Cost of Driving Crisis?

27:48Is this going to change, do you think? As somebody who is a professor of international politics, will this change how this war progresses in a different way to how maybe other American movements into the Middle East in years gone by have been done? Well, potentially. And I think I just need to stress that your earlier guest pointed out that this is fundamentally about people. This is about the people in Iran, of course, who are suffering enduring hardships. People in Israel, people across the Gulf, people in Lebanon, for that matter, and now people in the UK. This is fundamentally affecting people's lives in so many different ways.

28:28So I just wanted to really hammer home that point. I think this is really fundamentally about the impact on people. And I think with regard to your question, there's a really interesting set of things happening with regard to the UK's relationship with the US here. And I think in previous US military interventions, military conflicts in the Middle East, the UK would be side by side with the United States. And what we're starting to see with Sakia Starmer right now is a divergence from Washington in the face of some quite strong rhetoric and rhetorical rebukes from Donald Trump about Rolls Royces and allies and the like.

29:12But I think the UK is trying to distance itself from this intervention in the hope that it can try and de-escalate things. And that by not sending further ships or indeed troops or planes for that matter to the region, it would hopefully contribute to shifting the atmosphere slightly away from a global sort of coalition against Iran. of the sort that we saw in 2003 against Iraq or 2001 against Afghanistan, for that matter. And I think that's maybe one of the shifts that we're starting to see here in the hope that it could try and bring about an end to this. Simon, appreciate your time this morning.

29:55Simon Mabon there from Lancaster University, Professor of International Politics. More to come from Darmony and Gervais and yourselves as well. Keep those messages coming. Starmer has insulted all home heating oil users, says one person who's messaged us. By offering us£30 help, 500 litres cost almost£1 ,000. We can't afford heating now. Another saying, your man in Oxford, as we were speaking to Darren a little bit earlier about his heating oil situation, one has to pay up for green energy security. We removed oil four years ago. We're run on solar. People want an ASHP, a heat pump, I'm guessing that is.

30:32People want solutions without paying and don't care about the environmental impacts of fuel oil. pay up and a few getting in touch with a similar tone to brendan uh who's been in touch in newark saying the uk needs to be more independent we have our own natural oil gas coal and potential for fracking i know this can take years many years to implement and re-implement but surely the uk could negotiate a forward deal with norway now for oil and repay norway when the uk stocks come into fruition and dave in birmingham saying it's times like these we realize our lack of self-sufficiency. We need to produce more at home.

31:0785058, we've had plenty messages about suits as well as we get into John Lewis seeing an increase in suit sales. Interesting ties on the up as well. Are you seeing that at all? 85058, let me know your thoughts. The best B2B marketing gets wasted on the wrong people. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, including 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, skills, company revenue, so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience.

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33:03Wake Up To Money with Sean Farrington. Good morning. Wake Up To Money on BBC Five Live. Thank you for all of your messages about the world of suits. We're going to be talking about John Lewis a little later, seeing increased interest and purchases in suits and in ties as well. Let me know your thinking there. Somebody's been in touch saying, Ben in Woking says, I'm a teacher at an independent school. We're required to wear a shirt and tie. I've bought five suits from Vinted for the cost of one or two new ones. All are top end, M &S, TM Loon, et cetera. None cost more than 30 pounds. Why buy new from a shop?

33:43Ben, that is great work. Well done. Well done just finding one that fits as well. Be honest, Ben. Is there a little bit of a compromise you're having to make there with one bought secondhand a little bit and you're looking at prices as well as you go? Are you willing to have that slightly longer arm or little baggier shoulders than you would if you were spending ages traipsing the high street to try and find one off the shelf that fit pretty well? I'm interested in that process as well as we talk more about suits later. A bit of a shout out for Will's chat with Mark Neill, founder and chief executive of Mountain Warehouse, the outdoor clothing company.

34:20If you missed it, go and have a listen. It's a big boss interview on BBC Sounds. Great interview where Mark Neill talking about the disruption to global shipping routes, already pushing up costs for businesses importing goods from Asia and that tariff volatility complicating business planning as well. here today on Wake Up To Money. We're having a look at the world of tech. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is going to declare a little bit later what she believes are three key avenues for growth. She's giving what's known as the Mace Lecture in the City of London today. She's going to announce an additional billion pounds in funding for quantum computing.

