Archive for February, 2010
Wide disparity in rates increases: Public Finance
Northern Ireland’s 26 district councils have agreed their domestic and non-domestic rates for 2010/11, with variations in the increases imposed ranging from zero to more than 8%.
Dungannon & South Tyrone Borough Council has avoided any rise in either category, while Moyle District Council has increased domestic rates by a mere 0.03% and non-domestic by just [...]
Icelandic legacy: Local Government Chronicle
Iceland may not have changed everything as far as local government investment policies are concerned. But the collapse of the country’s three banks certainly had a big effect on councils, their finance directors and elected members, who have no intention of being caught-out the same way again.
CIPFA responded to the Iceland-related crisis by revising guidance [...]
Shine a light: Belfast Telegraph
Often the best business ideas come from trying to overcome challenges that seem to have no existing commercial solution. This was the case with Shane Meehan, founder and partner of Newry’s Media Lightbox.
“I was working in marketing at the time and the idea came from a problem we had in finding images and distributing them,” [...]
Taking the water: Belfast Telegraph
It might be thought that water is self-evidently a healthy drink. But various scares have led to some consumers questioning this.
First there was the Perrier Water crisis, when traces of benzene were found in some bottles. Harmful bacteria entered the tap water supply in various parts of the Republic. And there have been allegations about [...]
Northern Ireland customers face top credit card rates: Belfast Telegraph
Northern Ireland consumers using Northern Bank credit cards may be paying the highest interest charges applying anywhere on the UK credit card market – an astonishing 100 times the base rate set by the Bank of England.
According to analysis from Moneyfacts, Northern Bank charges 48.9% interest on its Platinum Mastercard. This gives it the [...]
Cooking up success: Belfast Telegraph
Fine dining doesn’t require fine restaurants. As the recession has hit incomes, so more people have turned to home cooking and the Chef Shop has benefited as a result.
Vincent McKenna, himself an experienced chef, opened his first Chef Shop in Belfast 12 years ago, selling high quality cooking equipment. And his business has steadily expanded [...]
Financial mutuals face troubled times: Co-operative News
Skipton Building Society’s decision to increase its mortgage lending rate is a sign of how badly hit some financial mutuals are in the current, continuing, crisis. Skipton has just increases its Standard Variable Rate from 3.5% to 4.95%.
This is a substantial increase, particularly in a period when the Bank of England base rate is a [...]
Questions of Cash: ‘Santander compensation was pitiful’: The Independent
Q. I have banked with Abbey - now Santander - for over 14 years, but I recently transferred to NatWest using a switching service which made contact with all my direct debits including, they claimed, for my Santander loans. But Santander wrote to me saying it had not received loan repayments. NatWest said it had [...]
Questions of Cash: ‘Can NHS claim back my pension overpayment?’: The Independent
Q. I received a letter from the NHS pension fund last July stating that my last NHS employer had notified them of a change to my total pensionable pay at retirement. This meant that my monthly pension was being reduced and that I had been over-paid on my lump sum and monthly pension amounting to [...]
Kicking the credit card habit: Belfast Telegraph
The big problem with relying on credit cards was dramatically highlighted last week by the report by Moneyfacts showing that several card issuers charge over 30% interest at a time when the bank rate is a mere 0.50%. Credit on cards has become more expensive, even while money has – theoretically – got cheaper.
What received [...]
