Happy Monday. Did you know the office favourite Post-it notes were stumbled upon by mistake?

Way back in 1968, scientist Spencer Silver was trying to develop an even stronger superglue and ultimately botched it. The weak adhesive he had mistakenly created wasn’t fit for purpose but just happened to be great on paper without leaving any tacky marks. The rest is history and now you can leave playful drawings on the monitor of your best work buddy.. all thanks to a happy accident. Cheers Spencer!

Notable UK earnings this week: HSBC (HSBA), Prudential (PRU), Haleon (HLN), Hiscox (HSX), Reckitt (RKT).

Notable US earnings this week: Home Depot (HD), Nvidia (NVDA), Salesforce (CRM), Workday (WDAY), Zoom (ZM), Snowflake (SNOW).

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🏗️ £120m hospital job for Kier in Edinburgh. Read more

🔌 Survey work to start for Shetland cable link. Read more

🌊 Five companies in line for €1B Scottish subsea network upgrade. Read more

Good news at HMRC with record surplus!
January delivered the biggest budget surplus since records began in 1993, with the public finances finishing the month a chunky £30.4bn in the black, according to the ONS. That’s £15.9bn more than January 2025 (not inflation-adjusted, before anyone starts etching “golden age” on a commemorative mug) and about £6.3bn higher than the OBR’s forecasters expected. Yes, the Treasury has found money down the back of the national sofa — and for once it isn’t just old receipts and despair.

The reason is less “miracle” and more “mundane but useful”: tax receipts were strongly up, while debt interest costs eased thanks to lower rates. Self-assessed tax revenues came in nearly £6bn above plan, and capital gains tax also surged — a reminder that when markets and asset prices get busy, HMRC turns into the country’s most effective side-hustler. Meanwhile, the cost of borrowing fell to £1.5bn for the month, a whopping £5bn lower than a year earlier: fewer pounds flying out the door to service debt means more pounds staying in the building, which is the sort of arithmetic even Westminster can usually manage.

For Chancellor Rachel Reeves, it’s been branded a “welcome relief” by economists at PWC and Pantheon Macroeconomics — and you can see why. High debt-interest bills leave the public finances jumpy, like a commuter on London Bridge in a gale, so any drop buys breathing space. Still, Reeves’ fiscal rules — aiming to get debt falling and the budget balanced by 2030 — don’t magically loosen just because January went well. With GDP growth looking anaemic and unemployment nudging higher, the risk is that tax takes cool off just as demands on spending warm up.

But youth unemployment breaks records too
Britain’s youth unemployment rate has climbed to a 10-year high, and it’s putting the centre-left government in an awkward spot—right where it doesn’t want to be, like a rich tea that wasn’t pulled out of the mug after two nanoseconds. Official figures show 16–24-year-olds hit 16.1% unemployment in the final quarter of last year, up from 13.8% in mid-2025. For context, it was under 9.2% during the pandemic era—yes, when we were all learning to socialise via banana bread.

More awkwardly, youth unemployment in Britain now beats (or rather, loses to) the euro zone. It’s not exactly the kind of “Global Britain” headline you’d want framed in the Cabinet Office—unless the frame is being used to board up a shopfront.

Business groups and economists are pointing the finger at a sharp rise in minimum wages, plus last April’s increase in employer National Insurance. Add “broader economic headwinds” (a polite term meaning “everything’s expensive and everyone’s nervous”), and you’ve got a jobs market that’s suddenly developed a taste for experience—ideally the sort that doesn’t require training, patience, or paying someone who still says “uni” unironically.

Guns n heather
In the land of shortbread and stoicism, Scotland’s police are having a rather un-Scottish debate about firearms. The Scottish Police Federation – representing 98% of officers – wants guns locked in patrol cars, New Zealand-style, rather than carried routinely.

At present, only about 500 specialist officers in Scotland are armed; the rest rely on radios, resolve and the hope the cavalry isn’t 100 miles away. Their manifesto calls for Tasers for all officers, guns secured in vehicles, and better psychological support for staff facing daily trauma.

The Scottish government, however, is clutching the principle of an “unarmed service” like a well-worn warrant card. Ministers insist that the current armed capacity is “appropriate and proportionate”, pointing to a record £1.7bn funding and a halving of crime since 1991. So the question hangs in the Highland mist: is access to firearms prudent preparation, or the first domino in a cultural shift? Braveheart, but make it operational policy.

British bases, ballots, boyos
Meanwhile, 6,000 miles southeast of Westminster’s wallpaper, four Chagossians have sailed from Sri Lanka to the Chagos Islands to “stand on our homeland again”. Britain expelled islanders in the 1960s to build the UK–US base on Diego Garcia. Now the UK has agreed to hand sovereignty to Mauritius while leasing back the base for £101m a year for 99 years.

British authorities served the four men with eviction notices; a judge has now blocked deportation for seven days, noting they’re 120 miles from Diego Garcia and no security threat. The government calls their arrival illegal and unsafe; their lawyers call it a lawful fight for return.

Back home, ministers are tightening political donation rules: three new tests for companies (real revenue, UK headquarters, majority UK ownership) plus “Know Your Donor” checks, all wrapped inside a Representation of the People Bill that would give 16 and 17-year-olds the vote. Foreign interference out, teenage voters in.

Supreme Court rules against Trump tariffs
After spending much of the past year largely backing President Donald Trump across roughly two dozen fast-tracked cases — helping him reshape immigration, federal employment, military service and more — the US Supreme Court has finally located its limit. On Friday, it torpedoed a marquee second-term priority: Trump’s sweeping global tariffs on nearly every American trading partner.

