School meal outrage

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Free meals failure

Food packages provided to families to replace free school meals during lockdown need to be “urgently improved” according to children’s minister Vicky Ford. Families have been sharing photos of the meagre packages online, with one mum estimating hers contained just £5 worth of food. It’s meant to feed a child for a week. Chartwells, the company providing the packages, apologised and promised to improve.

Stamp duty holiday

Campaigners have called on Chancellor Rishi Sunak to extend the stamp duty deadline*, which is due to end on 31st March. Over 300,000 buyers could miss out on the £15,000 tax break because they’re facing delays to their completion date. If thwarted buyers pull out of their home purchases, the property market could suffer a sharp drop.

BlackRock keeps coal

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, still has $85 billion of investments in coal companies. Last year, it promised to sell all its holdings in fossil fuel producers. So what happened? A loophole meant they could keep investing in companies that earn less than a quarter of their income from coal. BlackRock says its investors can choose to exclude coal from their individual portfolio.

Riding high

Sales of penny-farthing bikes have doubled since the start of the pandemic, with one sold every day last year. The Victorian bikes previously peaked in 1880 - but 2020 was a record year for the niche hobby.