Keir Starmer has refused to rule out a National Insurance increase for employers in the upcoming Budget. The PM insisted that the government would uphold Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise taxes on “working people”; yesterday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the party’s promise not to increase the tax related specifically to the part paid by employees, not employers. Nearly half the rubbish produced in UK homes is being incinerated to make electricity, in what scientists say is a “disaster for the climate”. BBC analysis shows that burning rubbish – which councils ramped up when the government hiked taxes on landfill 15 years ago – emits the same amount of greenhouse gases per unit of energy produced as coal power. A new treatment regime can cut the risk of dying from cervical cancer by 40%. A study led by a team at University College London shows that giving women a short course of chemotherapy before the standard chemoradiation treatment can transform survival rates and also reduce the risk of the cancer returning by 35%.

The problem child of Europe

France is in big trouble, says Sylvie Kauffmann in the FT – there is a “huge hole” in the country’s finances. New prime minister Michel Barnier has announced a savage budget to tackle the “colossal” public debt, with a whopping €60bn of spending cuts and tax hikes. Investors are so spooked by all this that France is having to offer them higher interest rates on its government bonds than Spain and Greece. In “rosier times”, Germany would have reined in the French – during the sovereign debt crisis of the early 2010s, Angela Merkel was more than happy “playing headteacher”. But Germany was flourishing back then; today, it’s in recession and Olaf Scholz’s governing coalition is seriously dysfunctional. This combination – France the “problem child” and Germany again becoming the “sick man of Europe” – does not bode well for the continent.

What worries European leaders even more is the prospect of Donald Trump winning in November, says The Economist. Europe has a large trade surplus with the US, which in Trump-speak is known as “stealing our jobs”. The former president’s plan for across-the-board tariffs of up to 20% would hammer Europe’s economy: Goldman Sachs estimates that “MAGAnomics” could reduce Europe’s GDP by as much as 1%. The other “dollop of dread” is that a Trump victory will cause further division across Europe. Whatever unity Europe mustered in dealing with Trump’s first term was down to Merkel’s “seasoned” leadership. Today, Scholz “commands no such respect”, Emmanuel Macron has lost all authority, and the EU is still in transition mode following its elections in June. So even if Trump did fancy calling Europe to “hurl abuse”, it’s not at all clear “who would be on hand to pick up the phone”.

All broadcasters dread their guests swearing, says Mark Mason in The Spectator. But perhaps they shouldn’t. The producers of a Radio 4 arts show once nervously checked the call log after a contributor used the c-word to describe a video installation that appeared to symbolise the relevant female body part. The team were stunned to find only one complaint: from a listener who was “absolutely disgusted to hear someone on the programme use a split infinitive”.

There’s no one like children to tell it how it is, says former England cricketer Alastair Cook in The Sunday Times. I was watching the cricket on TV with my daughter Elsie when Joe Root surpassed my record as England’s most prolific runs scorer. A stat came up showing that it had taken him 147 Test matches to reach 12,472 runs. “How many Tests did you play, Dad?” asked Elsie. I told her it was 161. “Well,” she replied, “he’s better than you then.”

Like it or not, we need the rich

As the new Labour government puts the finishing touches to its planned raid on high earners, says Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail, the nation’s rich are “preparing to flee”. And we’ll be all the poorer for it. For one thing, they won’t just be swerving Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s punitive new levies – “VAT on private schools, property tax, capital gains, inheritance tax”. They won’t be paying the old ones any more either. And that’s worth a few quid: according to the BBC, Britain’s 60 richest individuals coughed up £3bn in income tax alone in 2021/22 – enough to fund two thirds of all new spending commitments in Labour’s manifesto. And tax is only part of the picture.

What Labour don’t seem to understand is that the country’s economy is an “ecosystem”. And like all ecosystems, “diversity is key”: destroy one part, and you risk upsetting the whole delicate balance. Just look at Britain’s decrepit market towns to see what horrors await once wealth departs. Like them or loathe them, the rich spend lots of money on fancy restaurants and fine clothes, take cabs and stay in hotel rooms, and employ cleaners, gardeners, builders, drivers, architects, interior designers, personal trainers, nannies, tutors, chefs, lawyers, accountants and goodness knows who else. Without the rich, how will all these people make a living? The banker’s wife in her silly Range Rover with her perfect blonde highlights and precision botox may seem like a ludicrous figure. But to a lot of people, “she represents lunch”.

Amazon has unveiled a clever new AI tool which will allow its delivery drivers to work even faster, says Bloomberg. Vision Assisted Package Retrieval, or VAPR, will project a green circle on packages ready to be delivered and red Xs on those to be saved for a later stop. By saving employees’ time reading labels, the technology will shorten the typical delivery route by 30 minutes.

It’s a sexy Halloween outfit designed to look like a dose of the popular weight loss drug Ozempic, says The Independent. The “Sooo Snatched Costume” – a reference to online slang used to denote someone who is looking especially slim – is the latest example of a hipsterish trend for Halloween costumes to be more about newsy references than anything ghoulish or spooky. Sold by American retailer Yandy, it comes with a pillbox hat in the shape of an injector syringe and costs a mere $23.97. Order yours here.