Pithy intro encapsulating car-ish company’s recent issues and exploits of its needy boss.

Volta par leading to MainFT write-up of positive recent developments:

Tesla’s shares surged after the world’s largest electric vehicle maker reported higher than expected quarterly profit while forecasting “slight growth” in deliveries this year and a big jump in 2025.

Snarky teeing up of something being amiss.

Perfunctory paragraph providing link to pertinent recent document, and hinting at maligned content on page 13 thereof (h/t to treasured colleague from beloved newsletter).

Maligned content on page 13 thereof:

(Obsolete high-res link)

Further perfunctory paragraph regarding why it’s generally considered better to have units on the X-axis.

Witty denouement paragraph wrapping things up.

Further reading:
— Man shows car; shares fall

THE MONEYLESS man who ditched modern technology to move off-grid has revealed he survives without day-to-day commodities including running water or a flushing toilet.

Mark Boyle planned on joining the rat race and graduated with a degree in business and economics until a life changing conversation.

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In 2007, Mark set out to accomplish living a year without money and sought a free campervan before volunteering at a farm in exchange for a plot of land to live off.

Making the site slightly more hospitable, he then added a wood-burner, compost toilet and homemade stove.

Not fully achieving his goal, he spent £360 on a solar panel to power his electronics including a phone which he could only receive calls on.

His philosophy became a lifestyle and soon after he was brushing his teeth with cuttlefish bone and fennel seeds.

Leftover newspapers cast aside in bins acted as Mark’s sustainable equivalent to loo roll and he kept an eye out for food thrown out by nearby restaurants too.

Mark even made the 36-mile round trip from his caravan to Bristol on his bike, only hand washed his clothes and found other essentials by scouring the contents of skips.

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One year turned into four, until Mark made his first official purchase in 2011 – a pair of shoes from a charity shop.

The self-proclaimed Moneyless Man wrote a book to share his experiences and used the proceeds to fund a new plot of land near Galway, Ireland.

His DIY shack even featured in Ben Fogle‘s New Lives in the Wild which aired on Channel 5 in 2021.

Mark previously told Galway Beo how his life in the city of Bristol was “quite simple” and made up of “thousands” of “complicated things”.

He added: “Now I create a rather cumbersome life where I have to do everything but they are simple and easy to find.

“I don’t romanticise the past or the future. I know which way of life brings me the most peace and satisfaction.”

Despite admitting he does not romanticise his life, Mark hopes to inspire other to live out their dreams of a similar lifestyle.

Having published a number of books and regularly sharing his thoughts with The Guardian, Mark has been vocal about his thoughts on consumerism.

He believes that if people grew their own food, sourced drinking water and hand-crafted furniture, the population would be more mindful over their waste.

Having lived in a bubble where instant meals and supermarket privileges are non-existent, Mark has found peace and an understanding that even food is “not a given thing in life“.

We abandonded our 9-5 jobs to live off-grid in a shack we built entirely from scratch

A COUPLE has revealed how they escaped the rat race and found their dream life by building their own off-grid paradise.

Hoppie and Tao took a leap of faith when they decided to construct their cabin home in the Lamass Ecovillage in North Pembrokeshire.

Despite a bitter planning war that has gone on for over a decade, the pair live on site where there are a “collective of smallholdings and eco-dwellings in Preseli hills”.

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Taking to their YouTube channel, FLORB, to share their lifestyle with others, the couple revealed that they hadn’t always rejected the convention of day-to-day living.

Previously, Tao admitted to growing up in the “mainstream, in suburbia” with his mum, a housewife, and dad, an accountant.

He said: “I had a very ordinary upbringing but I never really felt rooted. It wasn’t until I started living on the land that I discovered roots.

“You’re not constrained by heavy mortgages or nine-to-five jobs. You’ve just got a lot of space to explore.”

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Previously, Hoppie ran a therapy business before moving to the rural village.

She said: “One day out of the blue, around my 40th birthday, I just suddenly felt [something] like a bell, going ‘ding’, saying it’s time to go to Pembrokeshire.

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt more empowered. My supermarket is a garden and my pharmacy is my herb garden. I love that.”

Transforming the original plot from a “bunch of small fields” and three caravans to their main chalet-themed home, the pair’s determination has paid off.

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Their green thinking doesn’t end there, as the pair have found living essentials and furniture through searching on eBay and in charity shops.

They also source their water from a spring, grow fruit and vegetables and even drink milk from their pet goats.

The lifestyle might not be for everyone with slightly less glamourous aspects such as the toilet barrel which stores waste for two years at a time.

Now hoping to extend their project, Tao and Hoppie have decided to turn the outbuilding structure into The Lammas Earth Centre for Transformation and Healing.

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US and Israeli spy chiefs will hold talks in Doha this weekend as the Biden administration renews its push to halt the war in Gaza and secure the release of Israeli hostages after the killing of Hamas’s leader.

The negotiations between CIA chief Bill Burns and David Barnea, the head of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, are scheduled for Sunday and will be the first discussions on a ceasefire for the besieged strip since August.

