Over the past year, commercial flight crews have been dealing with a surge in false GPS signals, initially intended for military use to counter drones and missiles.

GPS Interference Over Black Sea

These signals, once confined to war zones in Ukraine and the Middle East, are now affecting civilian aviation, raising concerns about flight safety.

Pilots, aviation industry representatives, and regulators have reported a growing number of GPS disruptions on flights worldwide, according to Digi24.

One notable incident occurred in August 2024, when a United Airlines flight from Delhi to New York experienced GPS interference over the Black Sea.

The false signals caused the plane’s route to deviate, and though the crew used other navigation systems to land safely at Newark Liberty Airport, the flight path showed that it ended in the Atlantic Ocean.

Similarly, in July, the crew of an Airbus A320 reported a “major map shift,” and a Boeing 787 had to abort two landings due to GPS failures.

Chinese property companies rose in early trading on Tuesday after the country’s central bank governor announced a cut to downpayments for second homes, part of a raft of measures aimed at boosting growth.

Pan Gongsheng said downpayments for first and second homes would be “unified” at 15 per cent. Previously the minimum downpayment on second homes was 25 per cent.

The Hang Seng Mainland Properties index, which consists of large Chinese property companies listed in Hong Kong, rose as much as 5.8 per cent in early trading. KE Holdings, China’s largest online property transaction platform, led gains as it jumped more than 13 per cent.

The broader Hang Seng index rose 2 per cent, leading gains among major regional indices for the day.

Shuttterstock / ComicsansThere is often a point during job interviews where the candidate is asked if they have any questions to put to the employer.

This part of an interview can be overlooked during preparations — but asking the right questions can help a prospective employee decide if the role is a good fit for them, while showing the employer that the candidate genuinely wants a career in advice.

So, what are the best questions to ask?

I’d want to understand how a firm embraced technology to assist its clients and how it provided exceptional client service

Nobody wants to feel like the proverbial fish out of water in a new job, which is why understanding a company’s culture is so important.

When people talk about company culture, they are referring to things such as shared values, attitudes and behaviour that shape how a business operates.

“Company culture is becoming more important to candidates, with 45% of employees and business leaders ranking this as the most important factor when looking for a job,” says Equilibrium Financial Planning culture and recruitment manager Kelly Eyton-Jones.

By asking about trending topics — such as the Consumer Duty — candidates can show a genuine interest in the industry

She believes that asking questions around team dynamics and work-life balance can be helpful for job seekers in assessing whether the work environment aligns with their preferences and values.

Financial services recruiters often find that, when hires don’t work out, it is due to a misalignment of culture and values. These experts say asking questions up front, during the interview, can help to avoid this.

“Questions around ethics, continuous professional development, targets for report writing and the firm’s own plans for growth are always good areas to focus on,” says recruiter Fram Search’s director of financial services, Kelly Biggar.

Recruiter Exchange Street’s director, Andy Taylor, says candidates need to find out what it is really like to work at the company in question.

Ask things like, ‘What is the most important thing you would want me to achieve?’ You can then take a view on whether it’s achievable

“Asking, ‘What is the culture like here?’ is a weird question, so I’d break it down. Ask questions like, ‘What characteristics do people who do this job well seem to share?’” he says.

“One that’s a bit more challenging is, ‘What would the people in the team say it’s like to work here?’ That can draw the interviewer out to talk about any issues the firm has faced and what it is doing about it.”

Candidates will be able to ask more probing questions around culture if they have done a bit of digging beforehand.

“Do your research — and that shouldn’t stop at the company website,” says Succession Wealth recruitment manager Charlotte Turner.

“Look at employee and company content on LinkedIn and social media. Check out what awards the company has been nominated for or won, events they’ve been involved with, and really get a sense of what’s important within the company culture. Then ask questions related to those aspects you identify with.”

Enquiring about how the changes in the Consumer Duty have impacted the business shows they have undertaken thorough research

Another subject candidates may want to ask about is the firm’s compliance culture.

Karishma Galaiya, senior manager of investments at compliance consultant Thistle Initiatives, says showing an interest here demonstrates that the candidate understands the sector and the importance of delivering positive consumer outcomes.

“Enquiring about the organisation’s implementation of the Consumer Duty may also offer insight into how consumers are treated,” she says.

Training and development

We have all heard cautionary tales of people joining a firm but not progressing, or being given unrealistic targets. To avoid this at the start, commentators recommend asking questions about training and development during the job interview.

Eyton-Jones suggests finding out about the qualifications or exams that must be completed in the first year, or the types of client they may expect to work with.

“These questions not only help to manage candidates’ expectations but also provide them with valuable insights into their potential long-term work,” she says.

Questions around ethics, continuous professional development, targets for report writing and the firm’s own plans for growth are always good areas

For Taylor, tactful questions such as, ‘What will the first 12 months look like?’ and, ‘How will you train me?’ can determine whether a firm invests in developing its people.

