By Luke Lang, co-founder Crowdcube For many British businesses, raising finance has become increasingly difficult in more austere times with banks, VCs and other financial institutions reigning in their lending. In fact, raising money is difficult at the best of times, which has led startups and growth businesses to seek alternatives. Crowdfunding is still a relatively new concept, which has seen its popularity grow since around 2011 when the likes of Crowdfunder and Kickstarter first appeared in the headlines. In...

By Alex Lodge @alexlodgemusic  The image that always comes to mind when I think about Werkdiscs – the shadowy techno label run by Darren Cunningham - is the memory of his musical moniker Actress' show at St John's in Hackney last year. It was a fantastically claustrophobic and terrifying performance, during which he stalked the stage, hooded and fiercely mysterious, surveying the dancers before him swaying to the hypnotic whisper of his hissing beats. The Werkdiscs output is so dominated...

By Seb Dean from Apartment-hotels.com London is known worldwide as an economic powerhouse, with Forbes recently describing it as the most influential city in the world and it is becoming a wealth magnet, with over 100 billionaires choosing to reside in the capital. This is bad news for most, as property prices hit fever pitch and most people are being priced out of buying a house in the City. However, for some, the price of a house doesn’t actually matter...

By Steve Taggart Being confined to the cramped space and stuffy recirculated air of an aeroplane for several hours can have a number of detrimental effects on our bodies, leaving us feeling tired and drained when we eventually reach our destination. Here, wellness holiday experts Health and Fitness Travel, round up 10 travel tips and their top 3 wellness escapes, so you can travel healthy, no matter how far your journey. 1.Stay stress free and plan ahead. Preparing for and...

By Jack Peat  Mexican food has been somewhat absent, or at least under represented, in the UK for some time. Whereas people in the US enjoy burritos and tacos as a staple high street diet us Brits have been left to seek out our refried beans and pulled meats. But not for much longer. A new wave of fast food – or perhaps I should use ‘over the counter’ to avoid the negative connotations - Mexican restaurants have finally found...

By Charlotte Hope Celebrities Throwing Water on Themselves Remember ‘necknominate’? Remember how terrible that was, and how people kept getting put in hospital and disowned by their friends for being the worst? Yes. So do I. So it’s time to welcome the new craze - the ‘ice bucket challenge’! I think you’ll agree that it’s come at an ideal time given the swelteringly hot Summer we’re experiencing in the UK, with temperatures in the North soaring to 17 degrees celsius....

By Jack Peat  At 5pm on every Saturday for as long as I can remember I have tuned into the radio to hear the voice of James Alexander Gordon. The passing of a man whose dulcet tones have become synonymous with the classified football results will deeply sadden many fans of the sport who, like me, will recall with nostalgia sitting in a car as the hot air blew from the heaters after 90 minutes on the terrace as the...

David Landon Cole The bitcoin - a currency based on a hash function - is often touted as the future and a recent article on The London Economic buys into that. I have a few objections with the piece that I'd like to look at. The premise for the article is an unattributed post on Reddit. The post claims that the US Federal Reserve commissioned research internally into the bitcoin, suggesting that it would overtake the mighty greenback between 2021...

By Vladimir Remmer The world financial equilibrium was devastated in 2006 when the US housing market bubble finally burst. Real Estate prices plummeted, wiping out securities tied to housing and striking financial institutions globally. The human toll was staggering and manifested in mass evictions, bankruptcies and foreclosures, combined with catastrophic job market contraction and prolonged unemployment. The consumer wealth adjustment, estimated to be trillions of US dollars, inhibited economic activity throughout most of the world and led to the 2008...