Last week, a Nasa spacecraft set off for Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, in search of signs of life beneath the moon’s icy crust. The previous day, SpaceX engineers caught a booster rocket with mechanical arms on its return from a test flight, potentially making interplanetary travel easier than ever. Space exploration has been much in the news this month — but, as two new books remind us, it also gripped the public’s imagination at the height of the cold war.
In 1962 Venus became the first planet in our solar system to receive a radio message from Earth. Transmitted from a Soviet radar complex, it consisted of three words in Russian: “Peace, Lenin, USSR.”
Well might we wonder what the little green inhabitants of Venus, had there been any, would have made of this. But the message was not really aimed at extraterrestrials. Rather, as a triumphant article in the Soviet armed forces newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda made clear, it was intended to demonstrate to people on Earth “a new victory for Soviet science and technology”.
In Mixed Signals, Rebecca Charbonneau tells this story as a way of illustrating that, during the cold war, US and Soviet efforts to communicate with aliens in space were as much about superpower competition on Earth as about locating those elusive beings. A historian at the American Institute of Physics, Charbonneau has written a well-researched and splendidly entertaining account of humanity’s search for alien life in the era of the US-Soviet “space race”.
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The other book under review, Ines Geipel’s Beautiful NewSky, draws attention to the darker side of science in the cold war. She exposes the highly secretive programmes in communist East Germany in which researchers conducted risky, even cruel experiments on humans and animals to find ways of enabling cosmonauts to endure long-distance space travel.
At one level, Charbonneau’s book is a heartening tale. Despite their ideological and geopolitical rivalry, the US and the Soviet Union often co-operated from the 1960s to the cold war’s end in the late 1980s in an effort to discover and communicate with extraterrestrial life. Scientists such as Carl Sagan, the American astronomer and author, and Iosif Shklovsky, his Soviet Ukrainian friend and opposite number, thought they were engaged in a common quest that transcended national identity.
As Charbonneau explains, there were good practical reasons for such collaboration. Earth’s rotation meant that continuous observation of an extraterrestrial source with ground-based telescopes was impossible from one country alone.
However, the space race and the search for aliens always had a military dimension. The powerful signals detection and analysis capabilities of the equipment used in this search made them ideal for military surveillance in deep space, Charbonneau says.
Sometimes the search had embarrassing consequences. In 1965 Tass, the official Soviet news agency, reported the potential discovery of an alien supercivilisation on the radio star CTA-102. This inspired the Byrds, one of the era’s biggest rock groups, to write a song about it. But there were no aliens — CTA-102 is just one of more than 1mn quasars (highly luminous galactic cores) so far discovered in the universe.
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Charbonneau trawls thoroughly through the available records to tell her story, but acknowledges future historians will probably find out more. When she visited Russia in 2019, she says, she “was unable to access a single scientific archive”. Under President Vladimir Putin, Soviet-style secretiveness and suspicion of foreigners are back with a vengeance.
Geipel, a former sprinter and long jumper who was one of thousands of victims of East Germany’s covert doping of athletes, has produced a powerful, at times deeply moving book about that now defunct state’s sinister involvement in space research. She provides an important corrective to recent revisionist accounts of East Germany as a place where life wasn’t so bad after all, even though the regime was a communist dictatorship marked by the omnipresence of the Stasi secret police and slavish loyalty to the Soviet Union.
As Geipel writes, the great myth was that everything East Germany did was for the cause of progress and peace. “Even after 1989, this myth was able to survive, remain intact and even regenerate itself in the face of all sources that indicated a different story,” she says.
East Germany’s research on human endurance was a militarised effort, with the Stasi’s keen involvement, from start to finish. The goal was to forge “a clear path towards a New Man created through complex chemical substances”, Geipel writes. Researchers realised that anabolic steroids — also used to dope athletes — could combat muscular atrophy in space.
Experiments with neuropeptides — tiny chemical messengers — were designed to remap the limits of human existence, improving the body’s ability to withstand extreme heat, cold, exhaustion, loneliness and mental disorientation. Speech analysis devices intended to analyse cosmonauts’ psychological state were of especial interest to the Stasi, as they could also be used to monitor critics of communism.
