00:00I think sometimes in the UK we're guilty of talking ourselves down and being a bit
00:03doomy and gloomy when actually the underlying data look all right. And actually, if we think
00:08back, this number relates to June. And if we think back to June, a number of nice things
00:11happened, didn't they? So we had the nice of weather, we had the start of the World Cup,
00:15and we had the deal out of the Strait of Hormuz. And the other thing was one thing that didn't
00:19happen in June was a big pickup in inflation. And so all those nice things came together
00:23and gave us a decent start to the summer. I mean, looking forward, what do you worry
00:27about the most? Oh, always lots to worry about. I think
00:30the Iran situation, of course, is unresolved. So we do expect inflation to go higher through
00:34the remainder of the year. And that will, of course, chip away at people's real incomes.
00:38There's a bit of budget uncertainty as well, of course, coming towards the 28th of October,
00:42new prime minister, unknown kind of quantity there. So that worries us a little bit. But
00:47I think there is reason to be somewhat positive here. You know, we've had a couple of months
00:51and the surveys suggest that that good data out of June continued into July at least.
00:56I think budget is October 28th. So we finally have a date. But I mean, are companies going
01:02to hold back until they know more about it? Or are you going to see like certain sectors
01:06pull back? Or is the firm focus really on the Strait of Hormuz?
01:09I think the pattern from the last two years is that companies have worried about what might
01:14happen in the budget. They've heard media reports around possible tax rises. They don't
01:18know where those tax rises might come. And therefore, they have sort of stopped a little bit
01:22on the decision making, the business investment, those kind of things, even hiring decisions.
01:26So it is possible that we get a third consecutive year of that happening. And of course, that's
01:31not great for the broader economy.
01:33What do you expect the Bank of England to do?
01:35So we don't think the Bank of England, I mean, some members of the Bank of England's committee
01:38do want to raise rates, but we don't think the majority and we don't think the governor
01:42want to raise rates if they can get away with not doing so. And so they ask at the moment,
01:49and they're telling us this quite explicitly, relying on this so-called Maradona effect,
01:52whereby the market expects them to raise rates, that tightens conditions. And if you've applied
01:56for a mortgage in recent months, you know that without the Bank of England having raised
02:00rates, your mortgage rate has gone up. So it's kind of working and hoping that that is enough
02:06rather than formally raising rates. So we're not expecting that in our base case. However,
02:11if oil is back above 100, if gas is spiking again, you know, things could look quite different.
02:15So the first you see is likely the of higher rates at the University of나� subdia is
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