UK households face a hit of £1,200 next year as stalling wages and rising tax and energy bills cause a “cost of living catastrophe” in the spring, a leading thinktank has warned. Government measures, including the new social care levy on national insurance and the freezing of the personal income tax allowance, will combine with high inflation to make 2022 the “year of the squeeze”, the Resolution Foundation said. – Guardian
Tesco is to launch the first fully-electric HGVs to be used commercially in Britain to serve its distribution centre in Wales. Two 37-tonne lorries will transport goods from a rail freight terminal in Cardiff to the company’s hub in Magor, about 30 miles away, from January. The vehicles can travel about 100 miles on a single charge, making the relatively short distance of the round trip an ideal route to test how further vehicles could be rolled out in the fleet, Britain’s biggest supermarket said. – Guardian
Huge cargo ships carrying liquid gas that were destined for China have changed course and are now heading towards the UK as Europe remains trapped in a major supply crunch. While the Continent’s energy crisis and high prices have attracted ships away from other parts of the world, the new arrivals are now bringing prices down. Benchmark Dutch front-month gas fell for a fifth day yesterday, dropping as much as 9.2pc in Amsterdam. – Telegraph
A hand sanitiser and mobile payments firm is planning a “super app” to help pubs weather the pandemic. The company, called TheUp.co, has raised £7m to expand its network of sanitiser stations, payment hubs and smartphone charging stations to more bars and clubs while including all its services in a new app. Tom Blomfield, the former boss of Monzo bank, is among the backers, alongside Jagermeister and JamJar Investments, the fund created by Innocent Drinks creators Richard Reed, Adam Balon and Jon Wright. – Telegraph
The government is facing growing calls for the introduction of a windfall tax on North Sea profits to transfer some of the pain of the energy crisis from consumers to producers. Dale Vince, founder of the renewable energy provider Ecotricity, yesterday called for oil and gas producers which have made large profits from the surge in wholesale prices to help to pay the bill for companies that have collapsed under the strain. – The Times
Anne Boden, the chief executive of Starling Bank, has been accused by more than 50 fintech company founders of stifling innovation after she said that Britain’s open banking regime had failed. The group, which includes the bosses of the fintech firms LendInvest, Zopa and Nested, wrote to MPs this week describing Boden’s comments during a Treasury select committee hearing as “uncompetitive and typical of banks trying to thwart the future of innovation in financial services”. – The Times
