Britain needs more than 200,000 new homes a year and is building well below 100,000. Yet housebuilders are struggling to find buyers for even this reduced number because people can't get mortgages for more than 80% of the value... more
David Cameron and ministers have given themselves an exemption from the Whitehall jobs freeze for so-called 'vanity posts' on fixed contracts, the Standard can reveal... more
Comment: The election must be viewed as one of the single greatest opportunities to bolster boardrooms with non-executive directors for many a year... more
Husband and wife MPs Andrew Mackay and Julie Kirkbride are forced to repay more than £60,000 as expenses watchdogs finally cracked down on their claims for public money... more
Those MPs who had hoped that memories of the expenses scandal might have subsided in time for the coming election have found that instead this painful episode has been resurrected by Sir Thomas Legg... more
Chris Grigg is in deep trouble. The 49-year-old former banker, who joined British Land as chief executive in January, has lost three members of the eight-strong team which runs the UK’s second-biggest property company day-to-day. It gets worse. The three defectors run the entire retail side of business, which accounts for 56% of the £8.6 billion portfolio.
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David Cameron tried to bind Tory wounds after the MPs expenses furore by offering jobs to old guard figures Peter Lilley, Stephen Dorrell and John Gummer... more
Bonuses may be, er, a bone of contention these days, but at the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership they're handled with all the style and grace you'd expect from the never-knowingly-undersold retailer. ... more
Sound check: German industrial metal band Rammstein literally play with fire in their live performances - and now they are about to unleash their singeing spectacle on London. Watch out for your eyebrows