34:56This is a new type of way of doing computing altogether that we've discussed on Wake Up To Money in the past where it can be that these new quantum computers, once they're fully up and running, can have gazillions times the power of even the world's biggest supercomputers that we have at the moment that are running the old school way of doing computing. And the UK is attempting to be clearly one of the leaders with this, particularly when we hear the words of the likes of Rachel Reeves, plans for stronger alignment with the EU, two regional growth corridors, as well as headlines in the papers today about the Oxford-Cambridge corridor and Rachel Reeves wanting to do more to get planning approved on the links between it.

35:44The BBC's economics editor Faisal Inslam has been speaking to the Chancellor at the National Quantum Computing Centre in Oxfordshire. He asked her about UK tech firms moving to the United States. We want that pattern to end and we want what we are producing in our amazing universities around the UK to actually stay in the UK, to keep that intellectual property in the UK, to keep those jobs here, because we know that if you can do that, then you can create more and more jobs here. And in the next few years, there's an opportunity to create around 100 ,000 jobs just in quantum, but that can only happen if we keep those businesses here.

36:22And that is why I so believe in an active and strategic state, working with businesses, working with universities, working with working people to shape the economy, not just let the market determine our future. So that was Rachel Reeves there, who was speaking to Faisal Islam. Dominique, tech advances, whether it's quantum computing leading in AI, we hear these words from the government quite a lot. Do you see it? You know, you're a training provider. Many businesses will be looking to use the latest in technology. Are we leading the way? do you know what that's such a difficult question it's such a broad question as well sean because basically i think that in many cases the uk is positioned really well to lead the way but the problem we've got here right now in the uk is not our access to ai and tech um i think it's how can we deploy ai and tech it's great having access to the funding it's great having access to the ideas and the thought processes and access to quantum computing and systems like that.

37:30But what we've really got here is a fundamental contradiction. We're accelerating the AI adoption, but we're weakening the management and skills infrastructure that we need to deliver it. There was an announcement yesterday where the government had defunded a lot of management qualifications, and that's going to impact SMEs. SMEs employ around 60 % of the UK workforce and account for 99 % of all UK businesses. So we're the people that are going to be deploying AI, yet the managers and people that we want to train that can actually take that AI deployment forward are not going to have access to the skills and the training qualifications to help them deploy that AI.

38:11It just doesn't link up. So for all the talk, it might not have the ripple effect of being actually implemented. I mean, Gervais, that means getting to the crux of one of the concerns here when people talk about the valuations of these massive tech companies. And we hear announcements of billions of pounds invested here, there and everywhere. Is this actually going to reap some rewards for the economy? If you take the kind of long term trends which are related to globalization, globalization has all been about bigness. you know, big companies, big stock markets like the US and all the rest of it.

38:50One of the features about nationalism, which is becoming more predominant in the political sphere, is that this is breaking up all that bigness. And actually, the UK excels relative to other global economies in having a much more vibrant and much more wide-ranging universe of small quota companies, and indeed many SMEs, as we just heard from Darmony. So actually, we've got the right foundations here. We really need to actually build upon smallness going forward. Yes, I absolutely agree that quantum computing is just extraordinary. It's only used in a narrow range of applications. You can't replace NVIDIA chips with quantum computing.

39:24But the opportunity is for us actually to work with our smallness, which is, I think, the feature which is going to be most favourably helped by binationalism, and actually lead the world actually in this area. Back to suits. Nathan in Aberdeen's been in touch. I believe the suit uprise is because events have opened up again. I never wear a suit to the office, but I was at the Air Charter Association Spring Lunch and the BBGA annual conference last week. What a life, Nathan. I wore a suit to both days, as did every other man there. I'm interested, women wearing more suits, is that the way that's going?

39:59Darmony is, I know when we talk about suits and ties, the instinct is to think, right, this is blokes changing how they go to work and view the smartness levels that are required. Is it the same story for women? Well, to be honest, I found myself wearing smart blazers a lot more recently and heels, so I think it is moving into that field. And whilst we've been talking, I've just been doing a little bit of online browsing for women's suits. So, yeah, I think there's definitely a lot more – there's more styles leaning towards that trend. So it's interesting. I'm really liking some of these styles with ties as well for women.