The US and its fellow mediators believe that Israel’s killing last week of Yahya Sinwar — the mastermind of Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack that triggered the war — has opened a window to revive the talks, which have been stalled for months.

But the Biden administration is proposing a shorter, temporary truce rather than the multiphase deal it had previously endorsed, which was intended to lead to the release of all the hostages, Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and a permanent end to the conflict.

A diplomat briefed on the described the latest effort as an attempt to broker a “mini version” of the previous deal.

The original proposal set out plans for a six-week initial pause in hostilities, during which Hamas would release female captives, the elderly and the wounded in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Israel would also have pulled back from all of Gaza’s populated areas and the parties would have negotiated the arrangements to get to the second stage, during which there would have been a permanent end to hostilities and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

The new proposal is expected to have similar terms for the release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners, but would probably last less than a month, the diplomat said.

It is not clear how either Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government or Hamas will react to the new proposal.

The latest push for a breakthrough comes as US secretary of state Antony Blinken has been touring the region in a last-ditch effort for a ceasefire ahead of the US elections.

He met Netanyahu in Israel this week, and on Thursday held talks with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, one of the lead negotiators.

Blinken said there was an “opportunity” to move forward on a deal “because the biggest obstacle to concluding that agreement was Sinwar”.

But others have blamed Netanyahu for blocking the diplomatic efforts in recent months by insisting on additional conditions for a deal.

The talks have been deadlocked since July when Netanyahu said that he would not withdraw troops from a strip of land along the Egyptian-Gaza border known as the Philadelphi corridor.

Since then, Israel has dramatically escalated its offensive against Hizbollah, killing the Lebanese militant movement’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and invading the south of Lebanon.

It has also continued its offensive in Gaza, killing scores of people in the north of the devastated strip in the week since Israeli soldiers discovered and killed Sinwar — Israel’s most wanted man.

After the Hamas leader’s death, Netanyahu said Israel was “determined to achieve all our war objectives and change the security reality in our region for generations to come”.

Far-right members of his ruling coalition have insisted that Israel should continue its war in Gaza.

But on Thursday, Netanyahu’s office said Barnea would go to Doha to “discuss the various options for starting the negotiations for the release of the hostages from Hamas captivity, against the background of the latest developments”.

Hamas, meanwhile, is leaderless but is sticking to its demands that it will only agree to a ceasefire and the release of hostages if there is an end to the war and Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza.

A Hamas “leadership council,” which includes Khalil al-Hayya, Sinwar’s deputy and main negotiator in Doha, and other senior officials within the group is expected to make the Palestinian militants’ decisions.

“Mediators are serious and think they can get a temporary deal that could lead to a longer agreement,” the diplomat briefed on the talks said. “However, the bigger issues for a permanent ceasefire still remain unresolved.”

A DAD received the life-changing news he’d won the lottery – only to be forced to split the £1 million winnings with four other people.

Paul White learned this week he was one of the lucky winners in the Postcode Lottery.

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But, due to the number of other entrants within his postcode, he has now had to share the prize with four other neighbours – leaving him with just £200,000.

The neighbours live in Breaston, Derbyshire, with three of them living on the same tiny cul-de-sac.

Despite this unfortunate turn of events, the retired electrical contractor was excited to at least plan a Christmas holiday to Australia with the winnings.

Meanwhile, neighbours Paul Rowland, George Mounsey and Alison Browne were ecstatic about the win.

Dad-of-three Paul said: “There’s a lovely community spirit and it’s lovely to have three winners in a row.

“I was going to take my wife for a weekend away. Now it’ll be a fortnight away. What are the chances of this happening here?”

He added that he would be treating his wife Angie and daughters Lizzy and Charlotte on a luxury holiday in the Maldives.

He joked: “Both my daughters are nurses. Lizzy wants to go to the Maldives. They’ve already said to us, ‘Oh we can go to the Maldives – you can take all of us.’ You know what kids are like.”

George said: “We couldn’t believe it when the three houses won together.

“We didn’t know they were in it until we went round and banged on the door and asked, ‘Are you in the Postcode Lottery? Have you had a phone call?”

Speaking of him and his wife Margaret, he added: “We haven’t got a clue what we’re going to do. We’re not short of money, we’re very comfortable.

“Margaret would like a static caravan in Yorkshire somewhere. We’ll see, we may invest.

“We’ve travelled the world and seen a lot of places. We’ve got two Schnauzers and when you’ve got dogs, you’ve got to think about them all the time. World cruises are out.”

Music teacher Alison said: “I don’t know what to think. This is life-changing, it really is.”

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BlackRock is launching a broad-based counterattack on a regulatory effort to limit the influence of large fund managers over US banks, saying it will drive up investor costs and “disrupt the flow of capital to the economy”.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has put forward a proposal that would require investors, including passive investment funds, to seek its approval when they take a stake of 10 per cent or more in a vastly expanded group of banks, including hundreds traditionally overseen by the US Federal Reserve or other regulators.

At the same time, the FDIC has separately contacted BlackRock and Vanguard, the two largest index fund managers, to impose tighter restrictions on their behaviour as big investors in the group of smaller publicly traded banks that it already supervises.

