Pisces

Good morning, you glorious beasts.

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a Twix advert for encouraging dangerous driving.

Five whole people complained about the ad, which features cars that crash and magically meld together. A true scourge on our highways.

Mars claimed the ad was “fantastical” and “removed from reality”, but to no avail.

Thank goodness. Too many have been lost.

ECONOMY
No one’s hiring and everyone’s hoarding cash

Vacancies are down. The economy is shrinking. And everyone’s behaving like greedy little goblins. Man the lifeboats: it appears this ship is sinking. Because:

Bosses aren’t hiring, they’re firing

Job vacancies are declining to pandemic-era levels. There are 63,000 fewer jobs than there were in March.

And unemployment is growing. At 4.6%, it’s at its highest in nearly 3 years. 

Just to rub salt into the wound, the number of people on payroll is predicted to fall another 109,000. Just fantastic. Part of the problem is:

An American called Donald made us shrink

Our economy shrank by 0.3%, the worst monthly drop since October 2023. 

A rather rum situation, all told. 

• Changes to stamp duty rates hit house sales, shrinking the services sector (estate agents and lawyers) by 0.4%. 

• Trump’s tariffs led to a £2 billion drop in exports, the biggest monthly drop since records began. 

• Which was also responsible for the 0.6% drop in manufacturing. 

But while Trump can be blamed for many things - economic uncertainty, geopolitical turmoil, the Norman Conquest - he can’t be blamed for Labour’s decision to burden businesses with more taxes. 

So we’re hoarding money like it’s the end times

According to the Bank of England’s chief cashier, there’s increasing cash in circulation because Brits are building "contingency pots" amid all this chaos.

Economic uncertainty, banking app outages (hello Natwest), and the generally apocalyptic ambience have us stuffing notes under the mattress.

Bring on the summer!

FINANCE
We’ve got a new stock market

It’s called Pisces. And no, it has nothing to do with astrology, you utter heathens. So tell me: 

What in God’s name is happening?

Pisces will make it easier for investors to sell their shares in private companies. 

Which is important. 

Pre-Pisces, it took investors a long time to see a return on their investment - either after an acquisition or an initial public offering (IPO). 

All of which made them less likely to invest in private companies. 

Because companies are staying private for longer

There’s more money sloshing about these days. 

Most companies will raise a few rounds of private funding before going public, which comes with all sorts of regulatory and financial baggage. 

Pisces is a good solution

It’s the first of its kind. For a few reasons: 

1. Shares won’t be taxed with stamp duty (hello, incentive)

2. It’s legit - the first FCA-regulated private stock market. 

3. Companies get to control who buys their shares. 

Which is fun. 

Why should I give a Millennium Dome about it? 

Because UK startups need investors like I need worthy opponents. 

• Companies are de-listing from the UK in search of richer climes

• American vultures are swooping on our cheap startups and gobbling them up, bones, patents and all. 

Pisces is good news

Consider today’s horoscope: 

“You should feel good today, Pisces, so don’t let this confidence go to waste.” 

But it also says “dial up on romance”, whatever that means. 

In short, the fate of Pisces remains to be seen. 

CONSUMER TRENDS
Tesco’s Finest hour

Tesco’s posh ‘Finest’ range saw an 18% jump in the first quarter of 2025, because people want good food but can’t afford forking out on a restaurant.

Serve it to me on a platter

In the last few years, restaurants have had to deal with:

• Higher energy costs.

• Food inflation.

• And then a bigger tax burden (thanks, Labour), causing them to increase prices by 8%.

All of which have caused prices to balloon.

Tesco’s fancy range has been able to neatly fill the gap, sort of like a “staycation” for nice food.

The sunny weather this spring meant people were having BBQs - which played right into their grubby little hands.

NEWS BITES
This just in…

• 🇬🇧 📈 The UK tech industry is worth £886 billion. That’s more than double the size of Germany’s and France’s combined. Huzzah! The first fundraising quarter was the biggest we’ve seen in three years. Our tech scene is growing at 12.5%, which is great. But the time it takes to raise funding has nearly doubled since 2019.

• ❌ 👶 London Tech Week barred an entrepreneur from entering with her baby. This obviously caused an appropriate online storm. London Tech Week said the event wasn’t “designed to incorporate the particular needs, facilities and safeguards that under-16s require”. Just an apology would’ve been fine, lads. 

• 🍫 😵 Dubai chocolate is deadly, and not in a good way. According to the Food Standards Agency (FSA), cheap and nasty knock-offs contain contaminants and additives. Lovely things like toxins produced by moulds and carcinogenic chemicals. 

• 📱 🇬🇧 TikTok is expanding in the UK this year. The Chinese social media company plans to open a second London office and create hundreds of jobs in the meantime. This comes after the platform recorded over 30 million British users. I can’t imagine they’re happy with the UK government’s plans to restrict children’s access after 10 pm. 

• 🇺🇸 😋 Another great London-listed firm was gobbled up by North Americans. Canadian consultancy giant WSP just bought a London-listed engineering firm for £281 million, which means its main listing will be across the pond now. It’s not the only one. 88 firms have done the same in the past year. 

• ☢️ 🏭️ Rolls-Royce is unstoppable. Yea, hark at its glorious ascendance, with stocks rising 53% since the start of the year. Glorious. And now it’s just won the bid to build the government’s small nuclear reactors. Rolls-Royce might be singlehandedly keeping the London Stock Exchange strong when all its friends are leaving it for rich American financiers.