Devolution Revolution?

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29:02Your ideas will get a boost while still sounding natural, credible, and just the way you want. For nearly 17 years, Grammarly has been the standard for responsible AI. It's the premier writing tool that 93 % of users trust to get more work done. In a world of generic AI, don't sound like everyone else. With Grammarly, you never will. Download Grammarly for free at grammarly.com. That's grammarly.com. Thoughts on that? Wake up to money with Sean Farrington. Good morning to you. It is wake up to money on this Wednesday morning, the 18th of March, just coming up to 25 to 6. Thank you for your messages about regional investment, how it should work, where the money should come from, what's needed in your area.

29:49Ian in Harrogate says Rachel Reeves, just tinkering around the edges until we reduce the size of the state and divert resources back to the private sector from the public sector. Nothing will change. Do keep your thoughts coming. Tom in Fife says the working man tax, regardless of hours worked, uncontracted to a 40 hours week, but regularly work in excess of 80 hours, which means more tax, more national insurance, stop taxing over time. More will be spent in the local economy. It's interesting that idea, Vic, Vic Stewart, who's the boss of The Alchemist, who's with us this morning, 22 bars and restaurants across the UK.

30:25That idea of trying to keep money within the local economy, something that's come up a few times of late on Wake Up To Money, given how much spending we do online and that money not necessarily being a local business that we're spending with. Is that a bit of an issue, keeping money in a region? um i think we look we we need we need to make sure that there is consumer money flowing throughout every single region i think that's really important i think the mechanism of how that's done doesn't doesn't necessarily need to be over complicated um i think if you're trying to i thought the last um chap's comment about not taxing overtime would be an interesting one just just straight away in my head i started thinking goodness me it's so complicated to calculate the correct pay for hourly paid people by the time you have all different pay types holiday accruals that the idea of having an overtime pay is a different thing blew my mind i think um yeah for me i'm always for the most straightforward route possible i think we we know that our regions need investment where where that money comes from actually doesn't matter that much and and Does it actually help the nation to be relying very heavily on the competence of a particular mayor?

31:41I think we've been very lucky in Manchester. I think in Manchester we've also benefited from having one party that has the confidence of control over a longer period. So you have a more maybe long term view on some of the types of investment that we look for. Not everywhere would have that. So, yeah, I think for me the most important thing is that there is investment in the north. 85058 joining the conversation I mean somebody's messaged in they've picked the perfect day to do it as we've got somebody from Yorkshire with us somebody from would you say Lancashire or Greater Manchester Vic what would you say when you you're from Manchester do you consider yourself the other side of the divide to Yorkshire I'll take both from a cricket perspective you know I do work with Lancashire Cricket Club so definitely a red rose you're allowed that well look interested in both your thoughts on this this is me as a Midlander being stereotypical about you northerners because somebody's been in touch saying I went to Manchester City Centre last week and couldn't find a proper pie only commercial ones, maybe more power to local businesses could help this no proper pies in Manchester Vic, what's happening?

32:47That just can't be true, I don't feel like they were looking hard enough Yeah, not looking hard enough, any better I know you're Brighton based these days Russ but we'll go back to your pie roots The last pie I had was in a fantastic restaurant in Mayfair and it was 25 and it was 25 quid, which I'm not sure really counts. No, a pie in Mayfield. I would like to have seen that. Was it any bigger? Steak and kidney. It was a very pleasing pot pie, but it was 25 quid. A pot pie. So does that mean it did have a bottom or it didn't? No, no, it's just the filling and then the crust on top. That's not a pie, is it, Russell?

33:2385058. If it hasn't got a base to it, where do you stand on that one, Vic? We could spend all day debating that. Does it need to have a bottom or not? I would say yes. I'd say the kind of pie you get when you go to Old Trafford is the sort of pie that I'm in for. 85058, the big questions of the morning. We see how we get into them. That's why we appreciate your messages, your thoughts, your experiences as you travel around the country and spend your cash. Right, let's get the very latest on what is dominating so many of the front pages this morning, the Daily Mail meningitis outbreak, worst we've ever seen, says experts uh uh the front of the um the mirror meningitis outbreaks working worst in a generation uh the sun as well have their story of i was blinded by the killer bug a tale from uh one person that they've spoken to who uh lost their sight for a couple of days uh those front pages being dominated by that pharmacies have warned of the constraints in the supply of the meningitis vaccine as demand surged this week following the death of two students in Kent.

