Exports from Ireland to Great Britain soared in the first six month since Brexit as imports sent in the opposite direction declined, according to official Irish government figures.

In a sign of post-Brexit imbalances in trade, the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO) said goods exports to GB (excluding Northern Ireland) rose by 20% to €6.7bn (£5.7bn) in the first six months of 2021, an increase of more than €1.1bn compared with the same period in 2020.

However, imports from GB fell by more than €2.5bn, or 32%, to stand at €5.3bn in the same period.

According to the CSO, exports from GB to Ireland decreased by 16% in June compared with the same month in 2020, with food, live animals and manufactured goods hit hardest.

British exporters have been hit harder by Brexit because they faced border checks from 1 January on shipments to the EU, while Irish and EU exporters to Britain have benefited from a phased in approach the UK government opted for...

Global miner BHP is planning a major overhaul, simplifying its company structure and dumping its oil and gas assets into Woodside Petroleum, creating one of the biggest energy producers in the world.

BHP on Tuesday declared a bumper profit due to high iron ore prices, as it announced it will bring together its Australian and UK arms into one company and leave the London Stock Exchange, which could have ramifications for investors.

BHP’s profit soared 42% to reach $US11.3bn in the year to the end of June, driven by record margins of 64% on iron ore from its mines in the Pilbara.

However, the company’s Mt Arthur coalmine in New South Wales is also now a $200m liability after dramatically collapsing in value over the past year amid a gloomy outlook for fossil fuels due to increasing competition from cheap renewable energy.

Unemployment fell in June as workers made redundant during the pandemic appeared to respond to a record rise in vacancies to re-enter the labour market and secure a job.

According to official figures, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.7% in the three months to June, down 0.2 percentage points on the previous quarter. Data for July showed the number of job vacancies passed 1m for the first time on record, the Office for National Statistics said.

The proportion of the working population out of work is still higher than before the pandemic, when unemployment was 3.9%, but the reopening of the economy and the rocketing demand for workers in some industries has pushed up the number of people in work.

Separate figures for July from HMRC also pointed to a strong recovery in the labour market, even as almost 2 million people remained on furlough, after the number of payrolled employees increased by 182,000 to 28.9 million.

The figures beat the forecasts...

Average weekly pay growth in the UK jumped from 7.4% in May to 8.8% in June, the highest since the series began in 2001 and above the Bank of England’s 8.5% forecast.

Ruth Gregory, senior UK economist at Capital Economics, says this

First Cobham, now Ultra Electronics, and Meggitt still to come. The sense of the UK’s defence industry being re-ordered and re-parcelled for the benefit of US private equity players and large US corporates is overwhelming.

While it would be absurd to say takeovers in the sector should never be allowed to happen, the bit that is missing in the current rush of deal-making is any sign of strategic thinking on the part of the UK government.

Does the business department or the Ministry of Defence think it important to have a thriving UK-owned specialist defence industry or not? Is there any point at which it would try to slow the current US-led takeover spree? What was the point of beefing up the government’s powers via the National Security and Investment Act, which comes into force next year?

In its last UK adventure in late-2019, Advent International paid £4bn for Cobham, signed up to the security conditions set by government, and promptly sold half the...

Future, the owner of titles including Country Life and Metal Hammer, has acquired the publisher of magazines including The Week and Minecraft World in a £300m deal.

The deal is the latest in a buying spree by Britain’s biggest magazine publisher, which spent almost £600m buying the comparison site GoCompare in November, and will hand a significant profit to Dennis Publishing’s private equity owners Exponent.

Future is buying a portfolio of 12 titles including the adult and junior versions of current affairs title The Week in the US and UK, MoneyWeek, Coach, Computer Active, PC Pro and IT Pro.

Exponent, which acquired the publishing company founded by the late Felix Dennis in 2018 for £166m, is keeping Viz, Fortean Times, Cyclist and Expert Reviews. Dennis’ automotive magazines, which include Auto Express and Octane, have already been spun off into a separate company called Autovia, which is chaired by the former MoneySuperMarket chief executive Peter...

Discharges of raw sewage by Southern Water into a protected natural harbour risk causing an environmental catastrophe, say campaigners.

Chichester harbour is one of the most highly protected marine environments in the country. But the latest analysis from Natural England shows that 80% of the protected waters are in an unfavourable or declining condition.

Campaigners have repeatedly raised concerns over the continued dumping of raw sewage into the harbour, which is a tourist attraction and sailing and watersports hub. The leader of Chichester district council has written to water regulator Ofwat urging them to hold Southern Water to account.

The publication of scheme documents doesn’t usually give much indication of the buyer’s plans for the business it is taking over, but it does reveal the fees that bankers and advisors can expect to make.

In the case of Parker Hannifin’s takeover of Meggitt, they are typically juicy. Bankers and advisors will make at least £206m.

