(Bloomberg) --

The waiting for Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal plan is over and the reckoning has begun. Middle-income households will be hit hardest by a collapse in living standards, stagnating wages and tax increases, the Resolution Foundation research group said. The typical UK household will take a “permanent” 3.7% hit to income. And some Conservatives fear the massive package is a death knell for the ruling party, Alex Wickham writes.

That’s driven some Brits to shoplifting, with an 18% jump in the year to June. Anti-theft devices — once limited to pricey items like alcohol — can now be found on £2 staples including butter, cheese and detergent. Banksy urged his 11.5 million Instagram followers to steal from Guess after accusing the retailer of using his artwork in a display in its Regent Street shop. 

There are plenty of empty storefronts around the country, but nowhere to rent in London, where more than seven people are actively looking for every property listed, SpareRoom data show. But even those higher rents can’t offset the end of cheap money for landlords, according to Jack Sidders.

It’s getting ever so dark earlier and earlier, and it’s a similar story around Europe, where cities from Stockholm to Zurich are cutting back on Christmas lighting to save money. Oxford Street will use two-thirds less energy this year turning on its display for only eight hours a day and switching to LED lighting.

In France, the nuclear industry is falling behind in efforts to get idled reactors running in time to escape blackouts and help Europe cope with the loss of Russian supplies this winter. But efforts to help citizens through the crisis might backfire if assistance is spread too broadly.

England fans are used to disappointment at major football tournaments (well, at least until the women won the Euros this summer). But that might pale in comparison to not being able to get a drink at Qatar’s stadiums after FIFA’s last-minute U-turn. High-end hospitality suites — the preserve of corporations, royals and billionaires — will still be able to serve alcohol to guests during the match. Andrea Felsted argues for Bloomberg Opinion that a World Cup win for England (or Wales of course) could help the struggling UK economy.

Over the next four weeks, the world’s biggest sporting competition will dominate the airwaves, with a bill to match. For an investment of $300 billion, the fossil-fuel-funded festival kicks off on Sunday with hosts Qatar playing against Ecuador. England begins its campaign against Iran on Monday afternoon and Wales plays the US in the evening.

Meantime, the fallout from the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX and Alameda continued to rattle the crypto universe and beyond this week with extraordinary allegations against the company’s former leadership by John J. Ray III, the group’s new chief executive officer and the man who oversaw the liquidation of Enron. “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information,” Ray testified to a bankruptcy court. Other exchanges from Binance to Crypto.com are still seeing jittery users pulling funds despite their efforts to reassure markets about their stability. 

The debacle at Twitter shows no sign of letting up. The mass exodus of employees has left Elon Musk’s platform vulnerable to all sorts of bugs and hacks, so much so that there’s genuine concern that it’s just a matter of time before it succumbs to a major glitch. As one former Facebook engineer noted: “The amount of tribal knowledge lost is simply staggering, possibly unprecedented.”

And finally, our In the City podcast crunches the surprising numbers showing why Paris has overtaken London as home to Europe’s biggest stock market.

Enjoy the rest of your day, and we’ll be back tomorrow with a look-ahead to next week’s excitement.

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