Suns out, buns out ☀️

Happy Monday. Advanced warning, next week is the Spring Bank holiday, so you know the drill - check the forecast, fire up the barbecue and wait for The Teapot to arrive on Tuesday morning instead.

During a sunny bank holiday weekend, Tesco expects to sell and additional 300,000 packs of BBQ meats, and an additional 1.25 million packs of sausages. Similarly, for any of you with a few quid extra - during the warm spell in March this year, Waitrose saw a 10% week-on-week increase in sales of steaks and burgers (stay tuned for data on Pimms and swingball).

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: SSE Plc (SSE), Vodafone (VOD), BT Group (BT.A), JD Sports (JD.), EasyJet (EZJ), Marks & Spencer (MKS).

Notable US earnings this week: Home Depot (HD), Intuit (INTU), Lowes (LOW), TJX Companies (TJX), Snowflake (SNOW).

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PROJECT WATCH

🍃 Severfield to start steel works for Agratas £4bn car battery gigafactory in Somerset. Read more

🔌 Consultation starts for £923m subsea & onshore cabling facility in Port of Tyne. Read more

🌊 Regulator calls for submissions on North Sea carbon storage locations. Read more

ECONOMY & FINANCE

(Economic) Gain-train
The UK economy kicked off 2025 with a proper spring in its step, notching up a punchy 0.7% GDP growth in Q1—the fastest in the G7 pack (and ahead of the expected 0.6%). While our international mates shuffled forward (or backwards, in the case of the US and Japan), Britain surged ahead thanks to a booming services sector, beefed-up production, and a flurry of pre-tariff business investments—particularly in planes and transport kit.

Exports also had a good go, jumping 3.5% with a tidy £2.4 billion headed across the pond to the States (a bit of pre-tariff stockpiling never hurt anybody). It’s not every day we top the economic charts, so let’s enjoy the moment before Q2 brings us back down to Earth with the usual dose of global wobbles and cautious forecasts.

Thames Water execs flush
While the country braces for hosepipe bans and eye-watering water bills, Thames Water’s top brass are reportedly on the verge of topping up their glasses with retention bonus bubbly. According to the FT, not content with presiding over a £20bn debt sinkhole, the company has cleverly rebranded executive handouts as "retention payments" — not bonuses, mind you — to stay ahead of Ofwat’s soon-to-be beefed-up bonus ban.

There’s a £3bn emergency loan at the centre of this controversy, hailed as “company saving”, that came courtesy of US hedge funds like Elliott Management and Silver Point — both names familiar from other financial drama sagas. The loan's eye-watering 9.75% interest rate makes this less a rescue package and more a premium-priced flotation device tied to a sinking ship. Executives call securing this loan a great success worthy of reward. I bet your mortgage doesn’t sound so bad now?

Meanwhile, Thames Water’s CEO Chris Weston, who bagged a cheeky £195,000 for three whole months of work last year, is reportedly not on the list for these new ‘non-bonuses’.

POLITICS

Referendums, reboots & a right royal rethink
Scotland’s constitutional kettle is bubbling once more, and—brace yourself—Michael Gove and SNP leader John Swinney are humming the same tune. Gove, soon to be known in Ermine as Lord Gove of Torry, has admitted that a second Scottish independence referendum could happen… if there’s “overwhelming support.” That’s political code for: “not yet, but maybe if the crowd starts chanting.” Swinney, meanwhile, is working the 1997 playbook, aiming to muster mass support as a mandate. It’s less Braveheart, more “let’s wait and see”.

Gove, ever the Union’s reluctant romantic, warned against complacency, saying the UK is a “living thing” - though that may depend on how lively the NHS, economy and ScotRail feel to the average voter. His Aberdeen FC analogy (“Don’t sack the manager, just play better”) was a subtle shout to his party’s wobbling position north of the border, where Reform UK’s rise is making blue rosettes twitch. The message? Hold the line… or risk finishing fifth.

Mobility, muck & mutual agreements
While Holyrood and Westminster flirt with another breakup, Sir Keir Starmer is trying to woo Brussels with a bouquet of youth mobility. A shiny new scheme could soon let young Brits work and wander across Europe again (for up to two years, not forever—calm down, Brexiteers). It’s not a return to freedom of movement, insists Starmer, just a “reciprocal” arrangement. Kemi Badenoch isn’t buying it—calling it “free movement through the back door.” Reform UK chimed in, naturally, with “it’s a trap!” energy.

And down in the bins, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is on a mission to turn crime into community service with actual grit. Her new plan? Send offenders out to clean streets, fill potholes, and scrub graffiti instead of serving short prison stints. No wages—just hard graft, with earnings funnelled to victims’ funds. With prisons full to bursting and early releases becoming the norm, it’s all feeling a bit like DIY SOS: Justice Edition.

