Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 958 i MoneyWeek

Good news (for most MoneyWeek readers at least): gold has just hit a new all-time high of £1,175 in sterling terms (see page 5). Bad news: this is as much about sterling weakness as anything else. Since Boris Johnson became prime minister and promised that we would leave the EU with or without a deal in 90 days’ time, the pound has fallen around 3% against the US dollar. This, in part, represents an information vacuum. “The pound’s weakness also reflects a loss of faith in the Bank of England” Right now pretty much anything could happen in the UK. A no-deal Brexit is possible (though, we still think, unlikely). An Article 50 revocation is possible (albeit very unlikely). A revised deal is possible, as is some kind of fudged…

Scenario 1: Governance-driven restructuring. Shareholder-friendly boards drive a wave of mergers, spin-offs and tie-ups, supported by easy monetary and fiscal policy. Earnings-per-share grow by 8% per year, of which 3% comes from share buybacks. Valuation rises to 15-year average. Year of new stockmarket high: 2026 Scenario 2: Muddle through. Profitability remains near current levels, but policy mistakes hurt top-line growth. No change in valuation. Earnings-per-share grow by 5% per year, with 2% from buybacks. Year of new stockmarket high: 2032 Scenario 3. Back to stagnation. Deflationists and fiscal hawks reverse Abenomics. Nominal GDP sinks while corporations hoard cash. Earnings-per-share decline at 1% per year, with no buybacks. Valuation slides back to 2012 lows. Year of new stockmarket high: 2045 The reality is likely to be far messier than these scenarios…

“We are living in a brave new world,” says Irwin Stelzer in The Sunday Times. Democrats and Republicans have managed to put aside their political differences in order to raise the ceiling on America’s national debt by $320bn. It seems that platitudes about future generations and fiscal probity are a lower priority than re-election battles in 2020. The US federal budget deficit now looks set to top $1trn for the second year in a row, reports Kate Davidson in The Wall Street Journal. Yet low Treasury yields suggest that markets are “unfazed by all the red ink”. That is due to ultra-easy central bank money. The US Federal Reserve has made it clear it will prop up markets with cheaper money, while the European Central Bank is being urged to…

Last year two companies that had always belonged together finally united, says WirtschaftsWoche. Luxottica, an Italian maker of spectacles, merged with Essilor, France’s producer of corrective lenses for glasses. Disputes between the two bosses have marred the last few weeks, but the outlook for the business remains as compelling as ever. Around 4.5 billion people need to have their eyesight corrected, but only two billion have glasses or contact lenses. EssilorLuxottica accounts for 45% of the global market for spectacle lenses; it also makes 25% of the world’s mountings for glasses. The balance sheet is strong, with the debt to Ebitda ratio a mere 0.6. The shares are well worth a look.…

Mike Ashley wanted to save the high street, says Hannah Uttley in the Daily Mail. Yet the Sports Direct mogul’s dreams of returning struggling chains such as House of Fraser to past glories is “turning into a nightmare”. Last week’s biannual results “set a new low” for Ashley’s relations with the City, says Ashley Armstrong in The Times. Management admitted that House of Fraser, which was purchased last year for £90m, may be in “terminal decline”. Ashley lashed out at retail foes, restructuring advisers and the government. He also made a “curious recommendation that chief executives should have drug tests to protect them from blackmail”. To top it all, he revealed that Sports Direct has been served with an unexpected £600m Belgian tax bill, equivalent to more than five times…

The last two months have seen unprecedented protests in Hong Kong, which continue despite the police using “tear gas and rubber bullets” against demonstrators, and standing by while “thugs” attack them, says The Washington Post. Chinese officials this week broke their silence on the protests. They expressed their confidence in Hong Kong’s unpopular leader Carrie Lam, but also adopted an “uncompromising” tone, hinting that Chinese forces could be deployed on the island. Beijing may be using harsh language, but if you read between the lines, it is clear that it is treading carefully, says Antony Dapiran in The Guardian. Indeed, the very fact that it is acknowledging the peaceful nature of the protests and the fact that they have been successful in forcing change is “remarkable”, especially “when such a…

