Only 15% of UK Bosses Are Hiring — and Young People Are Paying the Price

1.8 million people wanted in. There were 5,000 seats. And hundreds of thousands of the people in the queue weren’t people at all. RAYE said it herself. On 13 October she posted on Instagram that her one-off show at the Royal Albert Hall on 23 October had drawn 1.8 million registrations — and that “AI bots” had flooded the presale with “hundreds of thousands of fake registrations”. The presale asked fans to pre-register for a chance at a code. The bots registered too, faster than any human could. She is not the only one. On 21 October, Sam Fender’s presale for his Proper Massive stadium tour of the UK and Ireland in June 2027 was hit by what he called a “sophisticated bot attack” on the ticketing site Gigantic. The presale was pushed back 24 hours so that, in his words, “real fans get the tickets”. Gigantic said there had been an “unusually high volume of suspicious activity”. This is the normal now. And this week, Parliament had a chance to act on the other half of the problem — the resale market where the bots’ tickets end up — and voted not to. The vote that failed On Wednesday 4 November, MPs voted 286 to 62 against an amendment that would have made it illegal to resell tickets for major sporting events above their original price, including fees. The amendment was put forward by Liberal Democrat MP Anna Sabine as part of the Sporting Events Bill. Ministers said the vote was not a retreat. The real fix, they said, is a separate piece of legislation, a Ticket Tout Ban Bill, that would generally ban reselling live-event tickets above face value and put new duties on the resale platforms. But that bill is still being drafted, and it will not feature in the parliamentary session that runs until May 2027. Labour promised in its 2024 election manifesto to cap ticket resale at face value. Two years on, there is still no cap, no ban, and no date. The artists who backed the promise — The Cure, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Radiohead among them — are still waiting. So are the fans. Who actually runs the ticket market The bot problem and the resale problem are the same problem, and they sit on top of a market that is more concentrated than most fans realise. A parliamentary committee report found that Live Nation directly controlled 58% of the 23.1 million primary tickets on sale in the UK in 2025. Count the affiliated companies and the figure rises to 66%. Live Nation owns Ticketmaster, and it also promotes shows, runs venues and runs festivals — the same company can sell you the ticket, own the room and take a cut at every step. The Business and Trade Committee has urged the Competition and Markets Authority to launch a full investigation into the live music market before the end of 2026. The CMA has not given a timetable. The committee’s report described a “climate of fear” around the dominant companies, with artists, managers, independent promoters and grassroots venues afraid to speak out. The scale of the bot traffic is hard to believe until you see the numbers. The Royal Albert Hall told Billboard UK that it routinely blocks millions of bot requests during ticket sales — more than 38 million in a single 24-hour period, separate from the RAYE sale. What it costs you Live music is big business. Spending on music tourism in the UK reached £11.2 billion, with 24.7 million music tourists attending events in 2025. That money is real, and so is the price fans pay for it. Do the fan’s maths. A ticket listed at £65 face value can be £180 or more on a resale site before fees. A “golden circle” standing spot at a stadium show — the premium front section Sam Fender’s fans were arguing about this week — can cost double the standard ticket. For a young person on a first wage, the difference between face value and resale is the difference between going and not going. That is why this story matters beyond the charts. A ticket is not a luxury for the people reading this site. It is the one night out they save for, the birthday present, the first gig with friends. When a bot takes it and a tout sells it back at three times the price, something has been taken from a real person. What you can actually do You cannot fix Parliament from your phone. But you can make yourself a harder target. Buy resale only at face value. Ticketmaster’s official fan-to-fan resale, Twickets and DICE all cap resale at face value. If a site will not show you the seat or the face value, walk away. Register for presales the minute they open, and use the artist’s own mailing list rather than a link forwarded in a group chat. The RAYE presale worked on registration codes — the bots won by registering first and in bulk, so speed and the official channel are your only edge. Never pay by bank transfer for a ticket. A card or PayPal gives you a way back if the ticket never arrives. Screenshot the listing, the price and the seller’s name before you pay. And when a sale goes wrong, report it. The FanFair Alliance campaign collects fan experiences, and every report is evidence for the investigation MPs keep asking the CMA to run. The question RAYE’s fans did everything right. They registered, they waited, they queued. The bots were faster, and Parliament blinked. The question now is how long fans are expected to keep losing a rigged race — and what comes first, the ban or the next 1.8 million-person queue. Have you ever lost a ticket to a bot, or paid double for one on resale? Tell us what happened. We read every reply.

