Sandford's most wanted 🦢

Happy Monday. Our new favourite reason for a train delay landed with us last week. At the end of October, passengers in Glasgow were made to wait for a whopping four hours for the most quintessential British problem: Swan on the tracks.

Some say they can break a person’s arm, or blow up a man’s house. Now added to their rap sheet - delaying trains and stopping your commute, without a second thought. It was moved safely along after the four hour ordeal. Yes, four hours to move a swan - did nobody have a spare baguette?

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Imperial Brands (IMB), Sage Group (SGE), Babcock (BAB), Jet2 (JET2).

Notable US earnings this week: Nvidia (NVDA), Walmart (WMT), Home Depot (HD), Intuit (INTU), PDD Holdings (PDD).

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PROJECT WATCH

🌊 Ocean Infinity win more geo-tech work for subsea electricity number five. Read more

🏗️ Morgan Sindall break ground on £100m Manchester science building. Read more

☢️ Government award £1m to explore new nuclear sites near Sellafield. Read more

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Watts occurring in Wales
North Wales is going nuclear again, and this time it’s modular. The government has officially announced that Wylfa on Anglesey (Ynys Môn, for our proud Welsh speaking Teapotters) will be the site of the UK’s first ever Small Modular Reactor (SMR), thanks to a multi-billion-pound plan that’s gone full steam ahead – or should we say, full fission ahead.

If you’re unfamiliar with SMRs, just think of them as the iPhones of the nuclear world – smaller, sleeker, and slightly less likely to explode if you drop them. Developed in part by Rolls-Royce SMR, these nifty reactors promise low-carbon power for about three million homes. It's all part of the government's nuclear-flavoured clean energy push – an effort to wean Britain off fossil fuels without having to rely on the whimsy of the weather.

The numbers are bold: up to 3,000 local jobs at peak construction, £2.5 billion+ in investment, and long-term energy security for the entire UK. And let’s be honest – with energy prices bouncing around like a toddler on Haribo, anything that makes the bills a bit less apocalyptic sounds good.

With Great British Energy-Nuclear (GBE-N) footing the public bill and bringing the British public into the ownership club, it also means we finally own something more substantial than pothole laden roads and a housing crisis.

Unemployment on the rise
Britain’s jobless figures are unfortunately on the rise. According to the Office for National Statistics, unemployment hit 5% in the three months to September, marking the highest level since the twilight days of lockdown in late 2020. That’s up from 4.8% just last month, and rather worse than many boffins in suits had forecast. Sorry lads, no prize turkey for your economic models this year.

Elsewhere, HMRC’s experimental payroll data - which might be the most boring sentence I’ve ever written - revealed a 32,000 drop in employed folks during October.

Employer costs spiked in April thanks to the last budget changes - higher minimum wages and stiffer national insurance bills.

POLITICS

Pawprints to progress
In a move sure to make lab rats squeak a sigh of relief, the UK has unveiled an ambitious roadmap to phase out animal testing. Spearheaded by Science Minister Lord Vallance, the £75m plan will back cutting-edge research that swaps furry test subjects for high-tech alternatives - think AI, 3D bioprinted tissues, and organ-on-a-chip wizardry. The goal? Replace animal testing in areas like skin irritation checks and botox strength trials by 2027, with fewer dogs and primates involved by 2030.

While full elimination isn’t quite within paw’s reach yet, this strategy - hailed by researchers, charities, and even cosmetic crusaders - positions Blighty as a global leader in kinder, cleverer science. A win for science, ethics, and every beagle’s retirement plan.

Firewalls and false moustaches
Cyber villains beware: the UK is beefing up its digital defences. With cyber attacks costing £15bn a year, the new Cyber Security and Resilience Bill promises tougher rules for essential services - from NHS data wizards to the folks keeping our lights on and water flowing.

Under the proposed law, anyone from managed IT providers to data centres will need to report major cyber slip-ups within 24 hours, or risk fines steep enough to fry their firewalls.

Faces in the fray
Meanwhile, over in Redhill, Surrey Police are trialling live facial recognition tech from their shiny new van. Two arrests were made. Police say the software only flags watchlisted individuals, blurring and deleting everyone else’s mugs faster than a bad bumble match.

Civil liberties concerns persist, but Ch Insp Andy Hill insists it’s been rigorously tested and accuracy is up to scratch. Whether Orwellian overstep or vital tool, it’s clear the tech is now parked - literally - on our high streets.

