Rachel Reeves underwent a “barrage of Halloween interviews” this morning, says Politico, as she tried to sell Britain’s biggest tax-raising budget since 1993. The chancellor acknowledged that the hike in employers’ national insurance could lead to reduced pay for workers, but pushed back against the prediction by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that household incomes will rise at their second-lowest rate since the war. Rescuers in southern Spain are continuing their search for survivors after flash flooding killed at least 95 people on Tuesday. The floods, which were focused in the regions of Valencia and Castilla-La Mancha, came after some areas received more than a month’s worth of rain in a single day. A cyclist in Leicester has mapped out the shape of a skeleton using GPS on a Halloween-themed bike ride. Rebecca Laurel, 25, recorded the spookily-shaped journey using the route tracker app Strava. “I’ve done a pumpkin, a ghost and a witch,” she says, “so a skeleton was one of the last options.”

Goodbye Singapore-on-Thames, hello “Britain-sur-mer”

Rachel Reeves’s first budget is an “odd mix of eye-popping numbers and small-bore thinking”, says The Economist. The £40bn tax increase is equivalent to more than 1% of Britain’s entire GDP; the £70bn rise in government spending will see the state “swell to a size not seen outside an emergency or war”. Yet by placing the burden of the tax rises on employers, through their national insurance contributions, the chancellor is penalising small businesses for growing – growth that the economy desperately needs. As for the claim that this policy meets Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise taxes on “working people”, that’s pure sophistry. Workers will be on the hook with higher prices and lower wages.

It’s not all bad, says Juliet Samuel in The Times. The decision to raise capital spending – particularly in the NHS – is definitely the right one, as long as it’s properly targeted. But contrary to Labour’s promises, growth was “not at the heart of this budget”. Instead Reeves has stuck to the existing, broken model, in which the productive part of the economy is “increasingly cannibalised to feed the beast of our ageing population”. The increase in capital gains tax on shares, for example, will “whack productive, risk-taking investments”. The Office for Budget Responsibility says growth will rise for just one year, before sinking back down “to an even lower baseline”.

Whatever its pros and cons, this budget heralds a “major shift” for the economy, says Robert Shrimsley in the FT. It marks the end of the notion of a “low-tax, globally competitive Britain” in favour of a more European-style bet on state investment-led growth. It’s farewell to Singapore-on-Thames, welcome to “Britain-sur-mer”. No one yet knows whether Reeves will spend all her newfound loot wisely – “as with the growth plan, too much remains TBC”. Either way, Labour has “shifted the needle”.

The fiery Telegraph columnist Allister Heath clearly has a sense of humour. Two years ago, he was widely ridiculed for starting his piece about the infamous Liz Truss budget with the line: “This was the best Budget I have ever heard a British Chancellor deliver, by a massive margin.” His column today begins: “This was the worst Budget I have ever heard a British Chancellor deliver, by an enormous margin.”

Taittinger has released its first English sparkling wine, says the FT, and it’s a belter. Domaine Evremond Classic Cuvée is made with a blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Meunier grapes grown on the firm’s vineyard in Kent, where the chalky terroir has slightly more flint than in the Champagne region. The result has none of the “clanky acidity” of many English wines, with “ripe fruit notes” and a “mouthwatering, saline finish”. It will be in shops next year for £50, with only a tiny mention of Taittinger in small print on the back label. Company president Vitalie Taittinger says: “We believe the wine to be good enough that it can stand alone.”

Rivals is a glorious reminder of life before dating apps

There are lots of reasons to fall in love with Rivals, the hit TV adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s cult novel, says Olivia Petter in Vogue. There’s the “ludicrously attractive” cast, the ostentatious Eighties aesthetic and the “conscientious commitment” to “boisterous boinking”, not to mention the fabulous – “and highly flammable” – costumes. But it’s not any of that which has got me gripped. It’s the nostalgia it evokes “for a dating landscape that I am not – and never will be – a part of”. Granted, the fictional county of Rutshire is “hardly a place of resounding romantic success”. Everyone is cheating on everyone, or at least trying to. But things “still seemed an awful lot simpler back then”.

There were no apps to desensitise people to the whole dating experience. The womanisers like Rivals cad Rupert Campbell-Black were transparent in their shagging ways, so you knew where you stood – unlike the insidious “soft boys” today, who ensnare you with “therapy-speak and a passion for poetry” then gaslight and ghost you. Most of all, Rivals is a reminder of just how much people used to go out. With no iPhones or Netflix to distract them, everyone is constantly socialising: lavish three-course dinners, “decadent summer garden parties”, all-night bashes in countryside manors. Obviously not everyone in real life was attending quite so many sumptuous events. But there were definitely more opportunities to meet people in real life – to “find love at first sight instead of first swipe”. If only things were still that simple.

Mahjong, the centuries-old tile-based game that originated in China, is having a resurgence in Los Angeles, says Slate. Looking to reconnect with their roots in a way that feels “zeitgeisty”, millennials and Gen Zs are hosting mahjong parties, supper clubs and local leagues. One hipster collective, Mahjong Mistress, has thrown “blow-out” events at swanky venues with DJs and sponsored liquors, while prominent Asian-American celebrities such as Beef star Ali Wong have hosted mahjong-themed birthday parties. At Soho House, one event attracted a queue “curving out of the building and around the block”.

Opponents of slavery reparations claim it’s a “wacky idea” to give money to the descendants of injustices, says Kojo Koram in The Guardian. It’s actually a “fairly standard part of international human rights law”. In 2021, the German government committed to pay the descendants of the Herero and Nama ethnic groups $1.3bn for the genocide of their ancestors in Namibia. Canada has put aside $2bn for the victims of indigenous re-education camps. And “Britain has already paid out reparations for slavery”. The 1837 Slave Compensation Act paid £20m, worth about £17bn today, to 40,000 slave owners for the “property” they lost through abolition – a cost taxpayers only stopped covering in 2015.

They’re blasts of electrified gas flaring out from the surface of the sun, which have been recorded by a new space telescope. Known as coronal mass ejections, these flares play a part in the formation of the northern lights and other auroras that fill up our night skies on Earth, says The New York Times. The telescope, called the Compact Coronagraph, blocks out light from the sun like an eclipsing moon in order to monitor the corona: the wispy, outer part of the sun’s atmosphere. Space boffins say this will help them improve their forecasts for “space weather”, including when we can expect to see auroras.