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Sir Keir Starmer has said the UK government is “unashamed to partner with the private sector” in a set-piece speech that sought to boost flagging confidence in the British economy and his administration.

In his first address as prime minister to the Labour party conference in Liverpool on Tuesday, Starmer said he was willing to make “unpopular” decisions, but added he knew that people wanted “respite and relief” amid a cost of living crisis.

Starmer is contending with falling poll ratings and dissatisfaction within the party about the government’s “gloomy” outlook as it seeks to fill what it says is a £22bn “black hole” in public finances.

The prime minister argued that tough government decisions now would allow Britain “much more quickly” to access the “light at the end of this tunnel”, as he promised that the cost of filling the hole in the public finances would be “shared fairly”.

He added that confidence in the country was “brittle and fragile” and had to be restored, as he promised “national renewal”.

He added: “But the cost of filling that black hole in our public finances that will be shared fairly.”

Depicting his government as unashamed to work closely with the private sector to level up the country, Starmer said that Labour should be “proud to be the party of wealth creation”.

He said the government would give businesses more flexibility to adapt to the skills needs of employers through new “foundation apprenticeships” to give young people a way into work. 

He also announced that GB Energy, the new state-owned group intended to spearhead the transition to cleaner energy, would be headquartered in Aberdeen, a city set to be hit by Labour’s moves to curb offshore oil and gas extraction.

Speaking before he travels to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, Starmer urged “all parties to pull back from the brink” in the Middle East.

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Qatari telecoms company Ooredoo is borrowing QR2bn ($550mn) to expand its regional network of data centres, as the gas-rich Gulf nation seeks to capitalise on the information highway running through the Middle East.

Ooredoo is majority-owned by the Qatari government but listed and independently managed. Its data centre subsidiary, Mena Digital Hub, has obtained the 10-year financing facility from three Qatari banks and aims to overhaul and expand its data centres to meet demand for artificial intelligence applications. 

Fossil fuel exporting Gulf nations are betting heavily on AI to diversify their hydrocarbon-dependent economies. They believe they can provide the cheap power needed to run the energy-hungry computing warehouses that crunch vast quantities of data for AI uses. 

Analysts expect Saudi Arabia, the Gulf region’s largest economy, and the tech-focused United Arab Emirates to become the biggest markets for data centres and AI.  

But Ooredoo also has big ambitions, aiming to build 120MW of data centre capacity in the next five years. That’s equivalent to about half of the region’s 237MW market today, according to data from international real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, which projects that figure will more than double to 537MW by 2029.

In June, Ooredoo struck a partnership with US semiconductor maker Nvidia, which produces chips that can be used in data centres to handle AI’s intense computing demand.

In the Gulf “there’s space for probably three to four major players”, Ooredoo’s chief executive Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo told the Financial Times. “We hope to be one of those.”

Beyond cheap power and empty land, the Gulf is a particularly attractive market for the computing warehouses because regulators require local data to be processed within the country. 

“We already have 26 data centres [in Ooredoo’s main markets] and we’re expanding,” said Fakhroo, adding that “30 per cent of the world’s connectivity flows through [the] region”.

Ooredoo has data centres in Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman and Tunisia, as well as in Indonesia, under Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison.

But building data centres can be slow going. From obtaining regulatory approvals to securing the sought-after equipment needed to kit them out, Fakhroo said it was taking between 18 to 24 months to complete a data centre: “It’s a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem. I can’t deliver them fast enough.”

Aside from competition for in-demand AI processors, the US has put the Gulf states on a list of geographies requiring a licence to export the cutting-edge technology, over concerns about leaks to its rival China. 

Fakhroo said Ooredoo’s Indonesia data centre business had already got Nvidia chips, while in the Middle East, “we’re looking to obtain the first batch of chips by the end of this year”. 

Access to the US-made AI chips is just one way countries in the Gulf have ended up caught in the crossfire of Washington and Beijing’s competition over trade and technology. 

For Ooredoo, Fakhroo said that had meant keeping Chinese hardware out of data centres that catered to western companies. Ooredoo still worked with China’s Huawei in telecoms but, because its data centre clients included western cloud computing companies such as Microsoft and Google, they “are running western technology and not eastern technology”. 

Analysts say regional telecoms companies are looking to ventures such as data centres for growth, as the expansion of their traditional business slows. 

“It’s not like [data centres are] going to be the bread and butter of the telecom players,” said Ziad Itani, executive director of Arqaam Capital.

But “this is a new avenue for growth prospects”, he said. “At the same time it allows you to monetise your infrastructure”, because telecom operators already had data centres. 

Ooredoo has carved out Mena Digital Hub, and says it plans to invest $1bn to expand its capacity in the coming years.

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The tour guides say Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner were happy here. The two artists practised in a shabby, brown-shingled fisherman’s cottage in Springs, Long Island, with the Accabonac Creek flowing through the backyard, several hours’ drive and a world away from New York City.

