the going rate – you'll end up working your evenings to catch up, which is incredibly sustainable as anyone knows, particularly resident (or should that be hesitant?) doctors. Six weeks. I would rather run the London marathon backwards dressed in a chicken suit in a heatwave than do it all again. And yet here it is Now, this would all be fine if it was just for a few weeks. But it's not, is it? It's for six weeks. It's 40 days and 40 nights of planning, remembering, logistics, lunches, clothing, kit, bags, shoes, trainers, flippers, the wheres, the whens, the with-whoms, all the while maintaining the verisimilitude of professional life. Sooner or later, no matter how good you are at juggling, you end up delivering one 12-year-old dressed in a wetsuit to the toddler's party at a village hall and the toddler who can't swim 15 miles away to a reservoir for capsize training. That's if you can still actually drive at all because your hands are so permanently slimy from all the sun cream. Unsurprisingly come the first week of September (south of the border, anyway – the Scots go back earlier) you can usually spot the parents of school-age children. They have ghostly, withdrawn faces and move around the around the Lidl car park with a stooped Morlockian gait. Do not cross these men and women. They are teetering on the edge of breaking point. Is the six-week school summer holiday a species of psychological torture? Quite possibly. What I can say is that once upon a time the smell of sun cream made me think of happy times – now the odour is enough to give me a mild panic attack. And it shouldn't be this way. Because let's face it, we only have long summer holidays because that's the way it's always been. It's not through design. It emerged this way, it is believed, so that kids could be off school to help with the harvest. Now, if the children were still in the fields helping to gather up wheat and barley, then it wouldn't be such a waste of time. I'd approve of that – better than Fortnite on Nintendo or the brain rot on YouTube – particularly if someone else was watching them so I could get on with some work. But the fact is they're not – and they haven't been for about a hundred years, not since Laurie Lee had his last sip of cider with Rosie. So, I say, let's move with the times. Let's still have a whopping end of year break, but how about we make it feasible? How about we shave a fortnight off the six weeks and make it a neat month, and distribute that lost time between the holidays at Christmas and Easter or the half terms to spread out the pain? More than half of parents would support this, according to research by charity Parentkind. I'm not surprised. It would reduce parental breakdowns. It would spread out the exorbitant expense of the summer childcare bill – not unimportant when it can easily run to hundreds of pounds per child. And rather more importantly it would be better for the children because shorter holidays would give their little brains less time to forget absolutely everything that they learned the academic year before. Studies have shown that pupils regress during the long break as they get out of practice with reading and writing. Shorter holidays would mean a less rude awakening for them when they are required to go back to the daily rigours of school life, with fewer tantrums and tears at drop off. Academic standards would rise accordingly, as each year benefited from the reduced wastage of each summer before. But we know that the teaching unions would never tolerate it. And can you blame them? If you were in a highly unionised industry and were lucky enough to be in a job where you had six full weeks off in a row each and every summer, would your union agree? Not a chance. So we're stuck with it. But it would kinder and better all round for the vast majority if it were reformed. Meanwhile, ask yourself this: is it any wonder that Britons are choosing to have smaller families than ever – with about 1.7 kids per family, down from 2.4 40 years ago? No, I thought not.
Yahoo
21-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Gordon Brown Redux? UK Reportedly Mulls Sale of £5B in Bitcoin
Led at the time by Gordon Brown, the U.K.'s Chancellor of the Exchequer in the period from 1999-2002 famously sold off about half of the country's gold reserves at what turned out to be a generational bottom of roughly $275 per ounce for the yellow metal. In a bit more than two decades since, the price of gold has risen roughly 12-fold to its current $3,350 per ounce, the U.K. thus missing out on a substantial windfall. Is the sceptered Isle about to repeat that mistake? Facing the need to come up with as much as £20 billion this year to narrow the government budget gap, Rachel Reeves — the country's current Chancellor of the Exchequer — is eyeing the sale of what might be £5 billion or more in seized bitcoin (BTC), according to a weekend article in The Telegraph. While it's uncertain how much bitcoin the government controls, the Telegraph report noted one raid in 2018 recovered 61,000 Bitcoin from the proceeds of a Chinese Ponzi scheme. At the current price of roughly £90,000, that would be worth more than £5 billion. Differences between the Brown gold sale and the current possible bitcoin sale abound. Most importantly is the stage of the cycle. Bitcoin might go way up, way down, or remain flat from here, but — ahead 75% year-over-year and more than 1,000% over the past five years — the price is at anything but a generational bottom the way gold was at the turn of the century. Sign in to access your portfolio
The Independent
20-07-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Why the UK government could be set for £5 billion boost
Rachel Reeves is reportedly eyeing a £5bn windfall from the sale of seized cryptocurrency to help fill a gap in public finances. The Home Office is working with police forces to offload at least £5bn worth of Bitcoin and other digital currencies confiscated from criminals. Plans are being developed for a 'crypto storage and realisation framework' to securely store and facilitate the sale of these frozen digital assets. This potential funding addresses a £5bn spending gap, partly due to Labour's U-turn on planned benefit cuts, with a larger shortfall of up to £20bn also anticipated. While some critics oppose the sale, comparing it to Gordon Brown's gold sale, others argue it represents a significant untapped revenue source for the UK.
