Podcasts

The Budget this week was notable for two things: Firstly, The Chancellor decided to delay settling the coronavirus bill to another day and, secondly, the true scale of the women's underpaid state pension scandal was laid bare at £3billion. The collossal short-changing of married women on their state pensions was uncovered by This is Money columnist Steve Webb and journalist Tanya Jefferies just over a year ago. Their investigations, campaigning and tenacity has paid off and now women affected should get what they are owed - to the tune of an astonishing £3billion, according to Budget documents. Tanya joins Georgie Frost, Lee Boyce and Simon Lambert to explain the issue on this week's podcast, as the team also trawl through the Budget to explain what it means for people. One day Britain might have to try to balance the books and pay the bill for the coronavirus rescue, but that day didn't arrive with the Budget. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak openly indulged in some stealth taxation by freezing personal allowances and income tax thresholds in the future and said corporation tax would rise, but kept the cash flowing to aid economic recovery. Furlough was extended, there will be an encore at the stamp duty holiday party, the business investment of Eat Out to Help Out was launched, and a new 5% deposit mortgage scheme has been launched (without being called Help-to-anything, so that's something at least). The self-employed also got some more help, with new entrepreneurs getting assistance, but bizarrely those who previously earned more than £50,000 as sole traders and paid lots of tax are still left out in the cold. The tax burden is set to rise but this was no austerity Budget and Britain's debt and deficit are scarily big. So will Rishi's third Budget in a year be what Britain's economy needs to achieve escape velocity as lockdown eases (and hopefully never comes back)?

Want to keep up with the latest earnings updates from the States? Well join Chris Hill and the Motley Fool Radio Show team here on Share Radio, direct from Washington DC, for news, views and analysis of the US stocks that matter. In this week's show: The Trade Desk, Magnite, and other ad-tech companies tumble after Google announces some big changes; Costco and Target fall on earnings; Zoom Video reports a big jump in revenue but the stock tumbles; Okta buys rival Auth0 for $6.5B in stock; Square buys a majority stake in Jay Z’s streaming service, Tidal; Mercadolibre slips despite record revenue; And Amazon looks to secure some Prime programming with the NFL. Motley Fool analysts Andy Cross and Jason Moser discuss those stories and share two stocks on their radar: Lam Research and AppHarvest. Plus, author Joann Lublin talks about her new book, Power Moms: How Executive Mothers Navigate Work and Life.

Steve Caplin looks back at the first programmable computer, now 75. He gives us news of Amazon's first UK supermarket, how it's using AI to dub movies and is crowdfunding a cuckoo clock, how you can animate old family photos, the ex-punk drummer planning a space trip, a headset with a brain-computer interface, a surgeon's eye-raising appearance over Zoom in court and MIT developing what could be flat zoom lenses.

James Cameron-Wilson looks at the Golden Globes and wonders whether this year's winners are likely also to triumph at the delayed Oscars in April? He reviews the comic high school drama Moxie, directed by Amy Poehler as well as a visually impressive Anglo-Senegalese movie White Colour Black. Firing up his DVD player, James took the opportunity to revisit The Shape of Water, a strikingly unusual major movie which won 4 of the 13 Oscar nominations it received.

Russ Mould, investment director of A J Bell, has crunched the numbers to ascertain which Chancellors of the Exchequer have presided over the biggest rise int he All-Share Index and those who have been the most costly. He stresses the important of accounting for inflation, which changes the picture somewhat and reiterates just how important the current debate over whether inflation is returning could be to the safety of investors' portfolios.

Adam Cox is joined by Ken Bullock from Advanced Electronics, and Salvy Vittozzi from Apollo Fire Detectors. They discuss the fallout of the Grenfell Tower Fire, and the consequences this has had for those living in high rise flat blocks. They explain how this has led to the Waking Watch Relief Fund, and what the fund has been created to do.

Adam Cox is joined by Jade Asha, author of Actorpreneur. Jade talks about the struggles of being an actor and needing to have second sources of income while not working. They discuss how COVID has hit actors hard, and how it is causing many actors to leave the profession and give up on their dreams. Jade offers tips so that actors can still pursue their dreams while earning a living.

In this episode, Adam creates a hypnosis session inspired by the movie Limitless starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. In the movie, a struggling writer takes a nootropic pill called NZT-48 which allows him to access 100% of his brainpower. In the hypnosis session, you'll imagine taking this pill which will give you 100% cognitive capacity and a sky-high IQ. You'll imagine being able to learn rapidly, with high-level interpersonal skills. You will evaluate what you'll do with this superpower and what problems you'll solve, goals you'll set, and what your vision of your life will be.