The couple moved here shortly after their wedding in 1945, largely at Krasner’s urging. She wanted to remove Pollock from the bars that enabled his alcoholism, including the Cedar Tavern, a popular haunt among their fellow Abstract Expressionists. “If he was drinking, he wasn’t painting,” guide Theresa Davis says, and “if he was painting, it meant he wasn’t drinking.” Collector and patron Peggy Guggenheim put up the money for their down payment.

When they moved in, the house was a fixer-upper with no indoor bathrooms. The couple soon moved the barn to clear the view to the creek and made further improvements in 1953.

The property and the way they divided it echoes the tension of their relationship and their influence on each other as artists. During their lifetimes, Pollock’s fame overshadowed Krasner’s, due in part to the misogyny of the art establishment. But over time, Krasner’s work has gained recognition.

The house largely retains the sensibility of Krasner, who remained there until she died in 1984, long after Pollock’s death in 1956. Her robe is laid out on the bed upstairs as if ready for its owner, and her beloved collections of seashells fill the bedroom shelves and an artfully arranged living room corner beneath a bay window. Downstairs are Pollock’s record player and his jazz record collection, and their shared library.

Pollock took the barn for his studio, while Krasner used a much smaller spare room upstairs. Despite the difficulties that arose from Pollock’s alcoholism, depression and infidelity, they respected each other’s working practices: each had to ask permission to enter the other’s studio.

During a two-year period of sobriety, Pollock developed his famous drip technique here, pouring, dribbling and splashing paint on canvases laid on the floor. A shelf lined with paint cans, Pollock’s brushes still in them, is surrounded by images that bring his radical process to life. The barn’s floorboards are overlaid with Pollockian splatter that visitors may tread across in protective slippers.

“A lot of people feel shocked that they can actually walk on the studio floor and kind of be in a Pollock painting”, director Matthew Ward says. Even when crowded, the space is hushed, visitors stepping delicately as if on the ledger stones of a cathedral.

In the late 1940s, Pollock began numbering instead of naming his works to encourage viewers to feel a response for his improvised abstractions, rather than being affected by a title. Krasner, meanwhile, experimented boldly with colour and shape, evolving her aesthetic over her career.

Both continued to spend time in the New York art world, but their Long Island neighbours weren’t much impressed: when a skint Pollock tried to barter his paintings with local shopkeepers, most preferred cash.

In 1956, while Krasner was on a trip to Paris, Pollock crashed his car less than a mile from the house, after a drinking bout. He and one of the passengers died; the woman he was having an affair with survived.

After his death, Krasner took over the barn studio, leaving her paint marks stippled on the walls as she painted upright canvases. This palimpsest in the two axes of the space — distinct yet interconnected — provides perhaps the best physical metaphor for their relationship.

The house is an inspiring place, but a sad one, too — a reminder that no matter how peaceful the environs, demons of the mind can still triumph over artistic endeavour.

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UK household disposable income has dropped below pre-pandemic levels even as state support helped reduce inequality, underlining the impact of rising prices and higher interest rates on personal finances.

Median household disposable income was £34,500 in the fiscal year ending March 2023, down 2.5 per cent on the previous year and down from £34,700 in the year to March 2020, the Office for National Statistics said on Tuesday.

Disposable income — defined as the amount of money households have available for spending and saving after taxes — fell by an annual average of 0.3 per cent between 2020 and 2023, the ONS said, although it rose by 0.8 per cent a year between 2013 and 2023.

Disposable income inequality declined to 33.1 per cent in the year to March 2023 from 35.5 per cent the previous year on the back of government measures to ease the cost of living crisis.

The figures highlight the impact of the recent surge in inflation and reflect the rise in mortgage rates as the Bank of England increased borrowing costs.

After consumer confidence fell sharply in September, they also underline the challenge facing Sir Keir Starmer’s government to deliver its promise of higher living standards across the country.

Inflation stood at 2.2 per cent in August, well below the 42-year high of 11.1 per cent in October 2022 but above the BoE’s 2 per cent target.

Tomasz Wieladek, chief European economist at investment company T Rowe Price, said the jump in energy costs after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 had led other essential goods and services to rise in price at a time when households were facing higher mortgage costs and consumer debt.

But he added that “the effects would have been much larger” had successive governments not subsidised household energy bills or raised the minimum wage by almost 10 per cent.

Britain’s poorest households benefited from a 2.3 per cent increase in disposable income to £16,400 in the past year, helped by government support measures, the ONS said.

By contrast, disposable income among the richest households fell 4.9 per cent to £68,400, while there was a 2.5 per cent fall to £34,500 across the entire population.

Despite lower income inequality, the richest and poorest one-fifth of households were worse off than before the pandemic, with their disposable income down 4.3 per cent and 2.4 per cent respectively.

