EDITION 866
26 APRIL 2021

As another week slips by, here are 10 things which caught my attention and may have escaped yours. This newsletter is sent to 50,000+ subscribers each Monday at 10am. Please share on social media and forward to your colleagues and friends so they can subscribe, learn and engage. I would be very grateful if you did.

1. How to deal with a manager who is stealing your thunder: It’s easy to fall in the shadow of your manager at work, given that they often have more concrete and established relationships with senior leaders. This can mean your manager becoming the face of the projects you are working on, which will impact your visibility. READ MORE

2. Covid costs push government borrowing to highest since WW2. The cost of measures to support the economy during the coronavirus pandemic has pushed government borrowing to the highest level since the end of World War Two. Government borrowing - the difference between spending and tax income - hit £303.1bn in the year to March 2021, the Office for National Statistics said. Compared to the previous year, borrowing is nearly £250bn higher. Measures such as furlough payments have hit government finances hard. Borrowing hit £28bn in March alone - a record high for that month. BBC

3. From savings boom to spending spree. Consumers globally have racked up $5.4tn in savings on top of what you’d expect had the pandemic not occurred, estimates Moody’s. The credit rating agency predicts a surge in consumer spending once shops, bars and restaurants reopen thanks to “pent-up demand” and “overflowing excess saving” amounting to 6% of global GDP. Household savings peaked in many advanced economies last year for two main reasons: governments provided high levels of income support while economic uncertainty and the unavailability of services led consumers to hold on to their cash. The Times

4. Record food parcel demand. In stark contrast to #3 above, a record 2.5m food parcels were handed out by the UK’s largest food bank charity during the first year of the pandemic. The Trussell Trust said low-income families have experienced “historic” levels of need. It added that while its own outlets had experienced a 33% increase in the number of food parcels they distributed, this was a fraction of the total food aid handed out by thousands of other charities, schools and councils. Daily Mail

5. Getting ready for the inevitable questions. If you're getting ready for a job interview, be prepared to get some COVID-related questions. Recruiters are focusing, now more than ever, on how job candidates handled work (or being out of work) during the pandemic. They're also asking about workers' experiences in remote-work settings. Given this unprecedented past year, interviewees should be prepared to handle more unique questions than they have in the past. Here are three questions you should be prepared to answer: [1] How did your company communicate and manage employees during COVID? [2] What do you do differently now? [3] What makes you excited to get up in the morning? Fast Company

6. Biden to visit UK in June. Joe Biden will make his first overseas trip as president to the UK, attending the G7 summit in Cornwall in June. However, this “relies in part on luck” because the UK is hosting the G7 during Biden’s inaugural year. Biden and his foreign policy team have been sceptical about Boris Johnson who they see as being closely allied with Donald Trump. The Guardian

7. Full time for the European Super League. A YouGov poll reported that 79% of UK football fans opposed plans for a new European Super League (ESL) in football, while 14% backed them. 75% said they would not be interested in watching an ESL match. 89% felt that the move was motivated by financial gain. In the biggest whirlwind in recent sporting history, we watched as the plans were announced, discussed, raged against and finally cancelled. All in the space of just two days. You might've brewed a cup of tea to watch the news about the football league unfold. And you were probably still pouring from the same carton of milk for your celebratory cuppa once it was all cancelled. BBC

8. Staggering statistics. The Office for National Statistics reported that in the year to March, 811,000 jobs were lost in the UK. The under-35s accounted for 80% of those lost jobs. Greenpeace research as reported in The Guardian revealed that British supermarkets sold 1.58 billion “bags for life” in 2019, or 57 per household. Editor

9. Quote of the week. Amid mounting allegations of sleaze, a departing minister describing his government as a “cesspit” is the last thing Boris Johnson needed. Johnny Mercer, the ex-veterans minister who quit on Tuesday, said the government is “the most distrustful, awful environment I’ve ever worked in”. “Almost nobody tells the truth is what I’ve worked out over the last 36 hours”, he added. The Times

10. The bottom line. The average cost of a pint of beer in London is £5.33, an increase of 3% on last year, according to a comparison website. That is £2.26 more than the average in Perth, Scotland, and double the £2.45 global average, but much less than the £9.93 cost of a pint in Dubai. Metro