The rise in one paragraph The Bank of England raised Bank Rate from 3.75% to 4% on Thursday 5 November 2026, announced at noon. The Monetary Policy Committee voted 8 to 1 in favour, with Catherine Mann the one dissenter, wanting a bigger rise to 4.25%. It is the first Bank of England rate rise since August 2023. The Bank had held at 3.75% at its three previous meetings, on 18 June, 30 July and 17 September 2026. It moved because inflation is too high: CPI inflation was 3.5% in the year to September 2026, against the Bank’s 2% target, and the Bank expects it to peak at around 5% by mid-2027. The next decision is on 17 December 2026. If you are saving for your first home, here is what it means and what to do about it. Where mortgage rates stand today Fixed rates were already high before Thursday, because lenders price on what they expect the Bank to do. Moneyfacts put the average two-year fixed rate at 5.97% and the average five-year fixed rate at 5.99% just before the decision, and the average rate on new mortgages at 5.89%, its highest since November 2023. At the start of the year the average two-year fixed rate was 4.83%, so on a £250,000 mortgage over 25 years that adds roughly £170 a month compared with a deal taken out in January. The best deals are lower, but only with a big deposit. Mortgage Advice Bureau figures updated on 5 November put the best two-year fixed rate at 4.78% and the best five-year fixed rate at 4.78%, both from Halifax at 60% loan-to-value, which means a 40% deposit. The best two-year tracker was 3.99%, also from Halifax at 60% loan-to-value. With a 10% deposit or less, expect a higher rate. The average standard variable rate, the rate you land on if your deal ends and you do nothing, was 7.13% before the decision. What the rise does to your monthly payment If you already have a tracker mortgage, your payment will go up within days. As a guide, a 0.25% rise on a £200,000 repayment mortgage over 25 years adds about £29 a month, or about £348 a year. On a £250,000 mortgage over the same term, a 0.25% rise adds about £37 a month. If you are on a fixed rate, nothing changes until your deal ends. That is the point of fixing. But the rate you will be offered when you remortgage or buy is set by the market now, and the market has already moved. More than 2.3 million households come off fixed deals during 2027. For them, the rate on offer in the next few months matters more than the one they locked in years ago. Fixed or tracker? There is no single right answer, and this article is general information, not financial advice. A fixed rate gives you certainty: your payment stays the same for two or five years, whatever the Bank does next. A tracker follows Bank Rate, so your payment moves up or down with it. Right now the average two-year tracker is around 4.68%, below the average two-year fixed rate of 5.97%. That gap is the market betting rates will fall again. If they do, a tracker wins. If the Bank raises rates again, it loses. Ask three questions. First, could you still pay if your rate went up another 0.5%? If not, certainty matters more than a lower starting rate. Second, how long will you stay? If you may move in two years, a two-year fix or a tracker with no early repayment charge keeps your options open. Third, does the deal charge a fee? A cheap-looking rate with a £1,999 fee can cost more than a slightly higher rate with no fee. Work out the total cost over the deal, not just the headline rate. Your First Home: what to do before February The Your First Home scheme does not change because of Thursday’s decision. It is a government equity loan scheme for first-time buyers in England, backed by £4.7 billion over five years. You put down a deposit of between 2.5% and 15%, the government lends you 20% of the price through an equity loan that is interest free for five years, and a normal repayment mortgage covers the rest. Income caps are £110,000 outside London and £140,000 inside London, with price caps of £650,000 in inner London and £500,000 in outer London. Pre-registration opens by the end of December 2026, applications open in February 2027, and the first loans are expected from April 2027. If you plan to apply in February, the rate picture then matters more than this week’s. Oxford Economics expects Bank Rate to reach 4.25% by February 2027. That is a forecast, not a fact. But run your numbers at 4.25% and at 4.5%, not only at today’s rate, before you decide what you can afford. Do the groundwork now: check your credit file for errors, gather three months of payslips and bank statements, and ask a lender for a decision in principle. It costs nothing, and it tells you roughly what you can borrow. Five things to do this week First, if you already have a mortgage, find out when your deal ends and what type it is. If it ends within six months, ask your lender about locking in early; you can often switch to a cheaper deal before it starts if rates fall. Second, if you are saving for a deposit, check your savings rate: the average easy-access rate was 2.56% before the decision, below inflation of 3.5%, so compare accounts and switch when your provider falls behind. The Cash ISA limit stays at £20,000. Third, do not drift onto the standard variable rate. Set a reminder for the month your deal ends. On a £250,000 mortgage over 25 years, the average SVR of 7.13% works out at about £1,788 a month, against about £1,606 on the average two-year fixed rate:…

