Where's my snorkel? 🤿

Happy Monday. Where’s my snorkel? While most of us are scrambling for loose change down the back of the sofa, a team of divers off Florida’s “Treasure Coast” has just pulled up over 1,000 silver and gold coins from a sunken Spanish fleet — a haul valued at roughly $1 million. Reports are that it even trumps the feeling of finding a fiver in an old coat.

Turns out, the biggest buried treasure this year isn’t in crypto — it’s 300+ years of sand, sea, and storms. The Spanish “Plate Fleet” from 1715 finally decided to cough up after centuries under wrap.

MARKETS

Data: Google Finance, 5-day Market Close

Notable UK earnings this week: Asos (ASC), Whitbread (WTB), Bellway (BWY), Boohoo (DEBS), Yougov (YOU).

Notable US earnings this week: JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Bank of America Corporation (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), Morgan Stanley (MS), Goldman Sachs (GS).

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PROJECT WATCH

🏗️ NHS begins engagement process for £750m public sector construction works framework. Read more

🌊 BP brings another North Sea field back online. Read more

🔌 ABL win role in Eastern Green Link 2 subsea electricity ‘highway’. Read more

BUSINESS & FINANCE

Chinese wind investment for Scotland
Just as the Scots are packing away their Tartan from a particularly gusty Highland Games season, it seems big investment is on the horizon. Chinese wind titan Ming Yang Smart Energy has announced plans to set up a £1.5 billion turbine manufacturing plant in Scotland, and it’s more than just hot air—up to 1,500 jobs are on the cards in Phase One alone.

While the precise location hasn’t been nailed down, the Port of Ardersier, just outside Inverness, has emerged as the frontrunner. Once a MOD site and now reinventing itself as a renewables renaissance zone, it’s poised to become the UK’s first fully integrated turbine production plant. Braveheart would be looking on fondly.

Phase Two promises an expansion into floating wind tech—yes, floating—while Phase Three aims to build a full-blown offshore wind industrial ‘ecosystem’. Less Jurassic Park, more Electric Arc. By 2027, they plan to be churning out nacelles and blades faster than you can say “net zero”.

EU’s turn to slap on a big ol’ steel tariff
While the rest of us will be dragging out jumpers and poorly carved pumpkins, the UK steel industry is facing its own version of a horror show. The EU’s latest move to slash import quotas and whack on a hulking 50% tariff for anything above the new cap has left British steelmakers clutching their hard hats. For an industry that sends nearly £3bn worth of steel to Europe—yes, 78% of our exported steel goes to the EU—this isn't just a wobble. It's the kind of crisis that makes even HS2’s U-turn look graceful.

Bluntly, Brussels has halved the amount of foreign steel it’s willing to let in tariff-free—down to 18.3 million tonnes a year, a near 50% cut from 2024 levels. It’s all part of an increasingly protectionist turn as Europe, like a steel-clad fortress, tries to fend off cheap imports from China and Turkey. EU Commission exec Stéphane Séjourné says the bloc is acting to prevent another jobs bloodbath after 18,000 roles in Europe's steel sector vanished in 2024. Call it protectionism or survival instinct—either way, the UK just got caught in the crossfire..

POLITICS

Duty dodging, or just stamp foolish?
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s latest brainchild is to take the axe to stamp duty, the much-maligned fee that makes moving house about as appealing as moving teeth. The Tories say scrapping it would unleash a utopia of economic mobility and home-swapping glee — provided you can afford the keys to begin with.

Critics argue it’s more likely to grease the palms of posh postcode property owners than unlock social mobility. With a £9bn black hole to fill, some economists are calling for a two-for-one deal: scrap stamp duty and overhaul council tax. But unless there's a rabbit hiding in the fiscal hat, this feels more like pre-election smoke than a post-move mirror.

Secrets, spies and sino silence
A China spy scandal has collapsed faster than a paper lantern in a thunderstorm, and Downing Street's lips are sealed tighter than a fortune cookie. Two men, one a former parliamentary researcher, were charged with spying for China. But prosecutors folded after the government refused to label China a national threat. Labour has again delayed the London Chinese super-embassy decision amid the row.

Enter Lord Sedwill, who waltzed in with all the subtlety of Poirot at a pub quiz, declaring: “Of course China is a threat.” The Treasury, allegedly more worried about trade deals than traitors, reportedly leaned on Starmer’s top spook Jonathan Powell to keep the China audit buried. The resulting fallout? A diplomatic danse macabre where politics, security, and economic pragmatism are all trying not to trip over each other.

Teen IDs and big brother's baby steps
Digital IDs are coming to the UK, and the government wants to know: should your 13-year-old be part of the barcode brigade? The system, due by 2029, will be required for anyone who wants to work. Since many teens already do part-time jobs, the government argues it’s just common sense. But, privacy campaigners say it reeks of mission creep - from job checks to digital control. While Keir Starmer praises India’s biometric system, critics warn this isn’t an app store update, it's a democratic red flag.

Border brouhaha: Europe’s queue club
As of this week, Britain’s relationship with Europe gets yet another paperwork-heavy twist. Enter the Entry Exit System (EES), a fancy new EU border regime asking UK travellers for fingerprints, photos, and a quick pop quiz on their holiday plans. It’s being phased in gently - unless you’re on a coach to Madrid this week, in which case, welcome to biometric bingo.

With every Briton becoming a thumb-printed data point, some fear this border upgrade will mean long queues, missed flights, and fond memories of those halcyon pre-Brexit days when you only had to look grumpy to get waved through.

