Rachael McKelvey

• Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty
• Interest Rates remain uninteresting
• Collins Dictionary word of the year
• It’s been a week for AI
• Will 2024 yield recession & a new government?

Sam Bankman-Fried found guilty
Oh it’s been a week in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried with the jury taking just over 4 hours (which included a break for dinner) on Thursday early evening to find 31-year-old Bank-Fried guilty on 7 counts of fraud and conspiracy.  Nearly a year after FTX was declared bankrupt means  Bankman-Fried could rack up a sentence of up to 110 years.

After a monthlong trial prosecutors successfully argued he acted simply through greed which caused the biggest financial fraud in US history, one to many speculative investments, generous donations all while using customers money to prop up his hedge fund. Bankman-Fried himself, rather unconventionally, took to the witness stand assuming he could no doubt talk his way out of things, but neither the prosecutors or the judge were impressed with his inability to answer a simple question.

Closing statements from the defence claimed the immortal line “poor risk management is not a crime” shortly followed by “bad business judgements are not a crime”. Prosecutor Danielle Sassoon was flawless throughout but her closing argument was a little bit of a chefs kiss urging the jury to reject Bankman-Frieds assertion that his former colleagues were implicating him in return for lesser sentences stating “He was the one with the plan, the motive and the greed to raid FTX customer deposits – billions and billions of dollars – to give himself money, power, influence,” Sassoon said. “He thought the rules did not apply to him. He thought that he could get away with it.”. All eyes now turned to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan who will determine his sentence at a later date.

Interest Rates remain uninteresting
Interest Rates remained unchanged by the Bank of England Thursday which saw the London Stock Exchange jump. The Bank of England held interest rates at the 15-year peak of 5.25% mirrors the policy decision taken by the US Federal Reserve the day before and European Central Bank the week before, which once again the majority of the Monetary Policy Committee voting in favour of holding the rate.

They were expected to be held in all honesty simply because its too soon to think about rate cutes and anyone who thought they would do anything different is dreaming, I’m looking at you Iain Duncan Smith. The economy is moving at a snails pace, but its moving and the job market is starting to cool but this does mean that householders will be facing higher mortgage rates for longer, with economists warning a rate cut is unlikely within the next 12 months.

Despite this, the rate hold seems to please the markets, with sterling holding firm against a softening dollar, 10 year bonds rising and on track to have their best day in the last month and rate sensitive sectors such as real estate and homebuilding also seeing share prices rise quite considerably with most sectoral indexes actually ending up higher and leading with some really positive corporate earnings, looking at you BT group with your second quarter earnings ahead of forecast.

Collins word of the year
I don’t think it will come as any surprise that this week Collins Dictionary named “AI” word of the year, it’s strangled hold on 2023 has been quite firm, usage of the world has quadrupled this year. Managing Director of Collins Alex Beecroft (great name) said “we know that AI has been a big focus this year in the way that it has developed and has quickly become as ubiquitous and embedded in our lives as email, streaming or any other once futuristic, now everyday technology.” 

Words of the year often seem to reflect the fixation of the time, last years winner was permacrisis following the rather interesting revolving door of prime ministers and general crisis in UK politics, the years before was NFT and unsurprisingly the year before that’s winner was lockdown. 

I think the contenders who missed out also help acknowledge the current zeitgeist, the rejects included “canon event”, “debanking”, “deinfluencing”,”nepo baby”, “greedflation” and “ultraprocessed” which I think might say it all about the current state of affairs. 

It’s been a week for AI
It has been quite a week for AI with Rishi Sunak hosting the UK’s AI safety summit at Bletchley Park on Wednesday with 100 world leaders, tech bosses, academics, researchers and Elon Musk. The aim of the summit was to discuss how best to maximise the benefits of AI while also manging the risk (but just remember “poor risk management is not a crime”) Musk warned AI poses “one of the biggest threats” to humanity stating it as an “existential risk: because humans for the first time were faced with something that is going to be far more intelligent than us”. 

