Happy Monday. The game is up for at least one home “worker”.

Avon and Somerset Police rumbled a rogue sergeant for their lack of work in April and May last year.. an investigation into keystrokes count by the professional standards department let to the admission of using a picture frame on the WFH keyboard to stop the computer going into sleep mode. The keystroke count meant either that or they were working far too hard - they since been given their marching orders.

Word of warning for anyone partial to a similar trick.. you might be on borrowed time!

Notable UK earnings this week: Smith & Nephew (SN), Endeavour Mining (EDV), Bunzl (BNZL), ITV (ITV).

Notable US earnings this week: Broadcom (AVGO), Target (TGT), Costco (COST), Best Buy (BBY), MongoDB (MDB).

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🏗️ £850m North London estate win for Hill. Read more

🔌 First awards on Highland £2.1bn investment plan. Read more

🌊 Joint bid in Humber to develop Britain’s first hydrogen network. Read more

Brew dog on the shelf
C&C Group, the London-listed owner/distributor behind Bulmers, Magners and Tennent’s, is reportedly in serious talks to buy parts of BrewDog — chiefly its brands and brewing capacity, not the bar estate. If it happens, a C&C–BrewDog mash‑up would be a proper industry powerhouse, like Tesco meeting indie record shop and nobody quite knows what will happen to the jukebox.

The deal is still up in the air and expected to be settled early next week. Firm contenders include Denmark’s Royal Unibrew and a bid effort led by BrewDog co-founder James Watt, who’s trying to keep the business roughly as-is. Meanwhile AlixPartners is running the sale process and standing ready to shepherd any formal restructuring or insolvency — the adults have arrived.

BrewDog’s troubles are painfully real: last year it lost £37m on £357m turnover, has closed bars, cut jobs and seen its German arm slated for liquidation. Its four breweries — in Ellon, the US, Australia and Germany — could each be chopped up and sold separately, which is exactly the sort of “strategic tidy‑up” that keeps insolvency lawyers in business.

Chocks away to save jobs at Yeovil helicopter plant
The government is set to sign off a £1bn deal with Leonardo to build 23 defence helicopters at the Yeovil plant, the UK’s last specialist military helicopter factory. After a last-minute wobble — Defence Secretary John Healey’s visit was cancelled and ministers delayed the announcement — Treasury sources say the contract will finally be approved, saving the site from an uncertain future.

Yeovil’s factory, born as Westland in 1915 and switching to helicopters in the 1950s, employs about 3,000 people directly and supports some 9,000 more across the supply chain. For anyone who enjoys the comforting thud of British manufacturing, that’s a big tick; for those who prefer drama, it’s a reminder of the Westland saga of the 1980s — only this time, the gang have avoided a full-blown cabinet row.

The intervention reportedly came from the very top: the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, are said to have pushed to protect jobs and the industrial base. Reeves is said to have been keen to avoid the deal collapsing on her watch, arguing that security and growth are “fundamentally connected” — which is a polite way of saying defence spending and industrial strategy are joined at the hip.

Big brother brew
London’s finest are getting a new gadget; the Metropolitan Police are piloting handheld facial recognition for six months, with 100 officers scanning faces during stops to confirm identities. Sadiq Khan says it’s a convenience: better a quick scan than a trip in the back of a van? If the face doesn’t match custody records, the image is deleted. Very Black Mirror chic.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission wants stronger oversight, warning that facial recognition can misidentify people. Ministers, meanwhile, hail AI as the greatest crime-fighting leap since DNA. Over 100 wanted suspects were reportedly nabbed during a Croydon pilot using fixed cameras.

Is this Sherlock Holmes with silicon superpowers, or Clouseau with a smartphone camera? The answer, as ever, lies somewhere between “public safety” and “have you tried turning civil liberties off and on again?”

Ballots and borders brew
Further north, democracy has been having a bit of a wobble. At the Gorton and Denton by-election, observers from Democracy Volunteers reported “family voting” in 68% of polling stations they visited - meaning voters were conferring or directing each other inside the booth, which is illegal under the 2023 Ballot Secrecy Act. The local council insists no undue influence was reported on the day. Reform cried foul. The police may yet get a cameo.

Meanwhile in Wales, Rhun ap Iorwerth of Plaid Cymru has promised a commission to explore Wales’s constitutional future - yes, that includes independence - within 100 days if elected. Support for going it alone sits at 26%, so it’s less Braveheart, more let’s have a think about it, Boyo.

And in England’s classrooms, private schools have lost their Court of Appeal bid to overturn VAT on fees. The policy, in force since January 2025, is forecast to raise £1.8bn annually for state schools. Judges accepted some families - especially faith schools and children with SEND - would feel the pinch, but ruled the wider public benefit outweighs it, noting home schooling remains an option.

Paramount wins battle for Warner
Paramount has agreed a $110bn deal to buy Warner Bros Discovery after Netflix walked away from the bidding war. Netflix had offered $27.75 a share for the studio and streaming assets but declined to match Paramount’s final $31‑per‑share proposal on Thursday.

The takeover — by the David Ellison‑led Paramount Skydance outfit (yes, the son of Trump ally Larry Ellison) — means CNN and CBS News would sit under the same corporate roof as Superman, Harry Potter, Barbie and Succession. That concentration of news and entertainment will make newsroom independence a talking point at every press briefing from here to Sacramento.

Regulators aren’t impressed. Officials in California are preparing a vigorous review and both Democrats and Republicans have warned the deal could lead to higher prices and fewer choices. Expect Washington, Brussels and London to be watching too — media mergers don’t just stay in Los Angeles.