40:42Ben will be thinking, he got in touch saying he's buying up his suits. I'm thinking, why did I say that out loud? All of a sudden now there's a bit more competition on these sites for this kind of stuff. Ben's actually been back in touch as well. He says when he's talking about buying these things online, I was curious, do they fit or not? He says, I have a good seamstress. £10 to take trousers up an inch on one pair. Still more than worth it. But generally, if you're patient, the right size will come along. 8.5058, we'll be talking about that growth in suit sales, interest in tyres as well, more towards the end of the show.

41:17Let's talk potholes now. The estimated cost of bringing pothole-plagued local roads in England and Wales up to scratch has risen to£18.6 billion according to the Asphalt Industry Alliance. They've branded the situation a national disgrace. It found only 51 % of the local road network is reported to be in good condition. we know many of you are drivers heading about whether it's on your commute actually driving a vehicle is the day job we'd like to hear from you this morning how the roads are impacting your journeys, your life, what it means, the state of the vehicles has the bad state of them led to any costly damage Louise Baker is a mechanic who runs the Birmingham based Womanic, am I getting that right Louise?

42:02The word jumped out at me, Womanic, Womanic? How do we pronounce it? You got it, womanik. Great. It's a car garage anyway. You've been in the industry 20 plus years. That is why we've got you on the show. So, Louise, I'm sure a pothole moan is not uncommon to you, but the trend, the change, have you seen any improvements? I've seen no improvements and people are just getting, the bills that people are getting and people are coming to me for like just normal basic car servicing, just an annual service, and I end up finding broken coil springs, track rod ends hanging off. It's really bad. And they're all oblivious as to what's causing them.

42:41They just think it's wear and tear, but this is not wear and tear. Really? So does that change at all how people view their car and how they look after it if they're getting these problems that they think is wear and tear, but it's the state of the roads? It is just the state of the road. I think they just need educating. I mean, yesterday was a classic example. I had one of my regular customers in. She was in for just a routine interim service. And when I got out on the ramp, I mean, I drove the car and it felt no different. And when I got out on the ramp, the coil spring was literally hanging off.

43:13I mean, that could have blown her tyre out at any point. But she was completely oblivious as to what was going on. It was just in for her service, like I say. If she hadn't have serviced it, then it would have caused an accident. And so how much more did that cost her? Oh, my goodness. It cost her a spring and two tyres. so Bill's gone from like 150, 160 quid to just under£500. And this is one person with a likely impact being from the state of the roads. Absolutely, but I mean more importantly it's her safety as well, she has her kids in her car, yeah, it's more about the safety I think than the money for me.

43:49When you see the asphalt industry calling this a national disgrace, do you feel it's at that level or is this just the nature of things when you've got roads that are that old, it's been ever thus. It is, and it's a disgrace. It is. It's disgusting. The roads are really bad. Any road you go down now has got a massive pothole, not just the small potholes you used to get. These have got massive, massive trenches. Do the cars change at all? Have you seen, when you get them up on the ramp, that actually, right, these car manufacturers are almost having to adapt what they're building to handle these roads?

44:31No, I wouldn't say so. Every car has its issues, every car has its difference. I mean, you know, no, it's not going to make any difference at all. You know, you could hit a small, shallow pothole to a great big bunker. How would you fix it then, given Louise? I mean, I know this is clearly, as it fair to say, it's good for business, is that if there's a, you know, you're having to do a lot more repairs than you were before. But when you talk about that in changing costs for that one customer, and we talk about 18 billion odd pounds is how much the cost would be to bring all the potholes to repair right across the country.

45:10Is there a better way of doing this? Because individuals are spending money as consequences of having these. What do you mean? How should we cover this cost? I'm just thinking if that extra 400 quid from your customer that she spent on a damage from a pothole, it was actually some of that money was just put towards, you know, fixing it in the first place. Is that one way of doing it? Asking drivers to contribute a bit more? No, absolutely not. Don't you think? I think we pay enough. We pay enough for road tax. We pay enough for council tax. I think we pay enough money out. And we have done for years and years and years.