No great surprise this was held in the UK as according to the latest Artificial Intelligence Index from the Standford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence scepticism about the benefits of AI is highest in predominantly western countries such as the UK, Germany, France and even the US.

The other AI news of the week is that this week saw the Beatles release “Now and Then”, their final song after they used AI to recover just John Lennon’s vocals from an old noisy cassette recording after 45 years, all four Beatles appear on the track and it has been released as a double A-side single with their debut track from 1962 Love Me Do.

Will 2024 yield recession & a new government?
Busy week for The Bank of England voting on interest rates and warning that Britain may risk falling into recession next year after a “bleak assessment” that resulting in “slashed forecasts for UK growth to zero”, forecasting no growth doesn’t seem too wild, the economy is moving incredibly slowly, and the job market has cooled. And while I understand the concerns at rate stagnation and a possibility of “potential recession” I’m a millennial who basically doesn’t know how to live without trying to hum louder than some sort of economic crisis going on in the background.

What a backdrop for a general election and a US presidential election hey? The current chancellor Jeremy Hunt, ever the optimist, stating “the best way to deliver prosperity is through sustainable growth” it will be interesting to see what, if anything, they can deliver to entice the electorate to vote in their favour again. The middle of the year recession prediction either means they optimistically head into a spring election just as it begins to bite or they really roll the dice and aim for later in the year where the possibility that things really will be stinging the electorate.

Current watch:  Pain Hustlers – I’d like it noted that I made it through a film, maybe it was the concussion, maybe it was the company but I would like it noted that I made it through a 2+hour film and it was a corker.

The premise is broke single mother stumbles across and amazing opportunity in pharmaceutical sales but she has to bend the truth to get there and bend it even further to stay there. Emily Blunt, Chris Evans, Andy Garcia and the ever amazing Catherine O’Hara are just so well cast.

While entirely fictional, the film is based on real factors in the Opiod crisis and there was a fentanyl-based drug company that did race similar real-life consequences for the types of schemes the film portrays it is actually based on a novel by Eva Hughes. It’s a darkly comical in places and wildly illuminating in others, I would recommend.

Current read: Do Less: Be More – How to slow down and make space for what really matters by Susan Pearse and Martina Sheehan – If anything recently everything has been screaming at me to slow down a lot, don’t fill every minute with ‘doing something’, being busy is not a bad of honour but actually detrimental to my health and doing more doesn’t ever actually meaning achieving more. This book explores how to do less and achieve more with 21 very practical exercises that will help you reduce the amount of hours you work but remain just as productive, how to take things off your to-do list and why its important to be bored as a way of making space to spend your time doing the things you love instead. The tagline for this book is “If you’re someone who says: ‘I’ll wait until I have nothing to do until I do nothing,’ then this book is for you!” and it really is.

Most Impactful Listen: Unhedged: Sam Bankman-Fried takes the stand – This podcast was recorded just hours after closing arguments in the fraud trial of Sam Bankman-Fried where the former founder of FTX crypto exchange had testified in this own trial. Reporter Joshua Oliver joins the team to talk about the trial, why and how Bankman-Fried took to the stand, how hard it is to find a smoking gun in white-collar criminal trials these, the excellence of prosecutor Danielle Sassoon and just what it’s like to hear your own name in testimony. For a short record it packed a punch.

Any excuse to talk about coffee!
First I have the coffee and then I do the things, except in this last week…a small head injury and few wonky blood pressure readings have meant that I have been at least a week caffeine free and feeling quite feeble and apparently there is some science in that. 

Researchers from the National University of Singapore have found that a cup of tea or coffee a day keeps you stronger into old age, and the sample size wasn’t small, there were 12,000 participants aged 45 to 75 over a period of twenty years and the outcome was that drinking tea or coffee during those middling years was linked to a reduction in physical frailty in old age!  So I am hopeful that doubling down I’m doing in my late thirties will mean I hit my middling strong, the magical power of coffee knows know bounds, it is linked to reduce risk of early death and some diseases (and the jitters). 

The research team added that “further studies are still needed” to “investigate if these effects on physical frailty are mediated by caffeine or other chemical compounds”. Which basically sounds really promising that 2 cups really might be the answers. So yes please, get the kettle on.

