The author of Generation Maybe, Camilla Cavendish, explains the many reasons people are having fewer children, from dating apps to unaffordable housing and the climate crisis

Generation Maybe is the most tactful possible title for Camilla Cavendish’s bracing new book – because the trend she’s describing is anything but a “maybe”. “The wave of childlessness that is sweeping the globe is extraordinary,” she writes. It’s in the UK, where the fertility rate hit 1.39 children per woman in 2025, the lowest on record. It’s across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, visible in so many measures – nearly half of Canadian women surveyed in their 40s said they’d had fewer children than they would have liked. But it’s also a global story. “The UAE, Chile and Tamil Nadu in India have even lower birthrates than Germany,” Cavendish writes. “China is growing old before it gets rich, and Russia has maintained its population size purely by annexing Crimea and parts of Ukraine.” In fact, when it comes to falling populations, “only the Black Death in the 14th century is comparable to what is happening now”.

When I meet her in central London, Cavendish is tailored, self-possessed, you might even say poised, but very open – she never gives an opinion without asking yours, she talks very freely about her family and she is upfront about what she sees as her faults. Now 58, she started her career at McKinsey, the mega-management consultancy, having done PPE at Oxford at the same time as David Cameron, for whom she worked as policy director when he was in government and to whom she remains intensely loyal (every time his name comes up, we have a fight).

Winger was one of the first big-money academy transfers, part of a child labour market that has barely been questioned

“What’s your name?”

“Raheem.”

Soaring fish prices, labour costs and changing tastes all spell bad news for Britain’s chippies. Is this the end for the seaside staple – or will a few innovators succeed in keeping them alive?

One day in 2007, Darren Sudlow drove past the old stationmaster’s house at Padgate station, in Cheshire, noticed it was empty and decided to lease it. “He just fell in love with the place,” says his son, Kieran, who was 11 at the time. “He said he always wanted a fish and chip shop, for some reason.” Despite having worked as a joiner up to that point, Darren made a go of it, and the Plaice Station, as he named it, was a success from day one. “He worked like mad to get it open and then realised that the hard work hadn’t even started, and he had a queue out the door,” says the younger Sudlow.

The family lived nearby. Kieran Sudlow, who is now 30, worked at the Plaice Station as a boy, peeling potatoes, washing dishes after school, then cooking at the range when he was 16. He went on to become a chef, working in Australia for a few years, then returning to help out at the chippy part-time when needed. Business had always been pretty good. They won local awards and had a loyal customer base. But one day in March, Kieran remembers, his father came in and told him: “‘I think the fish and chip shop’s going to go.’ He said, ‘It’s not making money. I can’t see it carrying on.’”

In towns and in the countryside, I see SUVs and pickup trucks driven without care or conscience. It’s the Magafication of transport

Where is lawbreaking not just visible, but designed to be seen? Where is antisocial behaviour worn as a badge of honour? Where is pleasure gained directly from causing distress? And where is reckless endangerment often ignored by the police or treated with the mildest of punishments? The answer is on the roads.

Last month, three men in the West Midlands were convicted of street racing. Two were driving at over 80mph in a 40mph zone. The third clocked over 90mph in a 30mph zone. The West Midlands has long been blighted by organised racing, sometimes involving 200 cars or more and hundreds of spectators. The result is a long catalogue of deaths and life-changing injuries, including some caused when racers have left the road and ploughed into onlookers or pedestrians. And there are plenty more accidents where the police have little idea whether racing is to blame, for as soon as they happen, the drivers disperse.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Does your child’s favourite show give them a chance to reflect, or does it move too quickly for its lessons to sink in?

• A version of this piece was originally published on Aeon as The bombarding of childhood

I am at the airport gate waiting to depart, watching passengers hurry past with rolling suitcases and paper cups of coffee. A small boy sits very still beside his mother. He holds an iPad close to his chest, almost in a cramp, clutching the screen as if it might otherwise run away. I hear loud clapping hands and squeaking children’s voices. I lean over and see a cartoon character in green snatch a toy from another character in pink. The pink character begins to cry, tears splashing like sprinkles from its enormous eyes. The green character shouts sorry. Instantly, the tears stop and a wide smile replaces them before I have blinked. And, before I have even worked out whether the characters are speaking English or Arabic (as the mother does to the boy), the scene has changed and the two characters are rowing a boat with a random song in the background. The boy’s eyes dart on the screen from right to left, centre, down. His body is still but his attention is being hurried from cue to cue.

This is the problem I have come to think of as the pace of children’s media.

Readers describe feelings of rejection after submitting hundreds of applications but getting a handful of interviews

Hundreds of job applications, exhausting searches and relentless rejection – the experience of attempting to get back into the workforce after losing their jobs in their 50s and 60s has proved an ordeal for some Britons.

For some, those efforts prove fruitless and lead jobseekers to reluctantly take early retirement. Others may have to rely on benefits to pay the bills while they continue to job hunt.

Policymakers keep steady course as jobs market comes under strain and Iran war pushes up energy costs

• Business live – latest updates

The Bank of England has kept interest rates on hold despite growing concern over inflation as the Iran war pushes households into a fresh cost of living crisis.

Against a volatile backdrop in global markets as the fighting in the Middle East intensifies, the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC) voted to keep its key base rate at 3.75%.

In an address to European parliamentarians, the Canadian prime minister speaks about his hopes for what a new relationship with the EU could look like

Meanwhile, we are getting some interesting lines from Paris that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, convened the chiefs ⁠of ⁠the ​different political parties to discuss the ​crises ‌in ‌the Middle East ‌and Ukraine and their consequences on the energy market.

The meeting will ‌be held on Friday morning at 10:30am local time on Thursday (that’s 9:30am UK) and military and intelligence officers will share ⁠the information they have ​provided to ​Macron, his ​office said ​in ‌a ​statement.

The Conservatives want to brand Burnham’s administration as a ‘traditional tax and spend socialist government’

Andrew Griffith has delivered his speech, and he is now taking questions.

Q: You want the government to pause the making tax digital programme. Is that an admission that the last government got this wrong when it introduced it?

It is an admission that despite [good] intentions, the execution of that has left a lot to be desired.

In fact, coming to parliament from business, I can confess the law that we pass the most often is the law of unintended consequences. And I think making tax digital is a good example of that.

The truth is that Burnham and Miliband ignored the advice they were given – which was that if they were determined to sanction Israel, they should not do so before the Israeli election on 27 October.

It may not be surprising that this was the message from the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, when Miliband called him on 11 August to warn sanctions were imminent. ‘He said postpone it until after the elections,’ a diplomatic source confirms. It was also the message the Israeli embassy in London – and its new chargé d’affaires Chris Cantor – was relaying to the Foreign Office. ‘Their message was clear: why do it now? Wait until after the elections, because something might change,’ a senior Labour figure says.

Body found in pond in Suffolk village of Brantham, where Noah was last seen on Tuesday afternoon

Police searching for a three-year-old boy who went missing from a playground on the Suffolk-Essex border have found a body.

Noah Woods was last seen at 3pm on Tuesday in Merriam Close, Brantham, near Manningtree, before becoming separated from a relative.