Afternoon.

It’s Monday 21st September: the AI boom is making your gadgets more expensive, another railway has gone public and Britain’s car industry is wondering whether it should start building something else.

Kettle on.

📅 On this day: In 1937, JRR Tolkien published The Hobbit. The book introduced readers to Bilbo Baggins, Middle-earth and a rather important ring, eventually selling more than 100 million copies worldwide.

A global shortage of memory chips has sent prices soaring as manufacturers increasingly prioritise the huge quantities needed for AI data centres. Apple has now raised iPhone prices by £100, including for some older and refurbished models, while Samsung and Google have also increased prices.

It isn't just phones. Memory is used in laptops, PCs and games consoles, so manufacturers across the electronics industry are facing higher costs. The slightly annoying bit is that even when the shortage eases, analysts don't necessarily expect prices to return to where they were.

Apparently artificial intelligence has decided our phones weren't expensive enough already.

Every Crown Court in England and Wales will have at least one specialist courtroom for rape and serious sexual offence cases within two years, under new government plans. 

The idea is to make an often lengthy and difficult court process less traumatic. Cases will be given fixed trial dates rather than being moved around the court calendar, while the specialist rooms will have private entrances and waiting areas, and facilities allowing victims to record evidence in advance.

Court staff will also receive training on trauma, while a pilot will give victims a single point of contact throughout their case. The changes are partly an attempt to tackle very long waits for rape trials. Campaigners have welcomed the plans, although the Victims’ Commissioner has warned that better courtrooms alone will not solve the wider backlog.

The NHS has launched an urgent response after organ donations fell 9% over the past year, leaving around 8,700 people waiting for a transplant. Britain has an opt-out donation system, meaning adults are generally considered potential donors unless they choose otherwise. But doctors will not go ahead if a person's family objects, and fewer families have recently been consenting to donation.

NHS Blood and Transplant says organ donation is going through one of its most difficult periods in more than a decade. Around nine people a week are dying while waiting for a suitable organ. The NHS is asking people to record their wishes on the Organ Donor Register and, importantly, tell their family what they want. It is a conversation most of us would rather put off, but one that can make the decision much easier if the time ever comes.

Some of Britain's biggest car-parts manufacturers reckon the future of British manufacturing might involve making fewer car parts. Suppliers to Jaguar Land Rover have asked the government for help moving into aerospace and defence, arguing that their factories and workers already have many of the skills those industries need.

The warning comes after JLR announced plans to cut 4,000 jobs. The suppliers say Britain's automotive supply chain supports around 183,000 manufacturing jobs but faces growing competition from abroad, high energy costs and pressure from carmakers to source components more cheaply.

Their proposal is essentially to repurpose some of that industrial capacity rather than lose it. With European countries spending more on defence and aerospace, they reckon there is plenty of work available if British factories can make the switch.

Chiltern Railways entered public ownership yesterday, becoming the latest train operator to be taken over as part of the government's rail reforms. For passengers, nothing dramatic happens overnight: tickets remain valid and fares aren't changing because of the takeover. But 25 extra daily services and around 10,000 additional weekday seats are planned from December.

Chiltern joins a growing list of publicly owned operators, ahead of the creation of Great British Railways, which is intended to bring track and train management together. Great Western Railway is next in December, with the remaining transfers due by the end of 2027.

There really has been a rise in mental distress among young people, according to the professor leading the government's independent review into mental health, ADHD and autism. Professor Peter Fonagy told the BBC that increases in anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders cannot simply be explained by people becoming more willing to talk about their mental health.

He pointed to social media, economic uncertainty and a tougher jobs market among the pressures making it harder to be young today.

The review, involving more than 100 experts as well as affected families, was commissioned earlier this year and has not yet published its final recommendations. So this isn't the conclusion of the debate, but it does push back against the idea that the rise is simply down to younger people becoming less resilient.

The government's new foundation apprenticeship scheme recorded just 160 starts between August and April. Foundation apprenticeships were introduced to give young people an easier route into work and training, particularly those who aren't ready for a conventional apprenticeship. The government wants 30,000 people to have started one by the end of this parliament.

The latest official figures show the wider picture is rather better: overall apprenticeship starts in England rose nearly 9% to 308,770 in the first three quarters of the academic year. But under-19 starts actually fell, while the new foundation programme is clearly starting from a very small base. The government says the scheme will build over time.

Potentially concerning news for the core Cuppa demographic: climate change is making tea harder to grow. Kenya supplies around half of the black tea drunk in Britain, but farmers there say increasingly unpredictable weather is hurting yields and quality while their costs rise.

Tea-growing areas have experienced rain when it would normally be dry and unusual heat during traditionally cooler months. Combined with problems in other producing countries, that has helped push global tea prices higher.

Nobody is suggesting Britain is about to run out of Yorkshire Tea. Still, threatening the national tea supply does feel like a particularly effective way of getting Britain's attention.

Have a great day.

See you tomorrow.

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