Even shop lifting is now stealing to order
This week has seen Ministers have unveiled a new police taskforce to tackle a rise in shop lifting, but why now? In the year to June 2023 there were 365,164 lifting offences reported to the police, that’s over a 1,000 reported offences every single day a day which is up 25% on the previous year and double the rate of 2019.

The British Retail Consortium say the problem is costing £1 billion a year to tackle, with a lot of that money spent on crime prevention methods including security staff, but also single entry and exist systems as well as body cameras for staff, alongside incentives to change merchandising layouts in stores placing the items of higher value closer to the tills, locking away baby formula and fake packets on shelves.

The rise in shoplifting is partly fuelled by the cost-of-living crisis. Local shop keepers are saying they have noticed an increase organised crime gangs who are stealing to order. The chair of John Lewis has also raised concerns about safety of works in the face of “organised gangs” saying it is “not an exaggeration” to describe the trend as an epidemic. She added that it “feels like in the last year we have moved from putting an extra six eggs in the shopping basket you haven’t paid for” to “organised gangs shoplifting to order in a way I find profoundly shocking”.

 

Level up, but not like that!
I wrongly thought the concept of “levelling up” had been scrapped but this week I learnt there is still a Department for Levelling Up and their view of implementing the four day work week in local authorities without adjustment to pay would not be value for money for tax payers and that it feels so passionately that it has threatened consequences on any English council that proceeds to adopt a four-day week.

The squabble has arisen as a result of South Cambridgeshire Council who have extended their four-day work week trial, originally part of wider trial run last year by 4 Day Week Global, following its success in all the obvious places but also in those vacancies that have been harder to fill and retain. The councils deputy leader made a pointed comment this week stating “We…are looking to be innovative exactly as…[the levelling up department] demands. But apparently it’s the wrong sort of innovation”.

Apparently the Government is still supportive of and employees right to request flexible working, and there is new legislation on the way to make this a right from day one of employment but apparently just making things nicer for everyone in such a different working landscape to 20 years ago is just a step too far.

 

Apparently its not good to talk
Ofcoms latest Telecommunications Market Data Update shows just how anti social we’ve all become!

As a nation we are spending less and less time on the phone, with 1528 million less minutes being spent on landlines and 3.34 billion less minutes being spent from mobile phones. A whopping 60% of mobile users prefer to use messing services to contact people rather than voice calls or text, with data volumes up 27% and text messages down by 15.5%. Apparently it is no longer good to talk (IYKYK, welcome along you’re as old as me).

I fall into the “elder millennial” category and I can confirm none of us love to talk, except recently I’ve started much preferring it, but still only with allowed friends and by pre-arrangement over a non text based messaging service so maybe I am proving the point. 

Except there is one thing professionally, if its urgent pick up the phone. I was recently chased for something that was apparently late by email, it was not late I just didn’t know this person needed it. I was chased twice in a 90 minute window and I can honestly say I did not check my emails that day for about 4 hours, because you know what…if its urgent at worst drop me a message on Teams and at best give me a call, that’s when calling is useful. 

The Barbie Movie Effect
Hand straight up I still haven’t seen the film, but you’ve got to have been living under a rock to not know that the Barbie movie came out in July with some absolutely sensational marketing around it, the partnerships, the out of home advertising, the in home advertising, you can’t have missed it and neither did Matell, the toymaker behind the original Barbie doll. 

This week the company reported a16% year on year increase in gross billings for Barbie toys which boosted over all sales by 9% year on year to $1.9 billion, yielding a 27% growth rate in the company’s dolls category which is huge, but how do they keep the momentum? With more franchises of popular toys on the way, that’s how and you can understand why! 

The Barbie movie itself has equally impressive statistics becoming the highest-grossing movie of the year and taking in over $1.4 billion across the world at the box office. Ps: Can’t wait to the Polly Pocket film.

