RBS made a loss of £5.2 billion last year, the fifth consecutive loss since being taken over by the state in 2008, yet it paid out bonuses of £607 million (of taxpayer money). Only last month the bank was fined £381 million for rigging Libor rates and has set aside a further £1.1 billion to pay compensation to customers mis-sold payment protection insurance, …
More like ‘long holiday’ than ‘life’
Anthony Judge, 35, was jailed for life after he admitted kidnapping a schoolgirl at gunpoint as she walked to her friend’s house before raping her twice in a motorway lay-by. He must serve at least six years for the ‘horrific offence’ before being considered for parole.
When is a contract not a contract?
Best answer seems to be, ‘when it is with a bank and favours the customer’. Around 230,000 small business customers in the UK will be affected by Santander’s U-turn relating to accounts originally advertised as ‘free forever’. Small business customers are being told their accounts will now cost between £7.50 and £40 a month, with extra charges levied for paying …
Two ETA members arrested in London
Police in the UK, collaborating with the Spanish national Police, have arrested two ETA members, Antonio Troitiño Arranz and Ignacio Lerín Sánchez. With the new arrests, a total of five wanted ETA members have been detained in the past week.
Sharing porn
In March, Ben Dover Productions won a court order in the UK forcing O2 to pass on details of the owners of 9,124 IP addresses linked to illegal downloads and O2 customers suspected of illegally sharing pornographic films made by Ben Dover Productions will soon begin receiving letters from the film-maker.
No wonder there are queues
Delays of up to two hours continued yesterday. Furious passengers at Terminal 5, which is mostly for British Airways passengers, found only one immigration desk was manned for non-EU passport holders wishing to enter the country. Under a (ludicrous) Whitehall blueprint, it is suggested that airlines would in future pay higher landing fees to help sort out border chaos (and …
Mixed signals
Father who put up his own DIY speed camera told HE could be sued if there are accidents. The Council warned him he could be sued if anyone claimed they were ‘distracted’ or influenced by the ‘camera’. So, according to this, the speed camera is a safety device likely to cause accidents.
Netflix launches in UK and Ireland
The movie and TV streaming service Netflix has launched in the UK and Ireland, although it is set to face stiff competition from online rivals, including Amazon-owned Lovefilm.
World Pasty Championships
Cornwall will be the destination for many cooks from around the world in March for the very first World Pasty Championships at the Eden Project in St Austell.
Getting connected
A report by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency, shows that more than 100 million European Union citizens have never been online. In the UK, Martha Lane Fox has been given the task of getting the 8.7 million adults in the UK who have never used the internet to go online for the first time and recently launched a campaign, part …