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Good morning, you glorious beasts.

Tory MP Mark Pritchard has claimed £1,100 for 4 copies of Who's Who—a reference book you can get for free in the House of Commons library.

His own Who's Who entry lists "writing comedy" as a hobby. This expenses claim suggests he's getting quite good at it.

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ECONOMY
Is UK growth worth all the hype?

The British economy is now the fastest-growing in the G7, apparently. 

Which means out of all the world-leading industrial nations (China aside), we are the best. Officially. Better than the Japanese, the French, and the unstable partners of our toxically co-dependent situationship, the Americans. 

Rachel Reeves said, “We still have more to do”. Shadow chancellor Mel Stride said it’s “a bit premature to be popping the champagne corks”. I’m sure Kemi Badenoch shouted something. 

So:

What’s going on? 

Before we start garlanding maypoles and attending the all-night rave, let me (to coin a Starmerism) “make one thing absolutely clear”: 

The bar is pretty low.

First, the UK economy grew 0.7% in the first three months of the year.

That’s compared with the US economy, which contracted -0.2% (though Donald was quick to blame Biden despite being president for most of it). 

Growth is horribly low across the G7. All because of:

• Chronic underinvestment (possibly due to the post-financial crisis regulatory system)

• Terrible policy decisions (hello Brexit my old friend)

• Manufacturing decline

The list goes on.

So why did we grow?

• People were spending more money

• Businesses were shelling out 6% more than before, possibly because… 

• Manufacturers were rushing to produce more to escape the brunt of Donald’s looming tariffs. 

If the economy grew, then why do I feel so poor and lame?

Because

• We’re spending more money on Wifi, water and electricity than before

• We’re paying more in taxes (god damn you, 2024 autumn budget)

• And no one wants to hire us because it’s too expensive for employers. 

Can things only get better? 

To quote a habitually pessimistic Scottish gardener I know, “This’ll be oor summer.”

Because

1. The data comes from the period before businesses were lumped with higher national insurance costs and the need to fork out for a higher minimum wage. 

2. Employers are getting pretty miserable as a result and firing people

3. Plus, the US tariffs on all our goods hadn’t kicked in then.

So by next quarter, we might not be coming up trumps.

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EMPLOYMENT
A new visa to stop millionaires fleeing the UK

Millionaires are fleeing the UK like rats from a sinking ship. And the government, a smidge upset by this, are thinking about coaxing them back to HMRC’s warm embrace with an investor visa. 

Why are they fleeing? 

Because the government scrapped the non-dom scheme. 

Which essentially allowed wealthy people who lived in the UK to claim their real home was elsewhere due to emotional ties and, as a result, not pay tax on their worldwide income - so long as it didn’t enter a British bank account. 

Why should I care about millionaires?

Ending the non-dom scheme, some say, means wealthy people won’t want to come to the UK and invest.

• According to the Adam Smith Institute, the UK will lose the greatest number of millionaires of any country by 2028

• The result? The Treasury could lose upwards of £12.2 billion a year.

So far, 10,800 rich people have left the country, including a Goldman Sachs banker and an Egyptian billionaire. 

In fact, it’s got so bad that the President of Cyprus plans to come to London with the sole purpose of wooing wealthy people to come and live in his sunny tax haven.

What will the Investor Visa look like? 

According to the government, the visa will be for high-net-worth individuals who want to invest in

• Tech

• Life sciences 

• Clean energy. 

It’ll probably try to stop people abusing the system, as happened with the (now defunct) investor visa created by the Tories, which was used by some very naughty Russian money launderers.

TECH
We’re getting hacked

Hackers targeted UK companies and supermarkets this week en masse. 

Who got hacked? 

First they came for the supermarkets with ransomware: 

• M&S lost customer data to Scattered Spider, a US and UK hacker group operated by teenagers, and is losing £43 million a week due to lost sales

• The Co-op managed to shut down its systems before things got too bad. The hackers were livid because, in doing so, they said the Co-op was “torching shareholder value.” 

But recently? 

Chinese-affiliated groups have gone after the UK’s critical infrastructure: gas distribution networks, and water and waste management facilities.

And what they did was different. 

They tried to take control of networks and devices to run malicious programs and steal information by going through the backdoor of a software called SAP Netweaver. A patch, thankfully, has since been released. 

The Chinese embassy in London said they were “unable to verify the contents in the said security report.”

NEWS BITES
This just in…

• 🌍️ 📰 Foreign governments can now literally own our media, thanks to a recent reform by the government, allowing foreign states to own a 15% stake in our newspapers. This will help “cash-strapped” media publications, apparently. The Tories banned this last year after an outcry. As a cash-strapped media publication, Bunce can confirm the idea is tempting albeit a tad shady. 

• 🇨🇳 😢 China is upset at the deal we struck with the US. They feel “excluded” because the deal’s small-print says that even the faintest whiff of ‘Made in China’ in our cars and steel will mean we won’t get lower tariffs. Considering that the former Head of M16 said the Chinese could turn off our traffic lights and immobilise our cars, we might have bitten off more than we can chew.

• 🚚 🤝 Delivery companies Evri and DHL will merge, subject to approval from the Competition and Markets Authority. Combined, they could potentially deliver as many parcels as the (now Czech-owned) Royal Mail. DHL will get a minority stake in Evri, which seeks to conquer Europe by force of arms / parcel delivery time. 

• 🏠️ 📈 More adults are moving back in with their parents. One quarter of parents surveyed said their adult children moved back home, at an average age of 26. A fifth of them were over the age of 30. This comes after rising rents (and rental demand), as well as ludicrously high house prices.

• 🚱 🙏 Thames Water begs the government not to do it. Their boss, Chris Weston, said the company wouldn’t survive a £900 million fine because they owe money all around town, the cheeky gits. Remember, these were the nice chaps who leaked our water and infected it with sewage. Cry me a (rather sewage-filled) river. 

• 🤔 🇦🇱 Starmer is asking Balkan countries to take our failed asylum seekers. Ideally Albania, but the Albanians say they’re still busy dealing with Italy’s lot. These ‘return hubs’ will be exclusively for those whose legal routes have ended but are trying to stop getting deported by using common “stalling tactics” like saying they’ve lost their paperwork or are planning to make a baby.