The latest on the coming cost of living crunch from @emilygosden Household energy bills are forecast to surge by 27 per cent to an average of £2,192 a year from January, leaving consumers facing the highest domestic gas prices yet Renewed conflict between the US and Iran in recent weeks has pushed the wholesale gas price to a fresh four-year high, after months of disruption to shipments of liquefied natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz Ofgem’s energy price cap is due to rise from £1,723 a year now to £2,192 a year in January, according to a new forecast by EDF, one of Britain’s biggest energy suppliers. It could then rise again to £2,389 a year from April All of which will add to questions over whether John Healey's planned intervention on energy bills - increasing the warm home discount for those on benefits - will be enough... thetimes.com/business/energy…

JUST IN: Anthropic warns its AI models could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity" in IPO filing.

Exclusive from @breeallegretti Ministers have been secretly warned that some English reservoirs are at risk of running dry, hitting water supplies to homes in the run-up to Christmas The government’s emergency committee, known as Cobra, is meeting up to twice a week to discuss the situation in the southwest of England and Sussex A secret “reasonable worst-case scenario” was drawn up, anticipating that several reservoirs’ water stocks could fall to 0 per cent — dubbed “day zero” — within weeks Officials warned that without action, supplies to some homes could be affected, along with disruption to the construction of a nuclear power station and operations at a prison Wimbleball reservoir, which supplies more than 400,000 people in Somerset, has 13 per cent of its capacity, while Ardingly, which serves 280,000 customers across West Sussex, is at 17 per cent Ministers battling to avoid reservoirs running dry by Christmas thetimes.com/article/7812e10…

Exclusive: Alan Milburn tells me that smartphone use in schools needs to be restricted with tougher enforcement - such as putting phones in lockers or sealed pouches - to protect a “bedroom generation” of young people who are being deprived of a phone-free youth in which to socialise and develop. More for parents to do at home, too, Milburn says. I spoke to young people under the age of 25 who welcomed Milburn ideas and said they felt “addicted” to their phone and to social media. Parents told me they feel conflicted but, on balance, wish the government would tell them what to do. inews.co.uk/news/major-schoo…

LABOUR IS BACKTRACKING It’s now a top-tier political issue, with @bbclaurak drawing a car-crash performance from @AngelaRayner. Rayner refused to give leaseholders a cast-iron guarantee that the cost of extending a lease or buying out the freehold will come down. Yet that was Labour’s position in opposition. Labour warned that governments could be “lobbied by vested interests” into setting enfranchisement rates “that will be punitive for leaseholders”. And @mtpennycook even tabled amendments to the legislation that became the 2024 Act, seeking to make premiums “as cheap as possible for leaseholders”. Yet for the past two and a half years, the government has been stalling on the commencement of these enfranchisement reforms, already on the statute book, claiming they will only come into force once it has made “fixes” to the 2024 Act through the forthcoming Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill. But Pennycook’s opposition amendments, which sought to establish a “guiding principle” of “reducing premiums for leaseholders to their lowest possible level”, are not being carried forward. Look at the small print of the government consultation on lease extension and freehold buy-out rates that neither Rayner nor Pennycook publicised in the media. It opened on 15 July without an awareness campaign and closed on Wednesday. Once these rates are picked by Ministers, they are locked in for 10 years: what leaseholders must pay. The policy will decide whether leasehold will live or die. Leaseholders were left out in the cold again, while the consultation’s obscure legal and technical jargon favoured freeholders and their lawyer and valuer lobbyists, who will have flooded it with responses. Even our supporters who are economists, have PhDs, or have backgrounds in finance and regulation said they had never encountered a more exclusionary or gamed government consultation in their lives. But buried in that consultation is Labour’s U-turn, in paragraph 14: “… it is not intended to use prescribed rates in and of themselves, as a means of further reducing premiums for leaseholders”. The enfranchisement rates policy is now merely to: “... reduce the potential for dispute and provide certainty for leaseholders, freeholders and professionals as to what to expect from this part of the enfranchisement process.” So much, then, for Labour’s manifesto promise to “act where the Conservatives have failed and finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end”. No wonder Rayner and Pennycook are lashing out. Note the sass when Rayner invokes the Prime Minister, as if @andyburnham saying the right things about leasehold were enough to guarantee that this government will ensure a policy agenda repeatedly captured by vested interests finally favours leaseholders, not the property mafia. All the evidence of the past two and a half years, the excuses, foot-dragging and U-turns, points in the opposite direction. And Rayner acts as if journalists in a democracy need ask no further questions about this vitally important issue. We want to work with the Prime Minister and his Number 10 team to get these reforms right, but we’re being shut out. It doesn’t help when the PM’s housing minister is calling the government’s U-turn “misinformation”. We’ve run this campaign long enough to know that talking is not the same as doing. And leaseholders are rapidly running out of time. Ending leasehold is the test of the Burnham government, whether they want it to be or not.

🚨 IN FULL - HMRC letter to wealthy Britons : "I hope we can build an open and productive working relationship" 🤡

Have you undertaken the 3 day emergency preparations as recommended by our glorious leaders ?

WATCH: Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest (Kehlsteinhaus) damaged beyond repair after massive fire; arson suspected

Back at the Mecca @david99mac

BREAKING: AI AGENTS ARE ACCESSING MAJOR U.S. BANK ACCOUNTS WITHOUT BANK APPROVAL. According to Axios, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley are dealing with unauthorized third party AI agents accessing customer accounts. Some agents reportedly attempted actions beyond what customers instructed them to do. And this comes just one day after another shocking report that hackers reportedly used Claude, Grok and other AI models to automate attacks on over 400 financial targets across Latin America.