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Hello and welcome to More or Less.

We're ranging from soul to geostationary orbit this week, as we examine everything from

the economic significance of the space industry to the collapsing birth rates in South Korea.

Are we really down to six grandchildren per hundred people?

The strangest and most exotic of all, mortgage rates at 6%, something which most millennials

could scarcely have imagined, while many boomers can barely restrain their scorn.

As always, we will keep calm and carry on explaining it all.

And we should probably start with those mortgages.

It will not have escaped the notice of anyone who has persuaded a bank to lend them a scary

amount of money that interest rates have been rising.

Both the Bank of England's base rate and the rates offered to us by ordinary banks to take out mortgages.

These mortgage rates started rising at the end of 2021, increasing from about 2% up to

about 4% by the autumn of 2022.

Then came the Trust Quarting Mini Budget.

Remember that?

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

And you have burned so very, very brightly.

Anyway, the unfunded tax cuts that were proposed in that budget sparked fears of exacerbating inflation.

That would prompt the Bank of England to raise interest rates sharply and so mortgage

lenders had to raise their own fixed-term mortgage rates in anticipation.

Mortgage rates hit 6%, quite a shock.

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