45:47I don't know how they've got so bad. I think it's disgusting. especially when you see all your bin men and stuff sitting around in Tesco car park, you know, not doing anything. You could find more people from the council to go and give them a hand. Do you know what I mean? I think we pay enough money. It should be sorted. Given you see the consequences of potholes, do you change how you drive because of them? I did a three-point turn the other day just to avoid a pothole. That's how big it was. 100%. We should be thinking more about them to try and save ourselves a bit of cash almost as we're going.

46:24Don't think, oh, well, I think I can beat that one. You can't. You can't. Absolutely not. You're not going to win. Well, Louise, thanks so much. Great to talk to you. Thank you. One day we might be sitting here seeing that number get a bit smaller and you can tell us that you've seen improvements on these cars as they go. Fascinating. With a bit of luck. You never know. Fingers crossed. Have a good day, Louise. Louise Baker, their mechanic who runs the Birmingham-based Womanic car garage. Keep an eye out for that. Right, the US social media trial that has been going on. California jury now deciding whether the Instagram parent Meta and Google's YouTube should be found liable for causing the social media addiction of a 20-year-old California woman.

47:08Our North American technology correspondent Lily Jamali is at the courthouse in Los Angeles awaiting a verdict. The plaintiff who goes by Kaylee to protect her identity alleges that addictive design choices by Meta and YouTube harmed her mental health. She says she started using YouTube at six and Instagram at age nine. Her usage grew and on one particular day, according to her lawyer, she used Instagram for 16 hours. For nearly a month and a half, jurors here at the Los Angeles Superior Court have heard evidence from top executives, including Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg and his deputy, Adam Masseri, who runs Instagram.

47:44During one key moment of testimony, Masseri said 16 hours of usage constituted problematic use, but he did not call it addiction. Meta has argued that Kaylee suffered serious mental health troubles, which began before she started using Instagram. And YouTube has maintained that its product is not a social media platform. Kaylee's is one of several bellwether cases, the first to make it to trial. If jurors side with her, they'll then decide what damages the companies must pay her. The outcome, along with testimony and evidence her attorneys brought forth, could also affect the many trials scheduled to follow hers this year.

48:22Meta and YouTube could also be prompted to make changes to their platforms aimed at making them less enticing to users. That would be an intriguing one to stick with. So stick with us on Wake Up To Money, get subscribing on BBC Sounds, and we'll update you with that as we get the developments of that court case. Gervais, wanted to ask you about NCP making a fair few headlines this morning. The car park operator, of course, probably one of the most visible businesses around the UK. It's gone into administration, more than 600 jobs at risk. What's happened here? People might have thought, the car park industry, surely.

48:57that is one that's always needed yes it's interesting isn't it i think there's two things here first of all that car parking has been affected very much by people move online for online stores of course so that's one of the features even the hospitality industry has seen the cost rise and perhaps people may go to some of the restaurants and things a little less frequently so i think that's the first thing i think the reliability of car parking income hasn't been there as much as people have assumed and that's been put in combination with a business which is highly borrowed. And when you're highly borrowed, you're committed to pay back your borrowing, irrespective of how your customers are coming or not.

49:32And so I think it's a combination of too much debt, actually, in an industry which has turned out to be less resilient. But I think there is a longer term thing to worry about here, which is I think there are a lot of companies which are quite highly borrowed in the UK, private businesses, private equity businesses, those kinds of things. And I think that is, you know, if we get perhaps a longer period of disruption disruption related to the Iranian war and such like, if we do find that, unfortunately, you know, we are short of all sorts of supplies, then actually that's going to lead to a lot more companies potentially going bust.

50:04So I'm kind of worried. One of the advantages of having a stock market is many of these companies actually have the ability to raise capital externally. They can go to the shareholders and such like. So hopefully, even though there may be, you know, some trouble ahead, it may be hopefully with our strong position in the UK stock market, we'll be offsetting that to some degree. 85058, joining our conversation this morning. Blimey, we mentioned potholes. Haven't I've had a fair few messages about that? A litter picker in Keithley saying, I find springs from cars constantly. It's getting worse. Another saying, I'm currently teaching my son to drive.

