Latest news with #No11
Irish Examiner
4 days ago
- General
- Irish Examiner
Cute €265k one-bed cottage in Douglas for the price of an apartment
COMING soon, from a starting price of €265,000, are spanking new one-bedroom apartments at The View, Bayly, on Carr's Hill in Castletreasure, not far from Douglas village, a suburb of Cork city. A good deal older, and closer to Douglas village, is this one-bedroom cottage, with the same starting price of €265,000. Those shopping for homes on this kind of budget will need to consider energy efficiency (A-rated apartment v B-rated cottage); distance from Douglas village (apartment 2.5km v cottage 0.4km) and outdoor space (apartment has private balcony v tiered patio to the rear of cottage). If the cottage wins out, read on. It's 140-year old No 11, Clermont Cottages, one of a terrace of 12 built to house workers at St Patrick's Woollen Mills in Douglas, which O'Brien Bros opened in 1882. Workers at O'Briens Mills Douglas May 1933 While the mill closed in the 1970s, the connection with Clermont Cottages lingers: the grandmother of the current owner was a member of the mill workforce. 'My nana, Veronica Lynch, neé Fleming, from Passage West, started working there when she was 15 years old and was paid 19 shillings and eight pence,' says No 11's owner, Shónagh Lynch. 'She remembers the white cotton being dyed all sorts of colours and being used to make Garda and army uniforms.' A consignment of wool destined for New York departs St. Patricks Wollen Mills, Douglas in 1929 Shónagh's grandmother, a weaver who commuted on the 7.20am bus from Passage West and had to wait half an hour for the mill to open, worked in Douglas from 1952 until 1965, when she had her first child, having married Corneilus (Neilus) Lynch, (Port of Cork), whom she met in 1958. While Veronica never lived in the cottages, she remembers some of those who did. Family names included O'Callaghans, Kidneys, and Lombarts. The cottages have changed hands a few times this century. The Price Register indicates a bulk sale of most of the terrace in 2012 and subsequent individual re-sales. Some of the re-sales featured in these pages and showed evidence of investment and modern makeovers No 11 was renovated and upgraded and is in very good shape now — as it was when Shónagh bought it in 2022. 'Previous owners did a lot of the renovations, and they had great taste. I didn't have to do a whole lot,' she says. She did work on the flower beds and fencing out back and she collaborated with green-fingered neighbours to improve the planting out front. It's all very well presented now. Selling the compact 50sq m home on the South Douglas Road is Áine McLoughlin of AML Property who says the 'thoughtfully renovated cottage blends character with modern comfort'. Moreover a B3 energy rating was 'a rarity, for its era'. Accommodation includes open plan living downstairs, with a sliding pocket door between the living area and the kitchen/ dining space to the rear, from where French doors lead to the tiered patio, with some pretty mosaic tiling. Overhead includes a bathroom and bedroom. There's a guest loo downstairs. A new gas boiler was recently installed by Shónagh, as well as new stair carpet. Paintwork has been re-done throughout. VERDICT: Cute, turnkey home in terrific location. First time buyers likely to have to slug it out with investors and downsizers.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Starmer's winter fuel capitulation has made Reeves's life a whole lot worse
Sir Keir Starmer's about-turn on winter fuel payments defused a backbench rebellion but there is no such thing as a free lunch. What is convenient for the Prime Minister is just the opposite for his Chancellor. Rachel Reeves nailed her credibility to the policy, citing her first major act in No11 as absolute evidence of her dedication to reducing borrowing. Cutting winter fuel payments was supposed to prove Labour could be trusted with the public finances and show markets that Sir Keir's administration could face down both his own Left-wing MPs and Britain's powerful pensioners, defying the so-called 'grey vote'. Now that plan has been shredded, and at the worst possible time for the Chancellor. Despite Reeves's record-breaking tax raid in last October's Budget and her insistence that she has put the finances back on an even keel after inheriting a 'black hole' from the Conservatives, the numbers are not complying. The Chancellor borrowed £20.2bn in April alone, new figures show. That is up from £14.1bn in March and from £19.1bn in April of last year. It is also more than economists had anticipated, especially given the tax increases which came into force last month. Employers' National Insurance contributions (NICs) jumped from from 13.8pc to 15pc, and the income threshold at which the tax is paid fell from £9,100 to £5,000. Sure enough, 'compulsory social contributions', the measure of National Insurance tracked by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), brought £14.7bn into the Treasury's coffers last month, up by £1.7bn compared with April of last year. Higher income tax, VAT, stamp duty and tobacco duty revenues also helped central government tax receipts rise by £3.6bn to £62.1bn in the month. Unfortunately, spending increased even more quickly. Public sector pay rises and higher running costs helped push up government departmental spending by £4.2bn. Benefits spending rose by £1.3bn to £26.8bn, with inflation-linked payments and the state pension triple lock driving up the welfare bill. Overall, the Government spent £6.6bn more in April than a year earlier but its revenue increased by only £5.6bn. It is in this parlous financial situation that the Prime Minister has decided to order the Chancellor to spend more on winter fuel. There are further threats too. The Government has to pay interest on its £2.8 trillion debt, a bill which came to £9bn