Ctrl C, Ctrl V: Teapot Tuesday 🫖

Happy Monday. The last few weeks have reinforced a few known certainties in life; taxes, The Pope is Catholic, and regardless of recent weather patterns, if you take your bbq out for the bank holiday it will rain.

Teapot Tuesday, short week - get your coffee in and let’s go to town on Microsoft Excel for four days.

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Autotrader (AUTO), B&M (BME), Intl Distribution Services (IDS), Pets at Home (PETS), Dr. Martens (DOCS).

Notable US earnings this week: Nvidia (NVDA), Costco (COST), Salesforce (CRM), PDD Holdings (PDD), Dell (DELL).

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PROJECT WATCH

🏗️ £60m contract up for grabs at London Gateway container yard expansion. Read more

🏥 £1bn Airedale Hospital rebuild design team announced. Read more

🌊 MoU signed to explore feasibility of an offshore hydrogen pipeline between the UK and Germany. Read more

ECONOMY & FINANCE

Inflation comeback tour
Inflation has decided to make a comeback party. Last month, the UK's consumer prices index (CPI) surged to 3.5%, up from 2.6% in March.

Why the spike? A brutal combo of higher energy, water, transport, and council bills—alongside the ever-dutiful taxman, who’s been very hands-on of late. Employer national insurance contributions climbed too, making life harder for businesses and, in turn, more expensive for the rest of us.

The Bank of England, rather like a flustered waiter at a wedding buffet, is now juggling competing demands—price stability vs. economic stimulation. Economists now reckon we’ll get just one token cut this year—maybe by September, if we all behave.

The poppadom debate: potato or no potato?
You may be familiar with the famous Jaffa Cake court case - where some of the greatest legal minds in the country battled it out to decide if a Jaffa Cake was actually a biscuit or just the very small cake it claimed to be, in order to qualify as a zero rate VAT product.

Well, there’s been a development in a similar case - a potato punch up if you will, and Walkers just got popped. Again. After a failed attempt to argue that its Sensations Poppadoms should be treated like naan and priced accordingly—with zero-rated VAT—the Upper Tribunal has sided firmly with HMRC, keeping the snack firmly in the full-fat tax bracket.

In another tale from Britain’s legal buffet where the difference between a poppadom and a crisp isn’t just philosophical—it’s fiscal. Walkers, a subsidiary of American giant PepsiCo (because nothing says authentic Indian side dish like a multinational from New York), claimed these snacks were crafted to complement curries, not to be mindlessly munched during a Coronation Street binge.

But Judge Anne Fairpo wasn’t buying it. After scanning the snack’s contents—which contain more potato than your average sofa after a bank holiday—she ruled back in Jan 2024 that the snacks are “similar to potato crisps”. Admittedly, they're posh crisps with exotic chutney names, but potato is potato, no matter how you spice it.

A particularly tasty observation from VAT partner, Robin Prince, about silly product names. “Calling something ‘Hula Hoops’ doesn't mean you can spin it round your waist”. Quite funny for a tax law debate.

POLITICS

Chagos
This week, history, hormones and home security collided in spectacularly British fashion. First up: the UK has signed a deal to hand back the Chagos Islands to Mauritius—decades after quietly nabbing them for £3 million in 1965. But don’t pack the bunting yet.

Under the £3.4 billion agreement, the UK keeps Diego Garcia, its military gem in the Indian Ocean, on lease for the next 99 years (with a cheeky 40-year renewal clause). Defence Secretary John Healey insists it’s a strategic masterstroke; critics say it’s colonial cleanup served with a side of surrender.

Vapes and villains
The UK’s single-use vape ban kicks in June 1, so teens and TikTokers have precisely 11 days to say goodbye to their blueberry blizzard disposables. From Wales to Wigan, Trading Standards officers are sharpening their clipboard corners. Why the crackdown?

Environmentally, these vapes are litter-lobbing landfill fodder, and with nearly 10% of 11-15-year-olds now regular users, the government is desperately puffing out its chest. Retailers are under strict instructions: recycle properly, or face fines nastier than a menthol migraine.

From vapes to the supposed villains, enter the realm of Chinese takeovers. FireBlitz, a British firm supplying alarms to UK fire services, is now under scrutiny after its acquisition by a Canadian firm linked to Beijing. Cue panic at the smoke detector disco.

The government swiftly barred it from developing or selling internet-connected devices, citing national security risks and the potential for backdoor surveillance via... your living room ceiling. The Cabinet Office says it’s all about safeguarding national security.

The alarms, it turns out, could be digital Trojan horses—capable of unlocking smart doors, transmitting data, or just listening in while you microwave a jacket potato. “Sensor in every room”, said one expert. Sleep tight.

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ACROSS THE POND

USA loses its perfect credit rating
Last week, the US lost its last perfect credit rating, making it the latest in a string of fiscal fumbles. Moody's, the credit rating oracle, knocked the US down a notch from 'AAA' to 'Aa1', signalling about as much surprise as a UK summer proving soggy.

Moody’s drop-the-mic moment stems from the unchecked growth of US deficits and soaring interest costs. It's worth noting that a top credit rating is like a gold star in debt class, affirming a country's fiscal fitness. Yet, the US rating began its stagger back in 2011 with S&P Global Ratings, followed by Fitch in 2023, now leaving Moody's as the final referee to blow the whistle.

