The much-loved central London institution, which has been threatened with closure since January 2025, secures 25-year lease without break clause with current landlordsThe celebrated Prince Charles repertory cinema in London’s Leicester Square has announced that the threat of closure has been staved off by signing a new 25-year lease with its landlords.In a post on social media titled “You Saved the PCC”, the cinema said that “after 21 months of uncertainty, we’re delighted to have secured the future of the cinema” and that they had “signed a new 25-year lease with no break clause, ensuring our projectors will keep rolling for years to come”. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 15:20 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Animation studio narrows annual loss to £1.1m amid ‘challenging market’ in children’s contentDon’t break out the celebratory Wensleydale just yet. Aardman, the British animation studio behind the cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his beloved dog Gromit, has fallen short of a target to get back in the black, its accounts show.The employee-owned business was aiming to record a small profit in 2025 after two years of consecutive losses but was hit by production delays and a “challenging market” in children’s content. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 07:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

If ‘public control’ bit is delaying overhaul, that needs to be nailed down sharpish or continued uncertainty could be costlyIt is strange now to recall that Thames Water had a prominent slot on what was known as “Sue’s shit list” – the internal Labour dossier, compiled by Keir Starmer’s first chief of staff, Sue Gray, of potential crises that could erupt at short notice and force the incoming administration to make some big decisions quickly.That was July 2024. Here we are – more than two years later – and the Thames script has barely advanced. We’re still waiting to see if the financial crisis at the over-indebted, under-performing water company will be resolved by a creditor-led recapitalisation, special administration or something else. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 18:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Finance ministers gathering for the IMF annual meeting know the need for multilateral cooperation to deal with many crises. There is little chance of thatNot much has gone right for the global economy this year, and plenty has gone wrong. Two big regional wars are destabilising prices and supply chains everywhere. Businesses and consumers are feeling the effects of a serious energy shock. Rising inflation has made it a lot more expensive for governments to finance their debts. China and the US are at loggerheads over trade.Yet, so far, the impact has been modest. It is something of a miracle that the finance ministers and central bank governors gathered for this year’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Bangkok are not having to deal with a full-blown crisis. This is not like the autumn of 2008, when the meetings took place during the worst of the global banking meltdown.Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 05:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Voters’ opposition to the state of Trump’s economy is well established – despite his desperate attempts to deflectTell us: what is your personal ‘recession indicator’?It’s indisputable that the political polarization of our time has reduced (and confused) the influence of economic conditions on US elections.In September of 2024, in the waning weeks of the Joe Biden presidency, 65% of Republicans believed the US economy was getting worse. About six months later, as Donald Trump launched a trade war on the rest of the world with his “liberation day” tariffs, the share of Republican pessimists had dropped to 33%. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 12:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

There are many reasons to reject this affordability ‘solution’, not least it being complex and fiddly. Just keep things simple‘My mark of failure or success is whether I can get bills down or not. That’s the only thing I’m in this job to do.” So said Miatta Fahnbulleh, the energy secretary, recently, bracing for the hike in energy bills that looks inevitable in January. Industry projections suggest £400-ish on an annual basis is on the way, with “stubbornly high” levels for the rest of decade even if wholesale gas prices cool down.So, yes, one can understand why “affordability” is Fahnbulleh’s “top priority”. And, as this newspaper reported last week, there is likely to be an intervention in that direction in chancellor John Healey’s budget this month: £1bn of extra support for poorer households this winter. Continue reading...

14 Oct 2026 16:43 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Kate Fleming says the government must look beyond the models it rewards today, while Jenny Haigh says unlocking potential means recognising that creativity and science are partnersGordon Brown wants Britain to invent, invest in and own the future (British households would be £5,000 richer if we were more innovative. Let’s unleash our talents, 9 October). But invent what, and for whom? His hunt for “lost Einsteins” rests on a narrow vision: a lone genius invents, commercialisation scales, the problem is solved.That may suit a cancer drug, but not the wicked problems of our time – social care, education, climate – which demand not silver bullets but new technologies and practices for collaboration, distributed ownership and collective innovation. Continue reading...

14 Oct 2026 16:19 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN