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The economy is built around getting other people to do stuff you can’t or don’t want to do. There is a service for everything. But if the cost of these services becomes minimal, what does that mean for us?

The progress in AI over the past few months has reignited the conviction that vast swathes of office work, and indeed the economy being managed by computers, is something of an inevitability. The question is: what do we want the computers to do? If we leave the economy to answer the question, everything will be couched in terms of efficiency.

What people get from their work varies so much from person to person. Some developers enjoy the act of writing code, some largely enjoy the part which involves making something. Some people enjoy both. Some people enjoy interacting with people, some people enjoy getting stuck into a spreadsheet. I wrote this piece by hand (keyboard), because I enjoy the act of writing. Writing helps me to decide what I think and allows me to express my experiences and thoughts.

In a world where AI can do a lot of this and therefore more ‘efficiently’ - does that mean it should? Capitalism says yes. Therefore businesses, driven by a competitive market, say yes. If they could deliver the same value at a fraction of the cost, why would they not? There is already a tacit assumption amongst business leaders that they need less people ‘because AI’ and it hasn’t even reached a stage of maturity yet where this is definitely true.

The good news is we have some time to decide if that’s collectively what we want. The system we have is going to have to change but the best change happens from the decisions we make as individuals. It is up to all of us to decide what we want and make it happen.

There are lots of nuances to figure out. We have to be aware of how technology subtly shapes us from spellchecks to slides. Our tools create a box, which out of habit, we are likely to stay in. If we don’t do the hard work of thinking about how we can bring our ideas to life, technology will decide. Putting a half-baked idea into ChatGPT to see what it comes up with is feeling increasingly normal. It can be a great thought partner but it is incredibly easy to forego important thinking that won’t result in any new ideas.

In the rush to adopt technology that appears to give us an edge, we risk the usual challenges with outsourcing. We hand over the keys to a third party that doesn’t have the same context in which you operate and is therefore neither able or incentivised to achieve the outcomes you are looking for. We outsourced cooking to supermarkets, and we got sloppy lasagnes.

Historically, a real lack of thought has been given to the psychological impact of new technologies. This is one of the reasons why instant communication has undoubtedly made our lives worse. Constantly responding to the never-ending stream of requests makes us feel useful and like we are ‘doing our job’, but the constant context switching and stress of a new problem to solve has made deep work much harder.

AI could have a positive or negative impact on this. The positive is that information should be far more accessible. How many messages do you respond to that could be answered by AI that has access to the right data? The negative impact is that we go from doing at least some psychologically rewarding deep work to responding to an army of agents that are doing various tasks for us.

We have to be better than AI, as many professions are rapidly discovering. There are plenty of tasks where we should use technology - I don’t think anyone is going to argue that bookkeeping should be done by counting fingers. But we have to protect the things that humans are good at, like creativity.

Generative AI is entirely based on what has happened before, it is predictive. It is also predictive without a complete set of information. Humans have a unique ability to conjure novel ideas into existence. The challenge is that the creative process is inherently ‘inefficient’. You have to think deeply about things, play around with ideas, go in circles and consider options. AI can come up with an answer immediately, but it is rarely going to be the best one.

This doesn’t mean we have to keep pushing boxes around slide decks, or writing code one line at a time. Everyone is now a bit more senior with a tireless team to do a lot of the work. But it’s a different job, getting to the best solution by managing rather than doing. It’s a job that not everyone is equipped to do and not everyone wants to do. This is the challenge organisations now face.

There are no easy takeaways here, not least because the capabilities of this Promethean technology are still evolving. All we know for certain is that the world is going to look very different in ten years and all of us have a say in what we want it to look like. If we simply let the market decide then we risk a world that no one wants. We risk a world of sloppy lasagnes.

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Introduction

I rarely get hooked on a series. I have a short attention span and a pervasive sense of guilt every time I sit down midweek to watch something. That makes finishing five seasons of Yellowstone this year something of an achievement.

I’ve been struggling to work out what exactly it is that has resonated with me. Mainly because it’s definitely not the writing, which takes so much artistic licence that it then loses its licence and evades capture for five seasons whilst committing a string of felonies against credulity. Taylor Sheridan (the writer) himself has said it doesn’t really have a plot aside from the ongoing battle of “don’t take my land, I want your land”. Critics have panned it but it is and will remain an audience favourite. Why is this?

Join me on a journey through the American West, my own brain and capitalism to try and find out what is so great about Yellowstone.

The history

In the first half of the 19th century, settlers began to move west across America as good land became expensive. Thomas Jefferson had also just bought 828,000 square miles (The Louisiana Purchase) from Napoleon in 1803, so that he could afford to lose the Battle of Trafalgar. This was all underpinned by an ideology known as ‘manifest destiny,’ which was the idea that Americans were divinely destined to spread democracy and Protestant ideals, often at the expense of Native people.

It’s easy to criticise this sense of expansionism, but there seems to be something fairly human about wondering what’s over the next hill or through the next valley. Clearly, in times gone by, this has been at the expense of everything that stood in the way, but we are still always striving for that next thing. Whether it be promotion, adventure or air fryer.

In practice, this manifesting meant large caravans of the iconic Conestoga wagons making long, treacherous journeys to start towns with names like ‘Deadwood’ and ‘Tombstone’. Many of them were built around mining, with gold rushes becoming a key feature of the migration. It was only after the Civil War, however, that ranching and therefore cowboys really got going, thanks to an increasing demand for beef and a lot of railroad expansion.

Cowboying itself actually has its origins in the traditions of Spanish vaqueros and the hacienda system of medieval Spain. Ranchos became ranches and rancheros became ranchers, as the saying goes.

The cattle market

It’s no coincidence that Beth Dutton, the family capitalist, does not make her money from selling cows, which is ultimately what ranching is all about. Despite the private chef and chopper, the Dutton family does not have enough money, which is at least partly to blame for many of their woes.

There is a dichotomy at the centre of Yellowstone, just as there is at the centre of the American Dream. John Dutton seeks to preserve their way of life as the forces of capitalism move in to turn the area into a ski resort, but it was the very same forces that drove his ancestors there. The freedom to make loads of freaking money seems central to America, yet it has resulted in several industries that have become comic book villains, chasing profits and destroying people’s way of life.

As late-stage capitalism progresses, this conundrum feels more relevant than ever. Our current approach to running society is clearly the most successful that has ever existed, but we have reached a point of over-optimisation where large companies have become value-extraction machines. We are just here to consume, whether it be content or clothes.

The outfits

There’s nothing like accessorising to give someone an air of mystique, so popping on a ten-gallon hat, some spurs and a pair of chaps is always going to work wonders for one’s aura. Hollywood and Village People have taken the outfit of the noble cattleman and made it slightly ridiculous, but ever since jeans were invented in 1873, the clothes of the American West have become a staple of global fashion.

The footwear choices of horsemen have actually had long-term negative consequences on our trotters. Modern shoes have heels because the Persian cavalry wore them in the 10th century to stop their shoes slipping out of stirrups. As they implied someone was wealthy enough to own a horse, they eventually became a fashion statement. That, along with medieval taste for poulaines means most modern shoes aren’t designed for human feet.

I’m not quite sure how much one can read into the symbolism of hats in Yellowstone. Certainly, early on Rip’s almost pitch black number gives him a menacing aura before you realise he’s a big ol’ sweetie. And it’s clearly a symbol of Jimmy’s developing maturity that he graduates from a baseball cap to a cowboy hat. John wears a black one when he means business and a lighter one when he’s doing some actual ranching.

I’ve managed to go five seasons without buying a hat, thanks in part to bad signal at Lambeth Country Show, which meant a card machine wasn’t working. I think 1883 (the Yellowstone prequel), is likely to send me over the edge.

The cowboys

The fact that I was contemplating dressing up as a cowboy in my 30s left me thinking maybe I just like cowboys. Modern masculinity is complex, so it’s not exactly surprising that there’s a certain appeal to charging around on horses and getting into scraps with the fellas. The talk in Yellowstone of ‘making a living from the land’ is a reminder of just how impractical we modern city slickers are. I could no more ‘make a living from the land’ than I could make electricity from a river. It reminds me of the old question of if you went back in time, how would you use your 21st-century knowledge to get rich? It’s harder than you think to avoid getting burned at the stake for ranting about computers.

This train of thought is misguided, however. The reality of ranching is pretty brutal, so it’s naive to think that swapping the spreadsheets for stirrups is a ticket to some sort of beefy panacea. I like a camping trip as much as the next man, but as became abundantly clear in Brokeback Mountain, going camping for too long can leave one feeling more, not less, confused.

The music

I’ve always been more into the blues than country if we’re talking music genres rooted in the American South. Blues certainly makes for much better shredding on the guitar, but what I’ve come to appreciate about country is the storytelling. A good country song can transport you to this place of heartbreak and longing you’ve never actually experienced in real life. It has that autumnal feeling of nostalgia that makes you feel warm and sad at the same time, like a faded photograph.

If you’ve ever watched one of the montages of ‘movies with the wrong music’, you’ll know how instrumental the soundtrack is in making us feel what the director wants us to feel. Yellowstone is no different; it’s just extra powerful because the music and the story come from the same place. Anyway, I’ve listened to All I See Is You by Shane Smith & The Saints about a million times this summer.

The Characters

What Yellowstone lacks in plot it makes up for in characters. I’m not sure they’re always entirely convincing - Beth’s hot angry woman character can only be the creation of a bloke. But the almost elemental way in which Kelly Reilly plays her goes beyond the sometimes clunky narrative. Self-declared ‘simple man’ Rip may not be the most eloquent of fellows but buy god you’d feel safe with him around. John Dutton’s power comes from his silence and the weird mouth thing Kevin Costner does. The characters are great not because of what drives them, which is usually a bit nefarious, but their energy.

The ethos

The pioneering spirit of the West sits at the centre of American self-identity, which possibly explains the success of Yellowstone. We don’t have cowboys in the UK, we have shepherds. Whilst characters like Davy Crockett were busy fighting the Mexicans to claim Texas, Wordsworth was sitting in a field mumbling about being lonely as a cloud.

Living in the south east of England has a lot going for it, but the village greens and endless train stations can leave one wanting to be out doing cowboy shit. I think Jamie plays an interesting role in the show because he has the same ambition and ruthlessness as a 19th-century frontiersman, it’s just a lot more unattractive when embodied in a snivelling civil servant.

The American Dream is a powerful thing, and quite frankly, I think we could do with a bit more ambition in the old world, rather than just resigning ourselves to being a living museum that regulates stuff. That being said, we have to ask what the cost of our own ambition is. During the period of western expansion, it was the lives and livelihoods of thousands of native Americans. We’ve built a culture and economic system where we essentially have to look after ourselves, and that’s the priority. This doesn’t feel sustainable.

The scenery

By the end of season 5, I had decided that the real appeal of Yellowstone is the scenery and the connection of the characters to it. The entire show is about who owns what, and this heartbreakingly beautiful backdrop sits there silently, observing. Well, not quite silently, the wistful country music definitely makes it more heartbreaking. But ultimately, you don’t really care who gets the land as long as it remains intact.

The irony is that beauty was once everywhere, hidden under the cities in which many of us now live. I always find it funny when people describe a country as ‘beautiful’ because it’s hard to think of a country that isn’t. The sky is big, we just can’t see it.

So what’s the answer? Degrowth doesn’t seem to be it. The horse has already bolted. It also wouldn’t be fair for economically developed countries to pull up the drawbridge and say, “Actually, poor people, it’s probably better if you don’t make any more money because then you’ll want nice flats and that’ll ruin my view of the park”.

