They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Notable UK earnings this week: Vodafone (VOD), 3i Group (III), Burberry (BRBY), B&M European Value Retail (BME), United Utilities (UU.), WH Smith (SMWH), Wizz Air (WIZZ).

Notable US earnings this week: Cisco (CSCO), Applied Materials (AMAT), CoreWeave (CRWV), Take-Two (TTWO), The Trade Desk (TTD).

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🌊 Survey award to Fugro for East Anglia Two offshore wind. Read more

🔌 Kent-Sussex subsea cable work approved. Read more

⛰️ Design and integration tender up for Windermere worth £600m. Read more

BoE increases interest rates
The Bank of England has raised interest rates for the first time in more than three years, lifting the base rate to 4 per cent. That was broadly expected by markets, which have been doing their usual thing of trying to guess the future as if it were a particularly smug pub quiz. But the Monetary Policy Committee stopped short of promising more hikes are on the way.

Rates had been sitting at 3.75 per cent for nearly a year, following the last cut just before Christmas 2025. Now, with inflation pressure flaring again because of the Iran war and higher oil prices, the Bank has judged that bringing borrowing costs back up was the lesser evil - which is quite the trick when the economy is already coughing politely in the corner.

Govt to step in to question Sky ITV takeover
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has officially put Sky’s proposed £1.6bn takeover of ITV’s broadcasting arm under the microscope, after concerns were raised about what it could mean for media plurality and the range of British news on offer. In other words: when one company starts buying up the telly shop, the Government tends to ask who’s left on the high street.

Nandy has issued a Public Interest Intervention Notice, instructing both the Competition and Markets Authority and Ofcom to assess the deal. They now have until 27 January to hand over their findings, after which she’ll decide whether the matter needs a fuller, more bruising investigation.

The Culture Secretary had already warned last month that the tie-up could pose a risk to freedom of expression and the breadth of viewpoints in news media. She also said she wants to widen the merger rules so streaming platforms are pulled into the same regulatory net as traditional broadcasters - because, frankly, the age of pretending Netflix lives in a separate universe is over.

Under the proposed deal, Sky would take control of ITV’s Media and Entertainment arm, including its channels and ITVX streaming service. ITV Studios - the bit that churns out shows like Love Island - is not part of the transaction, perhaps mercifully for anyone hoping to avoid yet another summer of sunburn, graft and strategic recoupling.

Survey says
Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle is losing patience with Parliament's restoration. More time goes on surveys than repairs, he complains, and the law bars major works until MPs approve the whole project's scope and funding - handcuffs of its own making. The bill could hit £40bn and take 61 years; every year of delay adds £420m, and £150m a year already goes on keeping the place standing. Some wiring dates from the 1940s, some from Victoria's reign. A vote may come by the new year. Sixty-one years - about how long the Commons kettle has needed descaling.

Wings clipped
Wales may ban under-16s from buying energy drinks, following England, where drinks with more than 150mg of caffeine per litre - think Red Bull, Monster and Prime - become illegal to sell to children from April. Tea and coffee are exempt. Also in Wales, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library has relaunched, posting a free book every month until a child's fifth birthday to families in three Swansea school communities, Pencoed in Bridgend and Risca, near Newport. Parton, founded it in 1995, inspired by her father, who couldn't read or write. A cuppa and a bedtime story: Wales's new energy policy.

Trump asks UFC chief to take White House job
Donald Trump has turned to the octagon for his latest staffing solution, asking mixed martial arts promoter Dana White to become his new White House press secretary. In a move that feels less like a standard political appointment and more like a casting call for the most chaotic episode of The Apprentice, Mr Trump lauded White as a “violent Fighter and Warrior” on Truth Social.

The administration has been without an official spokesperson since Katie Zacharia left after just five days in the role - a stint so brief it barely had time to warm the office chair, let alone master the briefing room. White, the outspoken boss of the UFC and a long-time Trump ally, has not exactly built his reputation on delicate phrasing, which may be part of the appeal in a White House already operating with the subtlety of a brass band in a library.