The decision in one paragraph The Bank of England raised Bank Rate from 3.75% to 4% on Thursday 5 November 2026, announced at noon. The Monetary Policy Committee voted 8 to 1 in favour. The one dissenter, Catherine Mann, wanted a bigger rise, to 4.25%. It is the first Bank of England rate rise since August 2023. The Bank is acting because inflation is too high: Consumer Prices Index inflation was 3.5% in the year to September 2026, well above the Bank’s 2% target, and the Bank expects inflation to peak at around 5% by mid-2027. The next decision is on 17 December 2026. This article explains what the rise means for your mortgage, your savings, your side hustle and your first home. Why the Bank raised rates The Bank’s job is to keep inflation at 2%. It is not at 2%, and it is moving the wrong way: CPI inflation was 3.5% in the year to September 2026, up from 3.1% in August, the highest in almost a year. Energy prices are the main driver, with the Middle East conflict pushing up gas and oil prices and the energy price cap rising by £60 a year to £1,723 on 1 October. The Bank also fears second-round effects, where higher prices feed into higher wages and business costs, and the Budget‘s minimum wage rise adds to business costs. The committee was already split. At its last meeting, on 17 September, it voted 6 to 3 to hold at 3.75%, with Megan Greene, Catherine Mann and Huw Pill voting to raise it to 4% there and then. On Thursday the committee moved decisively, 8 to 1, and the dissent is now in the other direction: Mann wanted to go further, to 4.25%. What it means for your mortgage Tracker and standard variable rate mortgages usually change soon after a base rate move. As a guide, a 0.25% rise adds about £42 a month for every £200,000 owed on an interest-only mortgage, and slightly less on a repayment mortgage, because the bank recalculates your payment on the time left on your loan. So if you owe £200,000 on a tracker, budget for roughly £40 a month more; if you owe £100,000, roughly £20. These are guides, not quotes. Your lender will confirm your exact new payment. Fixed-rate mortgages do not change: if you are mid-deal, your payments stay as they are until it ends. But new fixed deals have already been repriced all autumn, because lenders price on what they expect the base rate to do. Before Thursday’s decision, the average rate on new mortgages had risen to 5.89%, according to Moneyfacts, and the average two-year fixed rate had risen from 4.83% in January to 5.97%, its highest since December 2023. On a £250,000 mortgage over 25 years, that adds £169 a month compared with a deal taken out at the start of 2026. The people most exposed are those coming to the end of a fixed deal. Remortgage approvals rose to 42,600 from 34,000 in August, suggesting many homeowners are locking in early. The thing to avoid is drifting onto your lender’s standard variable rate: the average SVR was 7.13% before the decision, which on a £250,000 mortgage over 25 years works out at £1,788 a month, against £1,606 on the average two-year fixed rate. That is £182 a month for doing nothing. What it means for savers A rise should be good news for savers, but how much you benefit depends on your account and how quickly your provider passes the increase on. Providers are not required to pass it on in full, and timing varies. Variable-rate accounts, such as easy access accounts, can change at any time, so check whether your rate has risen. Fixed-rate accounts do not change once opened. With inflation at 3.5%, money in a low-paying account is losing spending power, so compare accounts and switch when your provider’s rate falls behind. The Cash ISA limit stays at £20,000. What it means for your side hustle Borrowing gets more expensive: a loan, credit card or overdraft to buy stock or equipment now costs more in interest, so price that into your margins before you borrow to fund a hustle. The Budget gave side hustlers something concrete in return: the trading allowance rises from £1,000 to £3,000 from 6 April 2027, the amount you can earn from casual self-employment before you have to declare it for tax. The message is the same either way: build the hustle from what you earn, not from what you borrow. What it means for your first home The rate decision does not change the Your First Home scheme itself. The scheme, announced in the Autumn Budget on 28 October 2026, is a government equity loan scheme for first-time buyers in England, backed by £4.7 billion over five years. You put down a deposit of between 2.5% and 15%, the government lends you 20% of the price through an equity loan that is interest free for five years, and a normal repayment mortgage covers the rest. Income caps are £110,000 outside London and £140,000 inside London, with price caps of £650,000 in inner London and £500,000 in outer London. Pre-registration opens by the end of December 2026, full applications open in February 2027, and the first loans are expected from April 2027. None of those details moves because of Thursday. What does move is the mortgage part: a higher base rate usually means a higher mortgage rate, a higher monthly payment on the same home, and a lower amount a lender may be willing to lend. The deposit scheme lowers one barrier, while rising rates raise another. The practical point is timing. If you plan to apply in February 2027, the rate picture then matters more than the rate picture on Thursday. Oxford Economics expects the base rate at 4.25% by February 2027. That is a forecast, not a fact, but run your numbers at 4.25% and at 4.5%, not only…

