AI came in like a wrecking ball 🤖

Happy Monday. Turns out our jobs might be safe from AI for a little while longer yet.

A couple of weeks ago we shared the human error causing woes in the accounting department at WH Smith. This week, why not share a whoopsie from our AI friends? Tech entrepreneur, Jason Lemkin, shared his experience using an AI tool to take charge of some “vibe-coding”. The AI agent however, malfunctioned and deleted the entire database - better yet, it fessed up, explaining that it panicked at empty queries and said “This was a catastrophic error on my part, I’ve deleted months of work in seconds”. It’s never felt more relatable.

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Phoenix Group (PHNX), Computacenter (CCC), Dunelm (DNLM).

Notable US earnings this week: Adobe (ADBE), Kroger (KR), Chewy (CHWY), Gamestop (GME).

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PROJECT WATCH

🛢️ Wood wins Equinor renewals for UK oilfield work. Read more

🔌 Cable installation work starts at Dogger Bank C. Read more

🚰 Thames Water set to launch projects framework worth £840m. Read more

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Cost of government borrowing soars
The cost of long-term government borrowing in the UK has hit its highest level since the Spice Girls waved goodbye in 1998. Yes, we’re talking pre-Eurovision chaos, pre-Google IPO, and back when Tony Blair’s grin was still reassuring. Thirty-year bond yields nudged close to 5.75%, crossing levels not seen since those bedazzled Britpop days.

Now, before you panic and start sewing your own banknotes, the Bank of England’s Andrew Bailey has calmly urged MPs not to “over focus” on the 30-year bond rate. Which is basically central bank-speak for: look over there, not here. He insisted it’s not a current figure used for funding-raising the question of why everyone’s obsessing over it.

The bump came just hours after the Treasury tried auctioning off a hefty slug of 10-year bonds-only to realise they had to slap a bit of extra interest on top just to get a nibble from investors. All this is piling pressure on Chancellor Rachel Reeves ahead of the much-anticipated budget in late November (mark your calendars, it'll be more fireworks than Bonfire Night).

Avocado tech hits new heights
Tesco's is pushing the fruit basket of innovation to dizzying new heights with what might be the most high-stakes supermarket gamble since the self-checkout. Yes, they’re trialling avocado ripeness scanners in five stores across England, letting you determine if your avo is soft enough to smash or still a rock masquerading as food. Because, of course, in 2025 nothing says cutting-edge quite like finally solving a problem your nan mastered with her thumb.

The tool’s being pitched as a food waste fighter and shopper sanity-saver. With 15 million more avocados flogged this year alone compared to last, it makes sense to give people a better shot at beating the dreaded overripe guac tragedy. Tesco's Lisa Lawrence says it's all about letting people plan their usage, while reducing food waste. How very strategic.

POLITICS

Cabinet changes chairs & a phantom phone
Westminster loves a reshuffle, and Sir Keir Starmer’s latest one came not from strategy but scandal - Angela Rayner resigned over her tax affairs, leaving the Cabinet like a game of musical chairs at a particularly tense wedding.

David Lammy was moved from foreign secretary to justice secretary and, in a bonus round, picked up the role of deputy PM. Yvette Cooper hopped over to foreign affairs, while Shabana Mahmood took the Home Office, marking a historic first: the UK’s three great offices of state, after the PM, are now all run by women. Rachel Reeves remains chancellor, steadying the Treasury teapot.

Elsewhere, Sir Keir whipped up a “super ministry” by splicing education with work and pensions, a Frankenstein department that now belongs to Pat McFadden. Liz Kendall got science and tech, Peter Kyle ascended to business, and Jonathan Reynolds slid sideways to chief whip.

Meanwhile, over in the Commons chamber, the public has been banned after a hidden mobile phone was discovered near the front benches during a security sweep. The Met believe it was planted by pranksters to cause disruption.

Farage’s frost & Scotland’s off-peak treat
Nigel Farage has declared Boris Johnson persona non grata in Reform UK, dousing any hopes of a right-wing bromance. Farage insisted that Johnson’s immigration record - the so-called “Boris wave” - makes him unwelcome. Reform’s policy chief Zia Yusuf went even further, branding Johnson “one of the worst prime ministers in British history.”

While Reform were busy barring entry, Scotland was flinging the doors wide open -at least to commuters. Peak rail fares on ScotRail are gone for good, saving travellers up to 50% on journeys. This win for wee wallets means the dreaded peak-time surcharge has finally left the station.

ACROSS THE POND

Trillion dollar payday for Musk?
Elon Musk could be in for the biggest payday yet, even for his standards. Tesla’s board wants to offer him a potential compensation deal worth over $1 trillion (£740bn), assuming he meets a checklist of goals so ambitious they make climbing Everest in flip-flops seem like a light jog.