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In all this, western countries were not entirely blameless. After Germany’s reunification in 1990, investigators discovered that almost half of 35 doping substances used in the east’s sports laboratories had originated in the west. Moreover, as Charbonneau reminds us, the CIA conducted experiments on humans with mind-bending drugs such as LSD.
Both books make clear that science can be turned to terrible as well as noble purposes. If there are indeed aliens somewhere in the universe, perhaps they too know that.
Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain by Rebecca Charbonneau Polity £25, 256 pages
Beautiful New Sky: Fabricating Bodies for Outer Space in East Germany’s Military Laboratories by Ines Geipel Polity £20, 178 pages
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Tony Barber is the FT’s European comment editor
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This article is part of a new guide to Venice from FT Globetrotter
Sitting in the leafy courtyard of a quaint hotel in central Venice, I overhear a conversation at a nearby table. A young couple from abroad are having a private wine tasting with a local sommelier. It’s their first time in Venice, they say, and they’re “into food”. The sommelier introduces the wines, mentioning that one is produced “on an island of the northern Lagoon”. “Wait, what’s ‘the Lagoon’?” one of them asks. Ah, I think. I hope no one’s in a rush.
As one of Europe’s most extensive wetlands, the Venice Lagoon is intrinsically bound to the destiny of the city at its centre. This interdependence is outlined by Unesco, which granted World Heritage Site status to both: “Venice and its lagoon landscape is the result of a dynamic process which illustrates the interaction between people and the ecosystem of their natural environment over time.”
Venice overwhelmingly owes its existence to the inventive exploitation of its swampy surroundings throughout history. The aquatic landscape of the Lagoon, once understood and governed, offered the early settlers of the marshlands and their descendants a variety of perks, not least abundant sustenance, enhanced by the crucial presence of salt. Fish, game, and wild edible flora formed the basis of the local diet, supplemented with cultivated vegetables and fruits. Later, trading activities with the Mediterranean region, the Middle East and the Far East introduced exotic ingredients such as spices and nuts, whereas grains — corn, rice and eventually wheat — entered the city from the fertile fields of the Po Plain. The resulting cuisine is a synthesis of land and water, urban and rural, local and foreign.
Back in the Lagoon, the Serenissima had a clear system for organising life on the more than 100 islands that constituted the Venetian archipelago, based on vocation and position. Some islands became monasteries, others quarantine facilities and others proto-industrial hubs. The most fertile and naturally rich islands, such Burano, Torcello, Mazzorbo and Sant’Erasmo, grew into dynamic fishing and agricultural centres. Each produced a wealth of culinary subcultures that are still present, largely unaltered, on today’s tables.
What has changed is the environment: overfishing practices, rising water temperatures, the invasion of alien species and increasing salinity levels in the soil are altering the spectrum of what can be farmed and fished, shifting the perception of what is considered local and traditional.
As a result, creating a guide to Venetian cuisine that reflects its timelessness and cultural heritage while also being attuned to its contemporary changes is an interesting challenge. Here, I chose three key ingredients — eel, mallard and artichokes — with each serving as a doorway into a slice of Venetian history, geography and food culture from past to present, while also providing an opportunity to explore lesser-known flavours within this ever-changing and often-simplified liminal territory.
Today, it’s nearly impossible to taste this dish in its original form. Not just because glass furnaces cannot be used as health and safety-approved cooking facilities, but also because eel is now much rarer in the Lagoon due to overfishing and climate change. “There have been restrictions put in place on fishing for eels,” Domenico Rossi, a fisherman from Burano, told me. “This year, for example, it was forbidden to fish for them from January to June. This is because there are so few of them, and they want to ensure that any repopulation programmes in the rivers have time to take effect. And then, even when the season is right, there just aren’t many to catch.” Most eels found at the market these days are reared in the valleys of Comacchio, further down the Adriatic.