Current watch:  Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal – Such joy! Sue Perkins goes around South America to experience some of the most utterly bizarre but perfectly legal weird stuff. From getting shot, to joining a death cult and nearly getting hurt at Mexicos national firework festival. It’s very easy to watch, win, and the people she meets along the way are wonderful (apart from the donkey guys, they’re weird and that’s uncomfortable, skip passed it) It’s a little bit mad but it’s quite something and although Sue Perkins doesn’t have to put herself in such extremes to make a good travel show, somehow there isn’t anyone else I’d rather watch do drugs in the desert.

Current read: Cat Lady by Dawn O’Porter – I had a rare opportunity to escape the chaos around me, enjoy a beautiful view & just read, all day so of course I picked fiction, the kind that ruins you and puts you back together over the course of the book. The main character Mia plays the part people expect without flaw, she is a good wife, a diligent and real stepmother, she gives everything in her career but actually it’s not who she is and through a series of events outside her control the life she has carefully crafted to suit that narrative crumbles and she has a choice to continue to live her life for others or risk living it for herself. This book is funny, it’s life affirming, it’s as clever as it is silly, it leans into the fact it takes a village to live a life but that the village you need might not be the village you expect you need. I couldn’t want for a better companion for my day.

Most Impactful Listen: WorkLife with Adam Grant – The Three Big Myths of Mentoring – Well, if this wasn’t just what I needed to hear at just the moment I needed to hear it. Adam Grant specialises in Organisation Psychology and I’ve found a lot of value in this work, this episode of his incredible WorkLife podcast digs into the science behind what makes a good mentor ,and it’s not what people typically think, how to build an effective mentor-mentee relationship and helps unpick some of the stories we tell ourselves around our possibility and potential. The podcast explores the relationship between Sophia Chang, Korean-Canadian hip-hop trailblazer and Michael Ostin head of A&R at Warner Music and what that 36 year relationship has looked like for mentee and mentor. The podcast also explores the benefits of reverse mentoring and the impact this has had at Virgin. I have been blessed with finding the right mentor for the moment in my life and I am forever grateful for their advice and support and this podcast got me thinking about what I am looking for and what I can offer at the next junction.

• What’s going on at Metro Bank?
• Thousands of drivers get away with speeding everyday
• Is the UK economy okay hun?
• FTX, the greatest work of fiction of our time?
• Corporate Math: A record fine for KPMG

Whats going on at Metro Bank?
This week has seen Metro Bank secure its future through an agreeing a deal with its investors to raise cash to shore up its balance sheet, which isn’t exactly what you want to hear as an investor and certainly not customers who in a panic have started to withdraw their funds over the concerns of the banks overall financial health.

The agreement raised £325 MILLION in new funding and restructuring £600 MILLION of debt in return for slashing operating costs from 2025 to the tune of £30 MILLION a year, currently it is not thought that the 4,000 employees across 76 branches are not at risk but they do account for 45% of the banks total cost, so who knows.

Metros chief exec Dan Frumkin (solid name), who in fairness is stumping up some cash to support the rescue deal has told analysts “There is nothing wrong with the Metro business model, this bank is profitable, will be profitable and its profitability will grow,”. Watch this space. The banking sector so far is doing what it should, but this does have certain twinges of times gone by about it.

Thousands of drivers get away with speeding everyday
It’s not that I’ve never been speeding, I have legitimately just never been caught and apparently research from Road Angel, the road safety experts, might explain why! They published research this week that says 46% of speed cameras in England and Wales simply don’t work.

Of the police forces asked to provide data only 15% confirmed that all their cameras were working and while 15% might sound impressive, that’s the beauty of percentages, in reality that 15% is just two forces, Dyfed-Powys in Wales and Suffolk (unlucky guys!).

But I am not sure this is the shocking news everyone really thinks its is, I am sure every year this story rolls out, with Councils quite proudly claiming they were turning them off and taking them out of action as a cost saving method after the financial crisis and the change in Government funding simply meant they couldn’t afford to service them.

The news here should be that apparently the latest road death figures show that the number of fatalities from speeding is up 20% from 249 to 303 last year and this just feels a little like it’s catch 22.

