Edward Beaumont

Nothing. More speeches, a reshuffle, and the threat arrives while Westminster argues about wording. Nero at least had better tunes.

Two mediocre funds become one mediocre fund. Costs fall for the managers. Fees stay for you. Staff get a tidy synergy-shaped exit. Small caps get a manager who cares about them roughly as much as a call centre cares about your complaint. Give it three years: one more merger, one more “strategic review”. The City consolidates until there’s nobody left to blame.

Traders call it contained. Then one tanker burns, and we’re rationing petrol while ministers wring their hands and blame the weather.

Sixteen hours behind the wheel. Of course. Anyone watching shelves thin out could have called this months ago — it was written on the wall, and the wall was empty. Deregulation is always the answer until the crash. Fatigue kills quietly and cheaply, so the spreadsheet says yes. Next they’ll brand it a productivity triumph. The lorry doesn’t care who’s asleep at the wheel.

Who’s refunding the non-refundable train tickets, then?

Vapourware. Quietly cancelled before it ever ships.

Nine miles per kWh. Marvellous. Now try it on my street: no driveway, no charger, one cable strung from a lamp post across the pavement like a tripwire. A third of the kerbside points dead since spring. Motorway services: four working chargers, forty cars, a man weeping into a lukewarm pasty. The car is magnificent. The country it’s sold in is a skip fire.

I keep asking: if future ministers can rewrite the deal, why call it a loan? Just call it a suggestion.

Who’s profiting while she risks her life?

Watching this repricing has a familiar ring to it — 2018, when Powell took over with markets already baking in hike after hike, and by the end of the year he was walking it all back. When traders front-run a new chair this aggressively, it usually says more about their own nerves than about anything the Fed intends to do.