Tastes have changed, too. Fewer people, local or otherwise, seem to appreciate eel. This is confirmed by empirical evidence: as I searched for restaurants in Murano offering not just bisato sull’ara, but any eel-based dish, I was met with a “Sorry, no”. “We wanted to update our offering,” said a restaurateur at a contemporary osteria near Murano Colonna, while the owner of a very traditional restaurant nearby said: “It’s a hard sell, so we decided to favour other species.” Back in central Venice, however, a handful of restaurants still stubbornly serve eel, mostly chargrilled so as to reduce the natural oiliness and add some beneficial smokiness to its rich white meat.
This cosy, family-run place in the Cannaregio district is the perfect go-to for all things traditional, including eel. “What we serve is a reflection of what we like to eat,” said Nicolò Lazzari, the restaurant manager and son of the owner, Paolo. “Eel is something we enjoy very much and we like making it available to anyone who wants to try it. That is, whenever the season is right — we only source local eel. We serve it smoked and grilled alongside polenta, and our guests love it.” Website; Directions
Osteria Giorgione da Masa
Calle Larga dei Proverbi 4582/A, 30121 Venice
Masahiro Homma, the Japanese chef at the head of Osteria Giorgione da Masa, in Cannaregio, has a knack for creating original dishes that blend Japanese and Venetian flavours, ingredients and techniques. On his menu, eel is a year-round feature in his signature and much-loved eel cirashi, where a base of sushi rice is topped with amiyaki-grilled eel glazed with concentrated soy sauce. Website; Directions
When it comes to Venetian cuisine, one instinctively thinks of fish dishes. However, the Lagoon ecosystem provides an ideal environment for another protein that has been a favourite since the time of the Doges: wild duck. In the past, fishermen would pick up a rifle the moment fishing paused, with the marshlands doubling as hunting grounds. Today, the vast majority of “fishing valleys” in the northern Lagoon are used less for rearing fish and more for hunting feathered game, or selvadego in the local idiom.
Among the many species populating the Lagoon, wild duck (mallard) or masorin is perhaps the most widespread and appreciated. They are so numerous that they are categorised as being of “Least Concern” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s list of threatened species, and it’s not uncommon to see them in their thousands flying above the serpentine landscape of the barene, the marshland islands. Even though they are present year round, the best time to hunt duck is in the autumn and winter, which, incidentally, is also the best time to enjoy them in a ragù sauce scented with hints of cinnamon and orange. This intensely flavoured condiment is used to season pasta such as bigoli (thick fresh spaghetti from the Veneto region), tagliatelle or, more typically, potato gnocchi.
Opposite the celebrated Locanda Cipriani, set at the centre of a peaceful garden on the island of Torcello, is this elegant restaurant that recently gained fame precisely for its wild-duck gnocchi. Stanley Tucci prepared the dish and ate it here after a Hemingway-esque hunting session across the marshlands in the Venice episode of his TV series, Searching for Italy. Villa 600 is possibly one of the best places to try this dish, though everything else on the menu is just as tasty. Website; Directions
Trattoria Alla Maddalena
Fondamenta di Santa Caterina 7b, 30142 Venice
Set in an unassuming house facing the tranquil waters of Canale di Mazzorbo, this family-run trattoria offers traditional seafood dishes and, in season, some of the most delightful wild-duck primi. Choose between fresh tagliatelle ribbons or pillowy gnocchi, topped with a generous ladleful of dark, shiny ragù. In good weather, sitting on the waterfront or under the leafy pergola is a treat. Website; Directions
Setting foot on Sant’Erasmo after a 30-minute vaporetto ride feels like landing in a parallel universe of open fields, vineyards, sputtering Piaggio tricycles, sparse inhabitants and little else. Sant’Erasmo is the Lagoon’s largest island and also one of the most fertile, serving as the garden of Venice since the 16th century. Over time, this generous strip of land, located at the edge of the Lagoon, showed a special talent for producing flavoursome vegetables, particularly artichokes of the prized, tulip-shaped variety called carciofo violetto (violet artichoke).
