Former Wessex Water boss received £170,000 bonus despite ban on performance pay

The former chief executive of Wessex Water received a £170,000 bonus from its parent company last year despite a ban on performance-related pay after criminal pollution failures on his watch.Colin Skellett received a total of £693,000 in pay from the water company’s Malaysian-owned parent company, YTL Utilities (UK), including the bonus, according to its accounts up to June 2025.The bonus prompted strong criticism from the Liberal Democrats, which said it showed that the government’s bonus ban was “nowhere near strong enough”.Wessex was banned from paying bonuses for the year after it was criminally convicted in November 2024 for a sewage pumping station failure six years earlier, which killed more than 2,000 fish and resulted in the company paying a fine of £500,000. In June the government banned bonuses covering the 2024-25 financial year for the chief executives and finance bosses of Wessex and five other companies

US capitalism casts millions of citizens aside, yet Badenoch and Farage still laud it | Phillip Inman

Next month, Donald Trump will welcome a poverty-stricken family to peruse his plans for a $300m glitzy state ballroom in the White House. The event will be staged as part of National Poverty in America Awareness Month, the time every year when charities document the number of US residents surviving on low incomes.Of course, the president will do no such thing, preferring to summon the press to watch him rub shoulders with the billionaire class as he did at last month’s black tie dinner for the Saudi ruler and his entourage.Trump can be expected to ignore calls for policies to reduce poverty and to dismiss the annual awareness campaign, leaving him unencumbered by any guilt that past presidents might have felt looking in the mirror and seeing Louis XIV starring back at them.US poverty levels matter in the UK and across continental Europe because the rising level of poverty in the States – a trend that dates back to the turn of the century – is the direct result of a particular form of capitalism that increasingly popular rightwing parties say should be adopted

No longer ‘unloved’: retailers investing more in physical stores, UK data shows

UK retailers are investing more in bricks and mortar, with shopping centres and food stores leading a revival, according to research.Retailers and property investors are reallocating capital back into physical stores, according to the property group Knight Frank.The switch represents a fillip for high streets and shopping centres after a difficult decade, which culminated in the shutdown of most stores during pandemic lockdowns and an accompanying surge in online shopping.The growth in online retail has fallen back and flatlined at between 26% and 28% of overall retail sales since a peak of 35% in mid-2020.Retail has outperformed all other types of commercial property this year, with 9

Shoppers shun UK high streets despite lure of Boxing Day sales

Fewer shoppers have headed to UK high streets in search of Boxing Day bargains, with central London suffering a significant decline in visitors as many decided to shun the traditional start of the sales.Footfall at the country’s high streets and shopping centres fell on Friday morning, running slightly behind last year, according to figures from the monitoring company MRI Software. Across all UK retail destinations footfall slipped by 0.3%.Following on from a decline in Boxing Day activity in 2024, there were 2

AI boom adds more than half a trillion dollars to wealth of US tech barons in 2025

A stock market boom in artificial intelligence companies has added more than half a trillion dollars to the wealth of America’s tech barons in the past year, data shows.The top 10 US founders and bosses of some of the world’s largest technology companies saw their finances swell to nearly $2.5tn, up from $1.9tn, in the year to Christmas Eve, according to figures from Bloomberg.Elon Musk, already the world’s richest man, has again proved to be one of biggest winners as the AI gold-rush has pushed US stock markets to record highs

VIP viewing: cinemas bet on luxury bars and beds to usher in a new film era

From champagne coolers to front row VIP beds, cinema owners are investing heavily in premium experiences as the industry gets its box office mojo back.As the third instalment in James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar series pulls in the Christmas holiday crowds, the UK box office is expected to surpass £1bn in 2025 for the first time since before the global Covid pandemic.Amid financially testing times – with the pace of a hoped-for box office recovery derailed by the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes – cinema owners have focused on reinventing the movie-going experience to win back film fans.“We are rolling out 200 of our Ultra Lux seats, which have a built-in champagne or wine cooler, each day across Europe,” says Tim Richards, chief executive and founder of the Vue cinema chain. “Our ‘worst’ seat in the house is a leather recliner, and it is amazingly comfortable