ALISTAIR DARLING

The queen broke protocol and spoke with well-wishers as she left a small church near Balmoral Castle.

A dramatic swing in Scottish independence polls toward a "yes" vote has investors scrambling for answers on what might happen.

However, it remains far from certain that the Scottish public even wants independence.

Britain and the Netherlands plan to sue Iceland in a potentially drawn-out legal battle to recover $5 billion lost in a bank crash after Icelandic voters rejected a plan to repay the money.

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne is defending the beleaguered Bank of England (BoE) governor Mervyn King, who has come under fire in recent weeks for allegedly having a lack of political neutrality.

Among the many juicy tidbits revealed by the recently published Wikileaks documents were Bank of England chief’s Mervyn King’s concerns about Prime Minister David Cameron’s inexperience.

Banks said they need to be more open about the size of their bonus pools and the methodology for paying star bankers, after making progress in other areas of reforming pay structures.

Britain's newly created budget watchdog downgraded economic growth forecasts on Monday but did not radically alter the scale of austerity measures required from the country's coalition government.

European Union finance ministers on Sunday promised to counter the wolfpack of the financial markets as they sought agreement on a 600 billion euro ($805 billion) plan to keep Greece's debt crisis from spreading.

European Union finance ministers promised to counter the wolfpack of the financial markets and defend the euro before talks on Sunday on ring-fencing Greece's debt crisis to stop it spreading.

European Union finance ministers called for strong action to ensure stability before they met on Sunday to discuss ways of ring-fencing Greece's debt crisis to stop it spreading to countries like Portugal and Spain.

Greece and top world finance officials raced to get rescue funds to the debt-stricken euro zone country but concern in Germany about the scale of the bailout threatened to slow down the process.

The Labour government will unveil a 2 billion pound ($3 billion) green investment bank in Wednesday's budget to help Britain's transformation to a low carbon economy, a government source said on Sunday.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday he believed Britain would maintain its coveted top credit rating and announced a pay freeze for senior civil servants and military officers to help tame a record deficit.

Iceland's government pledged on Sunday to restart talks and swiftly reach a new debt accord with Britain and Netherlands, a day after Icelanders crushed in a referendum the previous $5 billion Icesave deal.

Britain is prepared to be flexible in reaching a solution with Iceland to repay debts, finance minister Alistair Darling said on Sunday, adding it would take many, many years for Britain to be reimbursed.

Sterling edged higher against a broadly weaker dollar on Tuesday, tracking a relief rally in euro/dollar as investors trimmed short positions in the single European currency.

Britain only just crept out of an 18-month recession at the end of 2009, suggesting any monetary tightening remains a long way off and raising fears about the prospects for recovery ahead of an election due by June.

The British government still hopes to make a profit from its multi-billion-pound rescue of major British banks during the financial crisis, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Saturday.

JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon called British Finance Minister Alistair Darling earlier this month to say Britain's 50 percent tax on bankers' bonuses punishes the bank unfairly, a person close to the bank said.

Braced to cut costs when Britain is facing the biggest government deficit in its history, a London council is trying the budget airline approach.