Proverbials

Good morning, you glorious beasts.

Fare dodging on Scottish trains has almost doubled this year.

ScotRail insists this isn't because Scots have suddenly become more dishonest. They've just unleashed more ticket inspectors to catch offenders.

Of the 1,644 stowaways, 958 still managed to avoid paying anything.

If only there were an outlet that explained how to travel on UK trains for free without breaking any rules. If only.

TECH
London is no longer the AI top dog of Europe

Paris snagged the top spot as Europe’s capital of AI. Which is really taking the biscuit. Particularly considering that

1. London-based VC-backed startups are actually worth more than Paris’s, and

2. France is ours by ancient right.

Quoi?

Paris’s tech scene is growing faster than ours.

• Since 2017, it’s grown fivefold in enterprise value.

• And, thanks to an exodus from the US, it’s now home to the likes of Mistral AI and Poolside. 

Indeed, it’s growing so fast that even UK-founded Revolut plans to base its HQ there—the arrant traitors. 

Why is Paris’s tech scene growing fast? 

A few reasons. 

• Easy access to the EU’s population of 448 million people

• Enjoy more generous R&D tax relief than we do

• Have access to the vast network of Parisian engineering and tech schools

• France offers a tech visa that’s a magnet for talented foreigners (who make up half of the scene), drawing them to France as divorced middle-aged men are drawn to the Philippines.

Why are we losing all of a sudden?

AI skills shortages in the UK have doubled in the last year—that’s the biggest skills decline in 10 years. 

We also have a knack for selling off our homegrown tech scene (Deliveroo) or letting it die (Builder.ai), cowards that we are.

And our banks don’t like investing in our tech scene because post-2008 financial regulations make it too risky.

Does this mean French robots will destroy us?

Calm yourself: Everything is going to be fine. 

Because: 

• London startups are still worth more (in total): £442.5bn versus Paris’ £213.4bn. So put that in your baguette and smoke it. 

• BioNTech just committed to opening a new AI hub in London and a research institute in Cambridge.

• Starmer says that he wants to attract AI talent with a brand new AI talent visa. 

If he doesn’t, then what in God’s name are all those data centres for?

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IMMIGRATION
Migration halved, but what now?

Migration fell by nearly 50% in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). 

The facts

• 431,000 more people arrived in the UK than left that year. 

• For context, that number was 860,000 the year before. 

• That’s the largest drop in migrant numbers since records began. 

Why the fall?

Because the Tories introduced major restrictions just before they were voted out. 

That meant there were

• Fewer people coming to work

• Fewer people coming to study

• And more students leaving.

Although, as the head of the Migration Observatory pointed out, the record-breaking decline was merely because numbers were so high already.

What are people saying? 

The Tories were quick to let everyone know who was really responsible for stopping all those bloody foreigners. 

• Shadow home secretary Chris Philip congratulated the “decisions taken by the last Conservative government” blah blah blah

• Badenoch said the “numbers are still too high”. 

• Farage couldn’t help but take a jab at the party he seeks to dethrone, saying that the numbers weren’t “as high as the great Tory betrayal”. 

Should we be happy? 

Casual racism aside, chaps, the UK faces chronic labour shortages in

• Care homes

• Engineering (1 million by 2030)

• Tech (largest in 15 years)

• Construction. 

While Starmer says he’ll get migration numbers down even further, he can't turn the UK into an AI powerhouse without a steady stream of highly talented foreigners. 

But what do I know? I am, despite all appearances, just a man.

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ECONOMY
Our private parts are shrinking

The UK private sector shrank for the second month running. Still, at least it wasn’t as bad as April, praise be.

Spill the goss, girlfriend

• Manufacturing declined at the fastest rate since October 2023

• Export orders fell 

• Manufacturers fired more people than they did since COVID. 

So why the rotten state of things? 

1. Trump’s tariff war created uncertainty, leading to a drop in orders

2. The government imposed bigger taxes and payroll demands on businesses, making them cut all non-essential staff and stop hiring people. 

Will things get better? 

🥳 There’s a touch more certainty now that the UK and US struck a trade deal

🥳 The Bank of England seems keen to cut interest rates further, albeit tepidly, which will help businesses borrow money to spend on expanding. 

👿 But tax rises are on the horizon, considering just how high government borrowing is. 

NEWS BITES
This just in…

• 😮‍💨 👮 It may be illegal to sigh at one’s irritating colleagues, after a software engineer with ADHD successfully sued his former employer for sighing at his poor time-keeping skills. The judge said nonverbal signs of disappointment or irritation could amount to discrimination. I take it this means expressing disappointment via interpretive dance now also counts as discrimination, so I am well and truly buggered. 

• 🇬🇧 🇲🇺 The UK just handed over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, and we’ll pay them £101 million a year so we can still use our military base (and ban them from letting the Chinese establish a presence there). The Tories are angry on principle, but the UN might have given Chagos to Mauritius anyway, thus ceding everything to China.

• 🧪 🥼 Pedos and rapists may be chemically castrated, thanks to Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s new plans. A government source said, “As always, she will grab this problem by the proverbials.” Chemical castration will start with jailed offenders, and then move on to creeps with suspended sentences. She hopes this will ease overcrowded prisons. 

• 🎙️ 🚨 Kneecap rapper Liam Ohanna is now a terrorist, apparently, after he waved a Hezbollah flag at a London gig last year. The police claim he displayed the flag in such a way that he seemed a “supporter” of the terrorist organisation. In their defence, Kneecap claim they don’t actually support terrorists - it’s just a smokescreen for the government to ignore the slaughter of Palestinians. 

• 🅿️ 📱 We will all use the same parking app after a successful pilot scheme of the National Parking Platform (NPP). This means we can pay for all our parking needs in one place, not with the 30 different parking apps available across the UK. Tech utopia isn’t the future. It is here and now, people. 

• 👩‍⚕️ 🪖 Public sector workers just got a pay rise. Doctors and teachers got 4%. Soldiers got 4.5%. Health unions are upset because nurses and midwives only got 3.6%, and the British Medical Association is ready to call a strike. Health secretary Wes Streeting insisted the rise was “above inflation”. 

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.