NatWest-RBS banking problems: Millions can't get wages as meltdown enters second day. By Ed Monk and Andrew Oxlade Published: 07:30 GMT, 22 June 2012 | Updated: 08:29 GMT, 23 June 2012 The computer meltdown at NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland, which left millions unable to access their salaries, could stretch into next week it emerged today.
The banking group will open 1,000 branches on Sunday, from 9am to midday, as millions of people are unable to receive money or pay bills because of an ongoing technical crash. Doors were also kept open until 7pm on Friday and until 6pm today because a huge number of transactions failed to go through properly. The problems with account access now rank as one of the worst technical failures at a British bank. Enlarge NatWest online banking meltdown: Millions of customers unable to move money or pay bills as accounts freeze Up to 12 million people have been affected by the major computer error which was triggered when a software upgrade was being installed to the payment system.
Nearly 10,000 homes repossessed in first three months of 2012 - Home News - UK. This was identical to the same period of 2011, but up ten per cent on the previous quarter.
The CML described the situation as “stable”, and suggested it might lower its forecast for the year as a whole in the summer. It had predicted that repossessions would reach 45,000 in 2012. But housing charities warned that rising mortgage rates could see repossessions rise. More than a million homeowners saw their mortgage rates rise earlier this month following a string of increases announced by lenders, blaming the weak economy and the increased cost of funding a mortgage. Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said: “With many lenders raising interest rates, hundreds of thousands of struggling homeowners will be worrying how they will cope with an increase in mortgage costs.” UK addicted to sleeping pills: Stress-related insomnia on rise since start of the economic crunch. NHS spending £50million a year on the drugsThat's a rise of one-sixth over the past three yearsExperts fear patients may be getting hooked By Sophie Borland Published: 23:11 GMT, 10 May 2012 | Updated: 07:06 GMT, 11 May 2012.
Stripping under-25s of benefits will knock young families off career ladder, claims Labour. Sorry Nick Clegg – social mobility and austerity just don't mix. When Nick Clegg announced a drive for social mobility at the weekend, based on the pupil premium for children on free school meals, he was articulating a goal supported across the political spectrum.
In his foreword to the coalition's social mobility strategy, published last year, Clegg writes that "tackling the opportunity deficit – creating an open, socially mobile society – is our guiding purpose". The same document boasts of "adopt[ing] a ruthlessly evidence-based approach, channelling effort and finance in the ways most likely to impact positively on social mobility". Social mobility shows a strong tendency to be higher in societies with smaller income differences between rich and poor. This is a strong and statistically significant correlation that has become stronger still as good-quality, comparable data on intergenerational income mobility becomes available for more countries.
Olympics made no boon to UK small firms. Small British companies say the government is shutting them out of the Olympics trade boost despite earlier ‘selling’ the games to taxpayers as an economic boon.
Chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses John Walker said London Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) is keeping a disproportionately hard grip on the copy right matters surrounding the games effectively blocking smaller business from sharing the financial benefits the Olympics is expected to bring in. Landlords 'evicting tenants' to make Olympic profit.
8 May 2012Last updated at 06:59 ET Tenant Ninna Thorhuge: "Everything is done in the name of the Olympics" Tenants in east London are being evicted from their homes as landlords attempt to cash in on the Olympics, BBC News has learned.
Desperate jobseeker sets himself alight outside Selly Oak jobcentre. A DESPERATE job seeker set himself alight outside a Birmingham Jobcentre in an alleged row over his benefit payments.
Horrified eyewitnesses saw the man douse himself in flammable liquid after tying himself to railings at the Jobcentre Plus in Harborne Lane, Selly Oak, at around 9.20am. Cops rushed to the aid of the 48-year-old man and sprayed him with fire extinguishers after he suffered burns to his lower legs. The building remained closed throughout the day and claimants were told that payments would be made directly to banks. C. Cryn Johannsen: The Ones We've Lost: The Student Loan Debt Suicides. This story was produced by the independent Economic Hardship Reporting Project, co-edited by Barbara Ehrenreich and Gary Rivlin.
One evening in 2007, Jan Yoder of Normal, Illinois noticed that her son Jason seemed more despondent than usual. Yoder had been a graduate student in organic chemistry at Illinois State University but after incurring $100,000 in student loan debt, he struggled to find a job in his field. Later that night, Jason, 35, left the family's mobile home. Concerned about her son's mood, Jan Yoder decided in the early morning hours to go look for him on campus, where a professor she ran into joined her in the search.