Is it a bluff? Who even knows anymore?

Dems line up impeachment approaches
Pete Hegseth may soon find himself facing the political equivalent of a very unfriendly audit, as Democrats prepare to use their new majorities in Congress to launch a string of investigations - and possibly impeachment proceedings. Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s new chief of staff, Stephen Miller, are also expected to be hauled into the spotlight, because apparently nobody in Washington gets to enjoy a quiet week.

The Democrats’ midterm gains have flipped control of both chambers, including states that have leaned Republican for decades, which is no small feat. Robert Garcia, the California congressman likely to chair the House Oversight Committee, said the focus will include Musk’s role in the Department of Government Efficiency’s firing of federal workers, and Miller’s part in Trump’s hardline immigration agenda - including the deadly operations in Minnesota that left two people shot by federal agents.

A show of hands
The Ivy in Glasgow has been criticised for passing off AI images as the work of its "in-house designers" - one watercolour featured a woman with three arms. The post has since been edited. Estate agents are at it too: house-hunters say AI-staged photos are false advertising, with fitted kitchens and Matisse artwork vanishing on viewing. The practice has been dubbed "housefishing".

Spare a thought, then, for New Zealand astrophotographer Brendan Larsen, accused of faking his shot of about 1,400 satellites criss-crossing the sky over Mount Taranaki. It took 578 photos and 45 hours in Photoshop - and he filmed the whole process, expecting exactly this. Three arms would at least speed up the tea round.

Rolling back the years
Nintendo has remade The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the Switch 2, almost three decades after the N64 original - still the highest-rated game on Metacritic. It plays much like the 1998 version, only prettier and a touch more cartoonish. Nintendo even added a sprint button to spare players from spamming the roll. Old habits.

Meanwhile, Worms began life on a Casio graphing calculator, when a bored Andy Davidson was struggling through A-level maths in Bournemouth. Originally called Total Wormage, it got banned from school, and has since sold up to 70 million copies - enough for everyone in the UK.

Pretty please
Amateur radio operators in Oslo have talked a European Space Agency satellite into playing Doom. It took seven attempts, a rooftop antenna and a 27 MB speech model squeezed onto ESA's OPS-SAT PRETTY cubesat - which, after hearing "PRETTY play Doom Doom Doom", launched the 1993 shooter and beamed back a postcard with a frame of the action.

The Norwegian Radio Relay League spent 59 days and about 7,200 kroner (pizza included) getting through. It is the first time a satellite has obeyed a spoken command, though not the first to run Doom. The hope is that a future craft might one day hear a mayday. For now, the lesson is simpler: if at first you don't succeed, shout a little more clearly at space.

Pack animals
Customs officers at Lima's airport must have had their spidey senses tingling, as they found more than 3,000 tarantulas stuffed into dirty socks across three suitcases bound for Germany, after spotting some unusual wriggling. At about €500 each in Europe, that's €1.5m a trip. The spiders, gathered from several regions of Peru, ranged from eggs and hatchlings to adults. Two Germans and a Polish citizen face criminal proceedings.

Fairies next door
Victoria's "forest fairies" have a new neighbourhood. Leadbeater's possums - gecko-toed, acrobatic, and the state's animal emblem - spring silently between branches at night, and were thought extinct until the 1960s. The last lowland animals, down to 13 in a shrinking swamp forest east of Melbourne, were taken into temporary care.

In late October, nine possums - six lowland, two highland and one hybrid - were released at Haining Farm, a purpose-grown refuge of 900,000 hand-planted trees, shrubs and grasses, behind a 3.6 km fence that admits walkers but not foxes or cats. They feed on honeydew and sap, dart through tea trees, and have been settled in pairs and trios. A quiet thicket and a decent cup: that's a fair start.

Star billing
A black donkey named Chunky Panday has topped the prices at Chitrakoot's annual donkey fair on the Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh border, selling for 72,000 rupees - about £570. Traders at the centuries-old riverside market, held after Diwali on the banks of the Mandakini, have a habit of naming their animals after Bollywood stars.