Deck the Teapot 🌲

Happy Monday. That’s it, December has arrived. Release Mariah, release Buble. Crack on with that first window of your advent calendar.

We’ve got you covered for any free gifts to hand out in your office too - scroll down to the bottom of your email, copy your referral link and let them drink from the Teapot to keep informed every Monday morning. It doesn’t even need wrapping!

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Berkeley Group (BKG), Frasers Groups (FRAS), AJ Bell (AJB), Paragon Banking (PAG).

Notable US earnings this week: Salesforce (CRM), Crowdstrike (CRWD), Snowflake (SNOW), Marvell Technology (MRVL), Kroger Company (KR).

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PROJECT WATCH

🌊 Subsea activity to start for world’s largest tidal stream energy project in Scotland. Read more

🎥 Plans lodged for £1bn Camden Film Quarter project. Read more

🏗️ JP Morgan plans unveiled for £3bn London mega-tower. Read more

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Budget in brief
Like Christmas in a few weeks, the budget came and went. Chancellor Rachel Reeves came marching in with a red box full of creative new ways to shake down your payslip. Her autumn statement, delivered under the rather ghostly shadow of the OBR accidentally uploading the whole thing early (we’ve all hit “publish” too soon after lunch), is less mince pie and more hard pie chart.

Here’s a Teapot summary of some more notable parts for you and all of your friends (be sure to share your referral link at the bottom of the email).

Frozen income tax thresholds
Tax thresholds will remain frozen until 2028, which basically means more people will be dragged into higher tax bands as wages go up—or don’t. It’s what's affectionately known as a "stealth tax"

High-end homes council tax surcharge
Owners of homes worth over £2 million should brace for a new “massive gaff” surcharge from 2028.

Two-child benefit cap axed
The controversial two-child benefit cap is being dropped from April. Introduced in 2017 to much grumbling, this change will cost £3.1 billion by 2029.

EVs to pay per mile
From April 2028, it’s time for EV owners to do their bit: 3p a mile for electric cars, 1.5p for plug-in hybrids. It's aimed at recovering some of that evaporating fuel duty, as people buy less petrol.

Dividend tax hike
Dividend taxes will jump 2 percentage points, to a slightly stinging 10.75% and 35.75% depending on your bracket.

Business rates shake-up
Business rates rising for venues worth over £500,000—but easing up for more than 750,000 smaller shops, cafés and pubs. Think big Amazon warehouses paying more and your local greengrocers paying a little less.

Gambling and booze duties climbing
Duties on gambling are upping, which should please anyone shocked by how much the government likes a flutter. And yes, alcohol duties will rise with inflation, so your pint just got more expensive—as if that wasn’t already a national scandal.

Pension & ISA perks cut
From 2029, only £2,000 a year of employer contributions will be exempt from National Insurance—down from, well, unlimited. That’s a tidy £4.7 billion extra in the Treasury’s tin. Plus, ISAs are being trimmed too: down to £12,000 tax-free a year for under-65s.

POLITICS

Life’s sweet politics
The UK has been busy weighing sugar cubes, political courage, and, controversially, puberty blockers. Starting with your morning mocha: the government’s sugar tax is now gunning for your "healthy" oat caramel lattes. From 2028, milkshakes and sugary milk-based coffees will join fizzy drinks on the naughty list. Why? Because it turns out your iced cappuccino might be packing more sugar than a Coke can. Pour one out for Starbucks - just maybe not into your bloodstream.

In more medical manoeuvring, a fresh UK trial is set to examine the effects of puberty blockers after last year’s sweeping NHS ban. The study, led by King’s College London, will follow 220 under-16s with gender incongruence to weigh risks against mental and emotional well-being.

It’s the first of its kind to look at brain development, but not without controversy, as the ghost of the Tavistock Clinic looms large. Still, researchers say kids and parents are desperate for clarity - and tea leaves only reveal so much.

Meanwhile, Parliament’s been dealing with heavier matters still. Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill just bought itself ten extra Fridays in the House of Lords, after peers managed to discuss fewer than 30 out of 1,000+ amendments.

The bill aims to give terminally ill adults a legal route to an assisted death, pending approval from doctors and a very official-sounding panel. With high stakes and high resistance, the bill might yet pass - but only if Lords spend fewer Fridays fiddling with footnotes.

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ACROSS THE POND

Trump closes Venezuelan airspace
On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump declared the skies over Venezuela to be off-limits, prompting raised eyebrows from not just airlines and pilots, but apparently from drug dealers and human traffickers too!

Donald posted this on his Truth Social platform (the capital letters are a direct copy, I didn’t nudge the caps lock) - “To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY”.

This declaration has been decried a “colonialist threat” by Venezuelan officials. It seems Trump’s government eyes a tactical approach to address Venezuelan President Maduro’s alleged dealings in illicit drugs, perhaps not the festive snow you hope for in December.

