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Welcome to the half-real, half-fantasy world that is ‘the day after the budget’ | John Crace

This is the day when politicians and amateur commentators talk more doggybollox than on any other day of the year

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Neither actually. It’s a bizarre hybrid, an altered hallucinogenic universe. Where up is down and down is up. Everything always slightly out of reach.

A world otherwise known as “the day after the budget”. A day when politicians and amateur commentators are guaranteed to talk more doggybollox than on any other day of the year. A day when everyone gets their 15 minutes of shame.

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 14:32:13 GMT
You’re gonna need a bigger boat: the 20 best films set on water – ranked!

As L’Atalante is re-released, we count down the best movies set largely on ships, boats, barges, yachts, steamers and trimarans. Submarines banned, as they’re under water

Stephen Sommers’ sci-fi horror pulp follows a bunch of scene-stealing character actors playing mercenaries hired to destroy the cruise ship Argonautica for insurance purposes. But a giant mutant octopus has got there first! Among the potential cephalopod fodder are Treat Williams, Kevin J O’Connor, and Famke Janssen as a jewel thief.

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 13:26:56 GMT
Champions League review: Arsenal erupt, PSV stun Liverpool and Benfica revive

Arsenal rout Bayern to stake a claim as Europe’s best, Liverpool spiral again, Benfica revive under Mourinho, and Estevão dazzles on a crowded week of stars

Bayern Munich’s unbeaten run and claim to be the best team in European football were both punctured at the Emirates. Arsenal were rampant against an opponent who have handed them so much pain in the past. The Gunners opened the scoring through their habitual set-piece goal, Jurriën Timber fulfilling the role of the absent Gabriel Magalhães. Lennart Karl, the 17-year-old, showed off his chops with a fine goal; from within Bayern have found the player they desired when they were thwarted in moving for Florian Wirtz. After that, Declan Rice and Eberechi Eze took control in midfield, Noni Madueke and Gabriel Martinelli scoring the goals, the latter a humiliation of Manuel Neuer’s sweeper-keeper stylings. Amid the fug of the extended Champions League group-stage format, where matches between elite clubs are routine rather than novelty, this was still a statement victory. “I think they had an incredible match against, in my opinion, the best team in Europe,” Mikel Arteta said of his players. That status surely now lies with his team: Arsenal top the group-stage table with a 100% record.

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 12:46:35 GMT
‘It was no longer a gift for my husband. It was all for me’: four women on how boudoir photography changed their lives

Now a hugely popular photographic genre, many women pay thousands to have intimate portraits taken of themselves by a professional. What do they get out of it?

A few hours into Brittany Witt’s boudoir shoot, with the mimosas kicking in and the music going strong, the photographer asked: “How do we feel about some completely nude photos?” Witt was lying on the bed in lingerie, in a studio in Texas, and hadn’t considered nudity an option. “I was like: ‘OK, we’re on this trust path.’” She undressed. The photographer, JoAnna Moore, covered Witt with body oil and squirted her with water, then asked her “to crawl across the floor with my full trust,” Witt says. “I did so. The pose was nude, and it was completely open. I wasn’t covered with a sheet. It was all out, it was all open, and it brought that worst level of self-doubt. I was terrified.”

Witt, 33, has come to see that terror as an important part of her experience. She used to be a competitive weightlifter. “I had a very masculine aura. I showed up in strength,” she says. At school and work – in the construction side of the oil and gas industry – she was “type A – scheduler, planner, had everything together, kind of led the group”. A turbulent home life when she was growing up led her to develop robust protection mechanisms which, in adulthood, acted as a block to relationships – issues she had been addressing with a life coach. But in that moment, on all-fours in Moore’s studio: “I felt those protections stripped away. There was nothing to hide behind, literally, figuratively.”

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 10:00:24 GMT
Face transplants promised hope. Patients were put through the unthinkable

Twenty years after the first face transplant, patients are dying, data is missing, and the experimental procedure’s future hangs in the balance

In the early hours of 28 May 2005, Isabelle Dinoire woke up in a pool of blood. After fighting with her family the night before, she turned to alcohol and sleeping tablets “to forget”, she later said.

Reaching for a cigarette out of habit, she realized she couldn’t hold it between her lips. She understood something was wrong.

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 11:00:25 GMT
‘We like it a lot’: how Romania created the largest deposit return scheme in the world

In the two years since the system was launched, beverage-packaging collection and recycling has risen to 94%

In the Transylvanian village of Pianu de Jos, 51-year-old Dana Chitucescu gathers a sack of empty polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, aluminium cans and glass every week and takes it to her local shop.

Like millions of Romanians across cities and rural areas, Chitucescu has woven the country’s two-year-old deposit return system (DRS) into her routine.

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 12:00:27 GMT
Government to ditch day-one unfair dismissal policy from workers’ rights bill

Flagship Labour plan to be replaced with six-month threshold after Peter Kyle vows to not let businesses ‘lose’ under new law

The government is to ditch its flagship policy from the workers’ rights bill, removing the right to protection from unfair dismissal from the first day of employment and replacing it with a six-month threshold.

The move comes after the business secretary, Peter Kyle, told businesses at the CBI conference this week that he would listen to concerns about the effects of the law change on hiring. A trade union source told the Guardian: “They’ve capitulated and there may be more to come.”

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 18:03:15 GMT
Budget tax rises may be ‘fiscal fiction’ as pain delayed for election year, IFS warns

Thinktank predicts backloading may force Labour to abandon tax rises or spending cuts

Rachel Reeves has positioned Labour to fight the next general election with tax increases and spending cuts that resemble a work of “fiscal fiction”, an analysis by leading economists has warned.

In its verdict on the chancellor’s budget, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the chancellor had chosen a high-risk strategy by backloading her plans to start just before voters go the polls in 2029.

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 15:36:30 GMT
Putin insists Ukraine has to surrender territory for any deal to be possible

Russian president says latest draft peace plan ‘can be basis for future agreements’ if Kyiv gives up unspecified areas

Vladimir Putin has said that the outline of a draft peace plan discussed by the US and Ukraine could serve as a basis for future negotiations to end the war – but insisted Ukraine would have to surrender territory for any deal to be possible.

“In general, we agree that this can be the basis for future agreements,” Putin said, noting that the version of the plan discussed by Washington and Kyiv in Geneva had been shared with Moscow.

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 18:12:05 GMT
Israel ‘still committing genocide’ in Gaza, Amnesty International says

The NGO’s chief says last month’s ceasefire ‘risks creating a dangerous illusion that life in Gaza is returning to normal’

Amnesty International has said that Israel is “still committing genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, despite the ceasefire agreed last month.

The fragile, US-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas came into effect on October 10, after two years of war.

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Thu, 27 Nov 2025 18:51:29 GMT

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