In a letter this month, 17 groups including the Salvation Army warned ministers that many Britons were “resorting to desperate measures” to cope with living costs and higher energy bills this winter.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves on Monday reiterated the government’s commitment to boosting economic growth, striking a more upbeat tone than in previous months and paving the way for more public investment.

She also set out an accelerated timeline on a pledge to roll out free breakfast clubs to every primary school in the UK.

Household disposable income has grown much more slowly since the 2008-09 financial crisis than in past decades, ONS data shows, highlighting the impact of slower growth.

In the 15 years to 2023, median disposable income rose only 7 per cent, compared with a 41 per cent increase in the previous 15 years.

Economists forecast that household income will rise again in 2024 as real wages are now rising and mortgage costs falling.

In August, the BoE cut interest rates for the first time in more than four years, leaving them at 5 per cent. Another reduction is expected in November.

Paul Dales, economist at research company Capital Economics, said there would “be an extra drag on real household disposable income” if Reeves raised taxes in the October Budget. But he added that it was likely “to grow faster [in the year to March 2024] mainly due to inflation having fallen faster than wage growth”.

It may be surprising, but it appears more people have considered becoming a senior paraplanner than a financial adviser.

Research from recruitment platform Indeed, with the St. James’s Place (SJP) Financial Adviser Academy, found just 4% of respondents had considered becoming a financial adviser, while 9% had considered becoming a senior paraplanner.

The research looked at attitudes towards careers among over 4,000 UK workers, highlighting a good salary, work/life balance and the opportunity to work from home as factors that create the ideal role.

This data was combined with job searches to produce a list of 10 of the best careers people have never considered. Senior paraplanner was second on the list, while financial adviser was fourth.

Broad appeal

This may go against the grain of expectations, as you would think advisers would have a higher profile among the general public as they are more client facing.

However, Gee Foottit, senior manager, partnerships, at the SJP Academy, points out we cannot draw conclusions about the level of public awareness for either role, as the research only shows whether respondents had considered these careers for themselves.

Foottit acknowledges the common perception is that advisers have the dominant career but people also have out-of-date perceptions of advisers as male economics graduates in suits who work in the City.

“Women make fantastic financial advisers,” she says. “The skills required can be more difficult to train people in – things like emotional intelligence, being inquisitive and feeling at ease to ask questions.”

Foottit says that while men – who outnumber women as advisers 80/20 – can certainly have these attributes, more women tend to already possess them.

It is widely accepted paraplanning has more of an equal gender split and commentators suggest this is because there are elements that appeal to everyone.

People whose main focus is to drive their career forward have pathways to follow, perhaps moving into financial advice.

Versatility and flexibility

The versatility of paraplanning also enables people to flexibly juggle work with the demands of bringing up children, while still having job satisfaction and options to progress in the future, when their families are more self-sufficient.

Although being an adviser also offers many of these benefits, there is a feeling the advice role is more defined, while paraplanning can be moulded around the needs of businesses and individuals.

Liam Chapman-Lyes, senior paraplanner at Succession Wealth, believes this is why the gender split is more balanced in paraplanning relative to advice.

“Paraplanners have worked from home since Covid – technology has opened up the role across the whole country rather than locally. And you don’t have to worry about client calls and working out of hours,” he says.

“You can do your hours, switch off at the end of the day and it’s less stressful.”

That is not to say men do not appreciate the flexibility and versatility that paraplanning offers. Chapman-Lyes has spent the last seven years building a career in paraplanning.

At Succession Wealth, there are different roles within paraplanning, such as associate paraplanner and senior paraplanner. This enables the firm’s paraplanners to occupy ‘light advice roles’ where they combine technical work behind the scenes with client engagement or cashflow planning.

“Paraplanning didn’t really exist 20 years ago but it has developed so much in the last 10 years. Now there are pathways for qualifying as a financial planner or staying in a paraplanner role – you can choose,” says Chapman-Lyes.

“I have bit of client contact – I speak to clients over email, assist on drafting the advice and cashflow modelling – but there’s lots of scope to do more.”

A growing profession

While hosting the Personal Finance Society’s (PFS) Purely Paraplanning Conference in April, Altus Consulting platforms consulting director Amira Norris was struck by the realisation that the paraplanning community is ‘growing and thriving’.

“Once seen as a stop gap to becoming an adviser or a way to promote administrators, paraplanning has evolved over the last decade or so to become a respected and valued career in its own right,” she says.

“The main institutes now all recognise paraplanning as a career path, with dedicated qualifications pathways and initiatives, such as the PFS Paraplanning Panel and the CISI paraplanner award.

“The role of a paraplanner has become invaluable to advice businesses, as the need to keep up with the regulatory and technical complexity of financial planning increases,” she says.

“We are also seeing offshoots of specialisations in areas such as cashflow planning, complex pension reviews and intergenerational wealth expertise.”