Autopen, auto-problem
Donald Trump has announced plans to scrap a slew of executive orders. The cause of this presidential purge? None other than an autopen—a device designed to replicate signatures without the hand strain. Trump claims his predecessor, Joe Biden, delegated his scribbling duties to this mechanical marvel, rendering those orders as useful as a chocolate teapot.

On his Truth Social playground, Trump declared that Biden didn’t lift a finger for approximately 92% of his presidency’s paperwork. He might not have presented the evidence of this yet but that’s not slowing him down. Meanwhile Trump has confessed to using the device too, but only for “very unimportant papers”.

TECH

Press X to encrypt
Imagine being at the cutting edge of encryption - and then losing the key to your own election. That’s exactly what happened to the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), whose leadership vote results were rendered unreadable after one trustee lost their vital slice of the decryption pie.

It’s a cryptologic comedy of errors: three trustees, one key each, and only two remembered where they put theirs. With the third’s portion "irretrievably" vanished into the digital void, the vote's now scrapped and set for a redo. Democracy, it turns out, can be defeated by something as simple as human forgetfulness.

Eyeing the competition
Meanwhile, Sam Altman’s "World" crypto-eye-scanning empire got its own blackout - this time courtesy of Thai regulators. Authorities ordered the deletion of 1.2 million iris scans collected in exchange for cryptocurrency, ruling the scheme broke biometric data laws. Thailand saw it as a dystopian swap shop.

Elon Musk’s AI brainchild Grok 5 is gearing up for a cyber-scrap with League of Legends royalty. Musk wants to pit his language model - complete with human-level reaction times and pixel-vision - against world champs T1. While some pros scoff at the idea, T1 and Riot Games are warming up. It could be the esports Kasparov vs Deep Blue moment of the decade, if Deep Blue had banter and broadband.

Elsewhere, Xiaomi has just scooped up a former Tesla engineer to arm up its dexterous hand robotics division - because what’s the point of building humanoids if they can’t dip biscuits into your tea for you? Zach Lu Zeyu, formerly of Optimus fame, now joins Xiaomi’s bid to give robots a helping hand.

In keeping with the humanoid arms race, UBTech isn’t holding back either. It's just landed a $37m deal to station its Walker robots at the China-Vietnam border. These sleek bots will guide travellers, patrol logistics zones, and - brace yourself - replace their own batteries. It's not quite iRobot yet, although the marching robots promo video makes it seem like it, but your next customs chat might be with someone less robotic. Give Sonny the wink, and (he’ll?) wave you through.

From drones to defibrillators
Up in Coventry, the local government’s Urban Ascent project just took off, aiming to weave drones and flying taxis into the city’s fabric. Think emergency medical deliveries by drone, road surveys from the sky, and maybe - just maybe - getting from A to B without touching tarmac. Funded by Innovate UK and backed by the NHS and Department for Transport, the scheme’s looking to turn urban airspace into a logistical playground.

But if Coventry’s looking up, Alibaba wants us to look through. The Chinese giant just launched Quark AI Glasses - a £420-ish slice of sci-fi promising a revolution in human-computer interaction. With flagship and lightweight models, they’re gunning for Meta, Xiaomi, and anyone else still trying to make smart glasses a thing. According to Alibaba’s VP, they’re as important as mobile phones.

Back on land, Binance is facing explosive allegations in the US, with claims it helped move over $1bn to terrorist organisations, including Hamas and Hezbollah. This comes hot on the heels of founder CZ’s Trump pardon - complete with political eyebrow raises and courtroom déjà vu.

WORLD

Altar egos
Weddings are in the air, and this week, Anthony Albanese just made history as Australia's first PM to wed while in office.

Meanwhile, across the spiritual aisle, the Vatican’s latest decree - rubber-stamped by Pope Leo - has declared a holy “oi, no polygamy” to its 1.4bn followers. The document stressed marriage should remain a duet, not a choir. Aimed in part at cultural traditions in parts of Africa and modern polyamorous trends elsewhere, the Holy See’s message was clear: one partner, one path, please.

And just when you thought marriage might be passé, South Korea surprises everyone with its first real baby bump in nearly two decades. Births are up by over 12,000. Marriages have also risen 18 months in a row. Modest gains, yes, but South Korea is still projected to be at 3% population in just three generations.

Coup de farce
While some leaders are popping champagne, others are trading speeches in sentences for sentencing. Peru has now jailed two former presidents in two days. Pedro Castillo, who once tried to dissolve Congress and rule by decree (subtle), was given 11 years for attempted rebellion. The man came in on a wave of anti-establishment hope, and left via the back door of a Supreme Court conviction.

A day earlier, Martín Vizcarra - a centrist who made anti-corruption his slogan - was convicted of, wait for it, corruption. Fourteen years for taking bribes during his time as a regional governor. Peru’s presidential past is starting to look more like a crime lineup than a history book, with nearly every recent leader either convicted or under investigation. At this point, their inauguration oaths might as well be followed by “...and anything you say may be used against you in a court of law”.