34:32In a snap survey of 300 members of the National Pharmacists Association, 87 % reported increased inquiries about the vaccine while 95 % saw a surge in patients seeking advice on symptoms who were worried it could be meningitis. We've heard the Health Secretary Wes Streeting say he's going to seek advice over whether to widen that vaccination programme against meningitis B. We've got Olivier Picard with us who's chair of that National Pharmacies Association, runs four pharmacies himself in Berkshire, in Buckinghamshire. Olivier, morning. Good morning, Sean. Just firstly, given that you're sort of nearer the south of England and nearer Kent than many around the country, in your pharmacies, have you noticed, you know, not in Kent yourself, but in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, any more interest from your customers, any more concerns from your customers on this situation?

35:22It's unprecedented. It reminds me of the early days of COVID. It's absolutely blown everyone out of their mind. I mean, to give you an idea, I went to bed quite late last night, having spent a whole day speaking to patients. I have woken up this morning having spent five hours in bed and I've had 75 appointments made overnight in our booking system. I don't have the vaccine in stock. I'm going to have to close the booking system because we just simply are unable to get the vaccine. I've not had demand like this since the early days of COVID. Do you think, there's a lot in there, Olivier, do you think part of that demand is because we had COVID so recently and had lockdowns and people are so engaged with the idea of something spreading at whatever rate and the concept of vaccines and bookings and all of that?

36:16and and also parents are genuinely worried about their children and you know i'm not getting any inquiries about adults i'm getting inquiries from parents who want their children who are university others maybe thinking of going to university in september and and they are all willing to be vaccinated and and what i'm spending my day doing is managing patients expectation around vaccine supplies, but also giving them reassurance. This is currently, as we understand, an outbreak that is contained to the Kent area. But if you're a parent and have a child that goes to a London university or maybe a Surrey university, you know, I can understand that there will be anxiety around that.

37:01And we're telling patients, we're talking about symptoms and what to do in, you know, what would be the early symptoms of meningitis, but also what to do in case of severe symptoms like, you know, the red or purple rash, the glass test with a rash that doesn't disappear and the need to actually phone 999 if genuinely they're concerned. But by and large, we understand that currently the outbreak is confined to the Kent area and we are trying to manage patients' expectations. But you're right, the COVID pandemic probably has led to many parents thinking, I want to get in early because they know that if they don't, then they may not be able to get treatment.

37:42Now, the UK Health Security Agency, which has been leading a lot of the official responses to this, declaring it a national incident on Sunday, for example, to help ensure supplies of antibiotics, they say that they have plenty of vaccines in supply. So when we hear about shortages and pharmacies not having them the way you might, they say it's not related to their need for them. Can you explain that? Yes, so pharmacies have always been offering meningitis B vaccination as many of our members, as well as the meningitis ACWY, but that's always been part of a small offering for patients who may have missed the vaccination on the NHS or for those who were born before 2015 and haven't ever had the meningitis B vaccine.

38:32And that means that the supply chain has always had very limited stock. Now, it is well possible that the manufacturers have got plenty of stock, but they are currently not distributing it to our supply chain and our wholesalers, probably waiting for UK HSA to decide what they are going to do in terms of vaccine supplies. And we also know that when there is news like this, pharmacies will try to order vaccine when they can to try and fulfill the demand. And obviously, it takes time for wholesalers to replenish stock. So it may be that it's an evolving picture. It hopefully means that vaccine will come back.