in April. That is down from £9.5bn a year ago as around one-quarter of the debt is linked to inflation, which until recently was on a downward trend. But inflation is now rising again and the Bank of England is under pressure to stop cutting interest rates. Financial markets are also getting twitchy – and this has the potential to be the most critical factor. The investors who lend to governments in bond markets are increasingly worried about the US's $37 trillion (£28 trillion) debt pile. Donald Trump is piling on more borrowing under his 'big, beautiful' budget plan and there are fears about how sustainable this is. As a result, investors are demanding a higher interest rate to lend to the US. It is conditions in the American market that set the tone – and the price – for debt globally, threatening to push up borrowing costs for Reeves. The interest rate on 10-year gilts, as UK government debt is known, has risen from a low of 3.7pc last September to 4.7pc today. Adding to woes is the fact that the Bank of England's quantitative easing (QE) policy, launched in the financial crisis and ramped up in Covid, is now a drag on finances. While this money-printing scheme helped to ease financial conditions during times of calamity, higher interest rates mean the Treasury is now obliged to help the Bank of England pay interest to commercial banks that hold the QE cash. The Treasury's latest quarterly bill landed in April, showing it transferred another £4.1bn to Threadneedle Street. The smallest relief has been offered by the ONS in the form of a revision to data for the financial year that ended in March. The Government borrowed £148.3bn in the 12 months, which is £3.7bn less than initially estimated. However, it is still £11bn more than the Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast, indicating that Reeves's starting point is merely slightly less awful than had been the case a few weeks ago. Now she has to work out what to do about it. Downing Street argues that the improved state of the economy – GDP grew by an unexpectedly strong 0.7pc in the first quarter of the year – means the public finances are on a stronger footing, and so the winter fuel about-turn is affordable. Ruth Gregory, at Capital Economics, is unconvinced. 'Business surveys suggest that strength has fizzled out at the start of the second quarter. This will filter through into weaker tax receipts in the coming months,' she says. 'With the PM announcing a partial U-turn on the cut to winter fuel payments, the dilemma faced by the Chancellor over how to deal with increased spending pressures in an environment of low economic growth and high interest rates hasn't gone away. 'With the markets seemingly uneasy about more public borrowing, further tax rises are starting to feel inevitable.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Independent
26-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Battle-tank Reeves crushes the Tories – but her own side are yet to be steamrollered
There's something of a battle-tank about Rachel Reeves, so it was no surprise that she started her big day posting a picture of herself posing by an actual armoured car and flanked by soldiers in khaki. Gears crunching, helmet hair rigid, the chancellor's verbal caterpillar tracks soon flattened another chunk of the welfare budget. 'Economic security is non-negotiable,' she intoned, Dalek-like. Exterminate! Reeves' military imagery alluded to one of her key messages, which she repeated all day long, that 'the world is changing'. This is the Treasury 's latest excuse for the economy not growing in the way that Labour promised, but it also sounds uncomfortably similar to 'events, dear boy events', which was the answer famously given by Harold Macmillan when asked why governments lose elections. For the morning media round, the defence secretary was wheeled out of his bunker. John Healey was a good choice, not just because he is getting all the cash hijacked from overseas aid, but also because he is about the only top rank minister who hasn't pocketed free family tickets to pop concerts. Shortly before lunch, Reeves trundled from No 11 to the Commons wearing a huge smile – looking as though she had just won the lottery rather than been informed that her NI rise had caused the growth rate to halve. Some tanks have no reverse gear. Taking her place at the dispatch box, she received a dutiful rather than ecstatic cheer from her own side. Labour MPs were going to make her work harder than usual. At the back of the chamber, a Banquo-like Anneliese Dodds apparated at the fore of a crowd of standing MPs, just within the chancellor's eyeline. Wearing a baleful expression and dressed head to toe in black, Dodds, the sole senior minister to resign over the aid cuts, glared in reproachful silence. If Reeves spotted her, she gave no sign but ploughed on through her statement, red-painted fingernails marking her place in the treasury script. The chancellor was kept occupied by the Tories, who adopted a strategy of laughing uproariously whenever she resorted to clichés, which was often. She took revenge by bringing up Liz Truss's disastrous mini-budget at every opportunity. Sir Keir Starmer, next to her, listened with a slightly furrowed brow. Angela Rayner nodded enthusiastically –and was rewarded with a big sisterly credit for pushing through planning reforms that Reeves predicted will boost the economy just in time for the next election. There was not much red meat to cheer Labour backbenchers. In the words of Sabrina Carpenter, the pop singer that Reeves took freebie family tickets to see recently: 'Oh, it's slim pickings.' But with Reeves it's all about the politics – and her messaging was relentless. Britain would be 'a defence industrial superpower'. The parties opposite were opposing new homes and jobs. Labour was making a difference. She sat down to a bigger cheer than when she stood up. Mel Stride, the Conservative shadow chancellor, spent much of the statement poring over graphs and tables from the Office for Budget Responsibility. There are few tougher tasks than replying to a spring statement – and his creased script bore visible proof of the herculean effort involved, the original typescript hidden behind scrawled annotations. He called it 'an emergency budget', despite the absence of tax and spend changes, and attacked the welfare cuts while also saying his side would have gone 'much, much further'. With an impressively straight face, he asserted that Reeves's tax rises had killed off a healthy growth rate inherited from the Tories. 