Perhaps what we should do is divide up the 24.6 million square miles of habitable land on Earth between the 8.1 billion people, leaving us each with around 7634 square metres, allocated by drawing lots. There are some obvious challenges that’d need working through, but at least it would give us a basis to rethink our place on the planet.

It’s probably best to avoid any Soviet-style centrally mandated systems, and let’s be honest, cities sit at the centre of an economic system that has pulled billions of people out of poverty. They can also be built in thoughtful ways which don’t result in them feeling like an urban hellscape.

Conclusion

The power of Yellowstone is how it surfaces the paradox of protecting what we have and getting on in life. Where you sit on either side of the equation depends on your economic status, age and where you live. Neither is right, neither is wrong; it’s a balance we must strike. Either that or it’s just fun to watch cowboys fighting to a good soundtrack with a lovely backdrop.

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June is upon us and I’m getting married in two weeks. The planning process has been an educational journey, I didn’t know paper came in so many varieties or that the peony season ends in mid-June. I will, at some point, write a long-form piece about The Business of Weddings, but it would be a bit curmudgeonly at this particular juncture.

Anyway, the reason I tell you this is because it feels like a good moment to take a bit of time off from my weekly missives to bask in the glow of marital bliss. I’ve got poems to read and boats to row, or whatever it is newlyweds do. I have no doubt there will be some content over the next couple of months when I accidentally open the FT app instead of an anthology of poems and inspiration strikes. But, for the most part, I’m taking the summer off. See you in September!

I do,

Hugo
Chief Groom
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Food companies are scrambling to use less ingredients 🧐 - it seems largely thanks to Chris Van Tulleken’s book Ultra Processed People but said people are demanding less scary-sounding ingredients in their food, which is forcing manufacturers to rethink how they put their products together. M&S has been leading the way with its ‘Only’ range. Cornflakes with only one ingredient, would you believe it?

2. Lululemon shares are taking a hit from the tariffs 📉 - they’ve got it coming at them from all angles, with lower consumer confidence meaning people are buying less fancy leggings and the trade war making their largely China and Vietnam-based supply chain look a bit vulnerable.

3. Wise plans to have its primary listing in the US 🚶 - regulators, the London Stock Exchange and the government are trying really hard to up the appeal of the UK market, but it’s just very hard to compete with the size of the capital markets on the other side of the pond. This news came in the same month Cobalt Holdings scrapped plans to list in London and Indivior decided to delist in favour of focussing on the Nasdaq.

4. High energy costs are making life difficult for industry in the UK 🪫 - Make UK has warned that the government’s industrial strategy is under threat as the energy bills for manufacturers are 46% higher than the global average. This is due, in part, to government levies which are being used to fund a variety of initiatives. Trade bodies say these should be scrapped.

5. The Financial Conduct Authority is cutting down on finfluencers 🚨 - three arrests have been made as the regulator attempts to get a handle on the thousands of IG accounts with some bloke standing next to a supercar they don’t own and giving financial advice. There are strict rules in place around advertising or promoting financial products, which is what many of these individuals are falling fowl of.

6. Tech execs won’t stop talking about ‘abundance’ 📈 - there are basically two views of AI. It’s either that it’s the end of the world as we know it or it’s the start of a period where everyone can have everything all the time. The Industrial Revolution x 1000. Unsurprisingly, those in Silicon Valley have convinced themselves - and are trying to convince the rest of us - that it’s the latter.

7. Pret A Manger owner is thinking about an IPO 🥪 - JAB Holding Company, which is headquartered in Luxembourg and also owns Krispy Kreme is considering bringing new investors as it looks to move away from consumer businesses to insurance and asset management. Pret lost a huge amount of money during the pandemic, but its finances have begun to recover.

8. Proctor and Gamble is restructuring 🧴 - the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) company that owns brands like Tide and Pampers is cutting 7,000 roles and divesting some of its assets. This is part of a wider restructuring which is seeing P&G automate and digitise a lot of its processes, reducing the number of people it requires in its workforce.

9. Gloucester is thinking about getting rid of modern shop signs - the council is asking residents whether shops within the city’s conservation area should have to reflect the area’s heritage, i.e. more old worldy and wooden. Personally I’m all for this sort of thing. Glasgow Central Station looks far better for it. Research has shown it also increases the overall economic prosperity of cities.

10. It’s tax not AI causing tech layoffs 💰 - a recent article in Quartz claims that it is a massive reduction in the R&D subsidies tech companies receive that has led to half a million workers being laid off since the start of 2023. In one sense changing the subsidies seems fair as Big Tech has more than enough money, but clearly it is not the companies that are paying the price.

Quote of the week

“Life is a mystery” - Madonna

A ‘gold rush’ has become a bit of a tired metaphor whenever there’s a new technology wave and everyone gets a bit overexcited, but it has made me wonder what there is to learn from the 1849 California Gold Rush.

Firstly it was news to me that the San Francisco football team is called the ‘49ers’ thanks to the events of that year and the years following where hundreds of thousands of people descended on the area from around the world. The journey across America was so perilous at the time that at least 50% of people arrived by boat. If you were travelling from the east coast of America this meant either sailing round the entirety of South America or getting a dodgy canoe through the jungle in Panama.

On average, gold-seekers did make a small profit and it’s estimated that 370 tonnes were removed in the first five years. As has been well documented, the people who generally profited most were those selling the equipment, lodgings and food that the forty-niners relied on. None more so than Samuel Brannan, who owned the only store between San Francisco and the gold fields. He bought every pick and shovel he could find, ran around the streets of SF shouting about all the gold to be mined and made a fortune in a matter of weeks.

You are gold,

Hugo
Chief Prospector
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Advertisers are flocking to TikTok 📱 - revenue shot up 50% last year as spending by brands continues to move from traditional channels to the major technology platforms. In order to sustain the growth they are looking to introduce a “search with ads” product in the UK that will enable businesses to appear in searches as sponsored content.

2. The happy world of Haribo is happier than anticipated 🍬 - the confectionary company has been forced to recall several bags of sweets after several members of a family felt unwell after tucking into a 1kg bag of Happy Cola FIZZ. Tests were done on several samples and it was discovered that they contained cannabis.

3. NatWest is no longer owned by taxpayers - during the 2008 financial crisis, the British government paid what was then the Royal Bank of Scotland £45.5 billion for an 82% stake to avoid it going under and potentially bringing down the financial system with it. The government has been unwinding its stake since 2015 and sold its final shares this week, crystallising a £10.5 billion loss for the taxpayer.

4. Cadbury is hiring 50 chocolate testers 🍫 - the part-time roles will be based at the Bournville site in Birmingham. Full training will be provided in order to help the new recruits develop their taste buds and learn the vocabulary required to communicate feedback. All you need to bring to the table is a passion for food and a willingness to try new stuff.

5. Poland's main stock market is up 28% this year 🇵🇱 - foreign investment and its relative insulation from the global trade war have made it an increasingly popular proposition. Around three-quarters of its trade is done within the EU and a recent stimulus package in Germany, its largest trading partner, has boosted confidence in the Polish economy which grew 3.8% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025.

6. New York Times agrees first AI deal with Amazon 🗞️ - the newspaper publisher is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly using its content to train its models so this will send a clear message on the sort of deal that needs to be done. The increasing use of AI is killing traffic to online magazines and newspapers but the AI companies are reliant on new content being created, so it is good for everyone if a viable commercial model is established.

7. Finance recruitment cycles continue to get more bonkers 🏦 - if for some reason you’d rather a job in investment banking or private equity rather than as a chocolate taster you might struggle. IB to PE is a well-trodden route but thanks to increasing competition, lots of graduates are signing up for roles at the latter a couple of years down the line before they have even started work at their investment banking job. The intense competition is leaving everyone pretty dissatisfied.

8. Rangers are now owned by an American consortium ⚽ - the group is led by the private healthcare tycoon Andrew Cavanagh and includes the investment arm of this week's featured American football team, the 49ers (who also have full control of Leeds United). The takeover provides some light at the end of the tunnel for Rangers fans after a long period of Celtic dominance and failure to deliver from the previous owners.

9. Details around the Stargate project are emerging 🚀 - everyone knew from the start the $500 billion touted by Trump was an ambition rather than a reality but even the $100bn promised immediately looks a bit unrealistic. So far the only capital deployed has been in Abu Dhabi to finance plans to fund ‘Stargate UAE’. OpenAI has sent out requests for proposals to a number of states to determine where is best to build 5-10 new data centres.

10. Drink groups are fighting back as they face a tobacco moment 🍺 - people are drinking less as podcasters and non-alcoholic beer companies decry the perils of alcohol which is a big problem for companies like Diageo who love to sell alcohol. They are claiming there is a lot of dodgy science out there and having a couple of drinks with your pals is absolutely fine. On a sunny weekend, it’s hard to disagree.

Quote of the week

Don't gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold -

Bob Marley

Sometimes I regale you with some coffee-buying adventure from the week, sometimes it’s about how great such and such band is. This week, however, we’re getting into the day job.

Much of the work Q5 does is at the strategic (sexy) end of Human Resources. Working out how best to get people to do the stuff that XYZ organisation needs doing. HR is seen by many as the day-to-day rigmarole of hiring, firing and keeping everyone happy, but, without humans deciding they need to get something done, we’re nowhere. No moon landing, no Albariño, no 14:32 to Bognor Regis.

This has all been thrown into question recently with the whole AI thing. What if we don’t need humans to get stuff done? What if we have a ready and willing computer program that will blend our wine and drive our trains? This all now seems possible. But we’re not there yet. Humans have to work with their computer compadres for the foreseeable future. It’s therefore been on my mind that the people most opposed in their ways of thinking in an organisation are those in the technology function and those in the people function. It’s like having a cat and dog who tolerate but ignore each other. It seems to me this needs to change. Well, a little company called Moderna (of Covid times) recently decided to merge their people and technology functions. The writing is on the wall.

We are entering an age where there is work to be done, and an increasing proportion of it can be done by machines. This isn’t anything new. Hopefully, your finance team aren’t using abacuses and you don’t have a typist pool knocking out memos on typewriters. But the shift in how work gets done is now accelerating and we all have to put our systems thinking hats on to examine how this interaction between humans and computers works in practice. Exciting? Yes. Alarming? Definitely.

If all goes well we can focus on fixing that dripping tap and taking the bins out whilst AI responds to our emails and puts off doing that report we were meant to do for another week.

OK Computer,

Hugo
Chief HRAI Officer
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Lots of veterans are moving into cybersecurity 🥷 - it’s a tough gig being a vet, you’re really good at something society only requires once in a while so when you leave, your options can be limited. Cybersecurity has provided a massive opportunity for people who are calm in a crisis and think in terms of risk, helping to fulfil the four million person shortfall there is in the industry globally.

2. Don’t be a trade unionist in Colombia 🥸 - having any sort of power in a country with an active cartel is a risky business but by some measures being in a union is most dangerous in Colombia. It’s not because they are fighting against the suggestion that maybe you don’t need a guard on trains, it’s altogether unclear why it’s happening aside from cartels not wanting organised groups in their territory.

3. Nvidia blasts American export controls 🍪 - several years ago the US banned exports of the most advanced chips to China to restrict their progress in the field of AI but Jensen Huang argued this week that all this has done is force them to build their own companies and market. It just goes to show you can’t pick and choose which free market economic policy you choose to follow.

4. Gerry Cardinale wants to take the Telegraph international 🗞️ - the Redbird acquisition of the Telegraph is just about over the line and they are hoping it may fill a hole in the US between the shouty Fox News and the shouty MSNBC et al. I’m not sure what the US equivalent is of old colonels voicing their opinion on the civil service is but what is for sure, is things are less polarised in the UK, would you believe it?