39:18However, at the moment, it's just the fact that the demand has how stripped the supply by several fold. and therefore we're out of situation, you know, a couple of days, three days into this story with no stock in anyone's fridges. Do you make a decision yourself, given the amount of people wanting to make bookings and get this vaccine, about who can get the vaccine if you had them in stock or would it just be first come first serve, they've all gone? No, I started with that attitude on Monday morning and within 10 minutes, everything that we had, which was literally a handful. You could have counted the number of vaccine on two hands.

39:59But what I have said is, if you are in a Southeast region, if your child is at university, it is very likely that they will possibly be at more risk. If you have a 12 or 13-year-old who goes to secondary school, just started in year seven or year eight, they are not, as far as we understand, the priority list. But it's really hard because, you know, I've heard some parents telling me, well, my child plays rugby and, you know, we played rugby against a Kent team last weekend. You know, what do you say to a parent who's coming up with these arguments? I'm not the one that should be deciding who gets and who doesn't get the vaccine.

40:42What do you say to a parent who says that, though? As a pharmacist, people definitely see their pharmacist as somebody to turn to for answers to things like that. The vaccine doesn't have an immediate protection. And what I said to patients or to parents and worried parents, I tell them that actually vaccinating your child today or next week will have very little difference on the speed which patients will be protected because if there was an outbreak that would start to spread further, you know, the vaccination still takes some time and it's a course of two doses of vaccine. But what we're doing is we're taking names, we're taking telephone numbers, we are having a list and we will be ringing patients when we have the vaccine in stock.

41:30We're also very tuned to what the UK Health Safety Agency is saying because hopefully as further advice come along, we can relate that advice to members of the public. We are trying to manage people's expectations. And I have a 16-year-old son and I have a daughter at university who is already vaccinated, but that was, you know, a year ago. My son, who is 16, is not getting the vaccine. In my opinion, currently, he's not in a level of risk being in Buckinghamshire with, you know, that far removed from Kent. However, you know, if things start spreading, of course, people are going to want to have the vaccine.

42:09I'm hoping that by that point, UKHSA has allowed the vaccine supply to be restored and wholesalers to stock the vaccine so I can buy it and offer it to my patient. And I will continue where I can, bridging the gap between what the NHS is offering and what the patient wants, which has always been something that we've had to do in pharmacy. Vic Stewart, hospitality boss on the show this morning. Vic, you have some of your bars across the south of England, for example. Is this anything that's impacted what you've done at The Alchemist in recent days, what you've talked about with your team? Not really, because London, we're kind of in London rather than in Kent.

42:51So I don't think that's really impacted us. For me personally, I also have teenage kids. So obviously I was just immediately on looking at what the vaccine situation was and how quickly I should be getting them for them. But I think we'll be keeping a little watching eye on it, really, because if it gets into London from Kent, then that would obviously potentially impact our staff. And we'd be looking to kind of do some more communication and support for teams at that time. So you're not sort of expecting any, you know, as many people might have these questions and they see these headlines day after day, any sort of impact necessarily on the behaviour of customers.

43:26and given our previous experiences of things that were spreading. And this is very, very different, as Olivier was describing there, to what we saw in COVID. But no sort of plans for this weekend to be any different to last weekend. I am certainly hoping not, Sean. I think at the moment it's very localised and then we're just hoping that it will stay that way and be contained. Very interesting to hear from Olivier, the differences between, you know, when you're running businesses, running pharmacies and the facts of the situation versus the concerns of many parents around the country right now.

44:06Olivier, thank you so much for your time this morning. Olivier Picard, the Chair of the National Pharmacies Association. 85058, you've got any messages, got any thoughts, questions, whatever it might be. Somebody saying, can we have an item in the future on pies, best value for money, size, regional differences, etc. We are here to serve. So yes, no doubt the Wake Up To Money team who will be always listening from right around the North West at home this time of morning. They'll already be beavering away on how we are going to best reflect that. So thank you for your suggestions this morning. Anything else you want us to have a look at?