“You can also ask things like, ‘How will you measure my performance?’ and, ‘What is the most important thing you would want me to achieve?’ You can then take a view on whether it’s achievable,” he says.

“If the business sounds great but expects you to do too much — well, nobody can do that.”

Industry trends and topics

Employers want to hire genuinely enthusiastic people — not someone who simply wants a job. So, anything that shows that a candidate has done their homework on the firm and the profession will go down well.

“By asking about current events and trending topics, candidates can demonstrate a genuine interest in the industry,” says Eyton-Jones.

Company culture is becoming more important to candidates, with 45% of employees and business leaders ranking this as the most important factor

“For instance, enquiring about how the changes in the Consumer Duty have impacted the business shows they have undertaken thorough research and have a sincere interest in the industry.”

Asking about a firm’s approach to technology is also a good idea.

“If I were starting out, I’d want to understand how a firm embraced technology to assist its clients and how it provided exceptional client service,” says Twenty7tec chief executive James Tucker.

“If a company is getting these things right, it’s very likely to be a great environment to learn in and develop a long career.”

This article featured in the September 2024 edition of Money Marketing. 

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Whereas last year’s Labour Party Conference was filled with untrammelled optimism, this year there’s a palpable sense of trepidation amid the victory celebrations in Liverpool.

The strict instructions new MPs have been given to ensure they keep out of trouble have contributed to that feeling. Nobody wants to become the conference’s Main Character for speaking out of turn, so soon after being elected.

There’s also the icy plunge into government, with the myriad serious issues that a party in power has to confront. When the Chancellor and Prime Minister talk of tough choices and inevitable unpopularity, it takes some of the spring out of your step.

But there’s also a degree to which the mood can be attributed to the rough ride the party has had in the press in recent weeks. Whether it’s painful battles over cuts to winter fuel payments, the ongoing row over donations in kind received by various frontbenchers, or the nascent spat over economic confidence, Labour MPs and activists alike are feeling somewhat tender from a barrage of difficult headlines.

There are three schools of thought about this.

Loyalists reassure their colleagues that this is just what it’s like for a new government. The scrutiny is harsher and more intense than in opposition, for good reason, and it will take time to adjust from the comparatively easy ride provided by endless Tory psychodramas and pratfalls.

Starmer-sceptics argue that these are real problems of political judgement, mixing personal overconfidence with an overly conservative fiscal policy.

Jeremy Corbyn, one veteran activist said to me on Monday, wouldn’t take flashy suits or leave pensioners in the cold. (The easy rejoinder is that if Corbynism’s monkish asceticism and enthusiasm for government debt was so fantastic, it wouldn’t have led Labour to disaster, whereas Starmer’s smart wardrobe and Reeves’s commitment to balancing the books has delivered electoral triumph.)

There may be some truth in both views, though each should be taken with a pinch of salt given they divide along factional lines.

But the third school of thought about Labour’s recent troubles cuts more widely, and should be of far greater concern to the party: their commuications machine is malfunctioning.

Regardless of whether Starmerites or their critics are right about the source of critical news stories, both agree that when such things happen, the Government’s media team needs to handle them effectively. Even loyalists privately concede that over the summer this has stuttered.

Issues that should be foreseen and headed off are allowed to fester for too long.

For example, the winter fuel decision is now paired with a new campaign to increase the uptake among vulnerable pensioners of pension credit. That’s a useful response for ministers to give when under fire – however, the cut was announced in late July, and the pension credit campaign didn’t launch until 2 September. In the gap, the narrative was set.

Messaging on difficult issues seems inexcusably clumsy. We are now weeks into the donations row, but voters are still being told that what was done was “within the rules” and even that “every MP does it”.

These replies are straight out of the failed response to the MPs’ expenses scandal 15 years ago. They didn’t work then, and they aren’t working now, for the good reason that they display a failure to understand the nature of people’s concerns about the issue. Instead they reinforce the problem.

“This is allowed and we are all at it” is not a helpful reply – and comms professionals should not be sending ministers out to deliver it.

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There are also signs that decision-making is just too slow, which is damaging in a fast-moving environment.

For instance, once it emerged that Lady Starmer had received gifts of dresses, it was inevitably going to be a news story – but a press operation at the top of its game should never have allowed her to be photographed the very next day at London Fashion Week looking at designer dresses.

It’s a small thing, but it turned a few paragraphs of black and white newspaper copy into a picture story, which was an unforced error.

She was absent from a London Fashion Week event at Downing Street later that day, where readouts of speeches suggested she was expected to attend – a source told The Telegraph the British Fashion Council had been mistaken in thinking she would be there at all – but by then it was too late.

That suggests the media operation knows what’s a good idea and what’s a bad idea, but something is slowing them down and preventing them putting those instincts to effective use.

My colleagues in the press are prone to over-dramatise, so let’s not overstate this. This is not a crisis. It’s not a disaster. But it is a problem, and the cumulative effect of a misfiring comms operation is attritional.

