Happy Monday. Since 2015 the public have been able to make suggestions to the Met Office for naming storms - it is typically only the more boring sensible suggestions taken onboard.

Last week, a Freedom of Information request revealed the full list of genuine public suggestions for the next batches of bad weather - a few shoutouts go out for Dame Judi Drench, Keir Stormer, David Blowy and of course… Stormzy.

Safe in the knowledge their suggestions wouldn’t be used, the British spirit drives folks to submit them anyway even if the Met Office rain on their parade.

Notable UK earnings this week: Admiral Group (ADM), Direct Line (DLG), Halma (HLMA), Balfour Beatty (BBY), Tate & Lyle (TATE).

Notable US earnings this week: Hewlett Packard (HPE), Oracle (ORCL), Dollar General (DG), Ulta Beauty (ULTA).

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🏗️ Two new residential towers approved for Isle of Dogs. Read more

🔌 NKT wins Eastern Green Link 3 work connecting Scotland and England worth €2.2bn. Read more

🌊 Green light for North Sea carbon capture appraisal. Read more

Interest cut unlikely
Traders had pencilled in this week for a March cut from the Bank of England, but those plans have been sent to the naughty step. After the BoE left rates at 3.75% in a narrow 5-4 vote last month, market odds for a March reduction have collapsed - from roughly 80–86% down to around 20–27% - and money markets now mostly expect a single cut to 3.50% later in the year, not two.

The culprit is painfully simple: energy. Brent crude is up about 15% since the recent escalation, European gas prices have jumped roughly three-quarters, Qatar has paused some LNG output and Tehran’s threats over the Strait of Hormuz have everyone nervy. Economists from NIESR to the IFS warn higher energy bills could push inflation back up and might even nudge borrowing costs towards 4% - precisely the opposite of what households were hoping for.

Spring statement summary
Rachel Reeves used her spring statement to insist the government has “the right economic plan” as rising oil and gas prices linked to the conflict in the Middle East sparked a sell-off in gilts and forced traders to scale back expectations for Bank of England rate cuts. In the Commons she warned the world has “in the last few days become yet more uncertain” and said it was incumbent on her to steer the economy through those shocks.

Fittingly, the speech fell on International Women’s Day - a neat bit of optics as a senior woman in charge of the public finances reassures households. She pointed to easing inflation and lower borrowing costs as signs that household pressures are easing, though markets were less reassured and moved first, asked questions later.

The Office for Budget Responsibility trimmed its 2026 GDP forecast to 1.1% (down from 1.4% in November) but nudged 2027–28 forecasts up to 1.6%. The chancellor said borrowing will be nearly £18bn lower than the autumn forecast and set out a steady fall in public sector net borrowing: 4.3% this year, then 3.6%, 2.9%, 2.5% and 1.8% by 2029–30.

Unemployment is forecast to peak later this year before falling every year of the OBR’s horizon, ending at 4.1% - which Reeves flagged as lower than at the start of the parliament. That’s the kind of cautious optimism that reads well in briefing notes and leaves less obvious fingerprints for the markets to pick at. An obvious caveat to add being who knows what comes next as conflict continues in Iran.

Government tries to fix work
Just in time for International Women’s Day, the government has rolled out a pair of workplace action plans aimed at tackling two persistent issues: the gender pay gap and the often-ignored reality of menopause at work. The idea is to encourage large employers to show exactly what they’re doing to fix the problem rather than simply publishing statistics and calling it a day.

From April, companies with more than 250 employees will be urged to publish plans explaining how they intend to reduce pay inequality and support staff experiencing menopause. The broader pitch includes familiar reliefs: lower energy bills, expanding free childcare, frozen rail fares, and keeping prescriptions under a tenner - a sort of economic care package with a side of workplace reform.

Perhaps, finally, the workplace is learning that menopause isn’t a personal inconvenience. Real progress will depend on whether employers actually follow through. A spreadsheet can highlight inequality; it can’t fix it.

Lords play musical chairs again
In Westminster’s grandest antechamber, the House of Lords is once again demonstrating that British constitutional reform tends to happen the way old castles erode.

The government wants to abolish the last remaining hereditary peers - the 92 aristocrats who still sit in the Lords because their ancestors happened to be important several centuries ago. Most hereditary seats were scrapped back in 1999, but a compromise deal allowed a small number to remain as a sort of historical antique aftertaste.

Labour pledged in its 2024 manifesto to finish the job by removing their automatic right to sit and vote. MPs have already approved the legislation, but the Lords itself - never keen on reforms that involve fewer Lords - has slowed the process with amendments and lengthy debate.

Conservatives have reportedly been offered the chance to create more life peers than usual later this year, effectively sweetening the deal if they allow the bill. In simple terms: fewer hereditary aristocrats, but perhaps a few more freshly minted political ones.

The numbers matter because party balance in the Lords is delicate. Conservatives currently hold the largest bloc of peers, and Labour wants to narrow that gap. Creating additional life peers - appointed by the prime minister and formally approved by the King - is one way to do it.

For hereditary peers who lose their automatic seats, there is technically still a path back: they can apply to become life peers like anyone else. British politics has always had a soft spot for institutional rearranging - removing centuries-old privileges while quietly adding a few new titles along the way.

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Unemployment jumps in Feb
US payrolls unexpectedly fell by 92,000 last month and the unemployment rate rose to 4.4%, confounding analysts who’d pencilled in stability. It’s the biggest monthly drop since the October shutdown - an unwelcome déjà vu for a market that’s been hoping for steadier ground.

Nearly every sector lost staff, with healthcare - usually a labour-market ballast - hit hard by strikes. Federal employment dipped by 10,000 and has tumbled about 330,000 (11%) since an October 2024 peak, while December and January job gains were revised downwards.