44:46We will have a deep dive into anything from your perspective. Let's have a look at what's going on at Bentley. The luxury car manufacturer Bentley could cut up to 275 jobs as part of what it calls overall efficiency activities. Russ, when you see a sentence like that, sometimes, you know, on Wake Up To Money, that can be in either direction. It can be a business looking to make itself more lean after a good time of it, or there may be concerns. You see the union saying here that this news had come out of the blue, the workforce is stunned. What's happening? Yeah, I think looking at it from the senior management's point of view, you know, Warren Buffett always used to say senior management's job is to set tone and culture, allocate capital and be ruthless with costs.

45:30And so in that respect, you can kind of view it as business as normal. Equally, Bentley is making a profit, but it's also got some very specific challenges. Chinese market's gone soft. President Trump's tariffs, remember, they're still out there. That's a challenge for automotive manufacturers here in the UK. So there are some specific challenges. And also VW Volkswagen, the company's German parent, they've cut back to some degree on its electric vehicle development programme. And I suspect there's been a knock on effect on that as well as Bentley. And they've been taking some costs out as a result.

45:5985058, if you work in that industry, we know we have many people who work in the car industry. We've talked about Bentley, we've been to Bentley on Wake Up 20 in the past and seen what's going on there. Do let us know if you have any thoughts about those jobs that could go at Bentley based in Crewe, making its cars in Crewe. It said investment continued at that Pimms Lane site for new electric models. But those jobs were now at risk. Just a little reflection, Russ, on the stock markets. We'd mentioned the oil price still, I think, this morning above$100 a barrel. Yep, just$101 a barrel of brand crude.

46:34But that mood amongst investors, another day on, what was it like yesterday? It was everybody still looking at the screens. It is very much about what's coming out of the Middle East right now, geopolitically, economically. There was talk of some crude oil flowing out to Asian customers such as China. There was talk of deals of oil being allowed out through Turkey. But equally, one thing that did catch my eye, there was a story, I think it was the Financial Times, one or two brokerages picked up on it, on oil being shipped out of Oman, not the streets of Oman. selling at$150 a barrel just because people can get their hands on it and there is a scramble for physical supply.

47:10So it's still very much a hot topic. But the overall UK market yesterday, I think the overall feeling is still markets have got their fingers crossed or are hoping or believing that it's going to be short and that the knock-on effect will be relatively finite. And I think if they didn't feel that was the case, stock markets would probably be lower than they are now. So that sort of gives us a sense if people felt like there was some form of escalation that might prolong it, think we might see a little bit more change? I think that's still a thing. I mean, you are seeing government borrowing costs, bond yields creeping up.

47:42The UK has probably gone up more than a lot of its international peers. That may be because the UK was very quick to subsidise and cap costs and foot the bill in 2022. It may be because the UK's got a bit of an inflationary sticky history anyway. And there are these fears of these issues in the background of if Labour gets a pretty poor result out of the May elections and there's a political shift at the top. Do they go left? Does that mean more public spending? We've seen denials from the leading Labour officials about that, but equally the bond market vigilantes are still watching that very, very closely.

48:1685058, do keep your messages coming, whether it's about deep dives into pies or whatever it might be here. Manchester is the new Blackpool, he says, only interested in getting punters in, he says there, and others getting in touch about a variety of topics. John's saying, I'm hearing there's a lot more cash transactions for small building projects. The customer and contractor wins the exchequer doesn't. Very interesting aspect to that, John. 85058, let's talk Disney now. Vic, is this one, as somebody running a business looking to generate an amazing experience for somebody, as we've talked about with Disney in the past, it's not just about the Disney Plus streaming service that people might have on their TVs and on their phones.

49:03Disney has the theme parks. It has so much going on at a company like that. They've got a change of boss at the top. Do you learn from what a company like that has done, does to try and get people to spend their cash with them and give them the highlight of their lives? Actually, yes, I'd say we do because what we're looking to do every time a customer walks through the door is to give them a brilliant experience. And we're kind of famous for our theatrical cocktails. And part of that is the way it looks. It's the way the server interacts with the customer. It's the product being really high quality.