Today, the carciofo violetto di Sant’Erasmo is grown under strict regulations dictated by the local consortium of producers. Among them is Fiorella “Cosetta” Enzo, who is at the helm of her family farm, I Sapori di Sant’Erasmo. “It’s not the plant that is unique,” she told me when I asked her why these artichokes are so much tastier. “Anyone could take this variety and try to grow it elsewhere. But only here have these plants found this soil — with clay and salt in perfect proportions. It’s the soil that creates the plant; this is how the plant becomes one of a kind.”
The artichoke plant is generous, both in yield and in versatility. Flowers grow year round and offer different characteristics depending on when they’re harvested. Production starts in mid-April with the main head, castraura, the most precious and tender and often eaten raw, followed by botoi and massete, which are typically braised. The remaining artichokes, larger and more fibrous, will become fondi (bottoms) by the end of season.
In May, visitors from all over the region pour into Forte Massimiliano for the Sagra del Carciofo (artichoke fair). They queue patiently to taste this exceptional treat at its prime, prepared in all manner of ways, from braised to raw, thinly sliced and topped with Grana Padano.
During the spring months, violet artichokes also make a show-stopping appearance at the market and on the menus of all the restaurants worth your while, from fine-dining establishments to frugal osterie, all the way down to the convivial bàcari (small bars) and their array of cicchetti. Some of them might even be part of the commendable Osti in Orto project, in which a group of restaurateurs joined forces to rehabilitate a farm on Sant’Erasmo, growing fresh produce — including artichokes — for their restaurant kitchens. Here, they make for springy antipasti, primi and main courses, in which the precious thistle is paired with anything from prawns, as at Antiche Carampane, to bottarga, as at Trattoria Anzolo Raffaele, where owner Luigi Secchi has a passion for sprucing up Venetian ingredients with touches from his native Sardinia.
Other chefs also make preserves and liqueurs with them. This is the case for Silvia Rozas, chef of Birraria La Corte, a contemporary pizzeria in Campo San Polo; Bacàn, a Latin-American restaurant; and the newly opened Salso, a Lagoon-inspired, water-facing eatery on the island of Certosa. Rozas says: “We usually harvest the artichoke buds when the season starts in April, and we preserve them so that we can use them in the following months — especially for pizza.”
She adds: “We also make use of the trimmings to make our house amaro, which, in addition to artichokes, contains samphire, dill, rosemary, thyme, cinnamon, pepper, cinchona, gentian, anise, and a citrus syrup. We serve it as our house aperitif with Angostura tonic.”
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Shoppers are being warned to be smart when selecting sweets for trick or treatersCredit: Alamy
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Cocoa and sugar prices have soared this yearCredit: Getty
As a result, chocolate prices have increased by more than 10% in the last three months.
The price of cocoa in London has skyrocketed by nearly 45% since the start of the year.
As of September, it sits at £5,302 per metric tonne, according to trade journal Confectionery News.
In April, it had reached a record high of £10,265.
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Poor harvests caused by unusual weather means cocoa supplies in the likes of the Ivory Coast and Ghana – which produces approximately 60% of the world’s cocoa – remain tight.
Nidhi Jain, commodity specialist at The Smart Cube, told the trade journal it’s a “dramatic rise”.
“Looking ahead, these supply issues are highly likely to keep prices elevated in the run-up to Halloween,” she said.
The expert added that sugar prices are also expected to rise over the rest of 2024 “due to supply distributions”, particularly in Brazil and India.
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“Given the volatile costs of these two commodities, there will be unavoidable affects on the consumer, with manufacturers considering price increases to confectionery products,” continued Jain.
“Higher prices for sweets and chocolates seem inevitable as commodity costs rise.”
SUPERMARKET HIKE
The price of chocolate has risen by 11% in the year to August, according to a study by the consumer group Which?
This is compared to other food and drink products which grew by 2.7% over the same period.
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These hikes can be seen in supermarkets’ own brand ranges and from manufacturers such as Cadbury and Mars.
Chocolate treats to avoid
The cost of Sainsbury’s No Added Sugar Milk Chocolate (100g) has almost doubled, rising from 95p in the three months to the end of August 2023 to £1.84 in the same period in 2024.