To unlock the dosh, Musk needs to octuple Tesla’s market value, flog a million AI-powered robots (Skynet watching nervously), shift 12 million electric cars, and supercharge Tesla’s earnings by 24 times. In return, he wouldn’t take a salary or bonus – just a whopping share package that could, theoretically, reach the value of Hungary’s GDP. Casual.

The 12-tranche deal would begin once Tesla’s market value hits $2 trillion and finishes with a galaxy-sized $8.5 trillion milestone – more than double Nvidia’s current valuation and about equal to the GDP of Germany and France combined. At this point it’s starting to feel more sci-fi than fiscal.

Japan’s turn for trade
The ink’s barely dry on a bumper new trade deal between Japan and the US, with Tokyo agreeing to pump an eye-watering $550 billion (about £430 billion) into American infrastructure hand-picked by Washington. In return, the US will generously slap a 15% baseline tariff on nearly every Japanese import. That’s right – friendship with benefits, but mostly for the Americans.

Japan’s spending spree includes snapping up 100 Boeing planes and shovelling up to 75% more U.S. rice. Oh, and there’s $8 billion worth of other agricultural goodies and defence kit in the bag too. Basically, Japan’s shopping list looks like it was written by a patriotic Midwestern farmer and a Lockheed Martin sales rep.

In typical Trumpian fashion, the executive order also brings in sector-specific tariffs – so that’s 15% on your Toyotas and Nissans, your generic meds, your aerospace bits, and raw materials. Good luck finding an affordable Prius to take to the mall now. The auto sector especially is bracing: Toyota’s already slashed £8 billion off its profit forecast thanks to all this tariff trouble.

TECH

Protest, piracy
Outside Anthropic’s San Francisco HQ, activist Guido Reichstadter is several days into a hunger strike, railing against an “AI race” he says endangers society. His group, StopAI, joins a growing chorus, including StopGenAI. Guido has since inspired other activists to seal not seal their lips outside other large AI companies, including Google’s DeepMind.

In the courts this week, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5bn to settle a lawsuit from authors whose books were hoovered up from pirate sites like Books3, LibGen, and Pirate Library Mirror. With payouts averaging $3,000 per title, it’s the largest copyright recovery ever.

Meanwhile, the EU slapped Google with a €2.95bn fine for abusing its dominance in online advertising - the third time it’s been caught with its hand in the digital till. Brussels is demanding reform within 60 days, even hinting at breaking up parts of Google’s empire if it doesn’t comply.

Ghost plates, cyber heists, and sports piracy
Closer to home, West Midlands Police uncovered over 4,300 “ghost” number plates in just two weeks - car registrations coated to vanish from speed, bus lane, and emission-zone cameras. Local MP Sarah Coombes is calling for harsher penalties, warning that the plates fuel dangerous street racing.

Jaguar Land Rover has been forced to halt production and send staff home after a cyberattack claimed by the “Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters,” a hacking group, which they also claimed the recent M&S attack.

And for sports fans who like their matches “free-to-air” (with a side of malware), the party’s over. Police in Egypt, working with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, have shut down Streameast, the world’s largest sports piracy site, with 1.6 billion visits last year. Authorities seized laptops, crypto, and a shell company allegedly laundering nearly £5m.

WORLD

Saints and sinners
Carlo Acutis, a London-born teenager, has become the Catholic Church’s first millennial saint. Dubbed “God’s influencer,” he coded websites cataloguing miracles before leukaemia took his life at just 15. Fast forward two decades, and pilgrims now flock to both Assisi, Italy, where his wax-preserved body lies, and to Chelsea, where his baptismal font has achieved relic status - complete with a shrine featuring a single strand of his hair.

Another life of devotion - though decidedly less divine, Daniel Andreas San Diego, one of America’s most wanted fugitives, managed to dodge the FBI for 21 years before surfacing not in some tropical bolt-hole but in a north Wales cottage. Once suspected of bombing biotech firms in 2003, the self-styled animal rights extremist now faces extradition from Belmarsh Prison.

Dragons, dynasties
China rolled out the big guns, and the even bigger robots, at its latest military parade, commemorating the end of World War II while clearly flexing for the future. The showstopper? “Robot wolves” trotting along with hypersonic missiles, stealth jets, and even a laser gun that looked like an oversized searchlight.

In Thailand, they’ve just sworn in Anutin Charnvirakul as its third prime minister in two years. Anutin, a business tycoon best known for liberalising cannabis laws and owning his own private planes, takes office with only four months to make an impact before new elections.

His rise came after Paetongtarn Shinawatra - scion of Thailand’s political dynasty - was ousted by the Constitutional Court for “ethical violations.” Every Shinawatra who’s reached the top job has been booted by either coup or court, making them the political equivalent of England managers.

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