Critics of modern monetary theory (MMT) condemn it as “madness, nonsense, mess, garbage, and even voodoo”, says James Montier, the independent-minded investment strategist at US asset manager GMO, in a research note. But what if they are wrong? In Montier’s view, core MMT principles such as “money is a creature of the state” and that “loans create deposits” mean that this new, controversial branch of economics is doing a better job of providing insights into the functioning of the modern economy than conventional neoclassical economics. And its focus on sensible objectives for fiscal policy, physical constraints on the rate of economic growth and the role of excess private debt in creating economic instability offer “a much more accurate and insightful framework” than the “broken orthodoxy” its opponents are defending. This…

London’s top corporate lawyers paid themselves record amounts last year, says the Financial Times. Heading the list of high-earners for the year to the end of April were partners at Freshfields, whose pay rose by 6% to an average of £1.8m. Equity partners – who receive a share in the firm’s profits – at Linklaters, Clifford Chance and Allen & Overy weren’t far behind, at between £1.6m and £1.7m. Newly qualified lawyers at so-called “magic circle” firms earn starting salaries topping £100,000 as the big five firms compete with US firms in the City, who offer “more generous remuneration packages”, says the FT. A “turf war for legal talent” has broken out in areas such as private equity. Pay has also been pushed up by a rise in requests to…

■ Investors who put money into portfolios run by St James’s Place (SJP), Britain’s largest wealth manager, “could see almost half their profits eroded by the company’s charges over 20 years”, says Ali Hussain in The Sunday Times. A £1m investment placed in SJP’s most popular balanced portfolio that goes on to grow at 6% per year would lose £340,743 (43%) of its gains to charges, according to research by Candid Financial Advice. In comparison, a portfolio with the same gross returns invested in a medium-risk portfolio at Hargreaves Lansdown would lose £203,156 (25.36%) of gains to fees (and some other investment platforms will be significantly cheaper than Hargreaves). Investments with SJP are run by external fund managers, so “in some cases it is possible to invest with the same…

economist.com/graphic-detail Bernie Sanders, a left-wing candidate for the US presidency, says that billionaires get to “elect the candidates of their choice”. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump claimed the system was “rigged” in favour of big business. Is this true? A new paper suggests not, says The Economist. Economists from Columbia and Chicago universities analysed data on Senate votes between 2001 and 2015 and national survey data from polling organisations to find out how often senators voted in line with the opinions of the rich and poor. They found that the rich get what they want from their senators about 60% of the time, the poor 55% of the time. Unfair maybe, but hardly rigged. Partisanship matters more. When rich and poor voters oppose each other on a given issue,…

More small businesses than ever before are switching bank account, encouraged to change provider by increasing competition for their custom and moves to make the process simpler. Almost 18,000 small businesses changed business bank account during the second quarter of the year, according to new figures from Pay UK, the organisation that administers the Current Account Switch Service (Cass), an initiative to make it easier for consumers and small businesses to change bank. That was more than twice as many as in the same period of last year, when only 8,000 businesses changed bank using the service. Pay UK said the increase followed a publicity campaign it ran earlier this year to make more businesses aware they are covered by the Cass, which makes banks responsible for completing account transfers.…

With the seesawing of trade negotiations over the past year, Asia has been hitting headlines for the wrong reasons. However, beyond the trade spats, the region remains the biggest driver of global growth with impressive economic and corporate fundamentals. Look closely and you will also see there is a solid trend of greater capital discipline being displayed by companies across the region, with stronger balance sheets and improving cash positions. These changes are often underappreciated by investors. We look for opportunities in unloved areas of the market. We are overweight in financials, given what we consider to be improved fundamentals at selected banks and insurers, and look to take advantage of valuation weakness where we can find it. We also have a focus on companies with strong competitive advantages and…

