‘I have saved exactly £0’: how soaring costs have hit Britons’ nest eggs and pensions

Andrew, a writer in his mid-30s from Essex, would be considered middle class by most, but his financial setup is precarious.“I have £4k in my savings account, and around £4k in stocks and shares. With a mortgage, childcare fees and other living expenses to cover, our monthly outgoings are always at least £2,800. Our savings would quickly vanish if our household income ceased,” he said.Andrew has managed to save £30,000 into a workplace pension, but feels unable to continue saving at the moment

Zip wires, darts, wild swimming: why shopping centres are trying new ways to bring in customers

There was a time when the most active thing to do at a shopping centre was jostle to the front of the queue at Primark. These days, however, developers are bringing in sport and health-related activities from zip wires to cricket, football, rock climbing and even wild swimming to draw in consumers and use space no longer wanted by retailers.While the trend for competitive socialising, such as crazy golf, darts or bowling is well established and gyms are commonplace in shopping centres, landlords are getting more creative and adventurous in the type of activity they are offering as they battle lacklustre interest in physical shopping.The activities are varied: Toca Social hosts diners watching and playing football in three shopping malls. US group Five Iron, which blends hi-tech golf simulators and coaching with a bar, has signed up for the first of at least 10 UK sites, at Broadgate in central London

About 1m Ford diesel cars sold in UK with defective emissions controls, court told

About a million Ford diesel cars were sold in the UK with serious defects in components supposed to curb toxic exhaust emissions, the high court has been told.The highly polluting vehicles were produced and sold between 2016 and 2018 after Ford’s engineers became aware of the issues, and many were never formally recalled or fixed, lawyers said.The claims came in evidence submitted in the legal action on behalf of 1.6 million diesel vehicle owners against five car manufacturers, including Ford, for allegedly using “defeat devices” to cheat emissions tests for nitrogen oxides (NOx).Parts of the emissions control systems as calibrated by Ford were discovered to become less effective when “poisoned” by sulphur in fuel during driving, the court heard

Australia welcomes Trump’s removal of tariffs on beef and other food imports

The Australian government has welcomed the Trump administration’s removal of tariffs on beef and other agricultural exports to the US.After previously insisting his import duties were not fuelling inflation, the US president, Donald Trump, on Saturday morning Australian time signed an executive order reversing tariffs on food imports, including beef, coffee and bananas.Trump, who is facing pressure over rising consumer prices, conceded in the order that “current domestic demand for certain products, and current domestic capacity to produce certain products” had influenced the decision.Last year, meat was Australia’s second largest export to the US, behind only non-monetary gold. Since Trump’s tariff regime came into effect in April, Australian producers have been charged a 10% export duty on most goods, including beef

Global markets struggle after tech sell-off and fears over Chinese economy

Global markets suffered another day of volatile trading after a tech sell-off that fuelled Wall Street’s worst day in a month and weak economic data from China showed an unprecedented slump in investment.The FTSE 100 fell by 1.1% in London, closing down about 100 points at 9,698, as bellwether banking stocks tumbled. Barclays, Lloyds and NatWest slumped between 2.7% and 3

China voices ‘extreme disappointment’ with Dutch minister at centre of car chip row

The Chinese government has expressed “extreme disappointment” with the Dutch minister at the heart of a row over chip supply to the car industry.A spokesperson for the ministry of commerce was responding to a Guardian interview with Vincent Karremans on Thursday in which the politician described the standoff between China and the European Union as a “wake-up call” for western leaders.The spokesperson said: “China has noted the recent remarks made by Dutch minister of economic affairs Karremans in media interviews. China expresses extreme disappointment and strong dissatisfaction with such remarks that confuse right and wrong, distort facts and persist in a single-minded course.“The profound lesson this semiconductor supply chain crisis has taught the world is that administrative measures should not be used to improperly interfere with corporate operations

People in the US: how are your holiday shopping plans being affected by Trump’s tariffs and the cost of living?

We’d like to find out more about your holiday spending plans this year. The New York Times reported on Friday that the Trump administration is pivoting to an affordability message and considering lowering some tariffs rates.The administration has floated policies that would lower prices for coffee and fruit, spoken about a 50-year mortgage proposal, and Trump has mused on social media about giving Americans $2,000 funded by tariff revenue.A Harris poll from September found that 74% of Americans said their monthly household costs had gone up by more than $100.We want to hear from you

Reeves’s plan to ditch income tax rise prompts government bond sell-off

UK bond markets took fright on Friday after it emerged that Rachel Reeves had ditched plans for a manifesto-busting increase in income tax at this month’s autumn budget.On a day of choppy trading in the City, the cost of UK government borrowing rose by the most in a single day since early July, when a tearful appearance by Reeves in parliament spooked investors.The yield – in effect the interest rate – on 10-year government bonds, which are known as gilts, jumped by more than 0.13 percentage points to trade at about 4.575%, the highest level in a month

’Tis the season for dubious TV adverts | Letters

The issues you highlighted in your editorial are real, but please don’t think that advertisers care about them (The Guardian view on the John Lewis Christmas ad: a modern story of fathers and sons, 7 November).This ad is a shameless attempt to make consumers think they are doing something worthwhile in buying overpriced gifts in a failing store that used to share its profits with staff but hasn’t paid them any bonus in the past few years.If anything, the relentless pressure of advertising (where the Christmas season starts earlier each year) only serves to pile more pressure on people who are struggling. The cynicism of these ads – pretending to care while desperately trying to trigger the Pavlovian Christmas shopping response – is truly depressing.Chris LinwardSalford Your editorial’s claim that the new John Lewis Christmas ad was “harking back to the 1990s” and evoked “a less complicated time to be a young man” would be news to anyone who remembers that time as the era of laddism and Loaded, and the underlying unease about men’s emotional lives as shown in novels such as Tim Lott’s White City Blue and Nick Hornby’s About a Boy