People are kicking off about the new Pret subscription
The Royal Mail, Meta and Rwanda all in this week's Stuff
Hello,
It was the Republican National Congress this week where a number of people could be seen wearing bandages on their ears in tribute to their nominee Donald Trump. Meanwhile hundreds of years of British democracy was resumed with the state opening of parliament that involves someone with the title ‘Black Rod’ ceremonially being denied entrance to the Commons Chamber.
We’re a funny old bunch us humans, and working together at scale seems to bring out the most weirdness. Day to day we’re all just going about earning a living, trying to look after ourselves and our families. But when you bring everyone together to form a society suddenly it’s all ceremonial sceptre this, chanting slogans that. It’s almost like things get so complicated that we have to simplify it back down to flags and ceremony to stand a chance of everyone getting along.
The problem is that at the extreme this all leads to that scene in Hot Fuzz with everyone standing around in weird robes saying “the greater good” in unison. It all gets a bit creepy, you might win village of the year but at what cost?
Crusty jugglers,
Hugo
The Independent Member for Stuffington-on-Thames
The Business of Stuff
The Stuff
People are kicking off about a change to Pret subscription ☕ - the coffee chain have rerun their numbers and the deal will move from being up to five coffees a day for £30 a month to five half price coffees a day for £10. They seem to have quite rightly figured out that they’ve been alienating anyone without a subscription and no one actually drinks five lattes a day.
HSBC has announced its new chief executive officer 👑 - Georges Elhedery who is currently the Chief Financial Officer will replace Noel Quinn from September when everyone goes back to school. Mr Elhedery speaks five and a half languages which will put him in good stead to navigate the choppy geopolitical waters ahead as HSBC gets pulled between east and west.
Buyer of the Royal Mail commits to continuing to deliver letters 📮 - Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky has committed to honouring the current Universal Service Obligation (he’s said forever but has signed up to five years on paper) which requires the Royal Mail to deliver letters six days a week. The company is already struggling to meet these targets, however, with only 74% of first class post arriving on time.
Dinosaur fossil goes for way more than expected 🦴 - last week we trailed the auction of a dinosaur fossil that was expected to go for $4-6 million at Sotheby’s. In the end the stegosaurus went for an absolutely bonkers $44.6 million. The fossil was bought by Ken Giffins, the billionaire founder of Citadel. There’s a concern that these specimens of natural history disappear into private collections but Ken, along with other buyers, are loaning them long term to museums and the like.
Audio streaming is up 15.1% globally in the first half of the year 🎶 - Latin music is the fastest growing genre as the world passes one trillion streams ten days faster than last year. Physical album sales are up as artists like Taylor Swift and Charlie XCX sell multiple different versions to satisfy their fans’ appetite to get their music in every format.
Netflix subscriptions are being boosted by Bridgerton and Baby Reindeer 📺 - the streaming service has added eight million subscribers in the three months leading up to June. Despite this they are going to have to find new ways to grow other than steamy costume dramas and disturbing tales of stalking. They are looking at areas like sports, live events and gaming to keep up momentum.
Nationwide to take over Virgin Money for £2.9billion 🏦 - the deal has been given the green light by the Competition and Markets Authority and will make Nationwide the UK’s second largest mortgage provider. There has been a significant amount of consolidation this year as retailers particularly have looked to exit their banking businesses.
Hotel industry is being threatened with a Michelin star system 🗝️ - the whole system feels outdated as we’ve got so much information available about different places to eat and stay. A mere star or a ‘key’ in the proposed new system seems reductive, forcing establishments to conform to specific standards to please inspectors. As Sean Thomas points out, many Michelin star restaurants are utterly indistinguishable and it would be a shame for hotels to go down the same road (that haven’t already).
Paul Kagame sweeps to victory with 99% of the vote in Rwanda 😑 - this was an improvement on 98.63% in 2017 and 93% in 2010. The cynical amongst you might point to the fact that the electoral commission banning his biggest rivals from entering might have helped him along and that an alleged voter turnout of 98% would be unusually high, even for a country with compulsory voting (which it doesn’t have). I couldn’t possibly comment.
Meta is looking to buy a stake in EssilorLuxoittica 🕶️ - the two companies have worked together on Ray Ban smart glasses which have actually done surprisingly well despite the fact you probably don’t know anybody with a pair. The tech behemoth is looking at taking a 5% stake which would cost them about $4billion, chump change to a company worth in the trillions.
Quote of the week
“This is democracy manifest” - Jack Karlson