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ACROSS THE POND

China tariffs and trade wars 2.0
China has cheekily dismissed fears of a fresh trade war. In response to President Trump's vow to slap a whopping 100% tariff on Chinese imports, the folks in Beijing have returned the volley, deeming America’s decision a "textbook double standard". It's almost as if the duo are duelling with tariffs instead of fencing swords. And, like a stock market horror flick, the US markets managed to lose a staggering $2 trillion in equity values in a day last Friday.

China's steadfast stance remains, "we do not want a trade war, but we’re not terrified". The Ministry of Commerce in China has shot back, accusing the US of weaponising national security and bludgeoning China with a myriad of unilateral measures and jurisdictional demands.

In a twist worthy of an international showdown, Trump's announcement of parallel measures to restrict “critical software” exports to China have stirred international spectacles. China, enjoying 70% control over rare earth supplies which are now subject to strict export controls, is proving a prickly contender - a bit like kicking off with the kid who owns the only football. There’s always a risk of picking the game up, going home, and not letting us play anymore. In a synchronised move, is now expecting U.S. vessels to pay docking charges at its ports from 14th October—a date that might overshadow any excitement for Halloween festivities.

Shutdown rumbles on
The shutdown has hit its eleventh day with the tenacity of a Eurovision earworm, stemming from a budget stand-off featuring Trump's Republican repertoire aiming for a Senate spotlight. Despite holding the gavel in both the House and Senate, they need to charm at least seven Democrats into a bipartisan dance to avoid another chapter in the shutdown story.

Democrats, meanwhile, are wielding healthcare improvements as a bargaining chip, refusing to back a spending bill that doesn't bolster the Affordable Care Act. Trump isn't particularly chuffed about the whole ordeal, accusing Democrats of holding "our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation HOSTAGE," which sounds more dramatic than a Shakespearean tragedy.

TECH

Drones, dining downwards
Manna Aero wants your takeaway on the fly by 2026: 23kg quadcopters cruising, lowering lattes and raising burger bellys. After 200,000+ drops in Dublin, Finland and Texas, efficiency’s up, tempers too: locals dub the whirr “helicopter hell” and fear a “new M50 in the sky”.

Come rain or shine, the Robot works overtime
China’s Deep Robotics unveils DR02: 5'9", 65kg, extremely waterproof, trundles at 1.5 m/s, climbs 20° slopes, LiDAR and depth cams, basically a warehouse worker with windshield wipers. Beijing’s sprinting in the humanoid arms race.

Seoul & Sora sci-fi
Seoul has gone full cyberpunk: in Jeo-dong Park, a life-size hologram cop flickers into being every two minutes, pacing its patch from 7 to 10 p.m. Police claim crime’s down 22%, proving once again that the mere illusion of authority can be just as effective as the real thing.

And speaking of blurred realities, OpenAI’s shiny new text-to-video app Sora has stormed past a million downloads in under five days, faster than ChatGPT managed in its caffeinated debut. Users type a few words, and out pops a ten-second “film” so lifelike it’s got lawyers, ethicists and bereaved families reaching for the pause button. Some of these bite-sized epics resurrect new life into performances, Michael Jackson moonwalking again, Robin Williams cracking spectral gags, all without so much as a séance or a signature.

The name itself feels eerily familiar to literary fans: Sora, just a syllable away from Soma, the bliss-peddling drug in Huxley’s Brave New World. One soothes the masses with synthetic serenity; the other floods social feeds with synthetic cinema. Both promise escape, one pill, one prompt.

WORLD

Basketball rebound: NBA returns to China
Six years after a Hong Kong tweet benched the world’s biggest basketball league, the NBA has dribbled its way back into China, or, to be precise, Macau. The Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns faced off under the casino lights of the Venetian Arena. Cameras panned over David Beckham and Jackie Chan courtside.

The NBA’s 2019 China freeze-out, sparked by one Houston Rockets tweet supporting Hong Kong protesters, had left a basketball-shaped hole in a market of 300 million players and many more fans. Now, with Beijing’s frost thawing and Macau rolling out the red carpet, the league is keen to show the love.

Even Nike’s accountants will be watching closely: sales in greater China have fallen 10 per cent, profit down a quarter, and there’s nothing like a few LeBron cameos and some dribbling diplomacy to reheat a billion-dollar ball market.

Kim Kong’s parade
Pyongyang rolled out the rockets (and the red carpet) to celebrate the 80th birthday of the Workers’ Party of Korea. Kim Jong Un took centre stage, waxing lyrical about revolutionary loyalty while debuting the Hwasong-20, a nuclear-tipped party popper aimed squarely at global anxiety levels.

Foreign VIPs from China, Russia, and Vietnam looked on as the military flexed everything from hypersonic missiles to suicide drones in a show straight out of dystopian central casting. Diplomatic choreography was on full display, with Kim cosying up to Russia’s Medvedev and sealing fresh defence deals with Vietnam. Meanwhile, South Korea quietly stocked up on antacids.

Parthenoff the scaffold: Athens uncloaked
For the first time in two centuries, visitors to Athens can behold the Parthenon in all its marble glory, no scaffolding, no steel, just pure 5th-century fabulousness. Conservation efforts had kept the temple dressed in metal corsetry for decades, but as of late September, the wraps are off, albeit temporarily.

The western side, which offers the best street-level views, is now unobstructed… until next month, when new, chicer scaffolding returns like an overly stylish house guest. With 4.5 million tourists in 2024 alone, the Acropolis remains the ancient world’s hottest ticket. So, if you want to see it truly bare, get your toga on tout de suite.