'With her fingers crossed, she fiddled the figures,' Stride alleged, almost begging speaker Lindsay Hoyle to rebuke him. Inflation, at under three per cent, was 'growing on her watch', went on Stride, which drew laughter from Labour MPs who recalled the dizzying 10 per cent rate under Liz Truss's watch. Potentially more dangerous for the chancellor was the handful of Labour MPs who stood up to voice misgivings. Debbie Abrahams, chair of the work and pensions committee, warned of ' severe poverty ' and sickness due to welfare cuts. Left-winger Richard Burgon questioned the 'easy option' of taking rather than 'the Labour option' of a wealth tax. But the tank rumbled onwards. Later, the economic wonks of the IFS issued their own verdicts, making clear just how vulnerable the chancellor's numbers are to economic shocks. One passage in Reeves' speech hinted at the precariousness of her position. 'The British people put their trust in this Labour government because they knew that we – they knew that I – would never take risks with the public finances.' The use of 'I' instead of 'we' indicated, rightly, that one woman will claim full credit if her economic plan works – and will be swiftly disposed of if it fails.
Telegraph
25-03-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
George Osborne: I wish I'd been brave enough to turn pensions into Isas
George Osborne wanted to turn pensions into Isas when he was chancellor but got 'scared off' by his Conservative colleagues, he has revealed. Speaking on his Political Currency podcast, which he hosts with Ed Balls, Mr Osborne said he explored plans to scrap upfront tax relief on pensions in favour of making withdrawals tax-free, in a similar way to how Isas operate. Mr Osborne attracted criticism before the 2016 Budget for the rumoured proposals, with experts warning it would affect people's motivation to save for retirement. Reflecting on his time in No 11, however, Mr Osborne said he wished he'd been brave enough to make the change and 'radically simplify' pension saving. Mr Osborne became chancellor in 2010 and is well-known for implementing the 'pension freedoms', which were announced without warning in the 2014 Budget. The reforms offered people more choice over how to access their pensions and removed the requirement to purchase a guaranteed income for life, known as an annuity. Responding to a podcast listener's question, he has now confirmed that he wanted to go one step further by reversing the existing system of providing tax relief on pension savings and charging it on withdrawals. Mr Osbourne said: 'One of the Budgets I'm proudest of, of the eight I gave, was the one in 2014 where, out of the blue, we unveiled this radical reform of pensions and said that people didn't have to buy annuities and it completely changed the savings landscape. 'But there was actually another big change I wanted to make in a subsequent Budget, which I got essentially scared off. 'I thought you could turn almost all pensions into Isas. So yes, you save out of your taxed income, but the money that comes out of the pension is tax-free, i.e. it can accumulate over your life if you invest in the stock market as people generally should over a long period, you could really benefit from it.' He went on to explain why he'd moved away from the idea. He said: 'I know [subsequent chancellors] all looked at it and none of them were brave enough to do it, and I wish I'd been brave enough to do it. 'My big mistake was unlike the annuity reform, which came out of the blue, I trailed this a bit and I kind of consulted with the industry, and all the forces of Conservatives and in the industry were like, 'we don't want to do this'.' Mr Osborne also admitted that the move would have boosted the Treasury's revenue during his tenure, but insisted that was not his motivation. He said: 'The really big fiscal wheeze is that essentially you're bringing forward the tax that you would have collected in 40, 50, 60 years' time to now. Instead of people saving tax-free into pensions, they'd have to pay tax on those savings, but the Treasury would lose money in 40 to 50 years' time. 'It would all even out over a long period in our lifetime. But while I was chancellor it would certainly bring in quite a lot of money, but genuinely that was not the reason for doing it, although people suspected that was a motive. I just thought it was a radical simplification.' During the same episode, his co-host, Mr Balls, a former shadow chancellor, said he would make changes to auto-enrolment if he were still in office. Currently, workers aged between 22 and state pension age and earning at least £10,000 must be automatically enroled into a pension. Workers pay at least 5pc, with employers adding a minimum of 3pc. However, Mr Balls said the contribution rate needed to increase and that the system should be extended to younger people and the self-employed. He added: 'When you've got a reform which is working, do more of it.' Labour is currently midway through the first of its two-stage pensions review. The second stage was expected to examine automatic enrolment amid concerns people aren't saving enough for retirement, but it has since been indefinitely delayed. The Government has still .