The main beneficiary on the Parker side will be Citibank, which will earn £59m from lending the money for the takeover. On Meggitt’s side N.M. Rothschild, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch will share £43m.

Lawyers for the two companies will also share at least £35m.

At the start of 2020 I bought, through the train ticket agency Rail Europe, two tickets for the sleeper train from Paris to Venice, travelling on 9 June 2020. The train was run by an Italian train operator, thello, and the tickets cost £185.In March 2020, thello cancelled all trains on that route. Rail Europe’s website stated that refund requests should be made direct to the train companies, so I sent my claim to thello in May 2020, in line with the requirements on its website. Thello has emailed me a number of times – the last time on 30 December - to say that it was dealing with queries as quickly as it could. It is now 14 months since the journey did not take place. Thello is, apparently, no longer running any trains. Rail Europe accepts no liability for the money which I paid to them for my tickets.

I would be really grateful for your advice, please.CW, by email

Working 3:2, what a way to make a living – but a new way that may take a little getting used to, according to experts.

As coronavirus restrictions lift, many companies whose staff have worked from home for 18 months are asking those workers to dust off their bras and smart trousers and return to the office part-time.

While the majority of people will be given little choice about where they work (the proportion of people working from home more than doubled in 2020, but was still only a quarter, according to the Office for National Statistics), many companies that have used remote working are now expecting staff to work more flexibly.

Recent research from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) found that about half of managers expected staff to be in the office two to three days a week, while 48% of managers feared team members could quit if they could no longer work remotely.

As employees face the prospect of the new 3:2 working diet, what are...

The quarterly survey, which involves more than 2,000 employers and covers all sectors of the economy, found that 69% of employers were planning to take on new staff over the coming weeks, compared with 49% this time last year.

When employers with hard-to-fill vacancies, which are most common in sectors such as hospitality and healthcare, were asked how they would deal with the gaps, however, as few as 23% said they would raise wages. Forty-four per cent said they would develop the skills of existing staff, 26% intended to hire more apprentices, 14% said they would do nothing and 9% that they would introduce or increase automation.

Employers in some sectors have been offering signing-on fees of up to £10,000 to tempt applicants, with the issue of healthy workers self-isolating after being “pinged” by NHS test and trace worsening shortages caused by changes to immigration as a result of Brexit and a lack of skills.

The CIPD’s labour market outlook survey,...

Few dates in economic history classify as turning points but one of them was Sunday 15 August 1971 when Richard Nixon went on TV to announce that the US would no longer exchange dollars held by foreign governments for gold.

Nixon’s announcement 50 years ago this week had lasting ramifications. It was a statement to the world that the US was too weak to continue anchoring the global monetary system as it had done for the past quarter of a century. It would remain the world’s biggest and most important economy but the days when it was uniquely dominant were at an end.

Shock waves from Washington’s decision to break the link with gold have rippled down the decades. The creation of the euro, the hollowing out of US manufacturing, the arrival of cryptocurrencies and the ability of central banks to print seemingly unlimited quantities of money can all be traced back to August 1971.

In truth, Nixon had little choice because the system of international economic...

It was like the football version of the race between Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos to be the first dick in space. The race, that is, to pull off the most stratospheric transfer deal. On Thursday, Chelsea announced the signing of Belgian forward Romelu Lukaku for an eye-popping £97.5m. Lukaku used to play for Chelsea but seven years ago they sold him. Now, they have bought him back at more than three times the cost. The club has a history of letting go some of the best players in the world, from Kevin de Bruyne to Mohamed Salah. You can afford such carelessness if your club is owned by a Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich.

As the Premier League returned this weekend, one might have expected the Lukaku move to have been the transfer story of the summer. In any other year, it might have been. This year, though, it has already been trumped – not once, but twice, and maybe again for a third time. First, Manchester City paid £100m, a new British record, for Aston Villa...

When Danny first entered professional kitchens he did so as a star-struck fanboy. He had devoured Marco Pierre White’s White Heat (“such a romantic book”) and Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. “I really bought into the glory of it. There’s a Bourdain line about the poetry of the way chefs moved at the grill. He was addicted to that. I loved it as well. I adored the cut and thrust of the kitchen. All I wanted was to be a really good jobbing chef.”

Danny (not his real name) spent the next decade throwing himself into 70- and 80-hour weeks of hard graft in high-end restaurants. “Standing at a stove doing 120 covers in a night is insane,” he says. “It was full on. Pans thrown. Screaming, shouting. I think people misunderstand that. The juniors expect it. Like soldiering, it’s part of the deal.” In that environment, he says, “you learn how to work fast, work cleanly”.

No one questioned the hours, stress or physical toll. Nor the drink and drugs which, for...

