First day of new rail and tube strikes begins in long-running disputes over pay, job security and conditions

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch has warned that the rail dispute could go on“indefinitely,” as the latest strike by thousands of workers caused travel misery for passengers.

He called on the government to end its refusal to get involved in talks over pay, jobs and conditions, as he joined a picket line outside Euston station in London. Only around one in five trains are running across the country because of the walkout by members of the RMT and TSSA unions, on the first day of a fresh round of strikes.

He also warned that Britain could be brought by a standstill by a wave of strikes hitting “every sector of the economy,” but stopped short of predicting a general strike.

Lynch said he fears finding a solution will not be possible because of “political interference” from the Department for Transport and the Treasury.

Andrew Haines, chief executive of Network Rail, said he does not believe workers are “clear on what they’re striking for” and argued that the problem is not with the government but the RMT union. He added that he wanted to put the pay offer to RMT members directly in a referendum.

But Lynch said RMT members were “completely committed to the cause” and would “keep going” in their long-running dispute over pay, jobs and working conditions “until a negotiated settlement is reached”.

Strikes by bus workers across Cheshire, Lancashire, Manchester and Merseyside will be suspended while GMB members vote on a new pay offer, the union and Arriva North West said on Wednesday.

Today, members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union at Network Rail (NR), workers from 14 train operators, Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA) union members at seven companies and Unite members at NR will strike. This will have a knock-on effect on rail services on Friday morning.

Also on Friday, members of the RMT and Unite working on the tube will strike, as well as Unite members on London United bus routes in the capital in a separate dispute over pay.

On Saturday rail workers will strike again, along with London United bus drivers, which will also affect Sunday morning train services.

Our main story today: UK rail passengers have faced another day of disruption, with the union leader Mick Lynch warning the dispute could go on “indefinitely” unless ministers intervene in talks.

Only 20% of train services were running on Thursday due to strike action across Great Britain that involved more than 45,000 rail workers, who are members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) and TSSA unions.

Turkey’s central bank has delivered a surprise interest rate cut to revive economic growth and sustain employment despite sky-high inflation.

The bank slashed its key rate to 13% from 14%, even though inflation rose to nearly 80% in July.

Thank you for reading. Please join us again tomorrow. Take care – JK

The energy industry has united behind a plan to set up a crisis fund that could prevent bills from soaring next year and provide a lifeline for households struggling with the cost of living.

Energy UK, the trade body for the sector, has written to the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, to back calls for a “deficit tariff scheme” to be established as a long-term solution to the energy crisis.

Under the plan, commercial banks would put cash into the state-backed fund, which suppliers could then draw on to freeze customers’ bills at the current price cap, £1,971, for two years.

The cost of the scheme would then be paid back over 10 to 15 years through a surcharge on bills or via taxation. However, the scheme could create a debt pile of up to £50bn, far greater than alternatives including Labour leader Keir Starmer’s £29bn plan to freeze the price cap.

The company that owns the rights to JRR Tolkien’s works, including The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, has been bought by the Swedish gaming firm Embracer Group, which has hinted it could make spin-off films based on popular characters such as Gandalf, Aragorn and Gollum.

Embracer has acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, the holding company that controls the intellectual property rights to films, video games, board games, merchandise, theme parks and stage productions relating to Tolkien’s two most famous literary franchises.

The deal also includes “matching rights” in other Middle-earth-related literary works authorised by the Tolkien Estate and HarperCollins – primarily The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth – which were published after Tolkien’s death in 1973.

US stocks on Wall Street were mostly flat, as investors assessed data showing a decline in weekly jobless claims. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 both dipped 0.2% while the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.3%.

Initial jobless claims fell by 2,000 to 250,000 in the week ended 13 August, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department. Economists polled by the Wall Street Journal had forecast new claims to total 260,000.

Jobless claims edge lower as Fed looks to cool labor market https://t.co/ALmBtkzHVZ

Here’s our full story on the rail strikes:

Rail passengers have faced another day of disruption, with the union leader Mick Lynch warning the dispute could go on “indefinitely” unless ministers intervene in talks.

Only 20% of train services were running on Thursday due to strike action across Great Britain that involved more than 45,000 rail workers, who are members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) and TSSA unions.

Commuters were told to only try to travel if absolutely necessary, with further disruption planned on Friday and the weekend. In London, bus drivers and London Underground workers plan to strike in the coming days.

All in a month’s work: A 20-year-old US university student has made a $110m (£91m) profit with a one-month bet on the meme stock Bed Bath & Beyond.

Jake Freeman and his family bought almost 5m shares in the struggling US homeware retailer at less than $5.50 a share in July for a total outlay of about $25m.

After an almost 500% increase in the shares, sparked by intense chatter about the stock on Reddit message boards, including several posts by Freeman, he sold them for more than $130m – crystallising the vast profit.

They rose as high as $28 on Tuesday, when Freeman is understood to have sold most of his stake. The Bed Bath & Beyond shares, which trade on the ticker BBBY, dropped to $23 on Wednesday, and were down a further 14% in pre-market trading on Thursday to $19.70.

Meme stocks are those that soar independently of the success of a business, thanks to hype on message boards and social media. They rose to prominence early last year when shares in ailing companies such as the US retail firm GameStop soared, partly driven by a campaign to punish hedge funds betting that their value would fall.

