Retailers prepare for cautious Christmas as a chill settles on consumers

Shoppers may be preparing to swoop for Black Friday bargains this week, but retailers are expecting a “cautious Christmas”, with households concerned about high energy and housing costs, as well as the potential impact of the recent budget.Trade has been slow in the run-up to the US-inspired promotional spree, which is a week later than last year, as shoppers held off buying presents in the hope they can snap up a bargain.Figures from the e-commerce trade body IMRG, which tracks the performance of more than 200 retailers who trade online, indicate that sales continued to fall this month after a disappointing October – down 11.7% for the week from 10 November, the worst weekly performance of the year so far.Andy Mulcahy, insight director at IMRG, says the latest figures mean online sales are down 2

Passwords are giving way to better security methods – until those are hacked too, that is

We humans are simply too dumb to use passwords. A recent study from password manager NordPass found that “secret” was the most commonly used password in 2024. That was followed by “123456” and “password”. So let’s all give praise that the password is dying.Yes, we know that we should be using 20-letter passwords with weird symbols and numbers, but our minds can’t cope

Labour could be knocked off course as it sticks to £40bn mission | Heather Stewart

‘“Starmer the farmer harmer”: the placards sported by the army of angry landowners who rolled into Westminster last Tuesday sent a clear message to the prime minister, albeit while he was out of the country.By Thursday, the Treasury was hinting at a retreat, albeit a very modest one, on its plans to levy inheritance tax on larger estates, mooting a transitional regime for the oldest farmers, who may not have time to organise their affairs.Meanwhile, the Bank of England governor, Andrew Bailey, fresh from wading into the future of EU relations, said retailers were right to warn of job losses as a result of Rachel Reeves’s £25bn national insurance contributions (NICs) increase. Scores of companies had written to the chancellor to plead their case.The noisy protests and hurried government consultations conjured botched budgets of the past – George Osborne’s omnishambles in 2012, with its pasty and caravan taxes; Gordon Brown’s abolition of the 10p tax rate in 2007, which Alistair Darling later had to paper over

Without the EU, the joke is on us if Trump gets his tariffs | William Keegan

‘As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron.”Those were the words of the great American journalist HL Mencken (in the Baltimore Evening Sun, 26 July 1920). The impending arrival back at the White House surely fulfils his prophecy.Last time Trump arrived in office, he was relatively unprepared

Remember the global financial crisis? Well, high-risk securities are back

When Margot Robbie made a surprise cameo in the 2015 film adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short, she did more to educate the general population about the risks of securitisation than most financial experts.The Australian actor’s brief monologue, notoriously delivered from a champagne bubble bath, explained how banks were bundling up their growing cache of risky sub-prime mortgages into investable bonds, before slicing them up and selling them off for profit.But the proliferation of these mortgage-backed securities in the early 2000s meant there was a catastrophic ripple effect across the global financial system when borrowers started to default on their home loans.The resulting crisis in 2008 triggered a crackdown by regulators. They introduced new rules that could help ensure that asset-backed securities – once allegedly referred to as “crack cocaine of the financial services industry” by the billionaire Guy Hands – would never again spark such a massive meltdown

Jaguar boss defends new ad and rebrand amid ‘vile hatred’ online

The boss of Jaguar has defended the company’s move away from “traditional automotive stereotypes” after a clip of its new advert was met with a barrage of “vile hatred and intolerance” online.This week, Jaguar Land Rover, the luxury UK carmaker owned by India’s Tata Motors, posted a 30-second clip on X featuring models in brightly coloured clothing set against equally vibrant backdrops, without a car or the company’s traditional cat logo.“If we play in the same way that everybody else does, we’ll just get drowned out. So we shouldn’t turn up like an auto brand,” Jaguar’s managing director, Rawdon Glover told the Financial Times of the company’s “copy nothing” campaign.The new ad and rebrand prompted a backlash online, including on X where the platform’s chief executive, Elon Musk, posted: “Do you sell cars?”In response, Glover said, “Yes