Meanwhile, Asda’s Moo Free Dairy Free & Vegan Chocolate Bar (80g) rose from £1.50 to £2.40, marking an increase of 60%.
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Cadbury’s Family Treatsize Multipack, which is a classic to have at the door for trick or treaters increased from £2.50 to £3.72 at Sainsbury.
Meanwhile, the Cadbury Milk Tray Chocolate Box (360g) rose from £4.01 to £5.74 at Morrisons.
Twix Caramel & White Chocolate Fingers Biscuit Snack Bars Multipack, which come in a pack of nine increased from £1.65 to £2.35 at Asda.
An Asda spokesman said the supermarket is “consistently recognised as the best-value traditional supermarket in independent price comparison surveys”.
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While a Morrisons spokeswoman said the company was “working hard to keep prices down and competitive for our customers”.
Sainsbury’s said: “While prices can go up and down for a range of reasons, we’re committed to offering our customers great choice and value when they shop with us.”
SHOP AROUND
Ele Clark, retail editor at Which?, explained that to ensure you get the best value for money on your Halloween chocolate, “shop around and compare the price per gram across different pack sizes, retailers and brands.”
This is known as unit pricing and is an easier way for shoppers to compare similar items of different sizes.
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You should be able to see the product’s unit price where its price tag is shown – it may be in small print.
It displays the cost of different products by weight, or volume and helps you easily compare the prices of products, regardless of their respective sizes.
For example, Tesco is charging £1.29 per 100g for a four-pack of Twirls.
However, the supermarket charges £1.10 per 100g if you snap it up using the Tesco Clubcard.
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How to save money on chocolate
We all love a bit of chocolate from now and then, but you don’t have to break the bank buying your favourite bar.
Consumer reporter Sam Walker reveals how to cut costs…
Go own brand – if you’re not too fussed about flavour and just want to supplant your chocolate cravings, you’ll save by going for the supermarket’s own brand bars.
Shop around – if you’ve spotted your favourite variety at the supermarket, make sure you check if it’s cheaper elsewhere.
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Websites like Trolley.co.uk let you compare prices on products across all the major chains to see if you’re getting the best deal.
Look out for yellow stickers – supermarket staff put yellow, and sometimes orange and red, stickers on to products to show they’ve been reduced.
They usually do this if the product is coming to the end of its best-before date or the packaging is slightly damaged.
Buy bigger bars – most of the time, but not always, chocolate is cheaper per 100g the larger the bar.
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So if you’ve got the appetite, and you were going to buy a hefty amount of chocolate anyway, you might as well go bigger.
Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
Nobody Wants This premiered on Netflix on September 26, and became the most watched show in the English language within its first week. A tidy 10-episode, Los Angeles-set romance, it tells a time-old tale of boy meets girl, where the boy is Noah (played by Adam Brody), a Reform rabbi, newly single following the break-up of a long-term relationship that didn’t lead to an engagement, and the girl is Joanne (played by Kristen Bell), a scrappy single podcaster and “shiksa” so unfamiliar with Judaism that she’s never heard the word “shalom” out loud.
The two share a sizzling chemistry, which is to be expected from two stalwarts of the television schedules. Bell (the voice of Gossip Girl and star of The Good Place) is a tiny, effervescent blonde with that strange blend of self-confidence and “crazy” that reads as California charming. He’s outrageously delicious, as would be expected from the actor who first won the hearts of millions as The OC’s favourite surf nerd, Seth Cohen. Bell, who was attached to the project from the outset, reportedly brought on Brody, a former co-star who is known to be cautious about being typecast as irresistibly handsome nice guys. Too bad, Brody: with Nobody Wants This he has reignited the OC fan base and beguiled a whole new generation.
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Fleabag gave us the Hot Priest. Now Brody brings Hot Rabbi. In a world of acceptance where all barriers to love have been eroded, true faith is now the only obstacle to the fulfilment of any budding romcom. To misquote Notting Hill: “She’s just a goy, standing in front of a rabbi, asking him to love her.”