There is increasing concern that people aren’t saving enough for their retirement. It would seem a good idea, therefore, to encourage the habit of saving and investing at an early age. But there are few books available to inform and inspire children and young adults. John Lee, famous for being Britain’s first Isa millionaire, aims to change that. His book explains how the stockmarket works to children, teenagers and first-time investors. Yummi Yoghurt tells the story of the flotation of a fictional yoghurt company, from the perspective of both the company and of potential investors. As the story progresses we learn how the stockmarket works and about some basic concepts such as price/earnings ratios and dividend yields. For those interested in taking things further, Lee concludes the book with his…

There may be only a remnant of fiscal conservatives left in the US Congress. But those few still there must have felt a sharp blade in their backs last Tuesday when the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reached a tentative two-year budget deal that would raise spending limits by $320bn and suspend the federal debt ceiling until after the 2020 presidential election. The deal was such an abject surrender, such a cowardly rejection of conservative principles, it makes one wonder, why did the Republicans agree to such a thing? Republicans themselves didn’t seem to know. It’s a “compromise”, said Senator David Perdue. “No comment,” said Mitt Romney, a former presidential candidate. But this is no longer the party of fiscal conservatism. Today, it’s the party of Donald Trump,…

HM Revenue & Customs could force several high earners, including some sports stars and actors, to repay £500m after an investment scheme was ruled to have used artificial losses to generate tax relief, reports The Times. A scheme run by Ingenious Media used limited liability partnerships to invest in films, raising 30% from investors and 70% from loans “that only existed on paper”. Most of the investment was written off in the first year and the participants, who include David Beckham and Sacha Baron Cohen (pictured), claimed tax relief equal to the amount they had invested. Ingenious Media said it offered “legitimate investment in the film and games industry”, says The Times. But while not illegal – and “none of those named [are] guilty of any wrongdoing” – the scheme…

Persistently low inflation in Europe has prompted Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), to pledge an “ample degree of monetary accommodation”. Expect interest rates to fall further into negative territory and a new round of asset purchases in the fourth quarter, say Daniele Antonucci and Joao Almeida of Morgan Stanley. The ECB has already purchased more than €2trn in government bonds with printed money. Yet with European bond yields hitting record lows and the supply of German bunds drying up, some are proposing bolder measures. Larry Fink, the chief executive of asset manager BlackRock, has called on the ECB to buy European stocks with newly created cash. Injecting money into the system in this way has been tried before: the Bank of Japan now owns 75% of…

Palladium, the silvery-white metal 30 times rarer than gold and used in catalytic converters, dentistry, electronics and jewellery, has gained 70% in a year. It now trades at about $1,530 per ounce. The rally has been driven by “three key pillars”, writes Ross Strachan of Capital Economics. Firstly, a “large structural market deficit” has been eroding stockpiles. “Second, tightening automotive emissions legislation in China and Europe” is increasing demand. These two factors have fuelled the third – rising demand from investors, as shown by activity in the futures market. Yet “the scale and speed of the price rise has been overdone” and any escalation in the US-China trade could spell an end to the rally.…

Kunlun Group, the Chinese owner of Grindr, has revived plans to float the popular gay dating app after the US dropped its opposition. A few months ago the Chinese gaming company agreed to a request from the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to sell the US-based app by June 2020 because America was concerned about the personal data of millions of American users. That put a planned flotation on hold. Kunlun has said it will close Grindr’s China operations, and no data will be sent there. The listing will be on a stock exchange outside China. Kunlun acquired a 60% stake in Grindr in 2016 for $93m before buying the rest of the company.…