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ACROSS THE POND

Trump gives BBC a new billion dollar drama
President Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for a grand total somewhere between one and five billion dollars. Yes, you read that correctly - billions. All sparked by a seemingly misleading, definitely dodgy edit of one of his speeches. The blunder occurred on the BBC's "Panorama" programme, where an oddly spliced-together version of Trump's words left viewers with the impression he’d taken a page out of a Hollywood action film script, directly calling for violence. There were in fact fifty minutes or so of speech between the bits they glued together.

Cue the British Broadcasting Corporation apologising like a child caught with its hand in the biscuit tin. Despite the apology and the promise to never let those clips see the light of day again - sorry Netflix, no reruns here - Trump's legal team gave the BBC a stern deadline, demanding a retraction and compensation which left BBC executives resigning as they scrambled for the exit doors.

The plot thickened as BBC’s Chair Samir Shah issues a heartfelt letter of regret to the White House but diplomatically declines to open the chequebook. UK PM Keir Starmer chimed in with a stern but loyal admonishment; suggesting the Beeb needs to tidy up its act faster than you can say 'has anyone got five billion quid'.

Swiss
The Swiss are having a fondue with fortune as they've struck a deal with the US to chop down those rather Trump-towered 39% tariffs on their imports to a more digestible 15%. In return, Switzerland's giving its piggy bank a considerable shakedown, promising a whopping $200 billion (£150bn) investment in Uncle Sam's land by 2028. That's as far-flung as standing in the queue for extended Black Friday sales, which is, incidentally, just around the corner.

Swiss Economics Minister Guy Parmelin is toasting what he calls "a great relief for our economy," noting Trump's tariffs had done a number on them since last summer. Swiss business moguls made the pilgrimage to the White House last week, gifts in tow – a gold bar and a Rolex, all above board of course.

TECH

Boosters, billionaires
Blue Origin just leapfrogged into the big leagues with a Mars mission that stuck the landing. Jeff Bezos’ towering New Glenn rocket launched twin NASA probes (Escapade: Blue and Gold) toward the Red Planet and pulled off its first successful booster landing on a floating droneship in the Atlantic, a feat previously monopolised by Musk’s SpaceX.

With cargo costs plummeting to £1k per kilo (down from £50k) thanks to reusable rockets, the billionaire blast-off bonanza is rocketing up. This marks Blue Origin’s pivot from space tourism (Katy Perry singing in zero-G) to full-on interplanetary science, complete with a Starlink competitor already circling Earth.

Not to be outdone, China’s space programme has had its own drama: three taikonauts were stranded aboard Tiangong after space debris cracked their capsule. Cue a tense nine-day delay before they safely parachuted into the Gobi Desert using a backup ride. Their plans remain firmly on track for a moonwalk by 2030.

Empires of illusion: drones, deception and digital fortunes
China’s latest power play, the Sichuan, is no ordinary ship - it’s the world’s first drone carrier with an electromagnetic catapult. Think Top Gun meets Terminator. This floating flex joins a rapidly expanding military, all while Beijing commissions nuclear-powered supercarriers and not so quietly prepares for potential conflict.

But military might isn't China’s only export - Qian Zhimin, crypto fraudster extraordinaire, was just jailed for almost 12 years in London after laundering billions in Bitcoin stolen from 120,000 Chinese investors. Masquerading as an antiques heiress in Hampstead, she plotted world domination, Swedish castles, and microstate royalty - all from bed.

Her scam exploited patriotic pensioners with poems and pyramid schemes, culminating in the UK’s biggest crypto seizure. The victims, now seeking restitution, are left sifting through poems and police proceedings, hoping justice can be mined - if not in Bitcoin, then at least in compensation.

WORLD

Papal parcel post
After a century of spiritual souvenirs sitting in Rome like forgotten postcards, the Vatican has returned 62 Indigenous artefacts to Canada. Described as “gifts” at the time, the items include a Cree pair of gloves and a whale-hunting Inuit kayak - both more meaningful than your average holy water bottle.

The move follows Pope Francis’ 2022 apology tour and is being hailed as a symbolic gesture of reconciliation. The artefacts, once showcased in a 1925 missionary expo, will soon fly home - airfare prepaid by the tribes themselves - for ceremonial returns. Call it divine delivery with a side of cultural course-correction.

Manzo’s mourners mobilise
In Mexico City, thousands protested President Sheinbaum’s handling of cartel crime and corruption. Sparked by the recent assassination of Uruapan’s outspoken mayor, Carlos Manzo, during a Day of the Dead festival, the protests turned fiery - with 120 injured and 20 arrested.

Gen Z-led, but accused by the president of being stirred up by political bots, the marchers dismantled barriers and faced tear gas. Sheinbaum, still enjoying high approval ratings and a no-nonsense stance on substances, finds herself in an awkward diplomatic salsa - recently declared persona non grata by Peru. Viva la protesta.