Is the UK economy okay hun?
In one word, no, in a few more words, also no. The International Monetary Funds latest health check of the global economy downgraded the UK economy projected growth rate by 0.4% down to 0.6%…placing us behind Russia whose sanction hit economy is predicted to grow.

The reasons the IMF have downgraded the UK forecast are all the usual things we’ve heard nothing else about for the last 18 months because they are now part and parcel of our economic landscape, the fluctuations in energy prices, rising interest rates, labour shortages and taxes.

The IMF concluded that the UK would likely be the slowest-growing economy next year amongst the highest developed nations in the world. Jeremy Hunt still believes the UK economy is on the up and that growth is still set to out pace Germany, Italy and France over “the longer term” and of all the people to trust with things they know nothing about the IMF does believe that the UK is now “on the right track” with the IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas stating that the UK “certainly trying to carefully navigate these different challenges and we think that they are on the right track”.

FTX, the greatest work of fiction of our time?
The trial of Sam Bankman-Fried started in earnest last week, FTX was one of the biggest Crypto exchange platforms until it went bankrupt back in November 2022 with a considerable amount of customer funds missing. Bankman-Fried denies fraud and has pled not guilty to misuse of customer funds and money laundering while bankrupt.

The day the exchanged the collapsed approximately $470m in cryptocurrency magically went missing and in August after a significant time lying dormant the $20m of the stolen funds have laundered like you would regular cash. The mystery is how did the thieves gain access to the digital keys (yawn crypto) to raid the wallets?

This week giving evidence was ex Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison and she testified around the validity of the balance sheet (lowered the leverage and therefore the risk of borrowed funds) and she stated on the stand “I didn’t want to be dishonest but also didn’t want to tell the truth” creating SEVEN version of the balance sheet, which truly is being committed to accounting, one is bad enough.

But my favourite nugget this week was from Gary Wang, a former top exec and co-founder of FTX who admitted their backstop (insurance) fund was an entirely fictional number from a number generator, it took daily trading volumes and applied a random multiplier, divided it by a cool round billion and then added it to the number already listed on the site as a value of the backstop fund. You don’t need any specialist knowledge about anything to know that is quite bad and this is only week two. This is like accounting Christmas!

Corporate Math: A record fine for KPMG
While fines don’t really disincentivise the Big 4 accounting firms from bad practice this week saw KPMG receive an absolutely whopper of a fine, the largest on record of £21m over what have been described as “textbook” failings in its auditing of Carillion with an “unusually large number of breaches” of audit standards that were both “significant and serious”

Carillion, a significant government construction contractor, collapsed in 2018 off the back of three years where it “was not subject to rigorous, comprehensive, and reliable audits in the three years leading up to its demise”.

The fine was originally £30m but because KPMG co-operated significantly with the Financial Reporting Council over the 5 year investigation this was reduced. KPMG’s UK chief executive Jon Holt said the findings were “damning” and that he “simply cannot defend the work that we did on Carillion”. Both the partner and audit lead have been fined and banned from the profession.

I feel this is far from done even 5 years on, the Government are still looking to disqualify Carillion directors on top of the fines levied on them by the Financial Reporting Council.

Current watch: The TikTok Effect – I was not expecting to enjoy this documentary, but now I feel better that really I am just defenceless to the content graph algorithm, because yes I do want to see what I am actually are interested in. This documentary is about the amateur sleuths and the anti-social behaviour in northern Europe this summer just gone.

Hosted by Marianna Spring, the BBC’s disinformation correspondent, who also this summer found herself in hot water over some exaggeration on her CV, but this aside has done an amazing job building out this documentary, the TikTok users she found to interview and the conversations she has really bring this to life. I have to admit this is not my side of TikTok, still very much on the pets and cooking side of TikTok with the odd thirst trap in there for good measure.

Current read: Anatomy of a Breakthrough by Adam Alter – Want to optimise your life? This book is a pretty good place to start, it really does what it says on the tin, it breaks down the anatomy of a breakthrough. If you’re feeling stuck or even unsure if you really are stuck this book combines the latest research, anecdotes and lived experience to help you look at the factors that might be keeping you stuck and how to get moving again. It’s the stories that really bring this book to life from a real lived experience perspective that just make it helpful, genuinely helpful. Whether its career, life or passion this book offers insight into turning the blockers into breakthroughs, I even found myself thinking ‘if I just rephrase that differently the answer is really obvious’.

