Late entry for one of the best long reads of the year

All the photography in this week's Economist Britain section is by Martin Parr

Lovely piece on Carlo Rambaldi, one of the top practitioners of the lost art of practical special effects, along with the great Stan Winston as.ft.com/r/e53c40dc-b...

Early Christmas 🎁 from @samgadjones.bsky.social and Paul Murphy: the full inside story behind Jan Marsalek's Libyan business inteterest and the bitter disputes they spawned as.ft.com/r/2a7015cd-6...

Hedge funds considering providing yet another DIP loan to First Brands Group

No photoshopping today as I’ve been temporarily blinded by this chap’s teeth

The real purpose of Robert Tchenguiz's Truss-fronted members club: repaying debts to the Reubens brothers. An early Christmas present for FT readers here (gift link, first 300 clicks free! 🎁): as.ft.com/r/14553746-2...

In a tough year, private credit bosses are pointing fingers on.ft.com/4pX1Wc0 | opinion

"UK’s Covid schemes ‘left front door open’ to fraud, says report" www.ft.com/content/803a...

Unintentionally comic piece from Citywire on Sanjeev Gupta and SFOs (Single Family Offices) that never mentions the SFO (Serious Fraud Office) citywire.com/middle-east/...

Is this the first time the phrase "fuck face" has appeared in an FT news article? www.ft.com/content/555d...

Some of the best content on the FT.com is not being produced by FT journalists, but by below-the-line commenter Winter Cruise Allowance. Here's their take on the new taxes on cash held in stocks-and-shares ISAs:

🔴 Nigel Farage’s Reform is more reliant on super-rich backers than any major party in modern British political history 75% of *all* Reform donations *ever* have come from just three rich men Is this what democracy looks like? New on Democracy for Sale democracyforsale.substack.com/p/75-of-refo...

What could possibly go wrong? www.ft.com/content/1ee6...

SCOOP: Bond investors warned US Treasury over picking Kevin Hassett as Fed chair www.ft.com/content/ad4b...

David Miles (of the OBR) at the Treasury Select Committee: Reeves’ speech was not inconsistent with the OBR’s assessment.

More good reporting on the precarious state of Thames Water's Coppermills site from The Waltham Forest Echo walthamforestecho.co.uk/2025/11/28/a...

Lovely piece

Absolute debasement of academic standards *student submits opinion in psych class *gets bad grade *instructor says she can make whatever arguments she wants but must draw on empirical sources *student & Turning Point says her religious freedom & first amendment rights violated *professor suspended

'I never thought Drahi would take MY collateral,' sobs bondholder who invested in the Drahi Taking People's Collateral Company. www.ft.com/content/33fb...

this is a chilling read on influencers pushing an extreme version of homebirthing with disastrous consequences www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

this is a good look at the off-balance sheet accounting underpinning Meta's big data centre deal www.wsj.com/tech/meta-ai...

I used to live near the Coppermills water treatment plant that is apparently central to London's water supplies and frankly it is terrifying that an obviously ageing facility run by a failing company with poor access is so crucial www.ft.com/content/97e4...

Kroll Bond Rating Agency is offering assistance to investors in dealing with the three main scourges of the private credit market: defaults, cockroaches and the Financial Times. www.ft.com/content/ebd2...

Coppermills water treatment works in Walthamstow serves as many as four million Londoners. The creaking facility was built in the 1960s and its pumping station is now on its last legs. Construction of a new system will not be finished until 2031. The consequences of a failure would be catastrophic:

Thames Water’s main treatment works is so vulnerable that just one system failure could leave millions of Londoners without running water. Mass evacuations could even be triggered in the event of a failure at the crumbling Coppermills works in north-east London. Full story here: on.ft.com/4r1IbBc

Some burnt lenders have insisted that First Brands' collapse came without warning — Brian Friedman, president of longtime banker Jefferies, told investors that “fraud is conventionally not detectable in the real world”. But others that dug deeper were able to avoid the fiasco. on.ft.com/4hZboJ3

Always instructive after a credit disaster to look what red flags were missed - report here from Julie Steinberg, @bondhack.ft.com and @ericgplatt.ft.com on First Brands www.ft.com/content/2459...

This is now outside the paywall, please do read and share

A bit of a Sanjeev Gupta update: Romanian authorities are probing his steelmaking business for suspected embezzlement and tax evasion involving carbon certificates, prompting police to carry out searches of a steelworks and private homes. Full story here: on.ft.com/4oIKYOk

Bluesky says it suspended author Sarah Kendzior because she was "expressing a desire to shoot the author of an article." But there's more to the story:

Unfortunately it appears I have to choose between two ironclad aspects of my personality today: Br*tain is a mess and Noah Smith is one of the internet's greatest morons. Having done an international connection at Heathrow this year, the latter wins by a country mile.

One amusing thing that just occurred to me in the whole Trump/BBC furore: because the Panorama documentary was first broadcast over a year ago, isn't he time-barred from bringing a defamation claim in English courts anyway?

Cracking profile from Tom Wilson of the incredibly euro commodities wunderkind who became a centimillionaire trading Russian oil on.ft.com/3WOdnpW

another nice piece on MSTR from @thekrazykobra.bsky.social

"My 'we do very, very normal due diligence' shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt."

Maybe Keir should demand the heads of major US news networks any time they imply Britain is on the brink of civil war or that we live under sharia law. Or does it not work both ways?

As with the NHS, I think part of the problem is how the institution has been so thoroughly sentimentalised in both the public imagination and its own imagination, to the extent that even a minor infraction is greeted like the Werthers’ grandad going on a five-day ket rampage.

The BBC will fuck things up from time to time. Lots of major news organisations do; just look at The Times having to memoryhole several fake news stories in a matter of weeks. No one is calling for the abolition of The Times, however. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Very normal scenes at a very normal session of the very normal United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas More First Brands drama here from the incomparable @pollard.bsky.social and @sindap.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/7f58...

Learn to cook, fuckwit

If you financed thousands of windscreen wipers in Mexico, but that collateral was then “commingled”, who owns the windscreen wipers? Where exactly are the windscreen wipers? Why did anyone think that buying windscreen-wiper-backed bonds was a good idea in the first place? www.ft.com/content/b492...

💸🙏🏻 IN LEX WE TRUST 🙏🏻💸 A year before Greensill Capital’s collapse plunged Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance into crisis, the British steel tycoon described Australian financier Lex Greensill as “our perpetual god” who had “poured insane amounts of money” into his companies. on.ft.com/47Etco8

turns out that when you owe the bank $2b, that can indeed be the bank's problem

In the last few days, the First Brands situation has escalated from “suspected” to “alleged” fraud. Our crack bankruptcy reporters @sindap.bsky.social and @pollard.bsky.social have had you covered.

Nigel Farage, who has so far registered a total of £280,500 for four hours a month as a "brand ambassador" for a company selling gold bars, thinks a £10 an hour minimum wage for young people is too high bylinetimes.com/2025/11/03/n...

This is phenomenal reporting from @radleybalko.bsky.social, although be warned, the term "gut punch" doesn't even cover it radleybalko.substack.com/p/accusing-j...

I don't usually criticise my colleagues in public, but I'm dismayed that this FT article has overlooked the capital's true proprietary trading whale. I am of course taking about East London's GSR (Gary Stevenson Research). www.ft.com/content/8a65...