The UK has blocked the takeover of an electronic design company by a Hong Kong rival over national security concerns, in the latest sign of growing British anxiety about Chinese investment.

The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, took the decision to prevent Super Orange HK from acquiring Bristol-based Pulsic, saying it was “necessary and proportionate to mitigate the risk to national security”.

It comes under the new National Security and Investment Act, which was introduced at the start of the year.

The government’s move is its latest attempt to curtail Chinese ownership of significant British companies, in particular technology firms or those with strategic importance.

Back to our rail theme. One of the UK’s worst performing train operators has launched an investigation after passengers had to climb over a 7ft (2.1 metre) spiked fence to leave a station when staff locked up early.

The Avanti West Coast train from London was 100 minutes late arriving into Oxenholme on Tuesday night, by which time staff had locked the station and left for the night, passengers said. Some resorted to climbing the fence in scenes described by the local MP, Tim Farron, as “an unacceptable farce”.

Avanti told the MP it took the incident “very seriously” and promised to investigate.

On a lighter note, Rishi Sunak’s habit of slightly awkward interactions with the everyday world has continued after he talked of enjoying McDonald’s breakfast wraps – an item that disappeared from the fast food chain’s UK menu nearly two-and-a-half years ago.

The former chancellor was speaking to ITV’s This Morning programme a day after he was photographed at a branch of McDonald’s, where again he appeared to struggle slightly to make a contactless card payment.

Asked by hosts Rochelle Hughes and Andi Peters what he had eaten, Sunak explained that it had been about 7.30am, and so he ate a bacon roll with ketchup and pancakes.

“If I’m with my daughters then we get the wrap,” the Conservative leadership hopeful continued. “My eldest daughter – if I’m with her, it’s the wrap with hash browns and everything in it. It’s what we do.”

However, a McDonald’s spokesman confirmed that the chain had stopped selling breakfast wraps in March 2020, a move made permanent with an announcement in January this year.

Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan is losing confidence in Sahap Kavcioglu, his latest appointment as central bank governor, and the two have spoken little in recent weeks, Reuters reported, citing three unnamed people.

Erdogan sacked Kavcioglu’s predecessor less than seven months ago, and also fired two others in the last 2 1/2 years.

The rapid turnover has hurt the central bank’s credibility, and has left inflation rocketing and the lira weak. Here is a history of the last four central bank governors, courtesy of Reuters:

Murat Cetinkaya’s early months as governor in 2016 were the last time when Turkey’s inflation rate was within an official target range around 5%. Throughout 2018 he faced rising price pressures and lira depreciation that culminated in a full-blown currency crisis, which was driven by a diplomatic dispute over the release of a US pastor, the threat of US sanctions and emerging worries over Erdogan’s influence over monetary policy.

Analysts said Cetinkaya was too slow to head off the crisis. By the time he raised the key policy interest rate to 24% in September of 2018, the economy was falling into a deep downturn that would bring an end to years of the strong economic growth that had come to define Erdogan’s leadership since 2003. However, He held policy steady and brought about a sharp fall in annual inflation through most of 2019.

Weeks after becoming governor, Murat Uysal - who had been Cetinkaya’s deputy - began an aggressive easing cycle that brought the policy rate as low as 8.25% in 2020, from 24%. The cuts, combined with a boom in state-bank lending, helped ease financial stresses as the coronavirus pandemic hit. But with inflation rebounding, Uysal reversed course and began tightening again in his last few months at the central bank.

A former finance minister and long-time member of Erdogan’s AK Party, Naci Agbal took the reins on an explosive weekend in Turkish politics. A day after the appointment, Albayrak, Erdogan’s son-in-law, announced his resignation as finance minister with a message on Instagram. Reuters later reported that Agbal had met with Erdogan days earlier to warn that the Albayrak-Uysal policy of currency interventions left the central bank’s reserves vulnerable.

Agbal quickly emerged as a respected inflation hawk and his short stint was dominated by aggressive rate hikes that picked up where Uysal left off. The lira rallied in response and some foreign investors edged back into Turkish assets after years of fleeing. Days before he too was fired early on a Saturday, Agbal raised rates one last time to 19%.

An ex-banker, Sahap Kavcioglu’s arrival at the bank was met with a sharp market sell-off in which the lira briefly lost 15% of its value before recovering some losses. His previous columns in a pro-government newspaper showed he shared Erdogan’s unorthodox view that high rates cause inflation, so investors prepared for prompt cuts. Yet as inflation continued to rise and the currency floundered, Kavcioglu held rates steady through the summer.

But with Erdogan publicly promising lower rates and inflation, Kavcioglu pivoted in September. He began giving dovish signals and urged investors to focus on a lower, core inflation measure, paving the way to a surprise 100 basis-point rate cut later that month that sent the lira to new all-time lows.

Partners at the accounting firm PwC UK have been handed more than £1m each for the first time, after a double-digit rise in revenues across the business.

The firm said on Thursday it had increased average payouts for its 995 top-level employees to £920,000 for the 12 months to June, up 12% from a year earlier, after a jump in profits linked in part to higher income from its consulting services.

Partners received another £105,000 each, on average, after sharing in proceeds linked to the disposal of its mobility and immigration business, which helped multinational businesses manage business travel, immigration issues, tax and salaries.