Petrol station flowers 💐

Happy Monday. Since yesterday was Mother’s Day, we’ll keep it short and sweet for the intro this week (just like your mum). Go on the mums!

UK Mother’s Day gift spend was expected to reach an all time high of £2.4bn this year, 5% more than we saw in 2024. A good boost for the economy, coinciding almost perfectly with the inflation rate of petrol station flowers.

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Petershill Partners (PHLL), Travis Perkins (TPK), Raspberry PI Holdings (RPI), Aquis Exchange (AQX).

Notable US earnings this week: Constellation Brands (STZ), Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), Acuity Inc (AYI).

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PROJECT WATCH

🏫 Bouygues bags £119m contract to build two new campuses. Read more

🏗️ £100m for Bam to transform British Land’s Broadgate Tower. Read more

🏢 Mace to lead £600m development of Euston Tower in London. Read more

ECONOMY & FINANCE

Spring statement revises growth outlook
While most of us were busy arguing over the clocks going forward or backward (they sprang forward, in case you forgot and turned up to work an hour late), the Office for Budget Responsibility decided to turn UK economic optimism backward. The 2025 growth forecast has been halved from 2% to a meagre 1%, leaving Chancellor Rachel Reeves "not satisfied"—which seems fair enough, considering satisfying news appears about as common as reliable as our rail services.

But chin up! Or at least half a chin. From 2026 onwards, the OBR has promised an economic glow-up that includes steady growth until 2029—peaking just before the next inevitable general election (how’s that for an election campaign?). Expect 1.9% growth in 2026, slipping ever-so-gracefully to 1.8%, 1.7%, and back to 1.8% in subsequent years. It's less "economic boom", more "slow clap from the back of the room".

Still, the spring statement delivered some fireworks. Welfare cuts are expected to save £4.8bn (presumably not earmarked for party hats), while the defence budget gets a solid £2.2bn boost next year. Because nothing says "forward-looking economy" like a bit more Ministry of Defence muscle.

WH Smith TGJones
The nation’s high street is set to take another hit — and this time it’s WH Smith doing the disappearing act. After 233 years of peddling pens, puzzle books and questionable sandwiches, the stalwart is selling off its entire high street business arm to Modella Capital (yes, the folks who own Hobbycraft), in a £76 million deal. The name WH Smith, will vanish from town centres entirely, replaced by “TGJones”.

Meanwhile, WH Smith will now pivoting its full attention to its airport and railway station empire — the last untouched frontier where we're imprisoned long enough to pay £4.50 for a Twix and forget that WiFi should be free. CEO Carl Cowling insists this is simply a savvy business move, citing 85% of the company’s profit now coming from their travel retail arm, which spans across 32 countries. One might say they’re reading the departure boards correctly.

POLITICS

Snackdown in the aisles
In a move set to ruffle more feathers than a crisp packet in a quiet sinema, Welsh supermarkets will be reshuffling their shelves by March 2026. The Senedd has narrowly passed legislation banning the display of unhealthy snacks—think pizzas, chocolates, and sugary cereals—from prime real estate like tills and aisle ends. The goal? To curb those impulse buys that turn us into monster munchers, because nothing says ‘health’ like a checkout queue staring contest with a carrot stick.

Face/Off in Croydon
The Metropolitan Police are upping their game of hide and seek. Come summer, the UK’s first permanent live facial recognition (LFR) cameras will be installed, scanning high streets for wanted criminals. This follows a two-year trial with mobile units that led to hundreds of arrests. Supporters hail it as a technological leap in crime fighting, while privacy advocates liken it to a dystopian nightmare.

The cameras will only be active when officers are present, and non-matching data will be promptly deleted. Yet, the debate rages on: safeguarding the public or sacrificing privacy? Privacy buffs call it Orwellian, coppers call it progress—either way, South London’s about to star in the ultimate game of I Spy, where the only prize is a pair of cuffs.

Time's up for daylight saving?
While Welsh crisps hide and Croydon’s cameras seek, Poland’s eyeing a timeless fix, winding up to tick daylight saving off the EU’s clock once and for all. The European Commission is on board to ditch the biannual faff that leaves us knackered without so much as a cheap flight to show for it. As the UK watches from the sidelines post-Brexit, one can't help but wonder if we'll be left in the dark or follow suit in embracing eternal summertime.​

ACROSS THE POND

Canadians pull plug on US visits
Canadians are giving trips to the United States a firm "no thank you," which might just stretch the already straining $50 billion U.S. travel deficit. Canadians usually top the charts of international visitors to the U.S. But with travel warnings echoing from Germany to Denmark, European tourists are second-guessing their stateside adventures too.

The strained Canada-U.S. relations don’t show any sign of turning around yet either - the current Canadian PM is egging his people to stay local, promoting a summer of exploration across their own beautiful back gardens rather than Uncle Sam’s.

