Abattoir

Good morning, you glorious beasts.

B&Q have apologised for advertising a flatpack bathroom cabinet as easy to assemble “even if you're a girl".

This comes in the wake of their “Do The Lift Thing” campaign, which proudly supported “tradeswomen breaking down barriers”.

Foot firmly in mouth, the listing has been removed and blamed on a "third-party seller".

A proofreader (whatever the gender) mightn’t have gone amiss.

TECH
The British Army is recruiting a team of hackers

The government is giving £1 billion to the British army to spend on hacking foreign nations. Which is staggering. It’s almost as if they’re - forgive this rhetorical extravagance - actually competent. 

Mr Healey said “the keyboard has now become a weapon of war”. Which is true, and has been for the last 30 years, John. But anyway:

What’s going on?

Short of making a blood-pact, Defence Secretary John Healey vowed (yes, “vowed”) to: 

• Let the British army unleash a team of hackers on Russia and China

• Spend £1 billion on upgrading into an AI-fuelled “kill web” that connects military systems, allowing us to more effectively hunt and destroy targets on the battlefield. Lovely. 

• We’ll start having all kinds of fun with electromagnetic warfare: disabling weapons systems, jamming signals to drones, and so on. 

Will we start hacking foreign nations then?

When asked whether this team of hackers will be used to target Putin’s Russia and China, the defence secretary replied: “Yes.” 

This is the first time a minister has openly admitted such a thing. 

Perhaps it wasn’t a smashing idea to literally let our enemies know exactly what we’re doing.

But why?

The situation is dire. 

• The number of UK cyber attacks has doubled in the last 6 months

• Since 2023, the MoD has been subject to 90,000 hacks from places like Russia and China. 

• Possibly because one quarter of public sector IT systems are ageing, limp and useless - and only ingesting some techno-viagra will help them rise to the occasion.

Have we never done this before? 

The UK has had an army-led National Cyber Force since 2020. But it’s not exactly brilliant at attracting the right sort of people. 

It was only in February that the army ended the need for recruits to pass fitness tests, leaving (presumably) no room for the average hacker to join. 

Remember: Britain was once a nation of gentleman pirates, highwaymen, and - before we stopped drinking and started talking about our so-called “feelings” - absolute bloody hooligans. 

Piracy is in our DNA. 

Let’s get hacking.

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ECONOMY
The economy is terrible and our debtors are calling

Businesses are struggling, the government is taxing us like it's WWII, and spending our bunce at record-breaking levels. And, of course, no one is buying anything. 

Why is no one buying anything? 

According to a survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the first three weeks of May were bloody awful. 

• Costs have never been higher (thanks to increased NI contributions, higher energy bills, and tariffs)

• This led to businesses increasing prices, which in turn led to lower demand and the worst sales for pubs and restaurants since lockdown

• That whole industry hasn’t felt this bad since good ol’ Liz Truss crashed the economy. Which is saying a lot, friends. 

Not a good innings, all told. 

To make matters worse: 

Our debtors are calling

The UK government is a sort of bloated, gout-ridden Tudor aristocrat who’s running extremely high debts:

• National debt already exceeds 100% of GDP

• Government spending is nearly half of overall GDP

• They’re paying annual interest payments of £100 billion a year. 

Sirrah! 

People are concerned

Because the government will have to raise taxes again to pay for

• Increased welfare spending (like winter fuel payments and child benefits)

• More defence spending (grab your gun, WWIII is coming)

• We’re spending £8 million a day on asylum hotels (yes, really). 

The tax burden is already as much as it was in WWII. 

Businesses are already struggling. 

We better start praying to the heathen gods.

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CIVIL SERVICE
Slashing through the Whitehall red tape jungle

10% of Britain’s bloated civil service is heading to the abattoir - which was a long time coming. 

What’s happening?

• By 2030, 50,000 civil servants will be sacked

• Starmer wants to shrink what he calls an “overcautious and flabby state”

• Overall, Reeves wants to cut civil service running costs 15% by 2023. 

But what have Whitehall’s servants done wrong? 

We spend too much on them for so little reward. 

• Since 2016, the number of civil servants has increased 35% - from 380,000 to 515,000

• Their productivity fell sharply during the pandemic and hasn’t recovered. 

Starmer’s right: it’s a flabby state. 

This mirrors the private sector

Widespread implementation of AI and automation in the private sector - as well as spiralling costs - has led companies to

• stop hiring for entry roles

• and ramp up high-skilled recruiting. 

Why should Whitehall be any different? 

Do they mean it? 

The Cabinet Office already culled 2,000 jobs - that’s one third of its core department - to “lead by example”.

The madmen mean it.

NEWS BITES
This just in…

• 🗑️ ⚔️ Rogue gangs of binmen are roaming the streets of Brighton willy-nilly due to a dispute between the GMB Union and the council. They slashed the tyres of a waste depot manager, and left a note saying: “Leave the case alone. Brakes next. Nice dogs by the way.” They had a cache of weapons (including a samurai sword), too. No wonder missed bin collections have increased 140% in  6 months. Meh. I’d be angry too if I was a binman.

• 💻️ 🦹 We’re all getting scammed. Scammers manage to successfully get Brits to give them their passcodes 7,000 times a day. This is according to UK Finance. We’re getting scammed more often, too - there was a 22% rise in remote purchase scams this year. We are gullible. 

• 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 The UK is second only to Canada for working from home. Brits work an average of 1.8 days a week, compared to Canadians’ 1.9. The survey revealed that hybrid working for skilled professionals is the new normal, although the Japanese and South Koreans still love the office, spending 4 days a week there. Industrious little fellows. 

• 🔋 🚗 Brits love EVs built by slaves, unlike the rest of the world. Chinese EV-maker Build Your Dreams (BYD), now being investigated for slavery in Brazil, has seen EV stocks tank worldwide, aside from the UK, where demand is rising fast. Weird. It isn’t like we have a historic penchant for slavery, do we?  

• 🟢 🏭️ Our government wants to make green steel. Which means zero-carbon steel. The proposed direct reduced iron (DRI) plant will strip the ore’s oxygen using green hydrogen, not methane, which produces massive amounts of CO2. Funnily enough, we once had such a furnace - capable of producing 1 million tonnes of steel per year - until, as is our historic wont - we allowed it to be shipped off to the US. UK Steel isn’t convinced. They think lowering energy costs would be a better way to spend the £2.5 billion fund allotted to it. 

• 🧓 💸 Bigger, better pension funds. The government will reform British pension funds, which will see employer pension funds pooled into £25 billion “megafunds” like those in Canada. The government say that a portion of these funds must be invested in UK businesses. Some industry leaders don’t like the government noseying in, but others think these big fat funds will improve retirement savings.

How can you let people know you’re cool and mysterious?

Share Bunce with your friends. 

Not only will people know you’re cool (you read Bunce after all), but you’ll get free stuff emblazoned with “Bunce”.

This will make you more mysterious because no one knows what Bunce is. Yet. 

These are scientific facts. 

So don’t be anti-science: spew us everywhere like an airborne disease.