The UK stockmarket accounts for less than 5% of shares listed around the world, yet the London-listed stocks still dominate most British investors’ portfolios. The typical wealth manager keeps around half their clients’ equity holdings in the UK, while smaller investors are likely to show an even greater home bias. The standard argument for investing abroad is to broaden your opportunities. Why limit yourself to investing in the tiny universe of major British tech companies, for example, when you could buy Apple, Alphabet or Microsoft in the US? However, for many investors, that justification isn’t especially compelling. The UK market has enough opportunities, as far as they are concerned, that the higher costs and additional complexity of dealing overseas doesn’t seem worthwhile. “An investor who only buys British is poorer…

The London Stock Exchange has come a long way from the days when pin-striped men would stand around trading equities. It doesn’t have a real trading floor any more, and nobody has to wear a suit. And if its latest deal goes through it won’t even be mainly in the business of trading equities either. With its plans for a $27bn merger with data group Refinitiv, the LSE will become one of the largest financial and trading data companies in the world. A bold move… Refinitiv was last year spun out of Reuters, the news agency that has turned itself into one of the largest providers of news, data and analytics to the financial-services industry. Jointly owned by Thomson Reuters and the private-equity firm Blackstone, it has built up a…

The annual Barclays Equity Gilt study shows that over the very long term equities outperform government bonds by nearly 4% per annum. This gap, known as the equity-risk premium, compensates equity investors for the uncertainty and risk of owning equities rather than bonds, whose interest payments and redemption are guaranteed. Most investors still think that it’s worth sacrificing some returns and keeping part of their portfolio in bonds, in order to benefit from the lower volatility of a balanced equity-bond portfolio compared with an all-equity one. And in practice, for more than 40 years the sacrifice was negligible: yields on long-dated UK gilts fell from nearly 20% in 1975 to the current 1.4% (meaning that bond prices – which move inversely to yields – rose strongly and so bond portfolios…

The new corporate raiders Jerry Useem The Atlantic Stock buybacks sound innocuous, but they are anything but, says Jerry Useem. They are a way of raiding corporate assets “at the expense of employees, investors and taxpayers”. Before the 1980s, corporations rarely repurchased shares of their own stock. Over the past nine years, they have spent more money on their own stocks ($3.8trn) than every other type of investor combined. Corporations say the practice is an “efficient way to return money to shareholders”: by reducing the number of shares outstanding in the market, buybacks lift the price of remaining shares. However, the spike is “often short-lived”. Five years on, these firms tend to perform worse. The shareholders who really benefit are managers. Take Craig Menear, chairman and CEO of Home Depot,…

bloomberg.com Last week Spain failed to form a government, says Leonid Bershidsky. Spain joins the growing ranks of countries run for extended periods by technocrats rather than politicians – and it appears to be doing just fine. Ever since the 2015 general election, Spain has had weak minority and caretaker governments. In that time, unemployment fell from 21% to less than 15%, the economy grew by more than 2.5% a year, and the ten-year government bond yield went from 1.8% to about 0.4%. The story is similar in a number of other developed nations. This ability to carry on regardless without elected governments, or with dysfunctional ones, is down to the strength of these nations’ institutions. Governments’ job is to make bold decisions and effect policy change. But such change…

A night on the sofa watching television used to be a straightforward affair. With just a few channels, the choice was strictly limited and often rubbish – maybe a soap, a lifestyle show, or a new BBC or ITV drama. Nowadays, just choosing what to watch can be an exhausting process in itself. Hours can pass by flicking between multiple channels provided by pay-TV (satellite or cable) companies, streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Now TV (which deliver their programmes over the internet), or catch-up services such as BBC iPlayer or All 4. The familiar complaint now is that there’s just too much good stuff on telly, and that it is a struggle for many viewers to keep up with the latest must-see dramas such as Killing Eve, Chernobyl,…

• What does your business do? Bippit is modernising the financial-planning industry. You simply connect an existing account to Bippit’s mobile app, decide what goals in life matter the most and we take the guesswork out of achieving them. • What’s been your greatest achievement? Hitting 1,000 people on our waiting list without any marketing was fantastic, but the most significant achievement was earlier this year, when we closed our first round of funding. Fundraising can be a challenge early on, when all you have to pitch are your ideas and some screenshots, but we were very fortunate to secure capital, along with excellent mentorship, from a select group of high-profile angel investors who liked what we were doing. • What has been your biggest challenge? Finding the right co-founder…

