General election 24: Cornwall voters know what’s wrong – but few know which party has the solutions

Published

10 months ago

May 30, 2024

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The House of Commons green benches have fallen silent in Westminster and it’s time for us, the United Kingdom, to choose who will occupy them next.

So, Sky News has decided to take a piece of upholstered parliamentary furniture around the country for you to share your thoughts on.

We started our Bench Across Britain series in the West Country, hauling our green bench down the harbour steps, across dark slimy rocks and on to the vast yellow sands of Towan Beach in Newquay Bay.

Here we found our first speaker, surf instructor Rich Holgate Smith.

“I haven’t engaged with it enough myself,” he admits. “I don’t follow Rishi Sunak religiously. But I see what’s happening on a daily basis, like, the way I’m living.

“The cost of rent has tripled in the last few years or the cost of food has gone up. And I see we’re losing a lot of the good things that made this country great, a lot of free services, the NHS, for example.”

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The feeling that public services are in decline is a recurring theme of conversation on our bench, as is the cost of living.

Young couple Sophia Zielinski-Keall and Max Whiteley are on the beach walking their dog when they stop for a chat.

“I haven’t seen anybody come down here really to see what’s happening in Cornwall,” says Sophia. “Like on house prices; they have spiralled out of control down here. We managed to buy a first home and we feel quite lucky. It was hard.

“I know a lot of people who are trying to buy their own first homes at the moment as well and they’re finding it really, really tricky, especially with the salaries down here. They don’t compare to the salaries in London and house prices are just shooting through the roof.”

Max adds: “I think we both got good jobs, but the money just seems to go every month. In a lot of ways I was better off 10 years ago than I am now, even though I was probably earning 50% less.”

Second-home owners pushing up house prices for the locals has been a growing problem in the region. Two teachers from Falmouth, Frankie Baseley and Jessica Fenton, say the same.

“Housing down here – it’s just gone way beyond anything that we can afford,” says Frankie. “We earn a pretty good salary for being in Cornwall, but going to a shop and doing like a weekly shop is just so expensive!”

Jessica adds: “Then I think at work, budget cuts, lack of resources, lack of funding for mental health, especially special needs, especially school trips – like the cost of living is really affecting coach prices, so we can’t go to school trips.”

St Austell and Newquay is Tory-held. Labour were second in both 2017 and 2019 and there was no UKIP or Brexit candidate in either election.

This year there are at least seven candidates, including one from Reform in a seat that is estimated to have voted 65% Leave in the Brexit referendum.

Labour needs a 14.5% swing to take the constituency. With that, uniformly across the country, they would be on course for a 50-seat majority.

There are multiple constituencies for the Conservatives to defend in the region which is currently pretty much a sea of blue. In England, Labour and Liberal Democrats only have two seats each west of Bristol – but are looking to turn the South West into a patchwork of red and yellow.

With 700 miles of stunning coastline, people here care deeply about the environment. One surfer who sat on our bench lamented “the amount of poo in the sea”. Other locals were angry with both main parties for rowing back on green commitments.

Transport is another issue, be it bus and train services, or the price of fuel. Aircraft mechanic Richard Wooldridge says the cost of petrol is “crippling” his family.

He says: “I travel for work, my wife travels to work. I work away from home so I can earn a good wage. But it’s now got to the point with the cost of fuel that I have to consider, whether I continue in my chosen career or be a stay-at-home dad because the fuel prices are so high.”

Down at the harbour at 9am on a Sunday, Richard is part of a group of men who religiously jump into the water come rain or shine. A fellow member of the Blue Ball swim club, teacher Matthew Jenkins, says for him “integrity” is the number one consideration for his vote.

He added: “I think the fact that we were told a lot of things and a lot of those things never happened, we were lied to a lot of times, especially during the COVID years.

“And I know some of those things some people found quite trivial, but in terms of integrity, they’re actually really important and they made a big difference to people’s lives.”

Despite the general dissatisfaction with the previous government and despondency over the cost of living – there is no huge enthusiasm for the main opposition party.

Jessica, one of the Falmouth teachers, reflected the general mood when she said: “I’m going to be definitely looking around at different parties and thinking.”

The people who came to our bench seemed to know what’s wrong with their lives – fewer knew which party had the solutions.

Politics

Ukraine floats 23% tax on some crypto income, exemptions for stablecoins

Published

52 mins ago

April 10, 2025

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Ukraine floats 23% tax on some crypto income, exemptions for stablecoins

Ukraine’s financial regulator has proposed taxing certain crypto transactions as personal income at a rate of up to 23% but excluding crypto-to-crypto transactions and stablecoins.

Crypto transactions would be taxed at 18% with a 5% military levy on top as part of the proposed framework, released on April 8 by Ukraine’s National Securities and Stock Market Commission.

NSSMC Chairman Ruslan Magomedov said in an April 8 statement that “the issue of crypto taxes is not a hypothesis, but a reality that is fast approaching.”

He added that the agency created the framework to help lawmakers make an “informed resolution” by considering each suggestion’s advantages and disadvantages because “these aspects can have a critical impact on the market and tax liability.”

Under the NSSMC’s proposed crypto framework, a tax will be applied when crypto is cashed out for fiat currency or exchanged for goods or services.

Crypto-to-crypto transactions wouldn’t be taxed, bringing Ukraine in line with other European countries, including Austria and France, as well as crypto-friendly jurisdictions like Singapore, the NSSMC said.

The regulator says it “makes sense” to exclude stablecoins backed by foreign currencies or only apply a 5% or 9% tax because Ukraine’s tax code already excludes income from transactions in “foreign exchange values.”