If Nobody Wants This has succeeded it is presumably because it is fun and cute, and unexpectedly well written. The writer Erin Foster, a spit for Bell, also hosts a podcast with her sister and converted to Judaism before marriage. NWT is largely drawn from her own experiences. I binge-watched the whole thing in two evenings and found it very compelling. But while the story retreads the formula of many standard romcoms, I found it most fascinating for the curious agelessness of its milieu and all its principal characters. Brody is now 44, and Bell likewise is in her mid-forties. Assuming both are playing people roughly in the same age bracket, NWT mirrors the worldview of the geriatric millennial. But none of the characters seem encumbered by the baggage of real adult responsibility. None seem to have much in the way of previous relationships, first wives, stepkids, mortgages or real jobs. Instead, they live in well-appointed villas in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, doing non-specific work and spending an inconceivable length of time hanging out with their respective parents.
Is this series the result of algorithmic programming, in which shows are neutered of any age nuance in order to appeal to a broader demographic?
With the exception of Noah, who has to do rabbi work at what seems a sensationally liberal-minded temple (see the lively Reddit discussion board about whether he should be playing basketball on Shabbat), the other characters inhabit a world in which 90 per cent of one’s daily duties can be conducted from a deep 12-foot sofa. Marriage is depicted as something undertaken to satisfy religious expectation, and all the married couples live completely independent lives. Even parenting seems only to require the odd evening heartbreak consult.
I enjoyed NWT but I found its universe of kidulthood increasingly bewildering. Is this the result of algorithmic programming, in which the shows are neutered of any age nuance in order to appeal to a broader demographic? Or is this a reflection of a new world order in which wrinkles, offices and children are slowly being obliterated? Scrutinising Bell’s implacable forehead (the mask of modern Hollywood), I marvelled that her concerns about the future of their relationship didn’t raise the question of having babies. Instead, she worried about odd inanities such as “will you like my friends?”, who were similarly single, unencumbered and constantly available.
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FT Edit
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Typically, dramas about couples in their mid-thirties onwards have revolved around family life or the time bomb of fertility. But perhaps with modern medicine, and societal shifts, retaining friendships has indeed become the most pressing relationship dilemma. Birth rates in the world’s richest economies have more than halved since 1960, with fertility rates now well below the “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman. Moreover, it’s not because they can’t that most people aren’t having children, it’s because they actually don’t want them.
Perhaps we are culturally transitioning into the world of the elder millennial — one that resembles the exact same world one lived in in one’s twenties, except now with salt-and-pepper hair and better furniture. Dating has become transactional, an app-based sex exchange, which means that actual relationships are a charming novelty. And while you may not live with your parents, you’re still so involved that your key relationships are primarily familial.
Or maybe this is the world according to Netflix. And like lovely Noah, it’s all a gorgeous fantasy.
ONE MILLION workers could be set for a pay cut under Rachel Reeves’ budget “painful” budget plan.
The Chancellor could extend the freeze on income tax thresholds in this month’s Autumn Statement.
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Rachel Reeves could unveil an extension to the freeze on income tax thresholdsCredit: AFP
In a bid to fill a £40billion black hole in the public purse, Rachel Reeves may be considering pushing the freeze beyond its current expiry date of 2028.
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The move could raise £7billion , according to reports by the Financial Times.
Labour’s manifesto promised not to increase rates of income tax, but included no mention of tax thresholds.
Other measures reported to be under consideration include:
The Treasury has so far declined to comment on Budget speculation.
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The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think tank said that extending the freeze would pull 400,000 more people into paying income tax, according to The Times.
Plus, another 600,000 could be dragged into paying higher and additional rates by 2029-30 as wages rise.
This means a total of one million workers could be dragged into paying higher rates.
Freezing thresholds is a form of stealth tax – and helps governments generate higher tax revenue in a way that isn’t as obvious as a threshold change.
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A person earning £50,000 a year now, who gets annual pay increases of 2%, will be earning about £55,000 by 2029-30.
This will have pulled them into the higher-rate tax band, making their income tax bill nearly £1,000 higher than if they paid the basic rate on their income, the newspaper said.