Each sluggish response or mis-step erodes a little bit of political capital. This government has lots of capital, because it has squillions of MPs and just won a gigantic election victory. But even in this position it cannot afford to squander impetus and authority. It needs those things to get stuff done, and to cultivate its 2024 voters for the next election.

That is what is most surprising about these mistakes. Labour had a long time to prepare for the 2024 election, and did so ruthlessly. It squared away reputational problems, it carefully mapped out its messaging and deployed a grid of announcements and tactics with great discipline.

Around the country, it is already swinging into action to prepare for the next election. New MPs are working their constituencies to build an incumbency advantage and to get their activists straight back on the doorstep.

If they are undermined in those efforts by negative headlines fueled by errors at the top, they will soon grow frustrated.

Mark Wallace is Chief Executive of Total Politics Group

Good morning. Some worrisome news to start the day: Paris has asked Brussels for another delay in submitting its budget plans, and investors are taking note: French debt prices are rising and converging with Spain’s on heightened consternation about the state of the country’s public finances.

Today, our Balkans correspondent interviews Kosovo’s leader on the anniversary of deadly clashes near its tense border with Serbia, and our Warsaw correspondent reports on Poland’s government weaponising a report into its predecessor’s cash-for-visa scandal.

Unhappy anniversary

One year after an armed stand-off shook Kosovo, Prime Minister Albin Kurti has warned of continued threats to stability in the region in an interview with Marton Dunai.

Context: A year ago today, paramilitaries connected to the Serb government clashed with special police units from Pristina, leaving four people dead and undermining western efforts to pacify the region through compromise.

“Since [the] terrorist attack in Banjska a year ago by this paramilitary group led by the notorious Milan Radojcic, the amount of information that we’re getting about illegal activities is enormous,” Kurti said.

He added that activities by “different criminal elements” and Serb groups had increased over the past year, compared with the years before.

For years under an international protectorate, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008, a move Belgrade has never accepted and still resists with the support of the likes of Russia and China.

Violence erupted on September 24 last year, when a convoy of heavily armed paramilitaries entered Kosovo and holed up in a Serb monastery in the village of Banjska, with stockpiles of heavy weapons. Kosovo police shot three of the insurgents — and lost one officer — before the attackers escaped to Serbia.

Radojcic, a former gangster and politician from Serb-majority northern Kosovo, later acknowledged to have led the attack, but remains free in Serbia.

Kosovo, in turn, has intensified efforts to root out Serb influence on its territory despite a growing pressure from the west to adhere to a previous compromise agreement with Belgrade.

Measures include a phaseout of Serb-issued vehicle licence plates and personal IDs, cracking down on smuggling between the neighbours and a ban of the Serbian dinar commonly used in Serb areas instead of the euro, which Kosovo unilaterally introduced. 

Kurti said that “it has become illegal not to act” on Serb influence. “We want a rule of law in place not to endanger peace and security.”

He added that his government’s measures had been “completely on the right side”, although Serbs have denied any malicious activities.

One year after Banjska, a compromise deal seems very far off.

Chart du jour: Dither and deliver

Potentially allowing Ukraine to use long-range missiles on targets in Russia is the latest in a series of “salami tactics” taken by western allies as they seek to assist Ukraine’s defence while avoiding escalation with Moscow. Here’s our read into how Kyiv navigates the Kremlin’s red lines — and western indecision.

Border control

Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk yesterday seized upon a report about illegally acquired work visas to accuse the previous rightwing government of having undermined the country’s security, writes Raphael Minder.

Context: Last October, Tusk’s coalition defeated the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) in elections, held only one month after the government got engulfed in a major scandal over Polish visas allegedly sold for cash via its consulates across the world.

Since taking office, Tusk’s government has continued to present PiS as a party that talked tough on immigration but failed to protect Poland’s borders, as showcased by its illegal visa scheme.

In contrast, Tusk in May rejected the EU’s reform of its migration system, saying that “the EU will not impose any migrant quotas on us”.

Tusk’s government also recently announced tighter rules for student visas to stop people misusing them to work in Poland.

Yesterday, Tusk said a draft report from state auditors questioning how 366,000 visas were granted under PiS to people from African and Middle Eastern countries “confirmed our worst suspicions”.

“While Polish soldiers and border guards were risking their health and lives to protect us from the wave of illegal migration organised by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Belarusian President Aleksandr] Lukashenko, the PiS government let in 366,000 people from Asia and Africa, also for bribes,” Tusk said.

Jan Grabiec, who heads Tusk’s chancellery, separately claimed that this figure was higher than the number of migrants Belarus and Russia had been trying to smuggle across the Polish border.

At a time when Germany and others are also increasingly critical of immigration, expect Tusk’s Poland to stay at the front of the pack.

What to watch today

1. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Belgian premier Alexander De Croo and other world leaders address the UN General Assembly in New York.

2. EU general affairs ministers meet.

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