50:38It's absolutely key now to teach him to drive and avoid clattering through pothole after pothole and try not to damage the car. I cycle a lot too, I can promise you. Our roads have never been this bad. Yeah, if somebody's learned to drive and it's your car, not theirs. I can see why that would be high up the priority list. Another getting in touch saying, Alan says, I'm about to head from Leighton Buzzard to the M1. I'll be taking a 12-mile detour to avoid junction 13 as the route is full of six-inch deep potholes that can't be avoided even at low speed. Proper car killers. He said, 85058, keep those messages coming about suits as well.

51:11Somebody said, my brother bought a suit on Timu. Not good padded shoulders. It ripped on second use. You have to be careful what you're buying, where you're buying, don't you? Eileen in Edinburgh says, I'm sick of sloppy males. Men look better, smartly dressed. Sorry, chaps. The wild and woolly laid back pioneer vibe is old hat. Pete's sake, make an effort. John Lewis has the right idea. But suits, though nice, are expensive. Smart, casual, needn't be and well put together. Looks good. What happened to all those makeover programmes we used to see on the TV? Eileen says, well, Fal Blake is co-founder of Gresham Blake.

51:45A menswear tailor, retailer in Brighton. And Val, have you noticed what John Lewis has said in its numbers, that it's seen significant growth in ties and suits? Good morning, Sean. Yeah, I think that the figures in that article definitely match what we're seeing. But since COVID, I think people, tailoring hasn't really gone away. It's just changed its form. People are wearing tailoring in a softer way. People started wearing, for us as a brand, we found that people are coming to us for suits that they want to wear rather than they've got to wear. Ah, yes. And where are people getting those suits?

52:26Are they bringing their own suits to you or are they getting some off your shelves? Well, we do offer a whole different type of levels of suit offerings. So we have ready-to-wear, we have custom-made ready-to-wear. as well as bespoke tailoring. But what we also love is when somebody brings back a suit that they've had for 10, 20 years plus that we've made for them and then they're coming back to us and they're saying, now can you adjust this for us? Now can you tailor this for us? It still sort of fits. Can you adjust it and make it fit better? Because suits are the ultimate slow fashion as well.

53:10It's not a fast fashion type of a thing. And if it's one you like, there's memories in there as well. Exactly. I think suits and coats actually sort of, this sounds weird, I think they become friends. So when you put them on, they give you that confidence. And they hold and support you. True, you can walk into any meeting if you feel like you're feeling a million dollars. What's changed though, Fah? Why all of a sudden a significant growth being seen? I think... People, I mean, obviously there's a big celebrity push at the moment with the Met Gala last year that made, you know, there was a lot of people that were a lot of really, really cool people we were seeing in some amazing suits.

53:58It's that endorsement and that younger celebrity endorsement right now. I think that's what's changed. There's a lot of young, really cool people wearing suits again that we're seeing. and that's made for us as a business, we're seeing so many more young people come to us for custom-made suits, for off-the-peg suits. And ties with them? And ties, yeah. Ties have always been... Ties, it's not that formal uniform that people want in a tie. It's more like a piece of wearable art. Thank you, Val. We'll have to talk again another time. Val Blake there from Gresham Blake. That's it from Wake Up To Money.

54:36Thanks for all your messages. Wake Up To Money from BBC 5 Live.

54:59A new era of Formula One is about to dawn. I think the biggest step the sport has ever seen. There are new rules, new cars and a brand new team. In Formula One it's just absolute brutal pure competition. And the next generation of star drivers are taking us along for the ride too. I'm going to go like a madman. If you want to make it first of all you have to believe that you have what it takes. The biggest shake-up of F1's rulebook has been years in the making. Somebody's going to get it right and somebody's going to get it wrong. I'm Rosamund Pike and this is F1 Back at Base. A new era. Listen on BBC Sounds.

56:03just sit back, get paid, and make room for things that actually feel like you. And with 10 ,000 plus new arrivals every single day from top designers like Prada, Celine, Louis Vuitton, and Loewe, all for up to 90 % off retail, you're bound to find something perfectly on brand to fill that extra closet space with. Plus, right now, you can get an extra$100 to shop when you sell for the first time. Make room for what feels like you. Go to therealreal.com to start selling and get your extra$100 to keep shopping at therealreal.com. That's therealreal.com. Terms apply.