Morning.

It’s Tuesday 15th September: Britain’s jobs market is cooling, the government is preparing to take over a major steelmaker and your phone can now get you served at the pub.

Kettle on.

📅 On this day: In 1940, the RAF fought off a major German attack on London in what became known as Battle of Britain Day. The failure to defeat Britain's air defences helped force Hitler to abandon plans for an invasion.

Britain’s jobs market is continuing to cool. The number of people on company payrolls fell again in August, while the number of vacancies has dropped to 702,000, its lowest level since 2014 apart from the pandemic.

Unemployment remains at 4.9%, but employers are hiring less and pay rises are slowing. Total pay growth, including bonuses, slowed to 3.9%, with a particularly big difference between the public and private sectors: regular public-sector pay grew by 6.3%, compared with 2.9% in the private sector.

That 3.9% figure also has a slightly unexpected consequence for pensioners. Under the triple lock, the state pension rises each April by whichever is highest: wage growth, inflation or 2.5%.

If inflation doesn’t beat 3.9%, that figure would determine next April’s state pension increase, adding roughly £490 a year to the full new state pension and taking it above £13,000. So not the cheeriest set of employment figures, but potentially better news if your working days are behind you.

The government is preparing to acquire Speciality Steel UK, which went into liquidation last year, after deciding it couldn’t support a proposed sale to a private buyer.

The company employs more than 1,300 people across sites in Rotherham, Stocksbridge, Brinsworth and Wednesbury. It makes specialist steel used in areas including aerospace and defence, making its future rather more strategically important than that of your average struggling company.

The government hasn’t bought it yet. Ministers will now work towards a public acquisition while keeping the door open to future private investment. For the 1,300 people working at the sites, the immediate point is simpler: the government is stepping in rather than leaving their future to the liquidation process.

Yesterday we told you Reform UK had received a fairly astonishing £72m from two crypto investors. It has taken roughly one day for things to become considerably messier.

The government is planning tighter rules around political donations that could affect the two £36m gifts. Proposed retrospective rules would limit how much people living abroad, or who have recently returned to the UK, can donate.

Reform says the donations are legal under the current rules. Nigel Farage says that if Labour changes the law in a way that blocks them, a future Reform government would target trade-union funding of Labour. So the £72m hasn't been found illegal; the fight is now over whether new rules should retrospectively affect it.

You can now use digital ID to prove your age when buying alcohol in England and Wales. Approved apps can generate a short-lived QR code after verifying you, for example with a facial scan or PIN. The person behind the bar or till can then use that instead of checking a driving licence or passport.

Nobody is being forced to use it. Businesses can choose whether to accept digital ID and physical ID still works exactly as before. Which means forgetting your wallet no longer necessarily prevents you buying a pint. Forgetting your phone, unfortunately, has somehow become even more inconvenient.

Some major retailers are failing to give customers all the money they’re legally owed when they return online purchases, according to Which?. Its mystery shoppers bought and returned more than 200 items from 17 retailers. Which? says Matalan, River Island and Sports Direct were among those that repeatedly failed to refund the original standard delivery charge.

That bit is easy to miss. When you cancel an eligible online order within the cooling-off period, retailers generally have to refund the basic delivery cost as well as the goods. They don’t necessarily have to pay what it costs you to send the item back. So if you’ve returned an entire online order recently, it may be worth checking the refund rather than assuming the number on your bank statement is correct.

NATO fighter jets have shot down a drone after it entered Lithuanian airspace near the border with Belarus. Lithuanian authorities say it appeared to have entered from Belarus and may have been carrying explosives, although its origin and purpose remain under investigation.

Lithuania borders both Belarus and Russia’s heavily militarised Kaliningrad region, so unidentified aircraft entering its airspace are taken particularly seriously. Lithuania said it was the first time NATO aircraft had shot down a drone in its territory.

Grocery inflation has risen to 2.3%, up from 2.1% last month, according to market researcher Worldpanel. That doesn’t mean your weekly shop suddenly costs 2.3% more than it did last month. It means grocery prices were, on average, 2.3% higher than a year earlier.

Oasis have announced another tour for 2027, including four nights at Knebworth, more than 30 years after the shows that became one of the defining moments of Britpop. The band will also play five nights at Glasgow’s Celtic Park and a fairly ridiculous 11 at Manchester’s Etihad Stadium, alongside dates across Europe, Ireland and the US.

There won’t be a normal general sale. Fans have until Thursday afternoon to register for the chance to buy tickets, presumably because the last Oasis ticket sale demonstrated that putting several million British people into one online queue at once isn't enormously relaxing.

The original Knebworth concerts in 1996 were watched by 250,000 people. Thirty-one years later, Oasis will be back. As will, presumably, several thousand bucket hats.

Have a great day.

See you tomorrow.

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