It’s said that when things go wrong at highly rated companies investors can be unforgiving. Except, it would seem, if the firm in question is Boeing (NYSE: BA), the world’s largest aerospace group. It has lost two of its 737 Max aircraft in fatal crashes and the model is now grounded indefinitely. It can’t deliver a big backlog of orders. Yet the shares are still up 7% this year and 13% above December’s lows. Such share-price composure in a major crisis suggests a belief – for now at least – that Boeing will turn things around and recover. To achieve this, it needs to incorporate modifications to the 737 Max sought by regulators and get it approved for commercial flight sooner rather than later. It must then present a timetable…

Future (LSE: FUTR) is a publishing company that now primarily operates online – digital media accounts for 70% of revenue. The firm was founded in 1985 and listed on the stockmarket in 1999. Group revenue grew by 103% in the six months to the end of March, driven in large part by acquisitions in the US, where revenue was up by 430%. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) rose by 169% to £23.7m, and the board expects full-year performance to be ahead of expectations. The share price has risen by 155% in the last 12 months.…

Jordan Belfort (pictured), born in New York in 1962, ran a business selling ice-cream and seafood door-to-door before his firm went bankrupt. He then briefly became a stockbroker with Wall Street firm LF Rothschild, but was fired in the aftermath of the 1987 crash, which caused the bank to collapse. Belfort then joined a “penny stock” firm, Investors Center, before founding Stratton Oakmont, initially as a franchise of Stratton Securities, though he would later buy out the parent firm. During the 1990s Belfort’s firm became extremely successful, employing 1,000 people and selling $1bn worth of shares. What was the scam? Stratton Oakmont followed the traditional “boiler room” model of using high-pressure sales techniques to sell shares (which Stratton owned) in dubious companies to investors. In many cases, Stratton would lure…

¥1.35trn The official cost of hosting the Olympics in Tokyo next year. Anti-Games campaigners Hangorin No Kai (No Olympics 2020) fear costs could spiral out of control, disadvantage the homeless, make rents unaffordable and force out independent businesses. $5.6bn How much aircraft-maker Boeing has set aside to compensate airlines that have had to ground their Boeing 737 Max passenger aeroplanes. American Airlines has reduced its profit estimate for this year by $400m because of the concerns over the jets’ air-worthiness. £9,000 The value of mobile phones and laptops that are lost or stolen from the BBC every month on average, according to The Times, based on freedom of information requests. The corporation said that all significant thefts were reported to the police. $95,000 How much Father Oscar Diaz, a Catholic…

“Permanently including quantitative easing (QE) in central banks’ standard toolkit has transformed global finance and capitalism in ways not comprehensible at this juncture. The bond ‘vigilantes’ are extinct. This has provided central banks unprecedented latitude to discard convention and follow their every whim. It has also conveniently removed a major risk (spike in yields) for equities. But is has also opened the fiscal floodgates, where monetary policies ensure the accommodation of huge deficit spending at [very] low borrowing costs. QE and the resulting death of the vigilantes have also empowered the strongman leader to subvert central bank independence… Threatening... the head of a central bank for not cutting rates... is a non-issue for today’s bond market. Ditto massive deficits… No checks and balances. Markets have lost the capacity to self-adjust…

Three to buy ConvaTec The Sunday Times This medical-equipment maker has suffered “a bruising run” in recent years. Two profit warnings, supply-chain disruption and the sudden departure of the chief executive have seen the firm relegated from the FTSE 100. Yet there are signs that a turnaround plan is beginning to work. In the long term, the world’s ageing population means growing demand for the catheters and ostomy care that ConvaTec provides. On 14.2 times forward earnings the shares trade at a significant discount to their peers. 150p Mpac The Mail on Sunday This Coventry-based engineering specialist makes machines that pack everything from “Glenfiddich whisky to ice cream”. It also designed the device that “allows PG Tips to make its pyramid teabags”. Clients include drink and drugs giants such as…

