See if you can do a better job than John Healey at creating a budget that keeps MPs and the bond markets onside

On 28 October, John Healey will announce the autumn budget to parliament. As in all years, the chancellor has to strike a balance between the following:

Raising the money needed to fund the services that voters demand.

Keeping taxes at levels that are acceptable to voters.

Persuading the government’s creditors in the bond markets that it will continue to be able to pay its debts.

Sundays were deadly, the generation gap between parents and their kids was enormous, and a pint cost 50p. The frisson of casual violence was everywhere. When I left school and set off to travel, I had no sense at all of where I was going or what I would find

I am wandering down a steep and unfamiliar street in Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, a force seven gale blowing in my face, when I look up to cross the road and see a back garden running up the hillside opposite. It ends in a granite rock face about 30ft high, and in that moment, I have a vivid flashback to being sat on top of it, watching a group of people in the garden below. I can’t conjure their faces, but the memory is all too real: the sun on my face, a woman calling up: “Don’t break your neck!” I can tell she’s not worried and neither am I. Nobody is. It’s a party and we’re young and we’re drunk and we’re carefree, without a worry in the world. Or at least, that’s how I remember it.

I continue down the street, spooked by the power of the recollection, how it has ambushed me. I stand outside the house. I could swear I’ve never seen it before. Did I come to the party over the cliff? Should I knock on the door? Hi, this is going to sound weird but I was in your back garden about 42 years ago and I haven’t a clue why but I’ve just remembered it like it was yesterday …

In a few days the busiest shopping street in Europe will be closed to traffic. The hope is that an unloved and polluted thoroughfare will turn into somewhere that people actually want to spend time

In February, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced that Britain’s best-known thoroughfare, Oxford Street, would be pedestrianised. To the surprise of every Londoner that I have spoken to in the past few months, it is actually happening. On Monday 26 October, the busiest shopping street in Europe – or, precisely, half of its 1.2-mile stretch – will be closed to traffic, putting an end to several decades of bitter arguments, obstructions and delays. Cars, lorries, vans, taxis, buses, bicycles, ebikes, scooters will be banned. Nothing but pedestrians (and emergency vehicles) will be allowed in.

This change will mark the most remarkable transformation to the streetscape of central London since at least 2003, when Trafalgar Square was turned from a glorified roundabout into one of London’s most recognisable public spaces. It will also form the most visible part of the mayor’s legacy, whether or not Khan runs for a fourth term in 2028. Three years ago, Khan published a memoir and manifesto, Breathe, attributing his asthma to growing up inhaling London’s polluted air. For the mayor, pedestrianising Oxford Street is the culmination of a mission to create a greener city that is oriented around public health, walking and cycling.

If Flávio Bolsonaro is elected, Brazil’s ecosystems will face collapse. The ruling class would rather burn the world than share it with the poor

However grim the trajectory might seem, I’ve always believed that sense will ultimately prevail. As the great perils of dismantling the living world become increasingly obvious, even the most rapacious exploiters must come round. Nobody wants to live on a dead planet, do they?

There are – or were – signs that this wasn’t just wishful thinking. Since 2015, mostly thanks to China, the area of the planet being reforested has increased, while thanks in large part to Brazil, the global rate of forest destruction has declined. The area of the Brazilian Amazon forest cleared each year is one-sixth of what it was when records began in 1988. In the past four years, as a result of Brazilian government policy, the deforestation rate has fallen by 71%. If Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is re-elected president on Sunday, the country could reach zero deforestation by 2030. The arc of the moral universe seems to have bent towards justice.

The director has turned Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel about an ailing adolescent and her glitchy robot friend into a thought-provoking film. What do the pair think this story says about tech, love and grief?

In the wings of the London film festival, a group of young influencers are discussing their personal highlights. Klara and the Sun, says one, and her colleagues agree. It’s not just that the film is still so fresh in their memory, or that they have gathered today to meet its creators and stars. Klara is funny and moving; it’s their festival favourite so far. I relay this exchange to Taika Waititi, the film’s director, who is sipping bottled water in a room down the hall. His gaze widens. He almost chokes. “Thank God!” he exclaims with just a bit too much heat.

Everybody has a perfect film, just as everybody has a perfect friend, and they vary because everybody is different. In the film, sick 14-year-old Josie loves her discontinued robot doll Klara, whereas most kids her age opt for brighter, shinier models. And the young influencers love Klara and the Sun – Waititi’s adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s acclaimed novel – while most older critics vehemently, violently disagree. All of which shows that there’s no accounting for taste, that people are confounding, and that our hearts and our brains are not always in sync. That keeps life interesting. It’s partly what the film is about. “The emotions that we give very simple labels to are really complex,” says Ishiguro, who is seated alongside the director. “The thing we call love, for example, is incredibly noisy and multifaceted. Nobody knows what the hell love is.”

You Can See Everything, a documentary about the disgraced biotech company founder Elizabeth Holmes, has enjoyed a record-breaking opening in the US. It is a testament to how fascinated we remain by the convicted fraudster, but what is behind the enduring appeal? US technology editor Blake Montgomery tells Madeleine Finlay why Holmes continues to fascinate us, and reflects on whether the Theranos scandal has had a permanent impact on Silicon Valley

Clip: You Can See Everything, A24

‘You can’t make this stuff up’: why we remain fascinated by Elizabeth Holmes

Exclusive: Officials say Miatta Fahnbulleh minded not to give approval in victory for climate campaigners

Miatta Fahnbulleh is minded to reject the giant Rosebank oilfield, sources have told the Guardian, in what would be a blow for the North Sea energy industry and a major victory for climate campaigners.

After approving the smaller Jackdaw gasfield on Wednesday, officials say the energy secretary is leaning towards refusing approval for what would be one of the biggest oilfields in the North Sea.

John Healey is expected to cut red tape requirements, particularly for smaller businesses

Kalyeena Makortoff is the Guardian’s banking correspondent.

CS Venkatakrishnan, CEO at Barclays, seems to have admitted defeat over bank tax hikes, which are expected to be a headline measure in Healey’s budget next week.

I recognise that the chancellor and the government has been entrusted with an important duty by the public and the people. And they have to balance a host of considerations. He [Healey] is the man in the arena, and I deeply respect the responsibility he bears on his shoulders and wish him well.

His long term goal is the same as our long term goal, which is to get growth.

So what is the chancellor now concentrating on? One could be forgiven for thinking him utterly unreconstructed: a party man and proud of it. There is no such thing as Healeyism, he says when the conversation turns to Anthony Crosland’s evangelism for the mixed economy: “I’m just Labour.”

“Just Labour” is exactly what the bond markets fear — and, indeed, it is what gives Kemi Badenoch hope of pulling off a comeback to rank alongside Lazarus and Bobby Ewing for utter implausibility.

Healey argued that his budget next week would refute the claim made by Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist, about Labour not having the right policies to promote growth. In an article for the Financial Times, Haldane said Conservative policies were better for the economy, partly because they were more likely to support “cuts to business and employment taxes and regulation to unleash animal spirits”. In his write-up, Maguire says:

It was Haldane who also said, memorably and mercilessly, that the markets had concluded that this was a “traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos”. At Westminster, this sort of criticism is at risk of curdling into thick and immovable consensus. What does Healey say to that? “I’d say to Andy Haldane,” he growls, fixing me with a cold stare, “speak to me next Thursday.” And, for the record, he speaks explicitly of “making an argument for how you bring welfare costs down” — albeit not via the “crude cuts” that were Starmer’s undoing.

Healey hinted that he was sympathetic to arguments that Labour should drop its plan to let younger workers qualify for the full national living wage. In his article Maguire says:

[Healey] is “acutely conscious”, too, of the “trade off” between an ever-increasing minimum wage — particularly for the youngest workers — and levels of employment.

He knows the many businesses who “want to employ young people” sometimes cite that upward ratchet as a reason they cannot.

Healey defended the part he played in bringing down Keir Starmer. Healey resigned from Starmer’s government over defence spending, and this contributed to the loss of support for Starmer in the parliamentary party that led to him standing down. Referring to this period, Healey said:

The country was ready for a change … Wherever you stood on the spectrum of the [parliamentary Labour party], there was a recognition that we needed a change.

We have a very rare moment now. We’re in the middle of a parliament, the second half of a parliament, and we’ve got a chance of a new hearing. People are at least willing to listen again … the Labour party is actually quite determined and disciplined, and in any party, the second half of a parliament starts concentrating minds.

Zelenskyy said: ‘Three waves of ballistic missiles have been launched at Kyiv by Russian “humanitarians”’

As we are waiting for Macron, first details of the planned police response to this weekend’s protests are emerging.

Junior interior minister, Jean-Didier Berger, said that the police presence will be “20% higher” than last weekend, with reinforcements from the army, elite police forces and gendarmerie.

Precautionary takedowns come as experts say bad actors could exploit vulnerability in language used by 70% of sites

Websites around the globe have gone dark after a serious vulnerability was found in a computer language used to build much of the world wide web.

Belgian, Dutch, Finnish, French and German sites were among those that governments took down temporarily as they scrambled to patch the critical weakness in PHP, a language used by almost 70% of websites.