Airlines on both sides of the border are feeling the pinch. Canadian airlines are trimming routes, redirecting sun-seekers from U.S. shores to Caribbean sands. American flights back to Canada are starting to look empty.

In a cheeky demonstration of Canadian feeling toward the US political climate - one Canadian brewery, Moosehead Breweries, began retailing a “Presidential Pack” - a pack of 1,461 beers, or one a day until the end of Trump’s term in office.

Greenland noise intensifies
“It’s cold as s*** here” - the words of JD Vance as he disembarked his plane in the Arctic Circle.

Apparently, Donald is back with his eyes set on the frosty fantasy land that is Greenland—where the ice is cold but the tension is icy-hot. Trump has hinted, once again, at the possibility of military intervention to make Greenland an unofficial 51st state of the US. This strategic, mineral-rich, yet reluctant prom queen of the Arctic continues to be America’s northbound obsession.

In what might have been dubbed 'Game of Thrones: Frozen Edition', Trump hinted at his warlike longing, should other diplomatic avenues prove to be fruitless. He claims there’s a sporting chance Greenland could join Team America without warfare—though he ever so subtly refused to sweep any military options off his political chessboard. Yikes.

TECH

Musk takes over... himself?
Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has bought X, meaning Musk has essentially purchased his own company in a move that’s either genius, madness, or just a fancy way to shuffle debts. The deal values xAI at $80bn and X at $33bn, a little shy of the original price tag of $44bn in 2022.

The acquisition cements the link between X and Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, while also giving him another chess piece in his ongoing checkmate-pending battle with OpenAI. On the subject of Musk, over in the EV world, China’s BYD has overtaken Tesla in annual revenue ($107bn vs $97.7bn).

AI's Ghibli grief
The internet’s thrown a Totoro-sized tantrum as ChatGPT churns out Ghibli-style snaps this week—adorable, nostalgic, and, according to some, legally dubious. AI-generated art mimicking Miyazaki’s iconic aesthetic sparked a copyright debate, with artists arguing it’s nothing short of creative theft.

Given that Miyazaki himself once described AI animation as an "insult to life itself”, it’s safe to say he won’t be thrilled to see his forests flogged by a bot.

OpenAI insists it doesn’t train on specific artists, but when an AI-generated cat looks like it wandered straight out of My Neighbour Totoro, or The Simpsons, or The Muppets, or Minecraft, or Lego etc… well... the internet has questions.

Proper random
Quantum computers have hit a milestone by generating the first-ever truly random number, which sounds like a niche achievement until you realise it could revolutionise everything from cryptography to lottery draws.

Unlike bog-standard computers faking chaos with algorithms, quantum taps into the spooky, subatomic lottery to dish out numbers that are, for once, genuinely unpredictable. In a world where everything feels increasingly controlled by algorithms, it’s almost poetic that the most exciting breakthrough in tech is... randomness.

WORLD

China strikes gold (again)
China’s latest jackpot in the geological lottery? Unearthing two 1,000-tonne gold deposits in the northeast. This follows last year’s £63bn discovery, proving that China’s mineral prospecting technology is worth its weight in, well, gold.

With the country already topping global gold production (a hefty 380 tonnes in 2024), this latest find strengthens its golden grip on the market. Gold isn’t just for dazzling jewellery—it’s crucial in financial stability, electronics, and even batteries, making China’s stash a proper gilt-edged investment.

As China unearths treasure beneath its soil, its newest sixth-generation stealth fighter jet has been spotted soaring above—dominating the depths with precious metals while demonstrating military mettle in the heights.

Long(est) haul
Qantas is launching a direct Sydney-to-London flight. At more than 20 hours long, it will be the world’s longest non-stop flight and fight for armrest real estate. Clocking in at 17,015km—a (35,000) feat so extreme it’s been named Project Sunrise after its dawn-dodging duration. Two sunrises later, you’ll stagger off into a Waterloo sunset, musing that Qantas means ‘Quite A Nasty Trek, Arrived Sore’.

There’s still tea in the pot...
The Teapot weekly quiz

Cuppa Chat: Cheat Sheet

📻🇬🇧 The BBC has decided not to include adverts in its UK podcasts despite initial plans.

🚀🎥 Chewbacca's Bowcaster from the original Star Wars trilogy sold for £471k at a US auction.

🎤⚖️ Dua Lipa wins a second copyright case over her hit song "Levitating", with a US judge ruling the elements were too common to be protected.

🎤🏆 Rosco McClelland wins the Sir Billy Connolly "Spirit of Glasgow" Award at the Glasgow Comedy Festival.

⛸️📺 ITV has "rested" Dancing On Ice, with no plans for a new series on its 20th anniversary next year.

⛸️🥉 Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson secure Great Britain's first figure skating World Championship medal in 40 years, winning bronze in Boston.

🏅⛷️ Zoe Atkin of Great Britain wins gold in the freeski halfpipe at the World Championships in Switzerland, scoring 93.50.