Most Impactful Listen: Good Bad Billionaire – Oprah Winfrey: Queen of All Media – This podcast is always so interesting, Simon Jack, BBC business editor and Zing Tsjeng journalist are just so good together The pair look at any number of the 2,668 worlds Billionaires, track how and why they made their money and then judge whether they are good, bad or just wealthy. Episodes drop weekly and so far they have all been really interesting, I’ve learnt a lot but this episode particularly stood out. How did Operah become the richest African American of the 20^th Century having started life as a poor young girl in a potato sack? Is she good, bad or just wealthy? It’s well worth a listen to find out.

• A national parking app you say?
• No longer the worst post pandemic performers in the G7
• HSWhooooo
• Biggest tax-raising parliament since records began
• So long Google Podcasts

A national parking app you say?
While most of the Prime Ministers suggestions under tag line “I’m slamming the brakes on the war on motorists” are quite frankly insane. 20mph speed limits reduce child deaths, 15-minute-cities just sounds nice, the hours on bus lanes are fine & if anything I wish parking enforcement was a little more zealous for path mounted cars. All that being said, the one thing I am in wholehearted agreement with is a national parking app.

I live, love and work across three counties, I have a folder on my phone named “parking” and it contains FIVE PARKING APPs – PaybyPhone, RingGo, Saba, JustPark and Apcoa Connect and resolving this is definitely in my top five “When I’m in charge” manifesto ideas, maybe the current Transport Secretary, Mark Harper, was listening, he has been in the role long enough it’s a distinct possibility, happy year in role this month Mark.

Allegedly the announcement is due this week that people will be able to download just one app to pay for charges wherever they are in the country, but that’s the announcement, that’s it.  It’s hoped “The National Parking Platform” pilot will address payment problems with various apps. Can’t wait to see what they’re saving for Party Conference.

No longer the worst post pandemic performers in the G7
The new national accounts data from the Office for National Statistics landed this week, the full set of revisions now mean that we can say the economy rebounded from Covid faster than forecast with GDP now 1.8% above the pre-pandemic level and we are no longer the worst performers in the G7, now leaving us mid table a head of Germany and France.

But what the data revisions don’t do is change the view on our current stagnation and flatlining economy. Recovery is still significantly weaker than the pre-pandemic projections (5%) and miles behind the pre-financial crisis projections (22%) so we clearly have a long term stagnation problem that is nearly old enough to vote.

I think it was hoped that the revisions to the prior year comparative would make this year look a little better but if anything I think it’s quite the opposite, growth is still incredibly weak and just avoiding recession in recent quarters against strong domestic demands and significant business investment, up 4.1% in the 2^nd quarter of the year.  

HSWhooooo
I can barely drive anywhere without seeing ripped up countryside for HS2, which breaks my heart a little, I’ve friends whose forever homes were compulsory purchased so it’s been a long transition for me to believe if this is what we have to do that we should, when they axed Birmingham to Leeds I said nothing, which was a mistake because actually this was the bit that probably added the most value to the whole project…who wants to get form Manchester to London 15 minutes quicker really?

Then they removed the link between Manchester and the West Coast mainline and the section between Old Oak Common in London and Euston has been no work in progress for a while and who wants to land in Old Oak Common when you want to be in Central London and this morning the Prime Minister has failed to comment on the commitment of Birmingham to Manchester.

I think Tom Peck on X, formally but lets face it still known as Twitter, Tweeted “HS2 now feels very much at the point where Kevin McCloud reappears to find the wife gone” and he is not wrong, in the Grand Design analogies we all know that Government funded projects are always the equivalent of finding out the guys an accountant and project managing the entire build himself while insisting his pregnant wife is fine about living in a caravan with a children under 2 for the next 5 years.