• Takeaway.com boss Jitse Groen plans to tuck in to Just Eat, says Alistair Osborne in The Times. Shares in the British online food platform surged by 23% on news that Groen’s Dutch operation is planning a £10bn all-share merger. Groen is billed as “the best operator” in the sector by Barclays. Just Eat’s shares have jumped as high as 780p since the plan was revealed, even though the current deal only offers an implied price of 731p per share. Investors reckon Just Eat can rely on the likes of Uber Eats and Deliveroo to bid up the price.Takeaway.com’s offer “could be just the start of the meal”. • British Gas owner Centrica is an “unwieldly beast”, says George Hay on Breakingviews. Now it has turned on its own boss.…

Diversification is the process of dividing your wealth between different investments to avoid being too reliant on any single one doing well. In plain English, it’s all about making sure you don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. The purpose of diversification is to reduce both your day-to-day risk (as measured by the volatility of your portfolio) and your potential for suffering uncommon but catastrophic losses, while maintaining a decent level of return. For example, if you own just one stock, then your portfolio is entirely dependent on the fortunes of that one company. If you own 15, then even if one or two perform badly, or go bust, then the others in your portfolio should help to compensate for the loss. While there’s no ideal level of shares…

• Former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg (pictured) claimed £112,882 of public money last year for “expenses for duties relating to public roles”, reports the Daily Express – despite earning a reputed £1m from his job at Facebook. Former prime ministers are entitled to claim up to £115,000 a year to cover office costs. Clegg, who says this is the last year he will claim for, lobbied for the perk to be extended to deputy PMs. David Cameron claimed £110,413, Tony Blair £115,000, Gordon Brown £114,057, and John Major £114,935. • Scottish video-game developer Rockstar North, which makes the phenomenally successful Grand Theft Auto series of games, has pocketed £42.3m in public subsidy in the last three years, reports The Scotsman. Yet the firm paid no corporation tax for a…

More than 50 underperforming British companies, including Centrica (see page 7), Kingfisher, Next, AA and William Hill, may come under attack from activist investors who will demand that they restructure their businesses or put themselves up for sale, says The Times, citing research by stockbroker Canaccord Genuity. Shareholder activism is on the rise in the rest of Europe following the arrival of US investors such as hedge fund Elliott Management and the establishment of home-grown activist funds such as Crystal Amber. And London-listed firms are now especially vulnerable to pressure, due to the UK stockmarket’s weak overall returns since the Brexit vote. Other potential targets include ASOS, IMI, Travis Perkins and TP ICAP.…

“I have to take full responsibility. I did believe I could turn it round. I put in £3m, another £3m, then another £3m, however the numbers went. But there was no good news.” Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver (pictured) on the lightning-quick descent of his restaurant chain into bankruptcy once its reputation had soured, quoted in The Times “Be accountable and loyal. Don’t pretend or pander. I was ambitious and I have clawed my way to the top, but I was clawing walls, not faces.” Celebrity agent and author Melanie Blake, quoted in Metro “The stockmarket is the only market where things go on sale and all the customers run out of the store.” US financial analyst and founder of the Pragmatic Capitalism blog Cullen Roche, quoted on Twitter “Whenever I…

bbc.com/worklife “Laughter is the best medicine,” says David Brent, the boss in TV sitcom The Office, before bursting into a solo manic cackle that seems to go on forever. The whole room stares back in lethal silence. Cringeworthy as he may be, Brent has a point, says Zaria Gorvett. He was inadvertently describing what management experts are now calling “microbreaks” – any brief activity that helps to break up the monotony of the working day. Though short, studies have shown that such breaks improve workers’ ability to concentrate, improve productivity, change in a positive way how they see their jobs and can help them avoid injuries – for example, those associated with sitting down all day, putting strain on the neck and back. Just taking time out to watch a…