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ACROSS THE POND

Clear for takeoff?
Some call them critics, some call them fake-news - but there is often an undertone purporting Donald Trump being susceptible to shiny things. In other news, Trump’s been offered a £320 million flying palace by the Qatari royal family—because what else says diplomatic ties like a gold-plated drinks cabinet at 30,000 feet? He insists the plush Boeing 747-8 is a gift to the U.S. Air Force and, eventually, to his presidential library (presumably with valet parking).

But hold your in-flight snacks—critics say this luxury jet might breach the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which frowns upon politicians accepting extravagant goodies from foreign powers without a congress giving it the seal of approval. That may be subject to some “conflict of interest” talk.

Security boffins are twitchy too. After all, accepting a jet from a foreign government isn’t quite like borrowing your neighbour’s lawnmower. There’s talk of hidden bugs, high-tech snooping, and an aircraft that would need more retrofitting than a 1970s kitchen. Let’s see how this one plays out.

Eat your greens, eat your tariffs
In the latest edition of "Tariff Street", former President Donald Trump has directed his trademark ire at Walmart, insisting the retail juggernaut should absorb imposed tariffs rather than passing costs onto consumers. Simply put, Trump thinks Walmart should take a bite out of their own profits—not US wallets.

The price of everything from bananas to baby car seats could soon be hiked, according to Walmart, which cites even the reduced tariffs on China as cause for concern. Doug McMillon, Walmart's CEO, quipped in Thursday's earnings call that although they can "control what [they] can control", even they can't adjust the laws of economics.

Trump took to Truth Social to demand that Walmart and China, "EAT THE TARIFFS." He suggests Walmart's billions in profit mean they can keep prices low, painting a picture of rosy corporate resilience.

TECH

Botox, baby breakthroughs & byte-sized bureaucracy
In the age of bespoke everything, meet KJ Muldoon—the baby who got the world’s first one-of-a-kind gene therapy tailored to his DNA faster than most Brits can get a GP appointment. Born with a one-in-a-million metabolic disorder, KJ is now eating more normally and rolling over like a champ, thanks to a CRISPR-powered medical marvel from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. It’s the genetic equivalent of turning water into wine—or at least ammonia into not-a-problem.

Meanwhile, the UK government’s taken a leaf out of Yes, Minister and handed civil service consultation duties over to a suite of AI tools named Humphrey. First assignment? Botox. Because obviously. “Consult”, the tool in question, claims to match human accuracy while saving 75,000 days of admin. Somewhere, a paper-pusher just wept into their outbox. And just to really drive home the age of algorithmic governance, Prime Minister Starmer wants to run AI “in the veins” of Britain’s economy. That’ll go down well at the next union meeting.

Crypto crooks, curious coders & curfews for kids
Coinbase, the crypto darling about to join the S&P 500, got hit with a cyber heist that may cost it up to $400 million. Hackers allegedly bribed contractors to leak data, impersonated the platform, and then asked for a ransom. Coinbase refused, fired the leaky staff, and is now launching a $20 million bounty pot instead. It’s a cyber-thriller worthy of a Netflix pitch: Catch Me If You Crypto.

And in other corners of the digital Wild West, TikTok has gone all Zen on its teenage doomscrollers. Scroll past 10pm and instead of dopamine, you’ll get deep breathing. Teens are now prompted with bedtime meditations, and if they ignore them, a second, unskippable reminder pops up—like a digital mum, minus the mug of cocoa. In Australia, they’re skipping the niceties entirely and banning under-16s from social media from December. Good luck enforcing that one.

WORLD

Pyramids and posh pilfering
Two Brits are on the verge of being extradited to Japan over a £679k smash-and-grab at Tokyo’s Harry Winston jewellery store. The two chaps, who allegedly posed as shoppers in 2015 before executing the glitzy heist, could become the first UK citizens ever extradited to Japan - despite there being no formal treaty.

Their objections? That Japanese prisons are too grim. The courts weren’t swayed, pointing to “prima facie” evidence, including abandoned Armani jackets and DNA-laced glass shards.

Meanwhile, YouTube’s crown prince of clickbait, MrBeast, is facing Mexico’s cultural wrath after filming a viral vid at ancient Mayan pyramids. The problem? The chocolate ad sneakily slipped into the footage, marketed as a “Mayan dessert”.

Authorities say he bent the rules of his filming permit, staged some scenes (no, you didn’t rappel into a pyramid, Jimmy), and falsely portrayed himself fondling ancient masks. MrBeast's camp claims it's all innocent content creation—but when your stunts involve helicopters and heritage sites, don’t be shocked when the Secretary of Culture turns up with a cease and desist and a side-eye.

Dye-abolical disaster
Brazil had a bit of a Smurficide situation. A truck crash in São Paulo unleashed a torrent of bright blue chemical dye into the Jundiai River, giving wildlife a surprise makeover. Ducks, fish, and other unsuspecting locals are now turning cerulean, after the dye—an acetic acid-based substance used in Styrofoam production—poured into a manhole.

Officials are scrambling to rescue animals and contain the spill. It’s unclear how many creatures have been affected, but early reports suggest several species are now more blue than Eeyore at a break-up brunch.

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