Telegraph
24-03-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
The cash Isa needs to be cut. I've told the Chancellor so myself
Emma Mogford will be answering your questions on her suggested reforms at 1pm today. Get involved in the comments section below. If we are to create the economic growth that is essential for our national prosperity, security and resilience, Rachel Reeves must act now to fix our investment culture. Last week my firm, Premier Miton Investors, sent a letter to No 11 calling for immediate action to be taken in the Spring Statement. These moves can be made without delay and would be fiscally neutral initiatives that deliver substantial, rapid and beneficial changes for the UK economy. As an investment management firm with nearly half of our assets under management invested in the equity capital of 418 UK-listed companies of all sizes, we strongly support reform for the UK's long-term domestic savings and investment sectors. The Government is keenly aware of the challenges we face, and these four actions would deliver strong benefits to our economy. Limit cash Isas Limiting the future tax benefit to £5,000 would significantly reduce the almost £300bn allocation to cash within Isas and immediately increase future investment into equities. We share the view expressed by Emma Reynolds, the economic secretary to the Treasury, that by holding on to cash savings, consumers are missing out on substantial potential investment returns, as the graph below shows. There is a significant benefit for both investors and the UK economy from this cash being invested in more productive assets. However, to avoid the risk that a large proportion of switched savings would be invested into overseas equities, we propose an incentive to invest those savings in a manner that benefits UK businesses and our economy. Focus Isa equity allocation on the UK Limiting all future equity Isa contributions to UK-listed equities, UK domiciled funds that invest at least 80pc in UK equities, UK listed funds and UK Government gilts would provide a significant increase in the proportion of savings invested at home. This does not prevent any individual investing in foreign companies but it improves the allocation to domestic investment, supports a flourishing UK equity market and is far better for the economy as a whole and the country in the long term. The tax cost of making this change is nil. The administrative changes involved are minimal and the benefits are potentially significant. This would not only lift valuations, making it more attractive and easier for firms to raise capital for both organic growth and growth via acquisitions, but support job creation across a range of industries. It would also boost the associated professional services sectors, which is an area of strategic focus for the UK, and bolster the number and size of IPOs in the UK market, further adding to GDP growth. The purpose of tax wrappers should be to encourage savings, enhance returns and provide incentives for long-term investment in productive assets. Directing more of the UK's savings into UK companies would help to deliver a significant boost to economic growth, to employment and the tax revenues to be invested into UK services – things I'm sure we would all like to see. Above all, this sort of action would send a strong signal to international capital markets and UK businesses of the Government's intent and commitment to creating a vibrant and resilient domestic investment market. Saving behaviours are best changed with incentives and there are two key methods we want the Government to consider: Removing stamp duty on buying UK equities We recognise stamp duty raised £3.3bn in 2023 in much-needed tax revenue. However, the potential benefits of reducing UK companies' cost of capital and encouraging domestic investment would be an even bigger economic boost. A staggered approach, such as eliminating stamp duty on buying equity in small companies, as in France, or on small transactions, could be considered a step towards full elimination. An intermediate step may be to remove stamp duty on smaller company transactions by removing it from all companies outside the FTSE 350. This would provide a much-needed boost to an area of the market that has been under significant selling pressure for some time, thereby encouraging investment in the most dynamic area of the market. Reintroduce dividend tax credits The abolition of the dividend tax credit in 1997 was a significant contributing factor to the reduction in allocation by pensions to UK equities. We recognise this is a more costly option, but the benefits could be the most significant and long lasting of all these changes, as it would incentivise large institutional investors to put the enormous pools of UK savings they steward into the best of British businesses. The graph below shows the woeful level of pension investments allocated to domestic funds. We believe there is a genuine appetite for further reform to our domestic savings and investment sector. Provided we do this well, we are on the cusp of the most impactful set of changes in 40 years.