The White House fired back, dubbing it “Biden's mess”, taking a jab at Moody’s for purportedly napping through the storm. It’s a bit like blaming the weatherman for the rain on a bank holiday – perhaps a smidge unfair, albeit temptingly convenient.

Orlando opens its newest theme park in the face of economic uncertainty
Comcast, the overlords of Universal, have strategically unveiled their pièce de résistance just as the US economy holds a Brexit-like tension in the air. And while airfare saw a dip this year akin to the morale of Villa fans on Sunday, Universal aims to buoy Orlando’s allure with a multi-world, fantasy-laden spectacle, which practically begs for an extended stay and potentially more money spent than on a weekend in Monaco.

Set across a sprawling 750 acres—a mere toddler in land size compared to some of the UK’s more ambitious roundabout junctions—the park boasts five theme worlds from the Ministry of Magic to the Isle of Berk, ensuring there's something for every wizard, Viking, and gamer. In the grand opera of economic uncertainty, Comcast sings the promise of innovation, having conjured 161 patents in its quest to redefine thrills, surpassing even the twists and turns of a British weather forecast.

While Disney has planned to splash out £60 billion on theme park expansions over a decade, Universal is staking its claim with its own future in mind. The lure, it seems, lies not only in its colossal lands but in a measured alchemy of magic and modernity—those animated dragons won't train themselves, after all.

TECH

Design deity
Sir Jony Ive, the man who made the iPhone irresistible and the iMac iconic, is now teaming up with OpenAI to reimagine the computer from silicon to soul. Yes, the “greatest designer in the world” (per Sam Altman) is back—not with Apple, but with Altman’s AI empire, following a tidy $6.5bn buyout of Ive’s startup, io.

The goal? A new family of AI-powered devices that might finally make “smart” hardware live up to the hype. Altman teased a prototype already in the works, calling it “the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen.” Lofty stuff, but when the man who made flat-screen minimalism sexy says he's on the brink of a revolution, you listen.

Apple shares dipped, industry eyebrows raised, and the hype train left the station without looking back. Expect hardware that’s more elegant than a haiku and cleverer than your cousin at Cambridge.

Infrared eyes & interstellar invaders
China has officially entered its Marvel era, unveiling contact lenses that let you see in the dark. No batteries, no goggles—just a thin layer of nanoparticle wizardry that converts invisible infrared into good old-fashioned visible light. Infrared flickers from remotes? Visible. Mice in night-time mazes? Victorious. Humans? Now capable of super-vision without the fashion faux pas of night-vision headgear.

Not content with giving us X-ray eyes, Chinese taikonauts have also discovered a new species of radiation-resistant bacteria clinging to life aboard the Tiangong Space Station. The Niallia strain is not only tough enough to survive the perils of deep space, but also has the unexpected party trick of breaking down gelatine—handy for any zero-gravity Bake Off emergencies.

Speaking of, space is about to get a cultural upgrade. On 31 May, the European Space Agency will beam Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube. Yes, the elegant waltz made immortal by 2001: A Space Odyssey into the cosmos from its Spanish dish, hurtling past the Moon in 1.5 seconds and brushing Voyager 1’s antenna within 23 hours. It's a cosmic apology for leaving Strauss off the original Voyager Golden Record in 1977. About time we got some rhythm out there.

Technologists are etching quite a future. One where astronauts, along with entrance anthems, might see in the dark without torches and carry tiny bacterial bodyguards to help them colonise the cosmos. Watch this space.

WORLD

Capsized command & catnapping captains
In Pyongyang, when your warship flops, heads roll, literally or metaphorically, depending on how cross Kim Jong Un is feeling. After a 5,000-ton destroyer tipped like a teapot on a windy windowsill, the regime arrested its top naval brass, shipyard engineers, and anyone within earshot of a spanner. The Supreme Leader called it a “criminal act” that wounded the dignity of the nation, apparently second only to a karaoke night without applause.

Meanwhile in Norway, a 135-metre cargo ship tried out a bold new delivery method - right into a man's front garden. Johan Helberg snoozed peacefully as 6,000 tonnes of steel came within metres of his bed. The second officer, also asleep at the wheel (literally), confessed to nodding off on duty. Charged with negligent navigation, he’ll be regretting his naughty Norweigan nod off.

Falling tiles & flickering lights
In China, a Ming Dynasty tower tried its best impression of a game of Jenga. The Drum Tower, originally built in 1375, decided to shed hundreds of roof tiles just metres from tourists. Built by the founding emperor of the dynasty, it had a rebuild in 1995—though judging by the recent structural tantrum, that might’ve involved more flair than function. Officials are now combing over every nail, beam, and decision made since.

And finally, to the shimmering Côte d'Azur, where France’s glamour capital is having an unseasonably noir moment. First Cannes, mid-film festival, lost power in what police suspect was a substation arson. Then Nice followed suit the next night, complete with tyre tracks and broken doors. A suspected double sabotage has triggered security reinforcements and an investigation into "organised arson." Lights, camera... conspiracy?

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