The true sign of a British summer: the wafting sound of slightly sozzled neighbours shouting incoherently in their garden.

Are we getting sicker or just more eager to seek a reason to stay off work? Something big has happened as doctors have doubled the number of sick notes they’ve given since 2016

Just to set it in context - huge attention on the morning radio programmes that inflation is 2.8% and expected to rise. It’s still less than half of what it was in 2023 when it was 7.3% and there was no talk of government trying to limit bread and milk prices. So why now?

When getting to Birmingham costs as much as going to the moon. HS2 now costing in region of £100billion. That’s more than NASA’s mission to the moon

Is it true that no one knows how to operate the heating in a hotel bedroom

The real worry is the low level of pension savings generally. £156,000 at 4% return would only provide you with £120 a week.

Private landlords are getting out of the business. But it’s not as simple as it first seems. Individual small landlords are selling but properties being bought by large commercial landlords according to estate agent Connells Group, the UK’s largest high street estate agency

Woman have half the pension of men. According to a report by the Pensions Commission, women approaching retirement have on average half the private pension savings of men, with a median pension wealth of £81,000 versus £156,000.

Breaking: British Gas has agreed to pay £20m to compensate customers who were victims of forced fitting of prepayment meters. Three years ago it was revealed that debt agents working for British Gas broke into the homes of vulnerable customers to fit prepayment energy meters.

In his speech China’s Xi Jinping talked about war in Greece, in 431BC “Can China & the United States transcend the so-called ‘Thucydides Trap’ What’s he on about? The Thucydides Trap is when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, the result is often war.

2nd in a series of unusual books from the library I’m working in…as the nation heads to the pub this evening for a Friday night drink, I’ll be digging into the page turner that is‘19 centuries of drink in England’

Do you have any cash? Bank of England says we need “cash as a contingency”. Blackout across Spain & elsewhere in 2025 left 60 million people without power & caused card payments to stop working, meaning businesses were only able to accept cash. But how many of us keep any?

Although the economy hit the gym(a little) most people’s wallets are still on the sofa…. The UK economy expanded 0.6% in the first quarter, figures this morning show. So no recession, but people’s finances still too weak to party

Is your chocolate cheating you? In a landmark German case about chocolate "shrinkflation", a court has found that Milka's classic Alpine Milk bar broke competition law. Cutting the amount of chocolate but keeping the same kind of wrapper meant customers were being misled.

When bad news is good news. Good news for 1st time buyers - estate agents at their gloomiest about prices in more than 2 years, according to RICS survey. Not good if you’re selling but a real opportunity for 1st time buyers to get on the ladder

Eurovision on Saturday. Watch out for the Norwegian entry which is peak Eurovision with 50% of its lyrics being “ya ya ya”. For all that - it’s very good

I’m going Cuban tonight with the amazing Roberto Fonseca and his band. Catch him while you can whilst he’s on tour youtube.com/watch?v=T5FV...

"Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May" - It's hailing outside. Clearly Shakespeare also got caught in unseasonal weather - but this is definitely odd!!!!

Big row over Benedict Cumberbatch & road rage cyclist. I’m not surprised. I’ve taken my bike inside & put it on blocks to use as exercise bike as other cyclists, not motorists, were so aggressive. Shouting at me to go faster & generally being unpleasant.Usually young men in bikes that cost hundreds

The huge irony of Trump’s ‘drill baby drill’ call to promote oil and his war in Iran is that it is turning people away from oil. New evidence today that sales of used pure electric cars reached a record high in the first three months of the year.

Britain is expected to lose 163,000 jobs this year amid the economic woes caused by the Iran war with lower income regions set to be hit hardest, according to a EY ITEM club report Two of the lowest income regions – South Wales and the Humber – expected to suffer the most.

Do we care? Despite the huge amount of coverage of local elections most of the country weren’t interested enough to vote and in places such as Elephant & Castle in London 70% decided a vote just wasn’t worth it. The overall winner may well have been ‘none of the above’

When is a rally not a rally? Wall Street’s rebound has been driven by the smallest number of stocks on record, pushing US market concentration to an all-time high and prompting warnings about the “fragility” of the rally. Moves in just one sector could lead to huge falls in the index.

Local authorities raised spending on children’s care providers (many owned by private equity) by 20% above inflation in the past two years, as companies raise prices & diagnoses of autism & other conditions increase, according to report by Revolution Consulting.

