‘Estate agent sent me a £4,000 bill even though it did nothing to sell my home’
Has a company treated you unfairly? Our Consumer Champion is available to help. For how to contact her click here. Dear Katie, I decided to move into a…
Homes selling twice as fast as normal this year
Homes have sold twice as fast as normal this month as the property boom continues despite soaring inflation and rising interest rates. Desperate buyers agreed purchases in…
Owning a car is now £500 more expensive
Insurance premiums rose at the beginning of the year when the Financial Conduct Authority, the City watchdog, banned the so-called “loyalty penalty”, preventing insurers from offering cheaper…
The new threat to landlords’ profits
“Suburban renting accounts for the largest proportion of renters in every region apart from London,” said Nick Whitten of JLL. These homes account for around 60pc of…
Money Makeover: ‘Can I retire early and travel the world in business class?’
A house by the beach and sunny trips abroad sound like the retirement dream for so many in their later years. Christopher D’Souza, a 58-year-old from London…
Finally, an electric car for the real world?
Schäfer stresses that this was no hypermiling exercise, in which professional economy drivers eke out the last drop of petrol or watt of power. “The car had…
I talked my wife into getting a puppy – and now I’m lumbered with looking after it
Six months ago, after two years of lobbying, I finally talked my wife into getting a puppy. I have such fond memories of the black labrador I grew…
Lola Bute: ‘I wouldn’t wish the pain of grief on my worst enemy’
In the March of 2020, just before the country was plunged into lockdown, Lola Bute was already in turmoil; grieving her boyfriend, Kai Schachter, who had taken…
What no one tells you about morning sickness during pregnancy
Learning she was pregnant, almost seven years ago, Charlotte Howden felt happy and excited. She even hoped for a touch of pregnancy nausea and sickness, “because we’re…
‘When women can’t access HRT, it can reach the point where they take their own lives’
In the meantime, moreover, what are women doing to make their lives bearable if they cannot get hold of the oestrogen gels, sprays or patches they need…
21 signs you are suffering from early onset midlife
You may have been surprised to see that Liam Gallagher’s potential hip replacements (he needs two, apparently) made the headlines. The former Oasis frontman’s arthritic joints knocked…
I’m all for new hobbies – but I will always prefer sex to sewing machines
From learning how to use a sewing machine to sexual exploration, I have taken up several new hobbies in midlife. You could argue that sex isn’t a…
I can’t imagine anything worse than a summer with my in-laws
Nearly everyone that I know is getting excited and making plans for a summer holiday. I would like to be as well but currently there’s an ongoing…
Being in denial can’t stop ageing, so start embracing it
Dr Becca Levy is a Yale professor and the author of the new book Breaking The Age Code, which examines how your beliefs about ageing will determine…
We can make the Commonwealth a real global power
What becomes of the Commonwealth should one of its 15 members that is not a republic join those 39 others which are? With Jamaica considering such a…
Labour is in dire need of an Ed Balls figure
Ed Balls’s decision not to contest the forthcoming Wakefield by-election for the Labour Party could yet be seen, in hindsight, as bad news for his Party. Since…
It’s not over for Macron
Imagine if Brenda from Bristol was Brenda from Bordeaux. Having voted in two rounds of the French presidential election, she would now face two more rounds of…
Marine Le Pen has been a disaster for the French Right
Is Marine Le Pen an extremist or a fascist, the insults routinely hurled at the leader of France’s National Rally? Frankly, it is not even clear which…
We must decrease our reliance on Russia in any way we can
Every morning when I look out of my bedroom window I see the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag flying from the Norman Tower. The terrible and largely senseless killings in…
No, the British countryside isn’t racist
It is just over 90 years since a group of young workers, some of them communists, decided to stake a claim to the countryside by staging a…
Disney vs Florida is a cautionary tale about pointless virtue signalling
It’s a morality tale in itself. The story of a vainglorious and hypocritical king whose over-polished halo has become a dead weight – impeding all logic –…
Press freedom should not be subject to the whims of MPs
The House of Commons will today hold a general debate on Ukraine, the first for several weeks. It is right that the military, diplomatic and political implications…
China’s latest Covid lunacy will soon be felt around the world
The ongoing madness that underpins China’s zero-Covid strategy continues to wreak havoc in the People’s Republic and will soon be felt around the world. The weeks-long lockdowns…
Ukraine’s struggle makes the West look decadent
I am writing from Ukraine, only please don’t tell my mother. She thinks I’m at a stag do in Krakow. I came to report on Easter in…
Tight trousers and bare ankles won’t throw Priti Patel off her Rwandan plan
I was in Ukraine at the weekend and the talk of the air-raid shelter was that someone had been accused of distracting Tories with their legs in…