Five Confetti shops have been closed and 48 staff made redundant. Photograph: Rex Features Panicky brides-to-be turned to internet chatrooms for help today after it emerged that Confetti, an online retailer selling wedding paraphernalia ranging from dresses to tiaras and insurance, had collapsed into administration with more than 1,000 orders on its books. The administrators, [...]

The survey found that 27% of British people ‘do not trust’ their neighbours. Photograph: George Sweeney/Rex Features Most British residents do not know their neighbours’ names and wouldn’t even recognise them if they passed them in the street, a new survey reveals today. Most of us would only immediately recognise just over one in three [...]

HMRC’s tax rule is catching out young people with a clause that automatically ends tax-free interest payments from banks when they reach 16. Photograph: Don McPhee Teenagers and students are being caught out by a HM Revenue and Customs rule so obscure even some tax specialists have never heard of it. They are falling foul [...]

Margaret Thatcher and her then-chancellor Geoffrey Howe in 1982, the year after Howe’s cost-cutting budget and in which unemployment topped 3 million. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen /Rex Features The first Thatcher government of 1979-83 had not been in power for long before I received a call from the office of a senior cabinet minister inviting me [...]