49:40But that is all packaged into experience. And actually, our head of marketing trained at Disney University when he was a young man. He went over and had some time at Disney. And he talks about it, you know, relatively often in terms of the impact that's had on him and the importance of experience. So I think it's definitely something that we look to learn from. Disney University. Nobody told me that was an option as I was going through the school years. That's very interesting. So is this effectively, I'm assuming is within the business, is it that you spend some time learning how Disney works?

50:17and yeah it's more you know reference points because i think what what's brilliant when you as a as a kind of senior team you need to keep looking outside your business if you only spend all your life looking at your own business then you're going to kind of slowly go downhill i think and to to spend time reflecting back on interesting experiences in other places or to be out there um not just in our competitors bars and restaurants but but also in places that are adjacent like the kind of theme parks or the other experiences that are being offered. I think it helps inform us about where we want the business to move.

50:53Well, from Disney University, which seems to be in Orlando, Florida, let's cross to the home of Disneyland and speak to Meg James, Senior Entertainment Industry Writer at the LA Times. Meg, thanks for joining us. So Bob Iger finally stepping down and we've got the new boss of Walt Disney, Josh DiMauro, taking charge. What's it all about? Well, I mean, this is a momentous day in Los Angeles because Bob Iger has run Disney quite masterfully for almost two decades. And today, later today, we will have the changing of the guard officially at the Mouse House. And Josh DeMauro, who has been with Disney for nearly 28 years, is officially stepping into the big role.

51:38So is it more of the same if he's stepping in after 28 years? Well, yes and no. I think that, you know, Bob Iger has had a brilliant tenure. He really has. He reformed Disney. He made all these very strategic acquisitions, Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm, which brought Star Wars. And then in 2019, he finalized the acquisition of much of Rupert Murdoch's Hollywood operations, not all of Fox, but a big chunk of Fox, which really, you know, built Disney for the streaming age. But, you know, as Josh DeMauro comes in, he faces a lot of challenges and he's going to be under pressure to boost the stock and also really differentiate himself from Bob Iger.

52:26And is that going to be about the theme parks, the experiences, or is it more about the streaming and the competition in that world? You know, we've just talked so much about this Warner Brothers Paramount deal. We thought it was Netflix that was going to be buying Warner Brothers Discovery. Now it's Paramount. There's a lot going on. So where's his main focus? Well, he does come from the experiences and the theme parks, and he has been overseeing the 10-year,$60 billion U.S. dollars expansion that Disney has envisioned, which includes collaborating on a park in the Middle East, which they could obviously run into some choppy waters there.

53:09The other thing I think we should look out for with Mr. DeMauro is he's a younger man. He came up more in the video game world. And video games is something that Disney's always really struggled with. They've made a big investment in Epic Games, and they were trying to build a Disney universe within Fortnite, as well as just sort of tackling, you know, artificial intelligence and protecting that very, very valuable Disney intellectual property, the characters, the franchises. And that's going to be another really key task. So can you imagine that being his big thing that in a few years we might be talking about there being gaming services on Disney +, the way people see it on Netflix?

53:55I do think that Disney's trying to sort of inch forward. You know, some of their years ago, they really struggled in the games. And that's why they linked up with Epic. They really did see that they needed to bring on some expertise that they didn't have in-house. I think one of the other things that's really interesting about Josh DeMauro is he is like a Disney fan to the core. when he was running Disneyland here outside of Los Angeles, he would go out and mingle with the crowd. So he's built a kind of almost, I wouldn't say totally a cult following, but a pseudo cult following among the really Disney faithful.

54:36Very interesting. So it's all well and good having a big love for it. Can he run the whole thing? We will see. Meg, thank you for your time. Meg James from the LA Times. Big thanks to Vic Stewart from The Alchemist. Russ, great to see you this morning. Russ Mould from AJ Bell. thank you for all of your messages as well we've had plenty coming in about pharmacies meningitis what might happen with the british economy and pies as well of course that's it from wake up to money wake up to money from bbc 5 live that's it from wake up to money you can download the podcast every monday to friday so please make sure you subscribe we'd also love it if you left us a review when you do get in touch keep the conversation going anytime as well on social media.

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