Anyone hoping for a property crash is going to be sorely disappointed. The main element of Rishi Sunak’s stamp duty giveaway may now be in the past and the Delta strain of the virus still ever-present, undermining consumer confidence, yet all the elements are in place for prices to continue moving up.

Without the market having much time to catch its breath, the 7% to 8% increases of the past year will only moderate as the mania for property as an investment marches onwards.

The next decade looks secure for those who venture into property ownership, be they first-time buyers, those wanting to swap a city-centre flat for somewhere more spacious in the suburbs or, more likely, over-55s who fancy adding to the family home with either a holiday bolthole or a mini rental empire.

Analysts at HSBC have such a long list of reasons for a prolonged period of property price growth there is barely space here to discuss them all.

They say the strength of the...

Continental Europe has come to the UK – at least when the sun shines. In towns and cities all over the country, alfresco dining has exploded, with thousands of extra outdoor seats being licensed.

Many in the hospitality industry say the move has saved their business from bankruptcy after catastrophic losses during the pandemic. Now, although Covid restrictions have been lifted, the government is considering making outdoor dining a permanent feature rather than a short-term response to a crisis.

Not everyone is happy. In Soho, the centre of London’s nightlife, residents say alfresco dining and drinking has disrupted access and created intolerable noise. People who have lived there for decades are considering leaving, according to the Soho Society.

Samar Zia, who has lived in social housing in Soho since 2016 with her husband and two children, keeps her windows closed some evenings because of noise. “People are singing at the top of their lungs, and some...

John and Carol Deed, Thriplow, Cambs“We had an air source heat pump fitted in January 2020 and it has proven to be a really good decision,” says John Deed, a former marketing executive in the car industry.

Deed and his wife Carol began considering home heating options for their detached four-bedroom detached 1970s house when it became clear their 25-year-old oil boiler was “on its last legs”.

In the corner of an Ohio field, a laser-armed robot inches through a sea of onions, zapping weeds as it goes.

This field doesn’t belong to a dystopian future but to Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer whose TikTok posts about farming life often go viral.

On the factory floor at Pittards in Yeovil, Marta, Gabbie and Gabriella are working together on a new product. They fasten strengthening layers to the leather base of a cylindrical handbag, attach a shiny brass zip, and handpaint seams so that the raw edges of the hide match the lipstick-red surface.

Pittards employs more than 150 people and does brisk business in baseball gloves, dog leads and walking boots, but the bag being made today comes with a waiting list and a £350 price tag. The Somerset Love bag, designed by Alice Temperley and named for the county where it is made, represents a new movement in the British fashion industry. Designers and models are beginning to share the spotlight with the people who actually make the clothes, bags and shoes.

The billionaire boss of South Korea’s Samsung empire hs been released from prison after serving 18 months of a 30-month sentence for bribing the former president of South Korea Park Geun-hye.

Lee Jae-yong, Samsung’s vice-chair and de facto leader, apologised to the country for his actions upon his release from Seoul detention centre. “I’ve caused much concern for the people. I deeply apologise,” Lee, 53, told reporters on Friday. “I am listening to the concerns, criticisms, worries and high expectations for me. I will work hard.”

Lee, who had run Samsung since his father, Lee Kun-hee, was admitted to hospital after a heart attack in 2014, is keen to get back to work and guide the company’s next steps. But under South Korean law he could be banned from working for the firm for five years. He will need to seek special permission from the justice minister to return to work, but this is expected to be granted after appeals from the South Korean business...

How does Allbirds explain carbon emissions to customers?

As a company, we’ve identified that climate change is the biggest problem facing humanity. We have a responsibility to try to bring our customer along with that idea and help them understand the magnitude of the problem we’re facing. But it’s a really hard one to explain.

If we think about the world of sustainability, something like plastics pollution is much more tangible, much easier to communicate to your average consumer than something like carbon emissions that you can’t see or feel. It’s very scientific; it’s a lot harder to explain.

But I think the heart of it – and why we started labeling all of our products with their carbon footprints in 2020 – is that the best way to bring this idea into the broader consciousness and help people understand it is the prevalence and availability of information.

An average person can’t explain exactly what a calorie is and how it’s measured, but that...

The chief executive of Gatwick airport has urged the government to simplify Covid testing requirements for travellers or continue to see the UK lag behind the recovery in the rest of Europe and the US, as Britain’s second busiest air hub reported a £245m loss in the first half.

Stewart Wingate blamed a collapse in passenger demand and government restrictions for the loss. In the first six months of the year, passenger numbers at Gatwick plunged to 569,000, from 7.5 million in the first half of last year, and 22 million in the first six months of 2019, before the pandemic.

The airport operator called for the government to scrap coronavirus testing requirements for travellers arriving from “green” countries and for those double-vaccinated passengers from “amber” destinations. For unvaccinated travellers from amber territories, Gatwick argues a single lateral flow test should suffice.

“UK travel recovery should not be allowed to lag behind the US and...