When asked about possible tax changes during a press conference in Berlin, Sir Keir Starmer said: “We are going to keep our manifesto pledges.”
He added: “I’m not going to pre-empt the individual measures that will be outlined by the Chancellor in due course.”
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He went on: “This is going to be a Budget that will fix the foundations and rebuild our country.”
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has already announced that Winter Fuel Payments will be limited to those receiving pension credit and certain benefits. The benefit is worth up to £300 per year and currently is available to everyone over state pension age and those on certain benefits.
No rises to some taxes
Keir Starmer promised there would be no rises to National Insurance, Income Tax, Corporation Tax or VAT as part of Labour’s manifesto in the election race.
Inheritance Tax
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It has been predicted that the Chancellor Racheal Reeves will make changes to inheritance tax rates or thresholds. One suggestion is the potential shortening of the gift period before death for tax exemptions.
Pensions
Pensions featured very high up in the King’s Speech, was this a hint at how high on the agenda it will feature in the budget? Experts say there are a number of options, including reintroducing the lifetime allowance cap. Ms Reeves has previously campaigned to reduce the tax relief that higher earners get on their pensions and to introduce a flat rate of 33% instead. Another possible option is changing the rules around pensions and inheritance tax.
Capital Gains Tax (CGT)
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There is speculation that the £3,000 tax-free allowance could be scrapped or there may be an extension of CGT to other assets.
Business Rates
There are rumours of reforms to support small businesses, possibly basing rates on land value.
Fuel Duty
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Possible rise in fuel duty, reversing the freeze since 2011 and impacting household costs. The Sun has backed drivers as part of its Keep It Down campaign since the start of 2011.
How do I calculate tax?
If you earn £12,570 or less, you currently pay no income tax.
On earnings between £12,570 and up to £50,270, you pay the basic income tax rate of 20%.
Wages of £50,271 and above are taxed at the higher rate of 40%.
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And the additional rate of income tax, which applies to earnings above £150,000, is 45%.
However, the thresholds are now frozen until 2028, but this could be extended in the Budget.
What else could be revealed in the Budget?
The Autumn Statement will take place at around midday on Wednesday, October 30.
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Multiple changes to inheritance tax are being considered by ministers.
It is not certain how many people will end up paying more money, nor how much more they might pay.
The levy does not affect the vast majority of the public at the moment, with only 4% of deaths resulting in an inheritance tax charge as the threshold for the 40% charge is an estate above £325,000.
The Chancellor is also expected to honour the previous Tory government’s plans to make around £3 billion of cuts to welfare by reforming work capability rules in the Budget.
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Ms Reeves is also said to be considering bringing a stamp duty discount introduced by the Tories to an end, the Times reports, which is expected to raise £1.8 billion a year by 2029.
Other reports suggest a tax on vapes could be raised, and that fuel duty could be hiked for the first time in 14 years.
Do you have a money problem that needs sorting? Get in touch by emailing money-sm@news.co.uk.
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Nearly three dozen people were killed in an air strike on the Jabalia refugee camp on Saturday, as Israel pressed on with a punishing offensive in northern Gaza in the wake of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s killing.
According to health authorities in the Hamas-controlled enclave, 33 people died and dozens were wounded after the Israeli strike on several houses near the Nassar junction in Jabalia.
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The fighting in Gaza underscored the difficulty for international mediators in renewing talks for a ceasefire, even after the death on Wednesday of Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 attack that triggered the war.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said on Thursday that the Israeli offensive would continue until the 101 hostages still held by Hamas were released. He offered the militant group an ultimatum: let the hostages go in exchange for a guarantee of physical security.
The Israel Defense Forces this month launched a renewed air and ground offensive on Jabalia and other parts of north Gaza, targeting what it said were efforts by Hamas to regroup in the area and launch attacks.
Israeli troops encircled the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia on Saturday and fired tank shells at the complex. The entrance to the nearby Kamal Adwan hospital was also hit, killing one person and injuring several others, according to local authorities and Palestinian media. Residents reported a partial telecommunications blackout.