5. Things aren’t going so well at Builder.ai 📉 - the company claimed they could enable non-engineers to build software a long time before vibe-coding was a thing but despite raising nearly half a billion dollars and having backing from Microsoft they have basically run out of money. This is amid accusations of Indian workers pretending to be AI and just doing much of the work in the background.

6. OpenAI buys Jonny Ive’s company 🤔 - it does feel like they’re trying to reinvent the wheel and their lack of any real connection in this weird video leaves one sceptical. I’m a massive Jony Ive fan but I’m also a massive Oasis fan and they released Be Here Now, presumably thinking it was a good idea. If it does mean we all become a bit less indentured to our bloody iPhones, I guess that’s worth a punt.

7. ‘Steroid Olympics’ to open in Las Vegas 🥇 - it’s the perfect sporting conclusion to a Trump America - a competition where there are no restrictions on what performance-enhancing drugs people can take. The games are being backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Peter Thiel and will be launched in May 2026. I hate to be the bore here but it does all feel a bit stupid. Like, what if we played football but everyone had a sword? Sure it would be entertaining, but do we really need to do that?

8. The Cricketer magazine is seeking new ownership 🏏 - if you’ve got a few quid lying around please let me know. I think we can turn the 104-year-old cricketing publication into the digital behemoth it deserves to be. Cricket is on the rise globally, it goes on forever so there’s loads of content and it’s endlessly meme-able. Let’s get a bid together and start our media empire.

9. India is the motorcycle capital of the world 🏍️ - Honda is planning to increase its annual production in the country by 650,000 units to 2.61 million motorbikes by opening a new production line at its plant in Ahmedabad. The market in India continues to heat up as sales of motorbikes rose 9% to 19.61 million units in 2024.

10. Defence spending is up but on the wrong things 🪖 - countries are still spending a huge amount of money on expensive fighter jets and subs when it’s become apparent over the past couple of years that relatively inexpensive drones and missiles are the direction in which warfare is heading. Governments (and defence companies) just love a massive spending programme with a cool name.

Quote of the week

“It’s a London Thing” - MC Styles

I’ve been thinking about the line from the original version of John Lennon’s song Imagine that goes:

“Imagine a world without Microsoft”

It’s clear from a lyrical perspective why it wasn’t included in the version that we’ve all come to know and love (except when celebrities sing it from their big houses during a pandemic). The extra syllable means it just doesn’t scan well. But we have been deprived of what I think is an excellent thought experiment.

I’m not disputing the utility Microsoft has, capitalism basically runs on it. Documents, slide decks and spreadsheets are the media we use to get stuff done in the information age and for the past 30+ years, Microsoft has been dominant in this arena. But what if things had been different?

Maybe we’d have escaped spreadsheets by now. I think our great-grandchildren will look back at us, hunched over our laptops for hours a day trying to remember formulas, with astonishment. People often say Excel is the second-best tool for everything which explains its dominance. It’s everything to all people. The problem is there’s a world of possibility out there with regards to data storage, data management, visualisation, collaboration and calculation. The tools are just less ubiquitous.

Maybe corporate communication would be more varied and exciting. There’s nothing inherently evil about slide decks, fundamentally they enable storytelling which is what everyone is trying to do. PowerPoint however sends you down a road trodden a billion times before when you are trying to put together something expressive and interesting. The term ‘slideware’ is a testament to how commoditised they’ve become, people almost apologise as they share their screen - “I promise we haven’t got too many to get through.”

Despite Microsoft’s dominance to date, we are reaching a fork in the road. If they cannot nail the integration of AI into their applications so one can ‘talk’ to Excel or PowerPoint, they’re in trouble. In many ways, it seems that’d be no bad thing if it lets a thousand blossoms bloom.

You may say I’m a dreamer,

Hugo
Chief Alternative Historian
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Owner of British Airways buys a whole load of planes ✈️ - IAG has ordered 71 long-haul jets split between Airbus and Boeing. This comes straight after the trade deal was announced between the US and UK which may have impacted the split between the American and French plane manufacturers. Airlines have to think really long-term as most of the planes probably won’t be delivered until the early 2030s when we’ll probably have jetpacks anyway.

2. WeightWatchers files for bankruptcy amid weight-loss drug boom 💉 - we often think about digital technology being disruptive but innovation anywhere can turn whole industries upside down across the board. WeightWatchers has gone from 4.5 million subscribers globally to filing for bankruptcy to help pay down its $1.5bn debt.

3. Disney to open a theme park in the Middle East 🐭 - it’s pretty astonishing it’s taken this long (potentially something to do with the political climate) but Disney will be opening an island on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island. The last theme park Disney opened was in Shanghai in 2016 and the continued expansion in difficult macroeconomic times points to the strength of their in-person business and the Middle Eastern market.

4. You can now become a train driver at the age of 18 🚂 - the rail sector is currently faced with a retirement crisis which has led them to lower the age at which someone can drive a train. The hope is that the move reduces 87% of ‘P-coded’ cancellations (those made the night before a service is meant to run) that are caused by driver shortages. I’m all for it.

5. Deliveroo is set to be bought by DoorDash for £2.9bn 👋 - the acquisition by the American company is making some question the strength of the UK’s capital markets as it struggles to retain top technology companies. Will Shu, Deliveroo’s founder and CEO, maintains the UK is a great place to start a business and we just need to have a more positive mental attitude. I’d be feeling pretty positive if I was him right now.

6. De Beers is currently sitting on a stockpile of $2 billion worth of diamonds 💎 - this makes them sound like a sort of Smaug-esque dragon but the issue is people are just buying synthetic diamonds now so they’re struggling to sell their mined rocks. The natural diamond market is now in a very tenuous position as cash-strapped consumers are becoming increasingly conditioned to the idea that lab-grown diamonds do the trick (whatever that means).

7. ‘Destination dupes’ are all the rage this summer ☀️ - ‘dupes’ more generally are a thing at the moment - I love it when a silly word becomes widely used. Many people are planning holidays to places like Montenegro and North Macedonia which could be mistaken for the Med without having the same budget and crowding implications. Since 2019, TikTok has driven huge volumes of passengers to hidden gem destinations. Not a bad idea to spread the load.

8. Gold smuggling is on the rise in Japan 🏅 - there is generally a very high global demand for gold at the moment as it is seen as a safe asset and Japan is up for selling it. 20 tonnes are leaving per month but the authorities are unclear where it is all coming from as they haven’t seen the tax revenue they would expect from that much coming in, in the first place.

9. Packaged bread is on the decline in the UK 🍞 - it was once a standard part of the weekly shop but has become the villain of the UPF wars with its high nonsense content which no one particularly needs or wants. Hovis’s owner is currently in talks about a possible merger with Kingsmill as the market is just not of a size that it can sustain both. The number of people eating sliced bread on a daily basis has dropped from nearly half to a third since 2015.

10. Pope Leo XIV points to AI as one of the reasons for his name ✝️ - the incoming pope has said that he chose his name in part due to the fact Leo XIII was faced with many of the social questions of the Industrial Revolution. Leo XIV suggested that his and the church's role is to help people navigate the latest industrial revolution as it unfolds over the coming years.

Quote of the week

“Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.”

― Susan Sontag

I’m always interested in the top songs for artists on Spotify. I was baffled to discover this week that the vast majority of the Arctic Monkeys’ most listened were from AM which whilst an excellent album is surely not on the same level as their first two. What’s also interesting is that the only song in the top five not from AM is 505 from Favourite Worst Nightmare, the last song on the album. It is in fact a “sleeper hit” with over two billion streams, peaking in popularity in 2022 thanks to TikTok.

Rod Stewart has of course also benefited from the TikTok network effect with his 1978 hit “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” having a resurgence a few years ago, although that has a mere 363 million streams, a touch behind Maggie May at 375 million. Bet you didn’t think you were going to have a load of teenagers making dance videos to your song 45-ish years later, did ya Rod?

Music is clearly not circular in the way that fashion is, I don’t think Baroque is going to be back in anytime soon, but it is great that these songs take on a life of their own. As Noel G says of Don’t Look Back In Anger “The greatest gift I ever got from it was the song itself”. Musicians often talk of how songs are just out there in the universe and it’s their job to be the conduit. Some songs would have been better left in the universe but for all the others, it’s lovely how they’re these timeless artefacts, humanity will have forever. Unless there’s a nuclear war or something.

I bet that you look good on the dancefloor,

Hugo
Chief Music Archaeologist
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. There’s a spate of cyber attacks underway in the UK 🕵️ - Marks, Co-op and Harrods have been all through the mill in the past couple of weeks thanks to DragonForce, a cybercriminal gang, not the heavy metal band. A load of customer data has been affected, it’s been considerably harder to buy a rotisserie chicken, and it’s not looking good, brev.

2. British soldiers being protected from their own drones 💂 - this has nothing whatsoever to do with business but is just amusing news that soldiers aren’t allowed to fly drones over their own heads even if they are in a tank. Hopefully, the enemy abides by the same health and safety regulations or there’s a serious risk of someone getting hurt.

3. The US is going to force Alphabet to break up Google 🧐 - they’ve had it bloody good for a really long time but it seems that might come to an end soon. The US government has asked a judge to demand they spin off their advertising business, which is accused of monopolising the market for publishing banner ads on websites as there is no real alternative to Google’s engine.

4. Jeff Bezos is planning to offload 25 million shares 💰 - recent filings show he is planning to sell nearly $5bn-worth of Amazon shares over the next year or so. This is not just to buy more suntan oil and creatine, he is using a lot of the money to fund Blue Origin which alongside sending rich people into space is helping with going back to the moon and stuff.

5. Grand Theft Auto VI has been delayed until May 2026 ⏳ - the long wait for GTA 6 is already the source of much merriment on the internet but it seems they need a bit longer still to “deliver at the quality you expect and deserve”. The broader gaming industry is in the midst of a downturn and this news is another blow because many hoped the release would encourage people to buy a new console.

6. There’s a growing trend for 5pm restaurant bookings 🍽️ - a number of restaurants have begun offering better value early evening set menus to cater to a younger crowd who want to be on their way home earlier and can’t afford the high-end prices. OpenTable has reported a 6% rise in the number of bookings being made between 4pm - 6pm in Britain.

7. Microdramas are on the rise 📱- these are scripted series which are just a few minutes long and filmed to be viewed on phones. They first became a thing in China but are rapidly growing in popularity globally with TikTok being the gateway to users finding this new form of content and then potentially downloading an app called something like ‘ShortMax’.

8. French teenagers spent their lockdown money on manga 📕- the French government dished out hundreds of Euros per teenager to spend on cultural activities to give a much-needed boost to the sector as it struggled. The teenagers went and spent all the money on manga (Japanese-style graphic novels) which was great for bookshops. Unfortunately, this bubble has now popped and sales of these books are down 25%.

9. Activist investor launches a campaign against the owner of Upper Crust 📈 - Irenic Capital has decided the maths ain’t maths-ing and taken a two percent stake in SSP to try and force changes that they believe will double the share price. SSP operates 3,000 outlets in 35 countries, mostly in airports and train stations. It operates both its own brands like Upper Crust and Camden Food Co. and third-party franchises like Burger King and Maccies.

10. The future of AI is diverging 🤖 - the focus and attention to date has very much been on generalist applications like ChatGPT which is alright at doing a number of different things. Behind the scenes, however, several more specialised agents are being built using open source models like Meta’s Llama. Many believe it is this specialisation where the real value lies.

