The new prime minister, Andy Burnham, made his first formal statement to the House of Commons on 1 September 2026, promising to lift the prospects of people in every part of the country. ‘We can make this next decade better than the last,’ he told MPs, setting out a tone of broad ambition for his administration.The Andy Burnham Commons address was brief in its formal delivery but wide in its stated intent. Speaking directly to elected members, he framed his government’s mission in terms of place as much as policy, pledging that no community would be left behind in the…
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.
First Minister John Swinney’s Swinney NHS health board reforms could reduce the number of territorial health boards on mainland Scotland from 14 to just two, under plans to be set out in his programme for government at Holyrood on 1 September 2026.The programme for government is Scotland’s equivalent of a legislative agenda, setting out the policies a government intends to pursue over the coming year. Swinney is due to present it to MSPs at the Scottish Parliament at 15:00, with public service reform and efficiency savings at its core.What the Swinney NHS health board reforms would mean in practiceScotland currently…
Peterborough bed poverty is leaving children sleeping on piles of clothes and bare floors, according to a local furniture bank that plans to spend £80,000 this year on beds and mattresses for families in need. The charity, Care Zone, described scenes of families of five sharing a single room with nowhere to cook and no proper place to sleep. ‘Many children are sleeping on a pile of clothes, or maybe just on the hard floor,’ said Ashley Wilcox from Care Zone. ‘That’s not good enough.’ What Care Zone does and who runs it Care Zone operates from a warehouse on…
The Larak Island US strike, in which American forces destroyed two Iranian rocket launchers on Sunday, has set off a fresh exchange of hostilities in the seven-month-old war, with Iran retaliating by attacking two American bases in Jordan on Monday and President Donald Trump vowing that Tehran would be hit ‘hard’.The small island sits in the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway that, according to NBC News, carried 20% of the world’s oil before the war began. Iran has used it as a chokepoint, reportedly requiring tanker crews to divert past the island for inspections and, according to BBC News, forcing…
Andrew Bailey has warned G20 finance ministers that artificial intelligence poses a serious threat to global economic stability, cautioning that a collapse in AI sector growth could trigger a market correction that ripples across the world. The Bank of England governor delivered the Andrew Bailey AI warning in an open letter to finance ministers in the US, ahead of G20 meetings scheduled for Asheville, North Carolina, running from 31 August to 1 September, Startup Fortune reports.Bailey was writing in his capacity as chairman of the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a global watchdog that monitors finance ministry officials, banks and securities…
The Scotland food price cap proposed by First Minister John Swinney has been condemned as unworkable by 23 business organisations, who have written a joint letter urging him to drop the policy before he sets out his programme for government. The signatories, drawn from retail, food and drink production, manufacturing, and distribution, argue that a statutory cap would do nothing to fix the underlying reasons food costs so much.The Scottish National Party (SNP) made the policy a manifesto commitment, pledging to compel large supermarkets to limit the price of essential items such as milk, eggs, cheese, and rice. Swinney has…
The Canada Investment Summit is shaping up as a defining moment in Prime Minister Carney’s effort to reorient the country’s economy away from the United States, as a deepening trade war between the two neighbours continues to cost jobs and squeeze household budgets on both sides of the border.The dispute has been running since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and launched a sweeping global tariffs programme. Canada was among the first countries targeted, and has been one of the few to respond with its own counter-measures. The US has placed levies on Canadian steel, aluminium, lumber and…
Oil prices climbed sharply on Monday after the US strike on Larak Island, in which American forces destroyed two Iranian rocket launchers on Sunday, raising fears of wider supply disruptions through one of the world’s most critical energy corridors.Brent crude, the international benchmark, gained 1.54% to $89.46 a barrel for November delivery. US West Texas Intermediate futures for October rose 1.44% to $84.60 per barrel. The moves came as traders weighed the risk of further conflict in the Middle East affecting oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway through which a large share of global energy shipments…
A federal lawsuit against the businessman behind the Freedom Fuel Network alleges that nearly $4 million worth of fuel was never paid for, raising questions about how the chain managed to sell petrol at steeply discounted prices that drew praise from President Donald Trump. The Freedom Fuel Network lawsuit, filed on 19 August by Georgia-based Mansfield Oil, names Syed Kazmi and his company KRSM as defendants. The chain made headlines in early July when Trump used its discounted fuel promotion as evidence that American consumers would soon see ‘record low prices’ at the pump. At 25 stations across Pennsylvania and…
The Kiwi Fruit is Cute crowdfunder has been launched by a Cheltenham crafting shop to raise £5,000 after a forced relocation sent its overheads soaring, leaving its three founders subsidising the business from their own pockets.The shop, based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, hosts community drop-in sessions and charity events, and has built a following through its Make & Mingle gatherings, where people travel from across the area to knit, sew or craft together in a group setting rather than alone at home.A move that changed everythingThe Kiwi Fruit is Cute opened in August 2024, according to a Reddit thread on the…