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Israel “is intensifying its targeting of the health system in the northern Gaza Strip . . . and its insistence on putting them out of service”, the Gaza health ministry said.
Israel has long maintained that Hamas and other militant groups use hospitals and other civilian infrastructure in Gaza as “command and control sites” and weapons storage facilities.
After confirming Sinwar’s death on Friday, Khalil al-Hayya, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau based in Doha, said in a televised address that the remaining Israeli hostages held in Gaza would not be returned until Israeli forces withdrew from the strip. He also demanded that Palestinian prisoners be released from Israeli custody and the end of “aggression” against the besieged territory.
“Sinwar’s death and the deaths of other leaders . . . only makes our movement stronger and more committed to pushing on,” he said.
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The war in Gaza has spread across the Middle East, leading to open conflict between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hizbollah movement.
Israel intensified its offensive against Hizbollah last month in response to more than a year of rocket and drone fire from Lebanon into northern Israel. The IDF has conducted waves of air strikes across Lebanon and this month launched a ground invasion.
Hizbollah on Friday vowed that “a new and escalating phase in its confrontation” with Israel was in the offing and on Saturday alerts sounded across northern Israel warning of rocket and drone attacks.
The Israeli military said one drone hit a structure in the northern seaside town of Caesarea, where Netanyahu has his private residence. The prime minister’s office confirmed that the premier’s home was the target but that Netanyahu and his wife were not present and no one was hurt.
In Iran, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei eulogised Sinwar as “an outstanding figure of resistance and combat” against the enemy, who dealt “an irreparable blow” on October 7 that would be “remembered in the region’s history”.
Khamenei added that Sinwar’s death was “a painful loss for the resistance front but will never stop it” from advancing, vowing continued support from Iran.
Tehran is bracing for an Israeli response to a ballistic missile barrage it launched this month. Israeli leaders have promised a “severe” reaction that is “deadly and precise”.
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Additional reporting Chloe Cornish in Beirut and Bita Ghaffari in Tehran
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Increasingly motorists are comparing car insurance to highway robbery. The average price of a new quote rose by nearly four times as much as inflation in the three years to June 2024. The government has pledged to tackle the problem. But are insurers really taking customers for a ride?
Some pricey policy add-ons fuel that perception. This week the UK financial watchdog launched an investigation into whether people are being overcharged to pay for car and home insurance in instalments. If the Financial Conduct Authority ends up imposing a 15 per cent annual percentage rate ceiling on premium finance, it could deliver an 8 per cent hit to the earnings of Admiral and Direct Line unless prices increase to replace the lost income, according to Abid Hussain of Panmure Liberum.
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The FCA will also probe the puzzle of why motor insurance has risen by so much in the UK. Yes, costs have been driven up by supply chain disruption, energy costs and labour shortages. As cars use more sophisticated technology, they are more expensive to repair. Fraud — including “crash for cash” scams — and inefficient claims handling arrangements are piling on expenses. But why have rates risen by four times as much in the UK as the EU? They are up by 82 per cent compared with 19 per cent in the three years to June.
One explanation is that these statistics overstate the problem. They measure quotes to new customers which appear to have risen particularly steeply following a 2022 ban on “price walking” — the practice of offering better rates to new customers than existing ones. Using a broader measure that includes renewals, premiums are at present £12 lower than inflation-adjusted peak prices in late 2017, according to the ABI. Moreover, UK prices fell more than EU ones in the pandemic, accentuating the subsequent rise.
Another possibility is that motor insurers are making excessive profits from underwriting. But that does not stand up to scrutiny. The sector reported an underwriting loss in both 2022 and 2023.
Some of the pressure is easing. Premiums edged downwards between the first and second quarter of this year. But they have already risen enough to return insurers to profit. EY forecasts a net combined ratio — claims and costs as a percentage of premiums — of 96 per cent this year.
Even so, a concerted push to improve efficiency and drive down costs is vital. This is a multi-faceted problem that is not for the industry alone. Some of the remedies — from policing thefts to repairing potholes — are in the hands of the government. Just leaning on insurers will not move the dial.
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