Quote of the week

“May the fourth be with you” - Some Jedi Fella

I hope you’re well and the Mini Egg-induced fog is starting to lift.

I’ve been reading this book called Humanise by Thomas Heatherwick about how most modern architecture is basically inhumane because it’s so boring. City skylines have been blighted by dull but efficient buildings for decades. They’re designed to cram in the largest amount of people into the least amount of space in order to maximise returns.

It occurred to me this is a feature of modern life more broadly. Everyone is so focused on optimisation, productivity and clarity of messaging that sameyness has become an endemic feature of our lives. Software all looks the same, and it makes sense to some degree because you don’t want to baffle users, the only problem is you bore them in the process. It’s of course the same with much corporate communication, professionalism is prioritised and any sense of fun takes a backseat.

So go on then, add some flourish, maybe a ‘mellifluous’ in an email here or a jaunty diagram in a presentation there. Have a bit of fun, you know.

Be silly,

Hugo
Chief Silliness Officer
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Blackrock is coming for the UK 💰 - it’s a bit of a double-edged sword when Larry Fink, who controls $11.6 trillion of capital, says the UK is “undervalued”. No one is complaining about investment but will we have all to be implanted with chips and prostrate before our lizard overlords? We do need some new infrastructure though, so probably just got to suck it up.

2. California is the world’s 4th largest economy 📈 - it has surpassed that of Japan, with a GDP of $4.10 trillion in 2024. It’s been having a tough time recently with all the fires and stuff, but they love to grow and make things there. They’ve also got the country’s two largest seaports.

3. 100-year-old shopkeeper is considering retirement (at some point) 🧵 - Arthur Ferguson has been running his haberdashery in Cumbria since the 1950s which he set up with his wife, Cicely. He’s still enjoying it and gets out of bed at 7am every day, except on Sunday when he has a bit of a lie in. Good on you Arthur.

4. JP Morgan and Amazon have brought back the suggestion box 🗳️ - Jamie Dimon and Andy Jassey have been asking employees how they can reduce bureaucracy and improve the businesses. Jasey said he received over 1000 emails and implemented 375 changes off the back of them. Toyota pioneered the idea of the suggestion box back in the 1950s and they’ve given us many things from personalised coffee cups at Starbucks to Playstation controllers.

5. Door Dash makes an offer to buy Deliveroo 💸 - the American company has offered to pay £2.7 billion for their London-based rival which some people reckon is going to start a bidding war. The board would be “minded to recommend” a deal at 180p a share which is still significantly below the initial IPO price of 390p a share, which was dubbed “the worst IPO in history.”

6. Apple is going to make all its US iPhones in India 📳 - the tech giant has been looking to move some of its operations away from China for a while, but the urgency has obviously intensified with all the tariff malarky. They are aiming to do this by the end of 2026, which if we’re being honest feels a little bit ambitious. You gotta do a lot of stuff to make 65 million iPhones. I’m just not sure they can do that much stuff in that time.

7. Decreasing wine demand in China is pushing down prices in Bordeaux 🍷 - there was a buying spree over the past couple of decades as China’s economy flourished and French wine became popular. Thanks to the big headache of actually producing wine and a growing number of domestic producers, this trend has gone into reverse.

8. Yellowstone is making Paramount loads of money 🤠 - it’s got to be the most dangerous ranch in the world but god it’s good television, them all cowboying about in nice scenery. It has brought in an estimated $ 2.9 billion, of which $450 million were from DVD sales. I’m not sure why, but that’s so on-brand for Yellowstone.

9. Mo Farah launches Urunn to take on Strava 🏃 - with the recent acquisition of Runna by Strava and a current heightened interest in the sport it’s a good time to be getting an AI-powered running coach out there. Urunn is a joint venture with WithU (trying saying that out loud) which already has a number of deals with companies from Maccies to John Lewis.

10. 1Rebel to take over Revolution site on Clapham High Street 🚲 - it’s a sign of the changing times that kids these days would rather exercise than knock back a load of Woo Woos and make some bad choices. A planning application has been put in with Lambeth Council to turn the former bar into a new spin class studio. Long live the revolution.

Quote of the week

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. - Margaret Mead

I hope the defrosting is going well (if you happen to be in the UK). I think I’m a seasons man. It’s all well and good having sun 365 days a year, but it’s nice to have the ceremonial first wearing of shorts. If it was sunny the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to complain about how it’s too hot and discuss how excited we are about autumn in about three months time.

Anyway, The White Lotus finished this week and I’m still a bit undecided about how I feel about it. As ever, the characters were class but I didn’t completely get some of the storylines. I’m not actually sure what the impact of Laurie’s mad night out was, and the incident on the boat seemed a bit gratuitous to me. I get that Saxon went through the wringer a bit on that holiday, and his whole identity was called into question, but did it need to be that? What was Lochlan’s whole deal as well? Unclear on his character, apart from being a humongous wet flannel. Maybe that was it.

My main takeaway is that Thai rock or ‘ไทยร็อก’ is quality. Kuen Kuen Lueng Lueng - Ironman with Thai vocals, go on then. If you're’ unwinding this afternoon, you could do a lot worse than this playlist of 60’s-70’s Thai Psychedelic Funk/Groove/Rock.

Piper nooooo,

Hugo
Chief Weather Officer
The Business of Stuff

P.S. Sorry if you don’t live in the UK or watch The White Lotus

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The Stuff

1. It’s all gone Pete Tong at British Steel ➖ - the company is currently owned by Jingye, a Chinese company, but it’s not making any money so they’re threatening to close it and the government has sprung into action. It will probably be nationalised which fits with the whole onshoring, independence vibe we’ve got going on this year. The issue is it’s bloody expensive to make steel in the UK.

2. More pigs impacted by the tariffs 🐷 - the second swine victim is Peppa Pig’s parent company, which sells a lot of its wares in the US and gets it all manufactured in China so quite frankly have no idea what its sales are going to look like this year. Shares sank 10% on Friday thanks to its little conundrum.

3. The company planning to put a data centre on the moon 🌚 - Lonestar Data Holdings of Florida popped a data centre the size of a hardback book on the Athena Lunar Lander, which is currently heading to the moon and all seems to be going well. The appeal of the moon is there’s unlimited solar energy, loads of space and no neighbours who don’t want a massive warehouse next to them.

4. CFOs are increasingly getting the top job 👩‍💼 - there’s traditionally been a bit of reluctance to put the finance folks in charge as they’re seen as being risk-averse and a bit too spreadsheety. A survey at the end of 2023 found however, that one third of CEOs in the FTSE 100 had previously been CFOs, up from 21% in 2019.

5. Prada is buying Versace for $1.36bn 👜 - there has been speculation for months that the deal was going to fall apart thanks to the tariffs, but in the end, it just resulted in a €180m discount. Versace is being sold by Capri Holdings, which also owns Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo. Prada has been enjoying rare success in an otherwise struggling luxury fashion industry recently.

6. People are going mad for Eastermas 🐣 - the UK is putting an increasing amount of energy and money into Easter. Eggs still form a big part of spending, but people are now buying crackers, wreaths and trees. I think it’s social media that drives this stuff. Posting a massive pile of eggs just makes one look like a glutton, but a table dressed all nicely in Eastery stuff is aesthetically pleasing

7. Netflix is experimenting with using OpenAI to power its search functionality 🔎 - you’ll be able to search by mood or with more descriptive prompts that might speed up the process of trying to find a film that suits everyone’s tastes. It does, however, depend on the streamer actually having some content that people want to watch hidden in its catalogue. The feature is already being piloted in Australia and New Zealand.

8. Bain Capital is buying HealthEdge for loads of money 💰 - a number of private equity deals are going on in the software sector at the moment, which has been affected a lot less by all the tariff and market chat. HealthEdge is being sold for $2.6bn with Blackstone exiting its controlling stake. The main products are software for health insurers, which covers 110 million people in the US.

9. Coffee prices are getting ridiculous ☕ - the Swedes are stockpiling, and espressos now cost the same as a pint did a few years ago. Prices have been pushed up by speculation in the coffee market and dodgy weather. They’ve gone down recently due to concerns that the tariffs will curb demand. Lots of sellers have started using cheaper beans to try and keep costs down for consumers.

10. Lots of people are getting surgery to change their eye colour 👁️ - good old TikTok has started a trend of people undergoing fairly dangerous surgery to get different colored peepers. Come on, guys, love your eyes. They are probably the organ I would least like to have surgery on, it just doesn’t seem worth it when they can’t really be that ugly can they? Like, everyone’s eyes are pretty cool as they are.

Quote of the week

“Uh we’re not goofing off, we’re creating musical fusion.” - Dewey Finn, School of Rock

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I tend to steer clear of the week’s headlines because you get enough of all that elsewhere. It feels more relevant to write about the skyrocketing price of turnips or whatever.

It would be a bit odd, however, not to mention all the tariff malarky that has been going on this week. Every business, aside from perhaps Mrs Goggins’ jam stall at the Sunday market, is likely to be affected. Even then, I’ll bet her sugar isn’t coming from down the road. Maybe sugar prices will increase as production becomes more expensive, maybe they’ll plummet as producers like Brazil look to divert stock from the US. Who knows?

There are two main scenarios we are looking at:

1. This is all just a big negotiating tactic to reduce America’s trade surplus and there will be a rash of deals with different countries to try and reduce or get rid of trade imbalances. On paper, this is the administration's position, as they’ve said the tariffs are reciprocal (not to tariffs but to trade deficits) and will be dropped if a deal is agreed. Companies with manufacturing bases in Vietnam have already seen their share prices rebound after “a really great, maybe the best call ever” between Trump and Vietnam’s leader.

2. The tariffs are much more ideological and not simply a negotiating tactic. Trump has been saying since the 80s that he thinks goods bought in America should be made in America. Tariffs are, therefore his way to try and force manufacturers into doing this. He and many in the administration also want to recreate the era when there was no income tax and money was generated for the government solely through tariffs.

For any number of reasons, 2) cannot work. Companies can’t just up sticks from overseas manufacturing bases and move them to America, and even if they could, it wouldn’t suddenly result in amazing wages in the US; there would just be lots of automation or worse, no competition. Even if the strategy were stuck to, it would cause so many problems for Americans in the medium term that it is not politically feasible.

So it looks like we can expect a parade of national leaders into Mar-a-Lago over the next few weeks to bend the knee and do a deal. The President of Madagascar will have to pledge to buy more bourbon and pickups in order to sell vanilla into the US market at a reasonable price, and so forth. Time the market right on Madagascan vanilla and you are absolutely laughing.

Buy and sell,

Hugo
Trader-of-stuff
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Percy Pigs are a potential early victim of the trade war 🐽 - they only recently went on sale in the US and were being hailed as the best British import since The Beatles, but they may be subject to steep tariffs as they are made under license in Germany. Thirty-six bags are sold in the UK every minute and were described by the M&S chairman as “our gift to America”.

2. Samsung turns to China to sell more chips 🍪 - despite investing tens of billions in American manufacturing facilities, they’ve struggled to secure major customers. Exports to China have jumped 54% through deals with companies like Baidu. China is also scrambling to get its hands on advanced chips in the face of restrictive export controls put in place by the US.

3. Russia hasn’t done anything about AI 🚶 - Putin reportedly doesn’t use a computer and forced his staff to use typewriters until about ten years ago. This is a big problem for them. Western defence companies are ploughing billions into advanced technology, so it stands to reason that in ten years, they will be completely ill-equipped to fight a modern war. Unless they team up with China.

4. Finland has loads of defence technology startups 🏹 - mostly known for saunas and chilled Nordic vibes, the country with a population of just five million has 368 defence technology companies. The Ukraine war and their entrance into NATO have supercharged these companies which are building everything from advanced headsets to surveillance airships. Stick that up your sauna.