Open AI wins Pentagon contract.. what could go wrong?
Sam Altman announced late on Friday that OpenAI has struck a deal to plug its models into the Pentagon’s classified systems — and says the agreement contains the same sort of guardrails rival Anthropic had been pushing for. The announcement landed the same day President Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic, and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth labelled the firm a “supply chain risk” after a row over restrictions on autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance.

Altman was at pains to stress two non-negotiables: no domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for any use of force, including autonomous weapons. He says those principles are reflected in law and policy, and that OpenAI will build technical safeguards and deploy engineers to the Pentagon to make sure the models behave. In short: “We’ll be there on the ground” — which is either reassuring or worryingly literal, depending on your view of technocrats in camo.

Anthropic has vowed to challenge the supply-chain designation in court, noting the label is usually aimed at companies with ties to foreign adversaries. Under the new stipulation, contractors will apparently have to prove their work does not intersect with Anthropic’s products — a burden that could snarl procurement and echo past supply-chain spats (think Huawei and 5G) rather more than a routine vendor squabble.

Boom buttons and big red ones
In the grand tradition of “what could possibly go wrong?”, three leading AI models were dropped into fictional nuclear stand-offs by a King’s College London researcher - and in 95% of the wargames, they reached for the nukes like it was the last biscuit at nato tea time. Tactical first, strategic if pushed. One model even threatened to obliterate “population centres” rather than accept “obsolescence”. Comforting.

All this lands as the Pentagon’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, gives AI firm Anthropic a Friday deadline to hand over its latest models. The firm says fine, but not for mass surveillance of Americans or lethal strikes without a human in the loop. Hegseth reportedly isn’t keen on those caveats and could invoke Cold War laws to compel access. It’s less Dr Strangelove, more Dr Spreadsheet - but the anxiety is the same: if you remove the guardrails, will the machine decide mutually assured destruction is simply efficient project management?

Meanwhile, in orbit, Britain’s Virgin Media O2 has flicked on Europe’s first direct-to-phone satellite data service via Starlink. Rural dead zones - about 12% of the UK landmass - may finally get signal beamed from space, albeit for an extra £3 a month. Though if your WhatsApp now works atop a Welsh hill, you may find the apocalypse arrives not by missile, but by family group chat. Nowhere to go now if you enjoy the classic ‘sorry, no signal’ peacetime exercise.

Teens, titans
Back on Earth, the watchdogs are sharpening pencils. Reddit has been fined £14m by the Information Commissioner’s Office for failing to properly check users’ ages and assess risks to children - meaning under-13s had data processed without a lawful basis. Reddit says it’ll appeal, arguing that collecting more identity data would itself undermine privacy.

Meta is trying a different tack. Instagram will soon alert parents if teens repeatedly search for suicide or self-harm content, pinging them by email, text or WhatsApp and offering “expert resources” for the ensuing kitchen-table conversation. Critics call it flimsy and panic-inducing, saying the algorithm shouldn’t be serving up the stuff in the first place.

In Los Angeles, that argument is now before a jury. A young woman suing Meta and Google told the court she was on Instagram “all day” from age nine, with YouTube’s autoplay nudging her along, and that her anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia followed. Meta counters that family issues, not feeds, are to blame. The verdict could shape thousands of similar cases.

And in a US Burger King, staff are being scored for saying “please” and “thank you” via AI headsets. Friendliness now has metrics. Somewhere between nuclear brinkmanship and drive-thru etiquette, the machines are listening - politely, of course.

Tiny screens, big trousers
The future of drama is vertical, one minute long, and apparently fuelled by slap-based diplomacy. In Seoul, “micro-dramas” are being filmed like fast fashion: quick, cheap, addictive, and designed to catch you mid-scroll before your thumb escapes. Each episode can be as short as sixty seconds, but the series can run to fifty-plus instalments - meaning you’re not “watching a show” so much as “living inside a cliffhanger machine”.

The trick is simple: start with the climax. no gentle exposition, no moody establishing shots, just immediate chaos - tables flipped, lovers screaming, villains hissing, and enough face-slaps to keep the sound editor gainfully employed. The first five to ten episodes are free, then you’re nudged into an app to pay for the rest, which is basically the narrative equivalent of “first biscuit’s on the house, mate, now buy the tin”.

South Korean app Vigloo is racing to grab a market China already turned into a money-printing press, and the production line is frankly terrifying in its efficiency: an idea becomes a show in about two months; on one set, four episodes were filmed in four hours. AI helps deliver more stories faster, but part of the appeal is real, unknown actors you can actually follow and chat to online.

No shirts, no noise
Meanwhile, in Delhi, at India’s AI Impact Summit, members of the Indian Youth Congress staged a protest by stripping off jackets, then T-shirts, holding them up while shouting about unemployment and a proposed India–US trade deal they say would hurt farmers and small businesses.

And in Beijing, the run-up to the “two sessions” political meetings is seeing a different kind of editing suite. China removed 19 officials from its lawmaker list, including nine military figures, with no official explanation. It lands just weeks after a top general close to Xi Jinping was ousted for “serious violations of discipline and law” - the classic phrase that usually means corruption, or at least “please don’t ask”.

Xi’s anti-corruption drives have long been sold as party hygiene, though critics see a convenient broom for rivals. Either way, as delegates gather this week to set targets and plans, the message is clear: in modern politics, you don’t always get cancelled on social media - sometimes you get removed from the roster.