BRACE YOURSELVES
Chaos for Brits as Rachel Reeves’s Budget hike on employers’ costs is set ‘to shut even more dental practices’
The average surgery is now facing an extra £30,000 in costs
MORE Brits are facing pulling their own teeth out — as the hike on employers’ costs is set to prove a pain for dentists.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is already facing fury over her £25billion Budget raid on firms by hiking National Insurance Contributions and lowering the threshold at which they kick in.
But for dentists the rise is said to be an “existential threat to services”.
The industry is already in crisis — with 13 million Brits unable to get an appointment — while 97 per cent of new patients trying to access NHS dental care in the last year were unsuccessful.
But the average surgery is now facing an extra £30,000 in costs.
The British Dental Association warned that NHS providers cannot access an employment allowance set up to soften the blow for small businesses.
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It said hundreds are already running at a loss and the extra burden “will push more of them closer to the brink with no choice other than to move away from NHS services”.
The dental group said it will lead to price hikes for patients — and raise wait times for those in need.
A spokesman for the organisation said yesterday: “We already are seeing people ripping out their own teeth or being tricked by scammers because they’re desperate.
"This is going to get much worse these extra costs are the nail in the coffin for many dental providers.”
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In a letter sent to Ms Reeves it argues Labour has gone back on its promise of rebuilding dentistry by “recycling existing budgets” and failing to “reflect the soaring expenses colleagues now face”.
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I grew up in a council house and now run a £1.2bn business - Labour’s Budget will destroy family businesses and cut wages
UK's £45m for Snow White
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DISNEY’S woke new version of Snow White received £45million in British taxpayers’ cash, documents reveal.
The live-action reimagining, due out in March, has cost Disney £217.7million in production already, company filings show.
It was made at Pinewood Studios, near Iver, Bucks, directly employing 419 people over the last two years.
Disney benefited from generous government tax credits that allowed it to recover a quarter of the amount it spent, provided the UK accounts for at least 10 per cent of the production’s total costs.
The tax boost comes as Disney is due to announce on Thursday it made £17billion in revenues in the last three months.
Film studios argue that tax credits make the UK a more attractive destination for investment and Labour has committed to maintaining them.
Disney said that in the last five years it had invested £3.5billion into the UK, directly supporting 32,000 jobs on a variety of film and streaming projects.
The firm’s new version of Snow White has already been engulfed in racism, sexism and political rows — including stars Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot at loggerheads on social media over their opposing views on the Israel-Hamas war.
Zegler also infuriated fans by calling the original 1937 animated movie “creepy” and referring to Prince Charming as a “stalker”.
Crypto's Trumped FTSE100
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DONALD Trump’s victory in the US Presidential election has sent the cryptocurrency market’s value surging above the total of London’s FTSE 100.
Bitcoin surged above $84,000 for the first time yesterday, pushing the total value of all cryptocurrencies to $2.77trillion in anticipation of a more crypto-friendly environment in Washington.
That is higher than the combined value of London’s top 100 listed companies at £2.09trillion ($2.69trillion).
Mr Trump accepted millions of dollars of crypto donations during his campaign trail and in September he and his children started their own crypto business called World Liberty Financial.
Bitcoin is still unregulated in the UK, meaning investors are highly vulnerable to losses. Two years ago investors lost more than $2trillion when Bitcoin’s value lost 70 per cent in six months.
Two-tier pay rises
PAY awards for public sector workers are set to overtake the private sector’s for the first time in four years, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Public wage rises are tipped to climb from 2.5 per cent to 5 per cent in the next three months, while private awards are expected to be 3 per cent.
It follows warnings that private companies will have to limit pay rises for staff due to extra employment costs.
Direct jobs axe
DIRECT LINE has revealed plans to axe around 550 jobs as its new boss grapples with a turnaround of the insurer.
The firm wants to save £50million in costs by 2025 and the cuts are equivalent to more than 5 per cent of its 9,000 workforce.
It comes as the firm said it lost 71,000 motor insurance customers in the last three months.
CEO Adam Winslow said: “We are in the early stages of a significant turnaround and our third-quarter trading is not yet fully reflective of the actions we have taken.”
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Bank's buyback
NATWEST has taken another step towards privatisation after buying back £1billion of stocks from the Government.
It bought 263million shares at 380.8p each — cutting the taxpayer’s stake from 14.8 per cent to around 11.4 per cent.
It is a legacy of the 84 per cent stake in the bank, then known as Royal Bank of Scotland, after a bailout in the 2008 financial crisis.
Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt had considered a discounted share sale to ordinary Brits to offload the shares but Labour ruled that out.
HEATHROW is on track for a record year, as Europe’s busiest airport had more than 7.2million passengers travelling last month.
The airport now expects to handle a record 83.8 million in 2024, more than its 80.9 million pre-pandemic record in 2019.
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