5. Musical biopics are out of control 🎶 - between 1990 and 1994, there were just 16 biopics about musicians, but that has risen to 68 between 2020 and 2024. A lot of this is down to back catalogues being sold off to private equity, who have seen the marketing value in making a film about the musician. There is obviously also just more history now, that’s the thing about time.

6. YouTube set to be the world’s largest media business 📽️ - currently the top spot is held by Disney, but the Google subsidiary is forecast to take over with revenues of $54.2 billion in 2024. Their success is at least in part due to the breadth of the platform, which has everything from movies to podcasts to amusing videos of people falling over.

7. Deel spy complies with authorities 🥸 - despite being offered an all expenses paid one-way ticket to Dubai by the leadership of Deel, Keith O’Brien has decided to cut his losses and comply with the investigation. The espionage was orchestrated by the CEO of Deel who paid Keith $6000 a month to gather corporate intel through various Slack channels.

8. Per capita spending on music has increased over the last decade 📈 - whilst streaming has been fairly disastrous for artists, it has meant that people are actually spending more money on music. It is far less hassle to spend a few quid a month on a subscription than copying your mate’s CDs or getting them off some dodgy illegal website that will give you a virus. Shame the money isn’t reaching the musicians!

9. Panama has the largest ship registry in the world 🇵🇦 - there are more ships with a Panama flag than any other country. Ship flags have very little to do with who actually owns them and more to do with the tax and legal regime of the country to which they are registered. Panama is, however cracking down as shockingly their favourable regime has resulted in some dodgy customers.

10. Alix Partners gets in Goldman to sell a stake 🥩 - the sale comes amidst a wave of deals involving professional services firms as demand continues to increase amongst private equity firms. Public Sector Investment Pension Investment Board is understood to be selling its share in the company which is estimated to be valued at between $5 billion and $8 billion.

Quote of the week

"Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way. Well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn't!" - Michael Fish

If you weren’t at the Global Government Forum’s Innovation conference this week then quite frankly, where were you? It made Davos look like a sort of twee literary festival. Who’d want to be up a Swiss mountain when you can be striding around London’s room of requirement, ExCel? One minute it’s a triathlon track, the next it’s a field hospital.

I like conferences, I think if an alien studied humanity at alien university, they could write a good thesis on them. It’s the weird combination of being completely formulaic but niche at the same time. Everyone is basically doing the same thing at every conference but the topic could be anything from oil exploration software to the future of Beanie Babies.

Anyway, this one was about the future of government and what it needs to do to pull its socks up. My main takeaways were:

1. The departmental model is a big problem - aside from the normal challenges of massive hierarchical organisations, having competing P&Ls and interests makes it very hard to do anything collaboratively. On top of that, each central function within a department essentially has a monopoly on delivering finance, HR, procurement, and IT. If the government wants to achieve its missions and capitalise on technology, the right incentives need to be put in place and the leadership need to draw on all corners of the public and private sectors. Not just the organisations for which they are accountable.

2. AI is being adopted faster than you think - I must admit I was expecting the approach to AI to still be pretty contemplative, but clear use cases are being addressed in several different departments. The size of the opportunity is enormous, so it stands to reason that if even 25% of this is achieved in the medium term, the impact on public service and the cost of running government will be huge.

3. AI is not the solution to everything - it feels like we are at a tipping point where the cost of automation is going to plummet, so lots of digital processes can be optimised relatively cheaply. This will be seen as low-hanging fruit, and hella investment will be pumped into it. The challenge is that many of the ways the public sector interfaces with citizens are very physical. Roads, schools, prisons, and hospitals all require real people and real stuff to make them better. They all need to be invested in.

Two days of trying to square the pace of technological change with 19th-century organisations left me needing to lie down for a bit. I had a pizza and thought about conferences instead.

Confer soon,

Hugo
Chief Conference Inspector
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Sky is the latest company to embrace the rise of the machines 🤖 - the media company is planning to close three call centres as people generally prefer using chat functionality until they get really cross and frustrated. This could result in a 7% decrease in Sky’s workforce and is part of a much wider trend in customer support.

2. The price of Easter eggs has risen by 50% 🪺 - inflation has hit choccy harder than most foodstuffs, at least in part thanks to unusually warm weather, which has driven down global production of cocoa. Confectionery companies have tackled this either by raising their prices or making their eggs smaller. If you are being eggstra careful to save at the moment, you could nip out to the shop on Easter morning.

3. Japan is the second-largest recorded music market in the world 🇯🇵 - despite this, it is only 24% of the US market. Japan is looking to capitalise on the global success of K-pop (which they claim is based on 80s Japanese pop), with their own brand of ‘J-pop’. Organisations like The Japan Culture and Entertainment Industry Promotion Association (catchy) and Toyata have been arranging showcases in the US in a bid to grow audiences.

4. A design firm from Camden is doing sterling work in Central Asia ✏️ - Cross Works won a bid to design a massive new section of Tashkent, hurrah for global procurement. Ground has been broken on the project and the Department for Busienss and Trade is helping Cross Works to set up meeting with some other -stans.

5. CK Hutchinson is planning to spin off its telecoms businesses 📞 - the Hong Kong conglomerate is considering listing it in London and is expected to be valued at between £13-19bn. The group will only be able to make any significant progress on this once the Vodafone-Three merger has gone through (they own Three), which is expected to happen in April. Alongside this, they’re selling off some assets near the Panama Canal to Blackrock, which the Chinese government aren’t too happy about.

6. BBC decides against plan to have adverts on podcasts 💰 - BBC Studios has been looking at different ways to raise additional revenue, one of which was advertising on platforms like Spotify. There has been a fair bit of backlash from its competitors who feel like the Beeb has an unfair advantage, given the licence fee, claiming it would be ‘disastrous’ for the podcasting industry.

7. Blackstone has got itself a stake in some UK airports ✈️ - they love owning bits of this and bits of that, these private equity companies and most recently have got their paws on a minority stake in AGS Airports, which owns Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton. They handle 11 million passengers a year across the three airports which is expected to grow as travel demand continues to increase post-pandemic.

8. Elon Musk has bought X from himself 🤝 - xAI has bought X in an all-stock deal for $45 billion as Musk looks to consolidate “data, models, compute, distribution and talent”. The long-term intention seems to be to build an ‘everything app’ which we can just plug our brains into and enter the singularity. Potentially an alright way to spend a Sunday afternoon, but all pretty Black Mirror.

9. OpenAI’s new image generator is pretty bonkers 🖼️ - previously, it didn’t really get language, so just churned out shapes that looked a bit like letters but didn’t make any sense. The image generator which uses 4o and was released this week, is pretty wild, to the point they are having to limit usage as it’s so popular.

10. Søstrene Grene is hoping to revive the UK high-street 🛍️ - the Danish homeware maker has opened a store in London, not a stone’s throw from their Swedish competitor Ikea. Commercial property rental prices have fallen dramatically from the pandemic which means foreign companies that didn’t consider the UK a viable place to launch, are now revisiting it as a place to expand. Brits are loving it as all they’ve had for the past five years is Poundland and Ladbrokes.

Quote of the week

“I got 21 seconds to flow
I got 21 seconds to go
'Cause if you like me lemme know
Let me in da studio
I got 21 seconds before I got to go” - So Solid Crew

I was on the train to the airport last week and two blokes were sitting in front of me, on the beers and on their way to some house revival festival in Bognor Regis. They clearly had a big weekend ahead and so were fuelling up on some incredibly smelly food they’d presumably bought at Victoria.

Now, let’s be honest: the rules regarding eating food on a train are a grey area. Personally, I’m a no-hot-food absolutist. We just don’t need your burrito demonstrating the second law of thermodynamics all over the carriage, pal. I also think eggy stuff hot or cold is not really on. But these are rules I’ve essentially made up and for many, smells aren’t that bad and people should be left to crack on with their Happy Meal.

In that moment however, these lads were breaking some sort of immutable law that I had made up. I considered my options. Obviously number one was throwing them or their food out of the window but that had some fairly serious practical and legal risks. I wrote off asking politely for them to put it away in case they a) threw me out of the window or worse b) just said no and I’d have to go and sit back down. I could also have just moved carriage but then they’d have won (unbeknownst to them) and anyway, the train was really busy.

Then I had a really crazy thought, I could just do nothing and everything would probably be ok. Action in inaction. This resolve was subsequently tested when their mate turned up and cracked out his Burger King. But by that point I’d concluded I’m probably committing transgressions against multiple people’s value systems daily so best we all give each other a break. These were fundamentally good lads, if a bit hungry….unlike the guys on the plane who were playing music out loud and then were rude to the air steward when she asked them to stop. They need to get in the sea.

Anyway, when I got the train home I bought some (cold) food from M&S at Gatwick and made sure to eat on the platform so I didn’t risk falling foul of my own legal system.

Smell you later,

Hugo
Chief Olfactory Officer
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Broadcasters fined for colluding on freelance pay 💰 - the BBC, IMG, BT and ITV have been told to cough up £4.2million between them by the Competition and Markets Authority for sharing information about fees for camera operators and sound technicians. Whilst being the most persistent offender, Sky avoided any fines by dobbing itself in early doors.

2. Rippling accuses Deel of corporate espionage 🥸 - they are claiming in a lawsuit that the HR technology company had a mole within their organisation that they were able to catch with a clever honeypot involving a fake Slack channel. Amazon is already wondering whether this could form the basis of the next James Bond film - From Workday with Love.

3. Nike shares hit a five-year low 👟 - the company is being hit in multiple directions from low consumer confidence, expected tariffs on products made in China and the fact everyone is buying their trainers from Hoka anyway. Analysts are concerned performance will continue to deteriorate further as Nike is struggling to change up its product mix.

4. Alphabet is buying Wiz for $32bn 🛒 - everyone is very excited that some big M&A is happening. Wiz helps companies to manage cyber security between cloud providers which makes it a great acquisition for the owner of Google as they’ll be able to see exactly what AWS and Microsoft are up to in their clouds. Serious pile of wonga they’ve paid there but it’ll go straight on the balance sheet.

5. Abu Dhabi is sitting on a health data goldmine 🧬 - the Emirate has sequenced 802,000 genomes via their largest healthcare company M42. Almost three quarters of the local population has been mapped, making it a massively comprehensive dataset. As they look to move away from fossil fuels, they hope this will drive a number of breakthroughs in combating disease.

6. European stonks are back 📈 - the focus for retail investing has been largely in American companies over the past few years, some more grounded in real value than others (e.g. Gamestop). As Europe gears up to defend itself and the US market sinks in the face of tariffs, lots of money and memes are flying around on this side of the pond.

7. The Aardvark project will democratise AI weather forecasting ☔ - as much as it’s fun to complain about weather apps, we are blessed to have supercomputers that can do a pretty good job. Many parts of the world aren’t so lucky which the Aardvark project is looking to fix through an approach that uses far less computing power.

8. Removal companies are struggling to keep up with demand 📦 - thanks to the current stamp duty deadline there are more than 75,000 people currently trying to move home which is keeping lawyers and movers very busy. Luckily conveyancers are already incredibly efficient and responsive to change but we’ll have to see how the men with ven respond.

9. US to import millions of eggs to lower prices 🥚 - ah good old globalism, always there to balance supply with demand. Egg prices were a rallying point for the Trump campaign last year so now that he is in power he’s really not got an eggscuse and so has had to go egg cup in hand to Turkey and South Korea. Tomlettes all round!

