Author: Blake Anderson

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.British retail sales tumbled 2.7 per cent in May, a much steeper drop than expected and the first this year, as consumers cut back on purchases of food and household goods.Friday’s figure from the Office for National Statistics was below the 0.5 per cent decline forecast by economists polled by Reuters.The fall, the largest for any month since December 2023, followed a rise in April, which retailers said was down to the unusually sunny weather. The volume of food store sales fell…

The current heatwave, which has pushed temperatures above 30C, was 10 times more likely because of climate change, according to research released as an amber health warning was issued across England.Temperatures are forecast to reach up to 34C on Saturday after hitting 32.2C at Kew Gardens in London on Thursday afternoon, making it the hottest day of the year in the UK. Parts of the country could see the first tropical night of 2025 over the weekend, when the temperature remains at or above 20C for 24 hours.Scientists at the World Weather Attribution, an academic group that analyses weather events,…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Seventy-two people died in the fire that consumed the Grenfell Tower block in west London early in the summer of 2017. Now the coolly incandescent feature-length documentary Grenfell: Uncovered provides a matter-of-fact and frequently distressing account of what happened on that night and afterwards, as told by witnesses, survivors, victims’ relatives and the emergency services who attended the scene. It is undoubtedly powerful, and it channels its evident fury into a greater purpose by making plain the complex findings of the official…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.UK credit card borrowing costs have soared to the highest levels in nearly two decades as falls in personal loan rates have paved the way to fresh options for consumers to tackle debt.The average annual percentage rate (APR) from the start of March until the start of June rose to 35.7 per cent, the highest on record since at least 2006, according to data provider Moneyfacts UK.The average interest rate on cash withdrawals from credit cards also hit record levels over the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Eight stupas greet us as we disembark from our ferry. Symbolic monuments to the life of the Buddha, they belong to the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, with brick-coloured square bases, white tapering steps and a golden spire. Prayer flags flutter close by. Neither are what you’d expect on a rugged island off the west coast of Scotland.About 3km long, barely 1km wide, and with a heather-covered hill in the middle that leaves little space for flat ground, Holy Isle is a…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Vicky Foxcroft has resigned as a Labour whip in protest against plans to cut disability benefits, increasing the pressure on Sir Keir Starmer’s government as it faces the threat of a wider rebellion over the policy.In a resignation letter to the prime minister, Foxcroft said that in a previous role as shadow minister for disabled people in 2020 she had seen that life for disabled people was “even tougher than I had imagined”.Although Foxcroft supported the need to address the rising welfare…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Consumer confidence in the UK rose for the second consecutive month in June, supported by a more positive economic outlook, according to a closely watched survey that raises hopes of stronger household spending.The GfK consumer confidence index — a measure of how people view their personal finances and broader economic prospects — rose two points to minus 18 in June, the research group said on Friday.It followed a three-point improvement in May and took the score to levels last seen at the…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.A hidden global crisis of population undercounting threatens to undermine policies from school building to disease outbreak response, scientists have warned.Fewer countries are carrying out comprehensive censuses while others have delayed publishing results, reflecting Covid-19 disruption, budget cuts, and falling trust in governments, researchers said in a paper published on Thursday.Potential damage from the decline in demographic information is magnified because advances in computing and artificial intelligence have boosted the capacity to analyse and gain insights from big data sets. The impact was…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is chief executive of the Office of Health Economics, a research organisationThe much-anticipated NHS 10-year plan is expected within weeks. Prevention will be at its core — but it’s almost certain we will get the funding part wrong. That’s not this Labour government’s fault. Nor can you blame its Conservative predecessors. This goes beyond political scapegoats: the real diagnosis is short-sightedness, both in ourselves and in public policy. There is a fundamental economic principle that explains why we act against…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Senior ministers are in urgent negotiations about boosting support for energy intensive British businesses and putting energy costs on a par with France and Germany.Lowering “eye-watering” UK energy costs will be the centrepiece of the government’s industrial strategy, expected early next week. In an effort to close the energy cost gap with key EU rivals, business secretary Jonathan Reynolds wants to go further than existing support for the steel and chemicals industries and launch a scheme that helps a much wider range…