EDITION 945
14 NOVEMBER 2022

There is no escaping it: too much news is bad for you. It should come with a government health warning: “This intellectual diet is fine taken in small doses, and preferably in weekly instalments, via a well-balanced newsletter, such as 10 things from William Montgomery."

So, as another week slips by, here are 10 things which caught my attention and may have escaped yours. Please feel free to share on social media and forward to your colleagues and friends so they can also subscribe, learn and engage. I would be very grateful if you did.

William Montgomery
Editor and CEO of TEN

1. How to rally the troops in a time of crisis. As a leader, what you say and how you say it matters - especially when your organisation is facing a challenge. In times like these, motivation is not about scaring employees into working harder with threats and blame but inspiring them to work together - unified in purpose and determined to succeed. READ MORE >>

2. Government ‘thinks unthinkable’ on tax. The government is considering increasing council tax and pulling more people into the top rate of income tax as ministers “think the unthinkable” ahead of next week’s budget. Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt may allow local authorities to raise more in council tax by tearing up a requirement to hold a referendum if they are increasing it by more than 2.99%. They may also reduce the threshold at which people start to pay the 45p rate of income tax, which is currently paid by those earning more than £150,000.The government is considering increasing council tax and pulling more people into the top rate of income tax as ministers “think the unthinkable” ahead of next week’s budget. Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt may allow local authorities to raise more in council tax by tearing up a requirement to hold a referendum if they are increasing it by more than 2.99%. They may also reduce the threshold at which people start to pay the 45p rate of income tax, which is currently paid by those earning more than £150,000. The Times

3. UK may struggle to fill ‘jobs of the future’. The UK could struggle to fill jobs of the future, which could include metaverse engineers, AI sports coaches and tech fashion designers, if computer science and artificial intelligence skills aren't taught in schools, research suggests. According to a YouGov survey commissioned by Amazon, 72% of secondary school teachers are in favour of making an active effort to boost education around AI and computer science. Without it, 75% say they fear a long-term skill gap. However, 64% of STEM teachers said they had limited access to computer science resources – and this figure rose to 79% when focused on AI. Sky News

4. Pay checks not enough to build wealth. It has become increasingly harder for salaried workers to get "rich" without inheriting wealth over the past decade, according to a study by Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). While in 2008, it would have taken 10 years of typical full-time gross earnings to leap from the middle to the top wealth bracket in the UK, by 2018, this rose to 16 years. Meanwhile, wealth levels have increased rapidly compared to wages in the past decade, as those who own houses, shares and other financial assets have seen their value soar. The result, the report says, has been rising wealth inequality, with working younger people growing up with lower living standards than their predecessors. IFS

5. Truss ‘cost the UK £30bn’. Liz Truss’s ill-fated mini-budget cost the country £30bn, said the independent Resolution Foundation. Calculating that Truss was responsible for half of the fiscal hole which the Treasury puts at £60bn, the thinktank said the figure would have been far higher without the U-turns taken by Hunt on the Truss plans. The estimates of the cost of “Trussonomics” will “intensify a bitter blame game now being played out at the top of the Tory party”. The Observer 

6. New study finds class pay gap. Working-class people earn several thousands of pounds a year less on average for doing the same jobs as middle-class peers, according to a major study of the class pay gap. The Social Mobility Foundation found that professionals from working-class backgrounds earn £6,718 less on average, while women and most ethnic minorities face double discrimination: working-class professional women earn £9,450 less than men, while working-class Bangladeshi professionals earn £10,432 less than white counterparts in the same jobs. The Guardian

7. Food bank use rockets. Almost 1.3m emergency parcels were given out in just six months to September – up by a third in a year – with 500,000 going to children. During the same period, 320,000 people were forced to resort to a food bank for the first time, reported the Trussell Trust, as demand for packages outstripped the supply of donations for the first time. The charity, which operates more than 50% of Britain’s 2,600 food banks, gave out 2,814 parcels when it began in 2006 but by the year to April 2022, the figure had reached 2.1 million. Liverpool Echo

8. Leap forward in cancer treatment. Sixteen people with untreatable lung, colon and breast cancer have had their immune system redesigned to attack their own tumours. Although it's too early to assess the therapy's effectiveness, the experimental study has been described as a "leap forward" and a "powerful" demonstration of such technology. The trial was devised to study the technology's safety and feasibility. The findings show that the disease continued to worsen in 11 patients but stabilised in the other five. BBC

9. Vaping linked to heart damage. People who vape regularly experience worrying changes in “heart and blood-vessel function”, researchers have warned. E-cigarettes are widely seen as a healthier alternative to traditional cigarettes, but there is a growing body of evidence that they are far from harmless. One recent study, presented to the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, found that as with smoking, vaping puts the body into “flight or fight” mode, increasing heart rate and blood pressure. A second study, by the same team at the University of Wisconsin, found that vapers performed poorly on treadmill exercises that are designed to predict heart-disease risk, compared with people who did not use any nicotine products. This was true even for people who were relatively young and had only a short history of vaping. Sky News

10. The bottom line. One in six residents of England and Wales – ten million people – were born outside the UK, up from 7.5 million in 2011, according to the 2021 census. In London, four in ten residents were born abroad, and around one in five had a non-UK passport. Office for National Statistics