10. Othello is the hottest show on Broadway 🎭 - with a stellar lineup of Jake Gyllenhaal and Denzel Washington it’s no wonder that what is already a cracking play is breaking records. Not cheap though, if you want to sit in the front fourteen rows it will cost you a cool $921. You’d be pretty close to Jake and Denzel though so it’s got a reasonable ROI.

Quote of the week

“Sure the fight was fixed. I fixed it with a right hand.” - George Foreman

If I said ‘Neue Haas Grotesk’ to you, what would you say? Probably ‘What did you call me?’ or ‘ please leave me alone’. Well the correct response would be ‘ah yes, the original Swiss name of the ubiquitous sans-serif typeface, Helvetica’.

Helvetica became popular in the 60s when lots of companies still had dorky logos with swirly writing so were in dire need of something a bit cleaner and Swiss. Minimalism was all the rage and Helvetica caught on everywhere. Nearly 70 years on and you still can’t move for the tightly-spaced font.

Helvetica goes in and out of fashion, there was an initial post-modern backlash at its uniformity, but that just resulted in people writing poems in Dingbats and no one needs that. Subsequently it has become a bit subversive, helped by its use in the Trainspotting poster. There is something powerful in the mundane and ordinary. And at least it’s not Times New Roman.

Anyway if you would like to know more about Helvetica and fonts in general, I thoroughly recommend this documentary.

Choose Helvetica,

Hugo
Chief Lettershape Officer
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Man United are building a new stadium 🏟️ - urgh, the bloody red team is at it again. They’ve done a thing. After much consultation Jim Ratcliffe and Co. have decided it’s time to build a 100,000 seater £2bn stadium which will be cracking news for Keir Build-Stuff Starmer. The development will be the UK’s biggest single site infrastructure project build since the 2012 Olympics.

2. PeakAI has been snapped up by UiPath 🪙 - what does this acronym soup actually mean? Another big American company has bought a promising young contender from the UK. Great because it shows there is some entrepreneurial spark here, not so good as it is another example of a successful UK startup getting eaten before it has the chance to reach any scale. Peak builds decision-making AI that can set things like pricing and inventory levels.

3. Hornby is going to leave the London Stock Exchange 🚂 - the model train set specialists have decided that their home bourse is no longer good enough for them and they’d be better off just going private. Although this seems like a damning indictment of the LSE, two shareholders own 91% of the company so the overhead of being a listed company is just not worth it.

4. Consultants warned Aberdeen about becoming Abrdn 🛑 - once again it’s been proven that you should always listen to consultants. Wolff Olins told the CEO in 2021 not to remove all their vowels and even asked to take their name of any marketing material so as not to associate themselves with the decision. The financial services has now rowed back on its decisions and become ‘aberdeen’ without a capital ‘a’. Riveting.

5. We’re all paying for airport lounges 💳 - getting an Amex Amex Gold Card for a year when you get your first proper job is a right of passage for many and soon enough you find yourself in some some dodgy lounge pretending to be an international jetsetter. These credit card providers are spending a huge amount on the lounges to make their customer feel special and as a result the lounges are getting much more fancy. Is it all worth it?

6. Tesco is going to trial giving away food 🍞 - the supermarket is looking to cut food waste and one of the biggest levers is just giving people stuff that’s going to expire. In selected stores some yellow-stickered stuff will be given away for free after 9.30pm. I once found a loaf outside Gail’s, that was a good day.

7. Bakkavor rejects takeover bid from Greencore 🛒 - the supplier of ready meals was offered £1.1bn to merge and form a massive food giant. It’s been good news for Bakkavor shares as they’ve jumped 18.4% which has made it easier for them to come out and say that the offer has “significantly undervalued the company.” All your curries are the same.

8. DeepSeek is focussing on research 🤖 - whilst Sam Altman is pissing everyone off by trying to maximise revenue AI, their Chinese counterparts are pumping all their money into finding out new stuff. The founder is a successful hedge fund type and seems weirdly nonplussed about making money. Scary when people don’t play along with capitalism.

9. Loads of rides are closed at DisneyWorld - between a third and a quarter of all rides are closed this year (due to the expense of repairs and running the things) which has tipped the balance of how people spend their time in Orlando. People are starting to view Universal as the more innovative and exciting theme park as Disney struggles under the massive weight of being Disney.

10. There’s a strawberry selling for $20 in LA 🍓 - they are flown in especially from Japan and getting them there while they’re still fresh is half the cost. They’re 200 times more expensive than your average Californian strawberry but are they 200x more delicious? Turns out they are, but eating them is a bit depressing as you have to think about all the overbreeding that got them there.

Quote of the week

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full - Henry Kissinger

There’s something transcendent about being up a skyscraper. I think it’s a miniature version of the Overview effect, the feeling astronauts get as they look at Earth from space. Many experience an overwhelming sense of beauty and awe as they look down at the silly little planet we call home.

I had a similar sensation as I sat at the top of 22 Bishopsgate on Wednesday, south London and millions of lives twinkling below. I wasn’t eating a sandwich with my legs dangling over the edge Lunch atop a Skyscraper-style but surveying the latest offshoot of the Gordan Ramsay empire, Lucky Cat.

As I tucked into my sashimi (it seems to be a legal requirement that all restaurants over 200m serve raw fish) the value in perspective struck me. It felt like a sigh of relief looking down at life, everything that appears so big and chaotic at eye level is inconsequential and twee when viewed from a great height. Once I’d finished that thought I contemplated nicking the cat chopsticks holder for a bit and then made conversation like a normal person.

Get some perspective,

Hugo
Chief Viewpoint Officer
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. UK and Europe are not deploying 5G fast enough 📞 - the major operators said this week at Mobile World Congress that the continent has become a global laggard thanks to a fragmented market. They claim that consolidation is required (which has begun to shape with the Vodafone-Three merger) in order to justify the massive investment required to build out 5G infrastructure.

2. Bill’s is expanding to the Middle East 🥂 - the restaurant group has spotted a niche that hasn’t quite been filled as there are endless fast food and high-end restaurants but not a lot offering the family-friendly mid-market fare they do. Bill’s is part-owned by James Caring who also owns The Ivy Collection, Sexy Fish and Scott’s. I like a Bill’s, it’s usually where you end up when you can’t think of anything else but it’s always a safe bet.

3. We could be facing the dotcom bust 2.0 📉 - with the markets all over the shop this week, largely thanks to Trump’s hokey cokey tariff policy, people are questioning whether this turbulence could be the first sign of a wider turndown. All the excitement and frothiness around AI is not dissimilar to the internet at the turn of the century.

4. Nasdaq is pushing to provide 24 hour equity trading 📈 - the stock market has always been a casino and now that retail trading across the globe is so ubiquitous, the race is on to allow people to buy and sell shares all hours of the day and night. The Nasdaq wants to capitalise on the current popularity of US shares so has begun conversations with regulators to launch in late 2026.

5. Everyone is cross with Gail’s 🥖 - it is already the benchmark for the gentrification of an area but have been subject to even more ire in the past week when it was revealed by a whistleblower that they chuck out sandwiches every few hours that are no longer deemed to be fresh. Gail’s denies some branches throw away up to six bags of food a day as their business would not be viable.

6. The price of first-class stamps is going up AGAIN 📮 - I bought a book of stamps the other day and when my eyes widened at the price the shopkeeper simply said “I know mate”. The price will be rising from £1.85 to £1.90 on 7th April. Royal Mail’s parent company is currently being sold to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, with the government retaining a golden share.

7. WPP has invested in Stability AI 🖼️ - the strategic partnership with the generative AI company will gave them access to a range of generative AI tools which are handy pieces of kit for an advertising company. Stability is currently being sued by Getty who claim their library was used to train their models.

8. New York investors take a stake in Qazgeology ⛏️ - America is on the hunt for rare earth metals and this collab with the Kazakhstani company marks a step onto China’s turf. Minerals like neodymium and praseodymium are key ingredients for things like wind turbines and medical lasers. A spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party was quoted as saying “geroff my land”.

9. TSMC pledges to invest $100bn in the US 🍪 - the Taiwanese company makes a disproportionate amount of the world’s semiconductors, which makes America incredibly nervous. The company has sought to evade US sanctions by promising to directly invest a huge amount of money in making the chips on American soil. Some suggest this will decrease the leverage Taiwan has, guaranteeing their security against a Chinese invasion.

10. Clothing manufacturers are looking to automate in Bangladesh 🪡 - the South Asian country produces a huge amount of the world’s garments but with increasing competition from Vietnam and Cambodia they are looking for ways to cut costs. Somewhat paradoxically this means that despite already tough working conditions, life is being made harder for employees who are losing their jobs.

Quote of the week

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That's what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people. - David Bowie

Are you busy? I’m busy. If we just get through this week/month/year then maybe things will calm down. No, wrong. This is it. This is literally your life. Stuff will keep happening and then that’s that.

What to do about this conundrum? If you’re lucky most of it is good stuff. Work, relationships, projects, kids, life. Well I’ve done some research and reached the following conclusions:

1. Be grateful - easy for me to say for sure, but whatever is going wrong there is probably something going right.

2. Be here - it’s about the experience, dude. How your feet feel against the floor? Class. That building you walk past every day? Intriguing. That bloke eating a burger on the train? Charming how oblivious they are.

3. Be now - in the words of everyone’s favourite Sanskrit author (Kalidasa) “yesterday is but a dream, tomorrow is a vision” - the past and the future aren’t real.

4. Do less - you don’t have to do that thing. I know it feels like you do but you don’t. Not right now. Honestly. Mañana.

Take it easy,

Hugo
Chief Lessness Officer
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Microsoft announces the end of Skype 📞 - back in the noughties it seemed pretty insane that you could video call someone in another country for free. Skype was at the front of the pack (along with MSN Messenger for whatever reason) with regards to turning broadband internet into communication. How they’ve survived this long is news to me. I presume there is a cohort of grandparents for whom it is still newfangled technology. Sorry Granny, you need to get Snapchat.

2. Instagram considers launching separate reels app 🤔 - Meta is looking to capitalise on TikTok’s perilous future in the US with its own short form video app. I was going to make a joke about it going the same way as Threads but have just discovered Threads has 320 million monthly users! They do need to sort out their algorithm though, especially after this week’s shenanigans when they flooded feeds with violence and gore.

3. Chloe is loving the Pokémon dream 🎴 - the former office worker from Chorleywood decided to bin it all off and open Collector’s Cardhouse. She recently sold a card for £40,000, has lots of international visitors and a YouTube channel with 118,000. I absolutely love this sort of thing, excellent work Chloe.

4. IAG profits double over the Christmas period 🛫 - the owner of British Airways and Aer Lingus has benefited from a massive rise in transatlantic travel as it continues to recover from the pandemic which decimated the industry. The CEO has warned that corporate travel will never return to what it was but luckily for them more people are willing to shell out on expensive seats when they go on holiday. The group carried 122 million passengers in 2024 with 46 million travelling on BA services.

5. Aston Martin cuts 170 jobs thanks to a pre-tax loss of £289m 🚗 - the car manufacturer has removed 5% of its workforce. It has launched a whole host of new models since it was bought by Laurence Stroll in 2020 but supply chain issues and production delays has resulted in several loss-making years.

6. Pearson’s profits rise to £3.5bn 📚 - you might recognise the name from school textbooks but it is the education company’s focus on digitisation that has put them in a better spot. Omar Abbosh, an executive from Microsoft, took over as CEO in 2023 and has pivoted the company to focus on technology adoption, including a strategic partnership with AWS. Soon enough school will just be downloaded into children’s brains so they can focus on playing conkers and nicking apples.