In a punchy, no-faff ruling written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court held that Trump had overreached under federal law by using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as his tariff wand. The key line: the power to “regulate… importation” does not magically include the power to impose tariffs. No hedging, no “we’ll get to the messy bits later”, and notably no guidance on what happens next for refunds, trade deals, or the political fallout. It simply struck the tariffs down — like a bouncer who’s had enough of your “do you know who I am?” routine.

…and he’s not very happy about it
On Friday, Trump said he’d replace the court-torpedoed tariffs with a 10% levy on all imports, due to kick in on Tuesday 24 February. By Saturday, that 10% had magically “inflated” to 15%, using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 — a rarely used bit of kit that lets him keep the new tariffs in place for about five months before he needs Congress to sign off. Whether the jump to 15% also starts on Tuesday is, at present, as clear as a foggy morning on the M25.

Trump’s pitch is the familiar one: tariffs will force companies to invest and manufacture in the US, shrinking the trade deficit. Slight snag — the deficit has just hit a fresh high, widening 2.1% versus 2024 to roughly $1.2 trillion (£890bn). If tariffs are meant to be the diet plan, America’s balance of trade has just ordered chips and pudding.

For the UK, the headache is that Britain and others (including Australia) had previously agreed 10% tariff arrangements — now potentially overwritten by the new global 15% under Section 122, according to a White House official. Our “privileged trading position” is still the Government’s line, and crucially sector deals around steel, aluminium, pharmaceuticals, autos and aerospace — most of what we sell the Americans — aren’t supposed to be affected. Still, British Chambers of Commerce trade chief William Bain is warning Trump’s workaround could be “worse for British businesses”. He’s got a point: uncertainty is the stealth tax nobody voted for.

Screen and scream
The government has decided the internet’s Wild West needs a stopwatch-equipped sheriff. Under a new amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, tech firms must remove non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours of them being flagged, or face fines of up to 10% of global revenue. Not pocket change.

The plan is simple: report once, and the image is scrubbed across platforms, digitally marked so it can’t pop back up like a particularly malevolent game of whack-a-mole.

That tougher tone lands as Mark Zuckerberg sits in a Los Angeles courtroom for what some are calling Big Tech’s Big Tobacco moment. Parents allege Instagram pushed addictive content at children, fuelling anxiety, body image issues and worse. An internal 2018 memo shown to jurors suggested Meta sought to “win big with teens” by recruiting them as “tweens”. Zuckerberg denies designing harm for profit. A jury will decide whether “engagement metrics” were merely numbers – or something more corrosive.

Even museums are getting in on the digital reckoning. The V&A has reconstructed YouTube’s original 2006 watch page and acquired the very first upload, “Me at the Zoo”, posted in 2005 by co-founder Jawed Karim. Nearly 380 million views later, a grainy clip in front of elephants is now heritage. If you were feeling especially old this morning, consider that your youth is now in a museum; you’re officially an artefact.

Moon n mood
NASA now, Artemis II – the mission set to send four astronauts around the Moon for the first time since 1972, further than any astronaut has been from Earth – may be delayed after a fault interrupted helium flow to the rocket. A hydrogen leak already disrupted an earlier rehearsal. The crew were aiming for 6 March. The 10-day mission will loop 4,600 miles beyond the Moon’s far side, a dress rehearsal for a later human landing and, eventually, a lunar space station. The race to set up shop is on.

Back on Earth, patients on a dementia ward in Maidstone will soon holiday without leaving their armchairs. A three-month virtual reality pilot will whisk them to Venice, Santiago or New York in 360 degrees, aiming to ease anxiety and lift mood. If NASA can’t quite reach the Moon this month, Kent and Medway Mental Health NHS Trust can at least offer Venice before tea.

Spires and spin class
In Barcelona, they’ve finally popped the cork on a 144-year building project. The Sagrada Familia – Antoni Gaudí’s gloriously ambitious basilica – has reached its maximum height of 566ft after a crane delicately placed the final arm of a cross atop the Tower of Jesus Christ. It now edges out Ulm Minster to stand as the world’s tallest church.

Gaudí, who died in 1926, never expected to see it finished. Only one tower stood when he passed; now the central spire looms above Barcelona like a spiritual lighthouse. If city officials agree, beams of light may yet shine from its four-armed cross. Funded largely by millions of tourists gawping at its organic curves and Catholic symbolism, the basilica is still not quite done. Perpetual construction: very on brand for Europe.

Meanwhile, in sports’ less celestial realm, the World Anti-Doping Agency is eyeing weight-loss jabs such as semaglutide (the stuff in Ozempic) with suspicion. The drugs curb appetite, which could benefit endurance athletes chasing marginal gains.

WADA must decide whether they enhance performance, endanger health, or violate the “spirit of sport”. A ban could arrive before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The Olympic motto is “faster, higher, stronger” (Citius, Altius, Fortius), not thinnus, injectus, excellus.

Shells and second chances
Far from stadiums and scaffolds, 158 juvenile giant tortoises have been released onto Floreana in the Galápagos, returning after an absence of nearly 200 years. Sailors wiped out the native species in the 1840s, treating them as slow-moving packed lunches. But a “back-breeding” programme – sparked when scientists found tortoises on another island carrying Floreana ancestry – has painstakingly rebuilt the bloodline. More than 600 hatchlings later, the first wave is home.

These tortoises are dubbed “ecosystem engineers”, reshaping landscapes simply by plodding about and munching vegetation. It’s conservation at its most patient: decades of science for creatures that consider a brisk day’s work a gentle amble.