All posts tagged: hammerblow

Rachel Reeves hammerblow as JCB threatens to quit Britain | UK | News

Rachel Reeves hammerblow as JCB threatens to quit Britain | UK | News

The heir to JCB’s vast manufacturing empire has warned Rachel Reeves’s Inheritance Tax policy could force the UK-based business to move to America. From April, only the first £2.5m of a business’s assets is eligible for tax relief after the owner’s death; the rest is taxed at 20%. But JCB chairman Lord Bamford’s son, Jo, says Britain risks losing one of its major success stories to the US due to the US’s more favourable tax rates. He said the family tax is a “real problem” and the firm, quite is headquartered in Staffordshire, could “quite easily become an American business”. He told City AM: “I love being in Britain. “I love being here. I love our factories. But I would say to a political party of any stripe, there’s only so much you can ultimately do.” Mr Bamford, who is on the board of the company his grandfather founded in 1945, said JCB could consider leaving Britain due to the inheritance tax levies faced by family businesses under Labour. The threshold had initially been set …

Tube strike hammerblow for Londoners as RMT drivers vote massively in favour of walkout over four-day week

Tube strike hammerblow for Londoners as RMT drivers vote massively in favour of walkout over four-day week

Tube drivers have voted massively in favour of going on strike in a bid to block the introduction of a four-day working week. No strike dates have been announced yet but a walkout of drivers who belong to the RMT union would cause massive disruption to the London Underground, though may not result in a total shutdown. RMT bosses have to give Transport for London two weeks’ notice of any strike action – meaning the earliest a walkout could take place would be mid-March, as no announcement is expected from the union today (Friday, February 27). The RMT opposes the way TfL is proposing to introduce a voluntary four-day week for Tube drivers because it would lengthen the working day and raise concerns about fatigue. But rival Tube drivers’ union Aslef is strongly in favour of the plans, which it regards as the “biggest improvement in working conditions for Underground train drivers in decades” and it would result in the equivalent of more than a month off. A total of 1,082 RMT Tube drivers voted …