7. Crypto ATM operator sentenced to four years in prison 🏧 - turning piles of cash into cryptocurrency is of course a fairly blatant approach to money laundering and is therefore illegal. Olumide Osunkoya is the first person to fall foul of the authorities for doing so, processing more than £2.5million and falsifying documents.

8. Spotify detaches us from the musicians 🎶 - the music streaming service discovered a long time ago that the majority of listening time is spent on background music whilst people are doing other things. This has led to the proliferation of playlists which atomise the works created by musicians and opens the door to AI-generated music. We need to get back to albums, it’s all about the albums.

9. Lululemon sign up Lewis Hamilton as an ambassador 🏎️ - the athleisure brand has been trying to expand its market share by appealing to men, so it’s a collaboration that makes sense as the F1 driver prepares to start his first season with Ferrari. It also speaks to the changing audience of the F1, which is getting younger and more female, a good result for the Canadian clothes company!

10. DeepSeek is taking hold in China 🇨🇳 - as a country they’ve been very focussed on renewables/electric vehicles and been slightly behind the curve on AI but with the dramatic release of R1 and the support of the government, usage is increasing dramatically. All the major cloud service providers, car manufacturers, hospitals and state-owned enterprises have moved quickly to adopt the software.

Quote of the week

Sometimes I do need to go to karaoke, sometimes I need to relax. - Jackie Chan

Is geopolitics a zero-sum game? If you believe in exponential growth, then it isn’t. We could band together, mine minerals on the moon, and enjoy our apportioned grass-fed forest beef, confident that the maths adds up and the atmosphere will be fine. Some would argue we have no other choice in the face of global threats like climate change and alien invasions.

Or maybe it’s a fight to the bitter end: whoever uses the most oil wins, and you’d better buy my gadgets or I’ll squash you. It seems this is how the current political leadership of the world perceives things, and perhaps that’s the reality. But when does competition become an end in itself? What are you going to do with the upper hand once you have it? Tell everyone you’ve got the upper hand? Expand the pie, I say.

I win,

Hugo
Chessmaster General
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. UK Government scores an own goal again ⚽ - Apple has pulled Advanced Data Protection for UK users after the government requested backdoor access to user data. This means that no data in the UK will be fully encrypted, a loss for consumers and a a bit of an L for the government, which should probably avoid picking fights with global tech companies where possible.

2. Scotland isn’t happy about English single malts 🥃 - There has been a backlash against a proposal to allow English whisky producers to use the term “single malt” in their marketing, with the Scotch Whisky Association saying it will “devalue” the term. The issue revolves around the mashing, fermenting, and distilling needing to occur in the same location.

3. Birkenstocks are not art, says German court 👡- The sandal maker has been trying to prevent knock-off versions from being sold by petitioning a court to claim they were works of art and thus entitled to strong copyright protections. The judge rejected this argument, 18 months after the case began. Birkenstock has been around since 1774, but it’s only in the past few years that it has shed its association with tofu and granola, with many celebrities wearing the sandals.

4. Fake sourdough is on the rise 🍞 - Beware of fake loaves. Many supermarket loaves that purport to be sourdough contain numerous additives and are not made using the traditional method. These loaves have been branded “sourfaux,” and the Real Bread Campaign is not happy about the whole charade. I’m glad people are standing up for bread.

5. Everyone is going mad for Spandex 🧘 - The global spandex market was valued at $8 billion in December, thanks to its widespread use in athleisure and shapewear. The only issue is that it’s responsible for a huge amount of microplastics entering the environment, leading several companies to try and create biodegradable alternatives.

6. Football fans are exposed to thousands of gambling ads 💰- The number of adverts appearing during the opening weekend of the Premier League went from 11,000 in 2023 to 29,000 in 2024, leading experts to say that the market is out of control, as unsurprisingly, self-regulation doesn’t really work. Some have suggested that the current “self-regulation” approach might be influenced by gambling companies inviting MPs to football matches.

7. Quantum computing could be here in years, not decades 🍪 - Microsoft has made an announcement, and if (a big “if”) it’s not just marketing bluster, then Majorana 1 could be solving “meaningful industrial-scale problems” sooner than expected. There’s a steady stream of announcements from companies about quantum computing, but the general consensus is that it’s still a way off from being truly useful.

8. Amazon takes complete control of Bond 🥸 - They bought MGM, which owns the franchise, in 2022, but after a long period of tension and inactivity, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson are stepping back to let Amazon take over. They obviously want a return on their investment, so many think it will follow the same path as Star Wars at Disney, with numerous hit-and-miss spin-offs.

9. The Elizabeth Line has been a success after all 🚂 - The project has performed far better than expected, transporting 500 million passengers since it opened in May 2022. Yes, it took far longer than anyone anticipated and was massively over budget, but could it be a sign that it’s worth undertaking large new projects? It has led Liverpool Street and Paddington to overtake Waterloo as the UK’s busiest stations.

10. A proposed French theme park in Oxfordshire seems a bit suspicious 👑 - Puy du Fou, a historical theme park in western France, is consistently ranked among the world’s best. The family behind it is looking to open one in the UK, but people have pointed to their involvement with the Kremlin and a proposal to build “Tsarland” in Crimea as questionable. The founder, Philippe de Villiers, also has far-right political leanings. As much as I’d love to romp around a fake medieval castle, it’s not sounding great.

Quote of the week

“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”
― Hunter S. Thompson

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Depending on who you ask, most of us spend at least a third of our waking lives looking at screens. We have these weird little portals into which we stare on the train, in the office, on the sofa and, when we’re feeling particularly dysfunctional, at the dinner table.

It’s hard to know what to do with this information. Should we minimise the time we spend looking into these portals, or just maximise the quality of what we do on them? There’s a homogeneousness to screens, the spectrum of experience is far narrower than that of the real world. A picture of the sea will never be the same as being in the sea.

On the other hand, the access to information, art and other people makes it seem like screens are a step on our evolutionary journey. One can only assume it took early humans a while to get to grips with fire, no doubt a few caves were burnt down and thumbs scorched. It feels like we’re at that stage now. In a thousand years people will look back at and pity us Neanderthals for giving ourselves Repetitive Strain Injury with things called ‘mice’ and spending all day moving numbers around in Excel.

Yabadabadoo,

Hugo
Chief Screen Sharer
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Spain is outperforming the rest of Europe 🇪🇸 - while many countries are struggling to grow, the Spanish economy grew by 3.2% in 2024 through a combination of tourism (94 million visitors last year), investment and immigration. The only issue is that people are pretty fed up with English people coming over to drink pints of Stella and eat fry ups so this might impact tourism in the future.

2. OpenAI rejects Musk’s $97.4bn bid 🫷 - the meddlesome billionaire has been trying to prevent the owners of ChatGPT from moving to a for-profit status. He claims this is for the benefit of humanity, but it can’t be a complete coincidence he owns a for-profit competitor. The bid has been seen as an attempt to force their hand but the board unanimously voted not to accept it, saying ‘OpenAI is not for sale’.

3. Activist investors still fiddling with UK PLC - private equity firms have been snapping up UK companies over the past couple of years and alongside this, they are buying up shares in companies like BP to force the management to make changes. Elliott Management has built up a stake of nearly 5% in BP in a bid to get them to stop spending so much on green energy and make some major divestments. Greta would not be happy.

4. Colombia is proposing to ban Escobar merchandise 🇨🇴 - it’s a weird thing that some people like to wear pretty questionable human beings on a t-shirt. I think I may have owned a top with a picture of moustachioed mass murderer Che Guevera during a teenage socialist phase. Quite rightly, the government in Colombia has decided it’s not a good vibe to have a prolific narcotics trafficker as a major cultural symbol.

5. John Lewis is partnering with Rough Trade to sell records ⏺️ - this will be music to the ears (again, quite literally) of all the centrist dads who can buy their sweaters and vinyl in the same place! Record players have been flying off the shelves at the department store so it makes sense for them to stock a bit of Chappell Roan alongside. What a way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

6. Pakistan wants to electrify its one million rickshaws 🛺 - the government is targeting 30% of all new vehicles to be electric by 2030. This is of course delightful for BYD, which is planning to open its first factory in South Asia. Sazgar is expected to lead production however, as it is a Lahore-headquartered company that has made traditional rickshaws for decades and currently holds 30% of the market.

7. Contraband sweeties are entering the UK in big quantities 🍭 - social media is driving demand for things like Jolly Rancher Hard Candy, Swedish Fish and Prime Hydration. These contain substances banned in the UK like brominated vegetable oil, bleached flour and Tartrazine. It’s unbelievable this nonsense is allowed anywhere, God bless reasonably high food standards.

8. The Port of Shanghai had a record month in January 📦 - it processed 5 million containers which is likely to drop off considerably given all the tariffs that have come into play over the past couple of weeks. This follows a record year which saw the port become the first one to process 50 million in a year.

9. Pubs are getting in on the breakfast action 🍳 - last year Spoons became the nation’s fifth-largest breakfast provider, overtaking Starbucks. People are spending less money in the evenings and more in the mornings so it is unsurprising that the likes of Spoonies is seeing the benefit of this; “come on darling, it’s good value and I’m pretty sure they do granola or something!”

10. Even the Mafia are struggling to recruit good candidates 🥸 - the bosses of Cosa Nostra were heard complaining about the ‘miserable’ calibre of recruits on a wiretap ahead of a massive raid. They’ve been trying to rebuild after a wave of crackdowns but they clearly need to work on the recruitment pipeline, as the new ones are all just getting arrested and becoming informers.

Quote of the week

“Some things we forget. But many things we remember on the mental screen, which is the biggest screen of all.” - David Lynch

I’ve been thinking about how you can’t eat art this week. Or to put it another way, most of us don’t get paid to be creative. The useful stuff you spend your day doing isn’t necessarily an expression of your highest self. And that’s fine.

We inevitably feel like we should be spending our days painting watercolours or playing the bassoon as we write another email, following up or reaching out. It can be hard to reconcile the people we’re required to be to get stuff done in a complex world with the presumably limitless human beings we really are.

As is often the way, when you listen carefully the answers find you. In this case, it was a documentary called Salaryman and a Rick Rubin podcast with architect, Bjarke Ingels. The former was about corporate culture in Tokyo and the lesson from that was we are all complicit in the work lives we have. You do have a choice, whether that is packing it in and becoming a fiddle player or just saying “circle back” a bit less and getting an ostentatious haircut.

Mr Ingels describes architecture as the “art and science of creating the framework for the life we want to live”. It involves stakeholders, budgets and requirements but fundamentally it is about bringing something in your mind into existence to make the world a better place. Now that’s a framing I can get behind on a Monday morning.

Gotta Serve Somebody,

Hugo
Chief Architect/Salaryman/Bassoonist
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. A really expensive violin is up for sale 🎻 - if you’ve always been on the market for one of Stradivari’s violins from 1714 then you’re in luck. Sotheby’s is set to auction it next week and is expecting it to go for $12-18m dollars which if it sells at the top of the range would make it the most expensive musical instrument ever sold.

2. India media companies are taking OpenAI to court 🇮🇳 - several companies are alleging that the makers of ChatGPT have made unauthorised use of their content to train their models. India has the largest user base of ChatGPT globally making it an incredibly important market for OpenAI. They have rejected the claims, saying all the data they use is publicly available.

3. Eggs are being stolen in the US as prices go up 🥚 - in an eggstraordinary turn of events 100,000 eggs were stolen from a grocer in the US. Prices have skyrocketed 65% in the past year thanks to a bird flu epidemic that started in 2022. Here is that clip from Succession if that’s where your mind goes whenever eggs are mentioned.