Breaking: Santander plans to phase out the TSB name from Britain’s high street after more than 215 years, following its takeover of the UK retail lender, according to exclusive report in the FT

Sainsbury, Morrisons and Iceland have called on the Competition and Markets Authority to subject Aldi and Lidl to a set of rules, that forbid large chains from using restrictive land clauses to prevent rivals opening stores nearby.

Airlines have cancelled 13,000 flights in a move that may disrupt half-term holidays, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Booking package holidays which offer more protection may seem more appealing for many as well as getting insurance the moment you book your flights

Warren Buffett has said “we’ve never had more people in a more gambling mood than now” as S&P 500 hit a record high The world’s most famous investor, predicted that “prices for an awful lot of things will look very silly”

Italian city orders dog owners to wash away urine or face €500 fine. Shouldn't this happen here? I often see it in Spain where dog owners carry small water bottles & just splash a bit of water on it. Seems very community minded to me. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Mortgage approvals rose in March as buyers scrambled to beat a possible rise in interest rates caused by the Iran war. Figures from Bank of England.

Hungry Nation: Three million UK households are being forced to skip meals as consumers resort to drastic measures to deal with rising costs, according to a Which? report

“Ozempic breath” brought on by weight-loss jabs is fuelling a rise in demand for mints and chewing gum. Hershey, which produces Reese’s and KitKats, said sales of its Ice Breaker brand of mints rose by 8pc in the three months to March.

Kent firm Chapel Down sold more than 1m bottles of sparkling wine for the first time & is aiming to hold 1pc of the global 'champagne' market by 2035. To celebrate here is a clip of me cutting off the top of a bottle with the then CEO - cheers

Brent crude oil surged to its highest price since 2022 after Donald Trump said he did “not want to” end his blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

The number of pensioners paying income tax rose more than a million in a year, with at least 22 per cent of taxpayers now being over state pension age, according to new figures from HMRC

Britons are building up rainy-day savings and cutting pension contributions as they brace for a new inflation shock from the Iran war, according to research from MoneySupermarket

Are you wasting money on the wrong mortgage? Answers to that and other mortgage tips on Times Radio at 3:40 do join us

Tech and AI-related shares now account for an astonishing 45% of the market cap ofS&P 500. That’s up from 25% in 3 years, when ChatGPT was launched, says Liam Halligan in the Daily Telegraph. A potential collapse is perhaps the most dangerous economic risk we all face.

Looking at the Trump shooting video, it looks to me as if Trump is almost the last person the secret service get to safety. Melania has gone and so has the VP - it’s only then they get Trump. Am I seeing this wrong and if not, isn’t that odd?

Public servants working for the Tokyo metropolitan government are being encouraged to swap their suits for shorts this summer to combat sweltering heat and rising energy costs. Shout out for anyone who spots the first pinstriped shorts in the UK www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

Am I the only one that thinks Google’s new King Cross London HQ is rather ugly? I know modern buildings come in for a lot of unfair criticism but it feels very 1970s concrete block to me. www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

EV ownership at ‘tipping point’ says FT. The irony for Trump and his ‘drill baby drill’ mantra is that his war with Iran has raised oil prices so much, it could end up marking the shift away from petrol to electric cars www.ft.com/content/ef33...

The UK stock market has risen over 20% in a year but the global highs do not reflect the risks in the global economy, and will fall back, a deputy governor at the Bank of England has said. A significant comment from the usually tight lipped Bank of England

The end of the computer password - one of the biggest changes to how you securely login to anything - now on the way www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Public electric car charging now cheaper than petrol, according to a report this morning from RAC. Rising price of oil has shifted consumer case for going electric.

Amid big worries - small things start to matter & businesses have exclusive insight into what that is. L’Oréal identified the “lipstick effect”. How a rise in demand for beauty products shows shoppers seeking out comfort purchases amid the economic fallout from the Iran war.

Breaking: I know we don’t get excited by good news generally but… Public sector net borrowing excluding public sector banks was £132.0 billion in year to March , £19.8 billion less than the previous year & £0.7 billion below the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast.

Why condoms are rising in price. The boss of the world's biggest condom maker, Karex, says the firm will raise its prices by up to 30% if the Iran war continues to disrupt supplies of the raw materials. Have you got any suggested good headlines I could use for this story?

Have you had a letter from the tax man that doesn’t make sense? Business owners are being urged to send examples of impenetrable letters from HM Revenue & Customs to an independent watchdog, ABAB, that promises to tackle the problem.

Confidence in the economy has plunged to the lowest level since the Winter of Discontent in 1978, with most consumers expecting things will only get worse, according to new poll by Ipsos