Cake pops are a warning sign of late-stage capitalism
Have you ever heard of 'ghost jobs'?
Hello,
I found myself in Starbucks at Clapham Junction yesterday morning staring at the ‘cake pops’ in a dazed stupor. It was quite early so the coffee options were limited and the idea of taking the one-hour train to Lewes for a big stomp without a latte was completely unconscionable. I’m not one of those people that pulls a face when someone says ‘Starbucks’ but there are certainly better places to buy coffee in the world.
The sheer array of insulin-spiking snacks was nauseating at 7.48 on a Saturday morning, but I still wanted them. It occurred to me that the entire modern world is designed to part us with our hard-earned pounds at every turn. From the endless opportunities to buy moments of mouth-fun for a couple of quid to the hundreds we can spend on clothes affirming our view of ourselves. An Arc’teryx coat that costs the same amount as a car just makes sense when you’ve committed to a new life of going for a long walk on a Saturday morning.
It happens daily with the endless things we can subscribe to or buy, cajoled on by our social media feeds. Maybe this app is the way to a new life, a better life, you think. But it’s not. You forget about the end of the free trial, accidentally spend £80 on an annual subscription to Blinkist and never look at it again.
Ellie, horrified by the size of a ‘medium’ which in Starbucks speak is a ‘Grande’ or more accurately, half a litre of foam and coffee, downgrades to a small. I wait patiently for my bucket of coffee, contemplating whether I have time to get a cake pop before the train leaves.
That’s not my name,
Hugo
Officer Cake Pop
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
Crémant sales are up 51% compared to last year 🍾 - the cost of living crisis has pushed people away from Champagne (well the ones that aren’t already glugging Prosecco) to the French sparkling wine. It’s made using a similar method and ticks many of the same boxes without the eye-watering prices. Some have even claimed that Crémant is the OG sparkling wine.
The price of coffee beans is at record highs ☕ - a growing middle class in Asia who have discovered the joys of a flat white is being compounded with poor harvests to push the price of coffee futures up by 24% since the end of September. Retailers are replacing the more expensive Arabica bean with Robusta to help counteract these price rises.
Elliott is now trying to have its way with Scottish Mortgage 😑 - the American investment firm recently attempted to buy Currys, but after being rejected has not yet departed these hallowed shores. They’ve amassed a 5% stake in Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and both parties are keeping quiet as to exactly what manoeuvring is going on. Scottish Mortgage has outdone itself over the past couple of decades with some well-placed bets on Facebook, Amazon and Tesla.
Spotify paid out $9bn to the music industry in 2023 🎶 - Spotify reckons it accounts for 25% of global music revenues so is a massive source of income for artists. Spotify itself is not particularly profitable as it continues to reinvest in its platform. Also important to point out that it pays the rightsholders which may often be the label and then the actual artist gets a proportion of this, which will vary wildly.
Gatwick set to pay first dividend in five years 🛬 - been a tough few years for airports and they seem to make it as hard as humanly possible for themselves, but believe it or not Gatwick has made some money! The airport reported after-tax profits of £314.8m which will enable it to pay out dividends to shareholders led by the French infrastructure group, Vinci. Passenger numbers are expected to return to pre-pandemic numbers next year.
Millions of ghost jobs are floating around on Linkedin 😶🌫️ - these are open roles that employers leave up to give the impression they’re growing or to just capture any interesting CVs that come along. Jeffrey Scott from Resume Genius reckons there are up to 1.7million ghost job openings on LinkedIn. This is in the context of a job market contraction after everyone got overexcited during the pandemic.
Fake magnums are ticking off Unilever 🍦 - the consumer goods group has gone to the effort of making a television advert to raise awareness of the issue (we’re watching you Aldi). They are spinning off their ice cream division which includes Ben & Jerry’s and Walls as it is slowing down the rest of the business due to the huge amount of competition and rising price of raw materials.
Bahrain’s sovereign take full control of Mclaren Group 🏎️ - Mumtalakat was already their biggest shareholder but now owns the Woking-headquartered company outright. The group wholly owns the sportscar manufacturer and has a majority stake in the F1 racing team. They now want to go after more technical partnerships to deliver an electric model.
The BBC is planning to develop a Large Language Model (LLM) 📚 - the corporation has a monumental archive of footage, sound and text which could be licensed to a technology company to train their foundation models or used to create an in-house product that could power the content creation process. The organisation is currently looking at different ways to build income streams outside of licence fees.
Independent shops allege Tesco is shaking them down through its wholesale arm 🧐 - Booker the cash and carry outlet used by many villages and owned by Tesco has allegedly been restricting supplies to squeeze the small shops out. 30% of the ranges previously sold are no longer available and the minimum order requirements have been pushed up. Tesco’s acquisition of Booker attracted much criticism when it was waved through in 2017.
Quote of the week
"Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins." -Edith Wharton