4. Most businesses can’t get the skills they need in the UK 🔎 - you just can’t get the people these days it seems with nine in ten UK companies struggling to fill skill gaps in their organisations. The gaps exist in everything from hard skills like software development to soft skills such as customer service. Companies are pleading with the government not to remove the apprenticeships levy as they are often the best way to grow people’s skillsets internally, without it costing an absolute fortune.

5. Governance jobs are on the rise 📑 - process gets a bad rep and conjures up images of bureaucracy but when done well it really does oil the wheels of an organisation. Many are recognising this and employing individuals whose full-time job is to make sure risk is being managed in the right way. There are an estimated 40,000-50,000 individuals in the UK filling this sort of role and one would hope good use of technology means more governance doesn’t just mean more paperwork to fill out.

6. Someone is finally nice about the UK stock market 📈 - the CEO of Metlen Energy and Metals thinks they run the risk of “disappearing” in the US if they list on the New York Stock Exchange which isn’t really a compliment but is promising at least for the struggling London Stock Exchange that has been snubbed a lot over the past couple of years.

7. Tiffany releases a hovering diamond 💎 - it’s part of a collection designed by Louis Vuitton men’s creative director Pharrell Williams. The Floeting platform has taken 17 years to get right with several scientists and even a Formula One engineer involved. The LVMH-owned jewellery company has invested heavily in its brand in recent years as sales in the wider watches and jewellery division have been disappointing.

8. Hollywood has bounced back from the writer's strikes 🎥 - this has had a massive downstream impact on the UK with £5.6bn spent on making films and TV in the past year, which is a jump of almost a third on the previous year. Many film production companies opt to make films in the UK thanks to a dearth of skills (and more favourable employment law).

9. Spotify is planning to add new subscription tiers 🎧 - following a deal with Warner Music they are looking to introduce new features like higher quality audio which will quite literally be music to the ears of audiophiles who besmirch the low quality currently delivered to our ears. I wish my ears were that good.

10. Netflix looks to drive growth through sport 🏁 - upping prices and cracking down on password sharing can only grow revenues so much, at some point you’ve got to offer something new. They are currently considering a bid for the F1, having seen massive success with their Drive to Survive series.

Quote of the week

“You can’t make a Tomelette without breaking a few Gregs” - Tom Wambsgans

It’s February, we’re so back. The Six Nations is underway, New Year’s resolutions are firmly behind us and it won’t be long before shorts are back in season. Thanks to old Numa Pompilius, the Roman king who invented January and February, we’ve only got 28 days of Tuesday and then we’re into March.

‘February’ comes from the Latin word ‘februum’ meaning purification, the old English names were somewhat less poetic but far more descriptive: ‘Solmonath’ meaning ‘mud month’ and ‘Kale-monath’ meaning ‘cabbage month’. If we’re talking seasonal eating then it is indeed the right time of year to be tucking into some winter cabbage, you might also want to think about some purple-sprouting broccoli. Even though it just seems like a poncy version of basic broccoli, it is actually incredibly hardy, so can be grown throughout winter. Delicious in a stir fry.

Eat your greens,

Hugo
Chief Vegetable Officer
The Business of Stuff

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The Stuff

1. Cokes recalled due to having even more chemicals than usual 🥤 - if your can has anything between 328 GE and 338 GE on the bottom, you might want to send it back as it’s probably got a load of chlorate in it. Disturbingly, the issue isn’t that there’s any chlorate but that there’s just too much chlorate, which is used to produce disinfectants and fireworks.

2. Sales of full-fat milk are increasing in the UK 🥛 - it feels almost countercultural to drink milk from an actual cow in this day and age, but people are moving away from ‘low-fat’ products which tend to be more processed. Searches for ‘full-fat milk’ were up 417% on the Waitrose website in the past month. Yoghurt is riding a similar a similar wave, as is butter. Dairy is back, it seems.

3. Levi’s used data to get a jump on baggy jeans 👖 - thanks to a partnership with Google Cloud that started in 2020, the purveyor of denim was able to identify that everyone was going mad for wider-fit jeans, across 50,000 points of distribution. The brand launched its ‘Live Loose’ campaign and made a whole load of baggy jeans as a result. I must admit I do like a taper but I am coming around to having a bit of looseness around the calves.

4. WHSmith is looking to move away from the high street 🗞️ - its most lucrative operations are of course those at airports and service stations, where there’s a captive market and they can charge £15 for a bottle of water. Unsurprisingly its high street stores are not doing so well, with revenue dropping by £14m in 2024. Unless you want a very specific magazine, there aren’t many reasons to go in there if you’re walking down, say, King Street in Thetford.

5. OpenAI scrambles to release free model after DeepSeek shock 🚀 - the US tech market was sent into a tailspin this week by the Chinese company releasing R1 that is just as good as ChatGPT, developed at a fraction of the cost. It has been seen as something of a Sputnik moment, and OpenAI has released its new o3-mini for free. I must admit I’m getting a bit lost in OpenAI’s approach to branding as o3 is, in fact, better than 4o, there is then o3-mini and o3-mini (high) as well as of course o1-mini and o1.

6. Robocops are being drafted in to stop shoplifting 🔐 - Safer Group has been installing security “pods” with cameras, motion sensors, AI-image recognition and sirens to help tackle people nicking stuff. Inevitably some people don’t love the vibes, but trials have led to a 49% reduction in “shrinkage” and a 79% reduction in break-ins.

7. A proposal is under consideration to stop drug advertising in the US 💊 - everyone seems to think there’s something dystopian about adverts for drugs, indeed they’re banned in every country except the US and New Zealand. If Kennedy gets through the Senate, he is going to propose banning them. This would have a big impact on media companies, as pharmaceutical companies spend billions on advertising in the US each year.

8. It’s all kicking off at Barclays 🏦 - it has been a hectic week for the company, with a major IT failure leaving millions unable to access their banking app. The current CEO also said that employees need to be back in the office three days a week, and the ex-CEO is gearing up for a trial over his alleged links to Jeffrey Epstein.

9. ITV is in talks with Redbird IMI about a plan to merge its studios 🎥 - the broadcaster is considering splitting off the production side of its business from the broadcasting part. The Emirati-backed fund, which recently tried to buy the Telegraph, owns All3Media, an acquisition target for ITV in 2023. The combined company would be one of the largest production houses in Europe, with revenues of £3million.

10. Comcast’s earnings beat expectations thanks to Wicked 🧹 - the witchy film broke box office records, taking $114m over its opening weekend. Comcast, who owns Universal (the maker of the film), saw adjusted earnings rise by 11% to $8.8bn. Not a bad day at the office for them.

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Quote of the week

"While it is February one can taste the full joys of anticipation. Spring stands at the gate with her finger on the latch." - Patience Strong

I was chatting to Yotam this week and he was telling me about how he’d been at the birthday party of a famous chef and one of the guests had pulled a bottle of chilli oil out of their pocket and slathered it all over the food. He said what an insult it was for this guest to ‘fix’ the food that had been so carefully prepared with a condiment. I said, “Yotam, it’s not that simple, things aren’t that black or white, there are lots of shades of grey.”

Take salt and pepper, which coincidentally are black or white, no one is going to begrudge you for putting some pepper on your pasta, and I put lots of pepper on my pasta. Salt can seem a bit passive-aggressive, as undersalted food suggests an oversight in the cooking process, but equally, it can just indicate someone with a particularly salty palette.

Some foods, quite frankly, need the lubrication of a bit of a sauce. Chips are the obvious example here, but not if you’re having steak. For some reason, mustard is right. I suppose it has something to do with the delicacy of flavour. Chilli oil makes sense on a pizza to cut through the richness of the cheese and the tomatoes, but probably not on whatever this chef made for his birthday party.

There is a somewhat darker side to this story. Capsaicin, the chemical that makes peppers spicy, has been found to release dopamine and endorphins. So in reality this poor guest was just trying to feel something in their cold condiment-addled heart.

Can you pass the salt,

Hugo
Chief Pepper Officer
The Business of Stuff

P.S. Just to clarify, Mr Ottolenghi was on a stage, I was in the audience and this conversation happened in my head.

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The Stuff

1. Diageo is considering the sale of Guinness 🍺 - the global drinks giant is contemplating spinning off the business whilst it is at the height of its popularity which would get them an estimated £8bn to do some other capitalism. Diageo has been moving away from beer but selling one of their most prized assets would be a major gamble. Guinness 0.0 is now the most popular non-alcoholic beer in the off-trade and indeed outsold cans of the real stuff over Christmas.

2. Blackstone is taking control of 5,200 British railway arches 🚂 - it’s astonishing the variety of activity that goes on in railway arches, particularly in London. I’ve dined, danced, shopped, rehearsed and climbed with trains rumbling over. The American private equity company is looking to take charge of a £2bn portfolio from TT Group and will continue to refurbish these spaces, hopefully into cool stuff not Costa Coffees (no offence, Costa Coffee).

3. News jobs board for careers in space 🧑‍🚀 - a space race is (allegedly) taking off in the UK and if you fancy being a ‘Mission Analysis Engineer’ or perhaps doing a PhD in ‘Digital Twin Extrapolation in Space Object Re-Entry Monitoring’ then www.spacecareers.uk is the place to look. The government is trying to avoid the skills gap that exists in other high-tech sectors.

4. Rolls-Royce agrees £9bn deal for nuclear subs ☢️ - this marks the biggest deal they've ever done with the UK’s Ministry of Defence and will see them make the reactors for a new fleet of nuclear submarines. The UK has had a nuclear deterrent since 1969 much to the chagrin of people who don’t like the idea of nuclear war. It does however mean we can sit at the big boy’s table at the UN to help not make decisions.

5. Brixton sues Brixton for calling themselves Brixton 😡 - an American company called Brixton LLC took the absolute liberty of suing Brixton Street Wear (who are actually in Brixton) for using their name. Fortunately, it has all ended amicably with a slightly smaller font on their logo and a promise not to sell outside of the UK. I’m still annoyed on their behalf tbh.

6. Shipments of Champagne are down for a second year running 🍾 - total shipments fell to 271.4 million bottles which represents a 9.71% annual decline. The French drink almost half of Champagne produced and their consumption has fallen to its lowest level since 1983 (apart from the pandemic). I’d like to do some research that breaks down the context in which champagne gets consumed.

7. Sainsbury's is putting an end to its cafes ☕ - I’ve always thought those cafes at the side of supermarkets seem like they’ve been on a permanent decline since their 90s heyday which actually never happened. Supermarkets are looking to focus in an increasingly competitive market and so Sainsbury’s is cutting 3,000 jobs and shutting down its remaining 61 cafes.

8. LinkedIn accused of using private messages to train AI 👂 - a lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Premium users in the US as a privacy setting was noticed that automatically opted people into sharing their data to train AI models. LinkedIn denies the claim, and says that the lawyers are “telling porkies”.

9. Australia is leading the way with the future of farming 👩‍🌾 - many believe that technology is how we need to dig our way out of the environmental hole we find ourselves in. Everything from robotic bees to soil-enhancing fungus is being trialled in Orange, New South Wales. Australia is at the frontline of climate change so they’re evolving through necessity.

10. ‘Cancellation insurance’ has a whole new meaning 🙊 - Samphire Risk, an independent underwriting agency backed by Lloyd’s of London is offering ‘cancel culture’ insurance should you wake up to discover your series of red-wine-induced tweets about the state of society haven’t gone down well. The policy includes a 24/7 hotline and a sixty-day plan to manage negative press. One can only speculate on how long the terms and conditions are.

Quote of the week

“I drink Champagne when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise, I never touch it―unless I’m thirsty.” - Lily Bollinger

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