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While we wait on tenterhooks to see what the chancellor really plans to do with our taxes, the financial press is still digesting the fallout from this month's base rate cut and the impact of the financial downturn on consumers. Many of this week's stories focus on changing prices - drops in the value of homes and shares and rises in the value of some of life's basics …
Like beans for instance. What used to be a cheap staple has increased in price by 53% in the past month, according to a story in the Mirror. "Beans means hikes" screamed the paper, as it revealed the cost of a tin of tomato-sauce coated haricots had rocketed from 19p to 29p. Other items in the supermarkets' value ranges are also getting more costly, the paper said, "adding to the misery of millions of the poorest families" - and students, too, no doubt.
Meanwhile falling house and share prices are proving a headache for families going through probate who are receiving inheritance tax bills based on values at the top of the market, even though the assets are worth much less now. There was good news in the Financial Times, which said the taxman may be willing to consider refunding some of the difference. Although, unsurprisingly, it will be down to consumers to do the running-around if they think they have overpaid.
IHT bills don't seem to have troubled Gunther IV - the eventual heir of German Countess Karlotta Liebenstein's £90m fortune. The Times blog said Gunther lives "the Playboy mansion lifestyle … splashing around in swimming pools while bikini-clad women and bronzed muscle men look on adoringly". It's a dog's life - Gunther is German Shepherd and one of the world's 10 richest pets and pampered pooches, according to the Times.
Defying the stalling property market - or at least trying to - is a couple who bought the east London house where David Beckham once lived. It may not have a blue plaque, but it does have a £1m-price tag, according to a report in the Daily Mail. "Normally, such a home - if you could ever sell it at all - would be worth £250,000 at most," the paper said, but a local businessman reckons he is negotiating with buyers in upmarket Chelsea and Mayfair. Before they decide to swap the King's Road for Leytonstone's charms they should consider the last line of the Mail's story: "Neighbours in Norman Road are distinctly unimpressed."
Ever wondered how Simon Callow and Nancy Dell'Olio have avoided becoming the Daily Mail's latest celebrity victims of the credit crunch? Me neither but the Telegraph has asked them for their money saving tips. Apparently some have resorted to making their own bath bombs and truffles to get by. As the writer, Sarah Edworthy, notes "the credit crunch may have hit the rich first and hardest".
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