The Budget in one paragraph On 28 October 2026, Chancellor John Healey delivered the Autumn Budget. It contained three measures that speak directly to young people: a new scheme to help first-time buyers, more room to test a side hustle without a tax bill, and a rise in the minimum wage. None of them changes anything overnight. All of them reward people who start preparing now. This article explains each measure in plain English, with the figures as announced. It is general information, not financial advice, and some details still need legislation before they become law. Your First Home: a smaller deposit, with strings attached Your First Home is a new government scheme for first-time buyers in England, backed by £4.7 billion of government funding over five years. It works like this. You buy a new-build home from a developer signed up to the scheme. You put down a deposit of between 2.5% and 15% of the price. The government lends you 20% of the price through an equity loan. A normal repayment mortgage from a participating lender covers the rest. An equity loan is different from a normal loan. The government owns a share of your home equal to the loan. When you sell, you repay 20% of the sale price, so if your home rises in value, the amount you repay rises too. If it falls in value, the amount falls. The loan is interest free for the first five years. After that, interest starts at 1.5% in year six and rises to 3% from year seven. To see how the numbers fit together, take an illustrative home priced at £250,000. A 2.5% deposit is £6,250. The government equity loan of 20% is £50,000. The mortgage covers the remaining £193,750. There are limits. Your household income must be no more than £110,000 outside London, or £140,000 inside London. Price caps apply, set by local authority median prices, with inner London capped at £650,000 and outer London at £500,000. The home must be a new build, bought as your main home, from a participating developer. Existing homes are not eligible, and the scheme covers England only. The timetable matters. Pre-registration is due to open by the end of December 2026, full applications open in February 2027, and the first loans are expected from April 2027. A new First Time Buyer ISA was also announced, but its details are still being worked through, so we are not quoting figures for it here. The trading allowance: more room to test an idea From 6 April 2027, the trading allowance rises from £1,000 to £3,000. The trading allowance is the amount of trading and miscellaneous income you can receive in a year without paying tax on it and without needing to declare it. It covers things like freelance work, selling online, and small services, where the activity amounts to trading. Here is what that means in practice. Suppose you earn £2,400 in a year from selling designs online alongside your job. Under the old £1,000 allowance, £1,400 of that income sat above the allowance. Under the new £3,000 allowance, the whole £2,400 sits within it. That is the difference between testing an idea and doing paperwork about testing an idea. A few rules are worth knowing. The allowance applies per person, not per trade, so two side incomes share one £3,000 allowance. It is an alternative to deducting your actual business expenses, not an addition to them: if your expenses are more than £3,000, deducting the real expenses may leave you better off. The allowance cannot create a tax loss, and it does not cover a trade carried on in partnership, or income paid by your employer. It starts on 6 April 2027, so it does not change this tax year. Keep records from day one anyway. Good records are what turn a side hustle into a business a bank or a funder will take seriously. Wages: the floor rises in April 2027 From 1 April 2027, the National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over rises by 3.9%, from £12.71 to £13.21 an hour. The rate for 18 to 20 year olds rises to £11.27 an hour, and the rate for 16 to 17 year olds and apprentices rises to £8.31 an hour. The Budget document puts the gain at £910 a year in gross pay for a full-time worker on the adult rate. If you are employed, that is a straightforward pay rise, and it is worth checking your April 2027 payslip to make sure it arrived. If you run a small team, it is a cost to budget for now, not a surprise to meet in April. Saving: the Cash ISA limit stays at £20,000 Savers got a reprieve. A planned cut to the Cash ISA limit, down to £12,000 for under 65s from April 2027, will not go ahead. The annual Cash ISA limit stays at £20,000 from 6 April 2027, within the overall £20,000 ISA allowance. The government has said amending regulations will be laid to give effect to this, so treat the position as announced rather than already law. One change does bite: tax on savings interest held outside an ISA rises from 6 April 2027, to 24% at the basic rate, 44% at the higher rate and 49% at the additional rate. If you are saving for a deposit, the order of operations stays the same: build the habit, use tax sheltered saving where you can, and keep the deposit money somewhere you can reach it when the right home appears. What to do now First, if a first home is your goal, work out your deposit target under the new scheme and check whether the price caps and income caps fit your area. Second, if you have a side hustle idea, use the months before April 2027 to test it small, keep records, and keep your income and expenses in a separate account so the numbers are clean. Third, if you are…