Friday 15 June 2018

A winning combination of warm weather and the
royal wedding saw retail sales far outstrip expectations last
month. Sales volumes rose by 1.3% compared with a month earlier,
after a bounce in April of 1.8%, the Office for National Statistics
announced. The Times says the news is a sign that the economy is
recovering from the sharp slowdown in the first three months of
2018.

BBC presenters have accused bosses of
“throwing them under a bus” by moving them on to the staff payroll
and condemning them to higher taxes. According to sources in The
Times, many of the corporation’s stars have been reclassified as
employees after taking official revenue tests last year. “This has
caused a great deal of unhappiness and anxiety,” said one source.
“They are livid.”

Rail passenger numbers in the UK fell last
year to 1.7bn – the biggest decrease since the 1990s. The Office of
Rail and Road says rail use fell by 1.4% in the 2017-18 financial
year, the first annual drop since 2009-10 and the biggest since
1993-4. The Guardian says the news “casts fresh doubt on the
viability of struggling franchises”.

About 60 bank branches are closing every
month, says Which. The consumer group found that 2,868 branches
will have closed between 2015 and the end of 2018, at an
accelerating pace. RBS is shutting the most, closing 350 of its own
branches in 2015-2018, as well as 638 NatWest branches and 35
Ulster Bank sites. Regionally, Scotland was most affected, with 368
branches due to have shut by the end of 2018.

The European Central Bank has announced that
it will phase out quantitative easing, despite evidence of a
slowdown in the eurozone. The ECB’s bond-buying programme is
currently boosting the eurozone money supply by €30bn each month.
This will be slashed to €15bn a month this autumn and ended
completely at the end of 2018. The euro lost more than a cent
against the dollar after the news.

“It would still be a retreat of sorts but, on all the most
likely plotlines, the wily old operator can expect to paid
spectacularly. He knows when to sell.” Nils Pratley of The
Guardian says Rupert Murdoch will win if he sells Fox to Disney or
Comcast. 

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