A Cambridgeshire homeowner says he suspected the Warm Homes Local Grant scheme was a scam right up until the work was finished and the paperwork landed in his hands. David Brain, from Wisbech, had solar panels installed at no cost through the scheme, and says his electricity bill has since fallen to 2p a day. But the councils delivering the programme in the county have now exhausted their £3.5 million allocation and are asking the government for more.The warm homes local grant is aimed at households in England with an energy performance certificate rating of D or below and an…
Author: Helen Rourke
Helen Rourke
Helen Rourke trained as a chartered accountant and spent fourteen years in financial services before starting to write. She qualified at a mid-tier firm, moved in-house to a media company's finance team, and spent her last years as a finance director at a creative agency, which gave her an unusual vantage point on both sides of the balance sheet. She writes about personal finance, tax, pensions, and the money questions people ask at dinner parties but never ask their accountant. She explains numbers without condescension and has no interest in making simple things sound complicated. Helen lives in North London. She files her own tax return on the first day it opens and considers this a character flaw.
Virgin has moved a step closer to launching its own passenger services through the Channel Tunnel after securing Virgin Channel Tunnel track access from the rail regulator, in what could end Eurostar’s three-decade monopoly on the route. The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) granted the approval, which covers up to 20 daily return services between London and Paris, Brussels or Amsterdam, running from 1 October 2030 to 31 December 2040.The ORR called the decision ‘a significant step forward’ in introducing competition on a route that Eurostar has operated without a rival since the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994. For…
The Iran US nuclear deal deadline expired on Monday with no agreement in sight, as Iran’s Foreign Ministry ruled out extending talks and threatened to abandon its defensive diplomatic posture, pushing crude oil prices higher.The standoff centres on a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed by Washington and Tehran on 17 June. The agreement was designed to open the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes for oil, while the two sides spent 60 days negotiating a final accord on Iran’s nuclear programme. That two-month window closed on Monday.Tehran says the US broke the deal firstIran’s Foreign…
Shares in Vista Energy jumped in premarket trading on Monday after a regulatory filing revealed a Peter Thiel Vista Energy stake worth about $76 million, held through his hedge fund Thiel Macro LLC.The filing, published on Friday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, showed Thiel Macro owned almost 1.2 million American Depository Shares in the Argentine shale oil producer as of the second quarter ending 30 June. Vista Energy was last seen up 5.4% in premarket trading on Monday.Peter Thiel Vista Energy stake stands out in a U.S.-heavy portfolioVista is the largest independent energy company in Argentina, operating out…
Smart lighting is often presented as one of the simplest ways to upgrade a home. Change the switch, connect it to an app and suddenly the lights can be controlled from a phone, included in routines or operated by voice. For plenty of households, it can be relatively straightforward. For others, removing the existing light switch reveals a problem that wasn’t obvious beforehand: there may be no neutral conductor at the switch position. It is a common source of confusion when people start looking at smart lighting, particularly in older properties, because a conventional light switch and a smart light…
The Strait of Hormuz shipping halt reached near-total standstill over the weekend as the 60-day ceasefire between the United States and Iran expired on Monday, with diplomacy stalled and no long-term agreement in sight. Just five cargo ships passed through the critical passage on Saturday, according to data from Kpler cited by Reuters, while not a single vessel was recorded on Sunday. The previous weekend had seen 31 ships make the same journey.The strait carries about a fifth of the world’s oil, averaging around 130 vessel transits per day under normal conditions. Overall shipping through the passage is down 90%…
A jury trial that could fundamentally reshape how Instagram and Facebook work for young people got under way this week, as the Meta Instagram Facebook trial moved from pre-hearing manoeuvres into a federal courtroom. Thirty US states, including California and New York, are suing Meta over alleged violations of federal and state privacy laws for children, and the scale of what they are demanding (in money and in platform changes) is unlike anything Meta has faced before.The states are seeking upwards of $1 trillion from the company. More striking in practical terms, they want the court to order sweeping changes…
Updated pub conversion planning rules coming into force in England will make it considerably harder for developers to turn pubs into housing or offices, under changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) published Monday. The NPPF is the document that sets out government planning policies for England and guides how local authorities apply them.Under the revised rules, anyone seeking to convert a pub to a different use must provide evidence that there is no reasonable prospect of keeping a pub business running. That evidence must include proof the property was marketed for sale for at least 12 months. A…
Parents are watering down baby formula to make tins last longer as rising costs push families to the brink, according to a County Durham baby bank that has helped hundreds of households since opening earlier this year.Megan Sinden, founder of Moorside Baby Bank in Consett, said families had told her they were putting less powder in the bottle to stretch a tin for an extra week. ‘Which to me is quite dangerous,’ she said. She is calling for a cap on the price of formula, arguing: ‘It’s not a luxury item, it’s a basic need for a baby.’Why Watering Down…
A mobile game called No 10: Full Confidence has beaten Minecraft to the top of Apple’s paid games chart in the UK, a success that few would have predicted for a title built entirely around the chaos of Westminster politics. The game was made by Benjamin Brewis, a developer based in Manchester.In No 10: Full Confidence, players take on the role of prime minister, working through more than 300 fictional political scenarios handwritten by Brewis himself. The goal is straightforward: stay in power for as long as possible by keeping four factions on side, the cabinet, backbenchers, the media and…