“BlackRock strongly opposes the proposal, which would harm investors, disrupt the flow of capital to the economy, and undermine the efficacy” of the existing regulatory framework, the $11.5tn asset manager wrote in a public comment letter filed on Thursday.

The two-pronged oversight effort has industry executives talking privately about an FDIC “land grab” and warning publicly the new rules will make banks less attractive investments and could destabilise smaller regional lenders.

Politicians on both sides of the political aisle have raised concerns. Republicans worry money managers will push progressive social or environmental causes, while Democrats have raised antitrust concerns about big funds that hold large stakes in multiple competing companies.

The FDIC has set an October 31 deadline for BlackRock and Vanguard to sign new “passivity agreements” that would require them to notify the agency every time they cross the 10 per cent threshold, put new limits on their contacts with bank executives and submit to independent reviews.

BlackRock’s letter said that process was premature. “The FDIC is applying [new restrictions] to certain firms as a fait accompli before reviewing comments on the proposal,” it said, adding the approach lacked transparency and “applies inconsistent standards across firms without a clear rationale”.

Because of its large index funds, BlackRock holds more than 10 per cent of the shares of 39 banks supervised by the FDIC and many more that would be affected by the proposed expansion. The money manager declined to comment beyond its letter.

Vanguard said: “We have engaged with policymakers, and suggested additional reforms that further clarify and refine expectations around passivity. We continue to work constructively with policymakers, including the FDIC.”

The US Chamber of Commerce called the rule proposal “flawed and not supported by data”, while the Conference of State Bank Supervisors said it would lead to “duplicative reviews”.

The Investment Company Institute, a lobby group, warned the proposal was a “drastic and unwarranted departure” that would “impose significant costs and burdens on regulated funds and their investors”.

It also said the renegotiation efforts “introduce uncertainty and create needless barriers for funds seeking to make passive investments in banking organisations”.

The regulator defended its approach. “The FDIC has an interest when entities seek to directly or indirectly control FDIC-supervised institutions,” it said.

The broader proposal’s fate may rest with the presidential election because the winner can shift the balance of power on the FDIC’s board.

But Jonathan McKernan, the Republican FDIC board member who has been vocal about his concerns about index fund power, said the effort to step up scrutiny of Vanguard and BlackRock should continue. “The two issues are distinct, even if perhaps topically related,” he said. “We shouldn’t wait to address an obvious gap in our monitoring framework.”

ROSÉ lovers, prepare to raise your glasses as a major supermarket is selling a huge 1.5L magnum size bottle of La Vieille Ferme Rosé.

Affectionately dubbed “Chicken Wine“, the popular drink is priced at just £14 with Sainsbury’s Nectar Prices and is perfect for Christmas parties and festive gatherings.

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La Vieille Ferme Rosé, already a favourite among wine enthusiasts, has skyrocketed in popularity after going viral on Instagram and TikTok this past summer.

Its playful nickname, “Chicken Wine,” and light, refreshing taste have made it a social media sensation, driving an impressive 96% boost in sales at Sainsbury’s compared to the same time last year.

If you’re hosting this Christmas, the magnum-sized bottle is guaranteed to be a conversation starter.

Whether for gifting or for sharing at the table, this larger version of the viral rosé ensures there will be enough to go around.

Available in selected Sainsbury’s superstores from this Sunday, this magnum promises to be a must-have for rosé lovers looking to make a statement this holiday season.

Sainsbury’s new magnum of La Vieille Ferme Rosé not only brings a larger bottle for festive gatherings, but also a better deal.

The 1.5L magnum, priced at £14 with Nectar Prices (or £16 without), works out at £1.07 per 100ml.

This makes it a more affordable option compared to the standard 750ml bottle, which usually sells for £8.50, or £1.13 per 100ml.

Unless the smaller bottle is on offer, the magnum offers better value for money, making it an attractive option for anyone stocking up on wine for Christmas or other celebrations.

The magnum of La Vieille Ferme Rosé at Sainsbury’s not only offers convenience but also better value compared to standard-sized bottles across other supermarkets.

The regular 750ml bottle is priced at £8.50 in Tesco and Asda, £7.50 at Waitrose, and £9.50 at Co-op.

Meanwhile, parents are rushing to Sainsbury’s to get their hands on toys for sale, with a mega-shot rifle with foam bullets scanning at tills at 50 per cent off.

It’s one of the biggest pre-Christmas sales around, with loads of parents stocking up on bargain presents for their kids.

Many savvy savers recently spotted the cheap toys in their local branches and finished festive shopping for the children in their family.

The shoppers posted their find on the Extreme Couponing and Bargains UK Facebook group after snapping up various toys – with some half price.

One of the members who posted about their finds said that they’d have a “happy grandson at Christmas” after picking up a Zuru Xshot for £20 instead of £40 – a 50 per cent saving.

Another member gushed over their items, saying they “will have two very happy little girls at Christmas” after picking up various Barbie dolls and Bluey toys.

The savvy shoppers found the goods in Sainsbury’s highly-anticipated toy sale.