Whether the weather is too hot, too cold, too wet, or too windy, there is always an excuse for train delays. Last week soaring temperatures were blamed for warped rails and sagging cables that caused delays and cancellations nationwide. Yet few will have bothered to seek compensation. A report by Transport Focus has revealed that just 35% of us use the Delay Repay system to claim a refund when our train is delayed. “Some people do not claim because they are not aware they are entitled to it, while others believe it is not worth the effort,” says Sophie Barnes in The Daily Telegraph. Last year more than eight million journeys were delayed by at least 29 minutes, says consumers’ rights group Which. But £100m of compensation went unclaimed. Under…

Firms seeking funding for late-stage innovation projects should consider applying for a new £10m fund. The government has relaunched the Innovation Loans scheme, first piloted last year, which will provide loans from £100,000 to £1m to micro, small and medium-sized businesses to help them commercialise ideas they have developed. A further £15m in loans will also be made available over the period to the end of 2020. Innovate UK (innovateuk.ukri.org), the government-backed agency running the project, says applications will be judged on the basis of the commercial potential of the project, with a particular focus on innovation likely to result in an increase in productivity. To be eligible, businesses must have fewer than 250 employees, turnover of less than €50m and a balance sheet worth less than €43m. The loans…

REA Holdings (LSE: RE) operates palm-oil plantations in the East Kalimantan province of Indonesia. It harvested a record crop in 2018, but financial performance was disappointing. Revenues rose by just 5.3%, with a fall in the price of palm oil – down to a ten-year low – offsetting production gains, while operating costs rose. REA made a pretax loss of $5.5m and is in discussions with lenders to refinance its $189.5m of debt. The board decided in June to defer paying a dividend until palm-oil prices improve. The share price has fallen by 67% in the last year.…

Matthew Jukes is a winner of the International Wine & Spirit Competition’s Communicator of the Year (matthewjukes.com). While researching a piece on urban wineries for my monthly column in elite English viticulture journal Vineyard, I found myself in one of the hippest, smallest and most inviting wineries I have ever visited. Aussie winemaker Alex Hurley conducted a winery tour (which took 14 seconds) and then we sat in what every other winery calls the cellar door or visitor centre, but in this cool company looks more like a Byronic dining room, to taste the range. In the past, this Fulham-based winery brought grapes in from as far afield as Calatayud and Limoux to make superb wines in our capital – 2015 Cabot Sq (£15) is a particularly toothsome biodynamic cabernet…

The industrial revolution is correctly recognised as a time of great progress, but there were also many losers – the craftsmen whose skills, and even occupations, were made redundant by the rise of mass production, to take an obvious example. In this book, economic historian Carl Benedikt Frey argues that history is about to repeat itself. Technological progress is “causing a great crisis of status, security and trust in institutions”, as John Harris puts it in The Guardian. In turn, this is leading to an “aggressive nostalgia and an aversion to thinking about the future” that threatens to squander the genuine benefits of these changes. Frey’s book traces the links between the spread of automation and the rise of populism, says John Thornhill in the Financial Times. Indeed, Frey believes…

• The BBC’s plan to axe free TV licences for the elderly is a betrayal, says Helen Daly in the Daily Express. Given that television can be a “lifeline” for the over-75s, it’s cruel to cut them off from their “access to the wider world through the broadcaster’s impeccable output”. Worse still, as BBC dramas, such as Killing Eve, starring Sandra Oh (pictured), become ever more popular among younger audiences, the elderly risk being “left out of the national conversation”. The pay rises handed to the Beeb’s top stars add insult to injury and risk denying to society’s “most vulnerable” a service that, while “not essential, has become a necessity… I am a supporter of the broadcaster – but denying those aged 75-plus the dramas and documentaries, the news and…