Mining, staking, hard forks and airdrops

Other crypto-related activities, such as mining, staking and airdrops, are also addressed in the framework which floated a few options for taxation.

The NSSMC said crypto mining is generally considered a business activity, but there might be a general tax-free limit for certain crypto transactions, including mining.

Under the framework, staking could be considered as “business captive income” or only taxed if the crypto is cashed out for fiat currencies. While hard forks and airdrops could be taxed either as ordinary income or when the tokens are cashed.

The regulator suggests a tax-free threshold could help “relieve the burden on small investors” and is common in other jurisdictions.

Exemptions for donations, transfers between family members, and holders who keep their crypto for a set amount of time are also flagged as possibilities. However, the NSSMC says the exemption might not apply to non-custodial crypto wallets.

Last December, Daniil Getmantsev, head of the tax committee of Ukraine’s parliament, said a draft bill to legalize cryptocurrencies was under review and expected to be finalized early this year.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy first signed a law establishing a legal framework for the country to operate a regulated crypto market in March 2022.

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Politics

21Shares files for spot Dogecoin ETF in the US

Published

3 hours ago

April 10, 2025

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21Shares files for spot Dogecoin ETF in the US

Digital asset manager 21Shares has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission to launch a spot Dogecoin exchange-traded fund, following similar filings from rivals Bitwise and Grayscale.

The 21Shares Dogecoin ETF would seek to track the price of the memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE), according to the firm’s April 9 Form S-1 registration statement. The Dogecoin Foundation’s corporate arm, House of Doge, plans to assist 21Shares with marketing the fund.

21Shares said Coinbase Custody would be the proposed custodian of its Dogecoin ETF but did not specify a fee, ticker or what stock exchange it would list on.

21Shares must also file a 19b-4 filing with the SEC to kickstart the regulator’s approval process for the fund.

DOGE currently has a $24.2 billion market cap and is the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by value. It was created in 2013 as a joke and is a fork of Lucky Coin, which itself is a fork of Bitcoin.

21Shares’ proposed Dogecoin ETF is the company’s latest effort to expand its spot crypto ETF offerings, which currently includes only a spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) fund.

The issuer also filed with the SEC in February to launch a spot Polkadot (DOT) ETF and last year, it filed to create a spot XRP (XRP) ETF.

The recent surge in crypto ETF filings reflects a “spaghetti cannon approach” from issuers testing which products the new SEC leadership might approve, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said in February.

“Issuers will try to launch many many different things and see what sticks,” Seyffart said.

Seyffart and fellow Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said in February that there is a 75% chance that the SEC will approve a spot Dogecoin ETF this year, while the betting platform Polymarket currently gives approval odds of 64%.

21Shares and House of Doge partner for DOGE funds in Switzerland

21Shares also said on April 9 that it partnered with House of Doge to launch a fully backed Dogecoin exchange-traded product on Switzerland’s SIX Swiss Exchange.

The 21Shares Dogecoin product will trade under the ticker “DOGE” with a 2.5% fee.

21Shares president Duncan Moir said that Dogecoin “has become more than a cryptocurrency: it represents a cultural and financial movement that continues to drive mainstream adoption, and DOGE offers investors a regulated avenue to be part of this exciting project.”

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Politics

US Senate confirms Paul Atkins to lead SEC under Trump

Published

3 hours ago

April 10, 2025

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US Senate confirms Paul Atkins to lead SEC under Trump

Update April 10 at 1:41am UTC: This article has been updated to include more background on Paul Atkins before becoming SEC chair.

The US Senate has confirmed US President Donald Trump’s nominee, Paul Atkins, as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission in a 51-45 vote largely along party lines.

Atkins’ confirmation on April 9 comes after Trump named the pro-crypto former Wall Street consultant to lead the agency late last year. Atkins also served as an SEC commissioner between 2002 and 2008, during the global financial crisis.

”A veteran of our Commission, we look forward to him joining with us, along with our dedicated staff, to fulfill our mission on behalf of the investing public,” the agency’s commissioners wrote in an April 9 statement.

Atkins founded financial consulting firm Patomak Global Partners in 2009, specializing in regulatory compliance and risk management, and served as co-chair of crypto advocacy group Token Alliance between 2017 and late 2024.

After he’s sworn in, Atkins will take over from Mark Uyeda, who has been the SEC’s acting chair since Jan. 20, after former chair Gary Gensler stepped down. Gensler’s tenure saw the SEC launch multiple lawsuits and investigations against crypto firms over alleged breaches of securities laws.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott expressed confidence that Atkins would continue the SEC’s crypto-friendly approach that it has taken under the Trump administration.

“Atkins will also provide regulatory clarity for digital assets, allowing American innovation to flourish, and ensuring we remain competitive on the global stage.”

Under Trump, the SEC created a Crypto Task Force to consult with the industry on regulation and dropped several crypto-related investigations and enforcement actions undertaken by the Gensler-led SEC.

Atkins is expected to take a different approach, telling a Senate confirmation hearing in March that a top priority of his at the SEC would be “to provide a firm regulatory foundation for digital assets through a rational, coherent, and principled approach.”

Atkins’ confirmation delayed by disclosures

Atkins’ confirmation was reportedly delayed due to several financial disclosures he needed to file as a result of marrying into a billionaire family.

He married Sarah Humphreys Atkins in 1990 — whose family is tied to TAMKO Building Products LLC, a manufacturer of residential roofing shingles that turned over $1.2 billion in revenue in 2023, Forbes reported in December. The couple have a reported combined net worth of at least $327 million.

Some of those financial disclosures revealed that Atkins owned up to $6 million worth of crypto-related investments, including crypto custody platform Anchorage Digital and blockchain tokenization platform Securitize, Fortune reported last month.

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