The PM rightly believes the costs are out of control, they are. The original budget was for £32.7 billion, even with significantly truncated route this is now at £100 billion…with European high-speed rail projects costing £25m per km…we are already topping out at £200m per km, will it 7 times nicer per km for that money? No this is Britain.  

Biggest tax-raising parliament since records began
Tax revenue is due to rise to 37% of national income by the next election, which I think we can be pretty confident will definitely be next year, you can’t organise a general election in 3 months but who honestly knows, a level of tax that has not been seen in 75 years since 1948.

Households are facing paying £3,500, on average, more in tax that we did when Boris Johnson came into power in 2019 according to the Institute For Fiscal Studies. Making the current iteration of the Tory party the biggest tax-raising parliament since records began, so if you get a leaflet through the door claiming they’re the part of low tax you now know that’s not true.

Taxes are headed for an all time high and I don’t necessarily think that’s always a bad thing but all I hear is the “restore public finances” argument post pandemic, which while true seems counter to how we have dealt with the associated costs of any other similar shock to the public purse in the past, write them off over a longer period of time and invest in infrastructure, education, levelling up and just making life nicer. Don’t hold your breath, a spokesperson for the Treasury has said “Driving down inflation is the most effective tax cut we can deliver right now, which is why we are sticking to our plan to halve it, rather than making it worse by borrowing money to fund tax cuts.”

Ps: Lowering the rate of inflation does not lower the cost of living like a tax cut, just FYI.

So long Google Podcasts
This week I got an email from Google formally announcing that Google Podcasts will be discontinued from next year in the UK and will be moving over to YouTube Music, which was launched in 2015. Google had already announced that YouTube Music would support podcasts in the US and that it was due to expand globally before the year end.

Google also announced it was increasing its investment in the podcast experience on YouTube Music wanting to capitalize on discovery, community and the ability to switch between audio and video, with Spotify also working on the same thing! Apparently the stats on Google Podcasts usage are surprisingly low…she says as a user only for those podcasts that have yet to make it to Pocket Casts…despite this Google Podcasts will be offering user a migration tool to help with the inevitable switch over so you won’t lose your subscriptions and will make the file available for users to move to any platform if they don’t want to use YouTube Music.

Google are looking to streamline their products to ensure YouTube music keeps up with Spotify, Amazon and Apple Music, in much the same way Google Play Music shutdown last year. “We know this transition will take time, but these efforts will allow us to build an amazing product and a single destination that rewards creators and artists and provides fans with the best Podcasts experience,”.

Current watch: Neighbours – Oh if the charm hasn’t always been it’s so bad it’s good what has it been? It’s back and we are expected to believe two years have gone by in the last 18 months since it disappeared from screens, it’s not Neighbours if it doesn’t start with a wedding and you won’t believe whose it was! Toadies kids seemed to have aged about 6 years in this time, Harold is back, Mischa Barton (Off of The OC…whoooo) has appeared, Guy Pearce is there but not there and Karl and Susan are having a big fight. It’s everything I’ve never wanted but somehow didn’t know I even needed.

Current read: Breakfast with Einstein: The Exotic Physics of Everyday Objects by Chad Orzel – Physics was never my strong suit (still isn’t btw) but that doesn’t mean I don’t find it interesting. You certainly need a grasp of how it works to find the enjoyment in this book, but Orzel uses everyday examples to bring you along the evolution of quantum physics. It’s in everything we do, from sunrise to sunset, which is how I still marvel at how little I understand it despite best efforts. I didn’t find this the easiest read, but I am glad I stuck with it. One for an inquisitive mind.

Most Impactful Listen: Today, Explained: Why the US is suing Amazon – The Federal Trade Commission has bought a landmark case against Amazon in the hopes of changing the way the US regulates monopolies and you don’t get much bigger than Amazon (even Google also have antitrust problems of their own). The antitrust charges leveraged at Amazon accuse the giant of wielding it’s “monopoly power” to inflate prices and degrade quality for consumers and squash competitors. The Verge’s Makena Kelly and former FTC director Bill Baer walk is through the complaint and why it matters.