A nasty jump in oil prices, blamed on the US–Israel conflict in Iran, adds another wrinkle. Higher energy costs could stoke inflation and take the Federal Reserve out of its usual playbook - cutting rates to prop up a weak job market - leaving policymakers “between a rock and a hard place,” as Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner put it. Sounds faintly 1970s, but with better coffee and worse politics.

Trump takes aim at Starmer
Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that the UK - “our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all” - is no longer needed after offering carriers for the Middle East, adding: “we don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!” The jab landed just hours after the Ministry of Defence placed HMS Prince of Wales on “high readiness”, which is awkward timing and poorer diplomacy than a soggy scone at tea.

The post underlines a widening rift since Trump returned to office amid the US–Israel strike campaign against Iran that began on 28 February. The fighting and Iranian reprisals have already killed hundreds: an estimated 1,332 in Iran and confirmed US military deaths (six), with further casualties reported in Lebanon, Kuwait, the UAE and Iraq - a conflict that keeps threatening to spill further across the region.

Keir Starmer has tried to thread a needle: telling Parliament, “We are not joining the US and Israeli offensive strikes,” while permitting US use of UK bases for “limited defensive purposes.” Those facilities include RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and the Diego Garcia base in the Chagos Islands (yes that one).

The tension is broader than carriers and bases. Trump has publicly berated Starmer over the Iran attacks - “this is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with”. The upshot: HMS Prince of Wales is put on standby while the “special relationship” looks like it’s been put through the wash on a hot cycle.

Meta glasses see too much
Meta’s sleek Ray-Ban-style specs promise hands-free artificial intelligence - letting users record video, ask questions about the world around them, and generally feel like they’re living in a slightly futuristic advert. Unfortunately, the reality is a little less glamorous. Putting the lav in lavish, an investigation has revealed that contractors reviewing data from the glasses have been viewing way too personal footage recorded by users.

These workers, based in Kenya and employed to help train Meta’s AI systems, manually review images and transcripts so the software learns to recognise what it’s looking at. In practice that means glimpsing everything from ordinary living rooms to far more private moments.

Meanwhile, Britain is considering whether children should be allowed on social media at all. The government has launched a consultation on a potential ban for under-16s, asking parents, young people and experts whether platforms should face tougher restrictions - or be barred entirely.

The debate has intensified globally after Australia introduced the first such ban late last year. Indonesia has already announced it will deactivate accounts belonging to under-16s on major platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube from the end of March. Supporters argue social media’s design - endless scrolling, autoplay videos and algorithmic rabbit holes - is addictive and damaging to young minds.

And in the increasingly surreal world where politics and the internet collide, even Pokémon has had to get involved. The Pokémon Company has rebuked the White House for using it’s imagery in a pro-Trump meme posted online, stressing it never authorised political Pica Pica.

Robots deliver lunch and surgery
While politicians argue about apps and algorithms, the machines themselves are quietly expanding their job descriptions.

In Sunderland, for instance, little six-wheeled robots are now trundling along pavements delivering takeaway food. The autonomous delivery vehicles - part of a trial run by Just Eat - collect meals from restaurants and navigate streets and pedestrian crossings to reach customers’ doors.

Meanwhile, in a much more dramatic display of robotic assistance, a surgeon in London has successfully removed a patient’s prostate while the patient himself was 1,500 miles away in Gibraltar.

Using a robotic surgical system connected via fibre-optic cables, mechanical arms were controlled from London while a local medical team stood by in Gibraltar. The delay between commands and movement was just 0.06 seconds - if only all waiting times were that long.

Rapper runs this town
The protest rapper is winning the Nepalese election. Balendra Shah appears to be heading for a commanding victory in Nepal’s parliamentary elections, putting the 35-year-old rapper-turned-mayor on track to become the country’s next prime minister. His party, the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), has swept the directly elected seats and is also leading the proportional vote, a combination that suggests a landslide once counting finishes.

To understand how a rapper ends up running a Himalayan nation, you need to rewind to last year’s youth-led uprising. The protests, triggered initially by a government ban on social media, quickly ballooned into a wider movement against corruption, economic stagnation, and the political class that had dominated Nepal for decades.

Shah emerged as one of the movement’s most recognisable figures. Long before politics, he built a following as a rapper whose songs criticised corruption and inequality. His rise since then has been rapid. In 2022 he shocked the establishment by winning the Kathmandu mayoralty as an independent candidate.

The scale of the upset is remarkable. Shah personally defeated former prime minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, winning almost four times as many votes in the constituency contest. Whether protest energy translates into competent government is another question entirely. Turning rap lyrics into national policy is a trickier remix.

Tycoon chooses silence
While Nepal’s voters appear to be rapping their political script, Hong Kong’s most famous pro-democracy media owner has chosen a very different path: silence.

Jimmy Lai - the 78-year-old businessman, newspaper founder, and long-time critic of Beijing - has decided not to appeal the 20-year prison sentence he received under Hong Kong’s national security law.

The case centres on accusations that Lai conspired to publish seditious material and collude with foreign powers. Prosecutors pointed to meetings he held with senior US officials during the massive 2019 pro-democracy protests. Lai has always insisted those meetings were simply discussions about events unfolding in the city, not attempts to influence foreign policy.

For decades Lai used his newspaper, Apple Daily, as a vocal platform criticising China’s rule over Hong Kong. When Beijing imposed the sweeping national security law after the protests, it transformed the city’s legal landscape almost overnight. Lai’s sentence is the harshest handed down under the law so far. In effect, Lai - once one of Hong Kong’s most powerful media voices - now faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.