• Captain admits fearing sack after T20 World Cup flop
• McCullum says main job is lifting ‘miserable’ Buttler

Jos Buttler feared he could be sacked as England captain after their T20 World Cup exit in June, but hopes that Brendon McCullum’s appointment as white-ball head coach will lead to the most “rewarding” time in his career.

Buttler is back leading England after a four-month absence due a recurring calf injury. Since his last match, the T20 World Cup semi-final defeat by India , Matthew Mott has been fired and McCullum appointed in his stead.

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Albert Beale and Paul Parker honour the pacifist movement, while other readers say public poppy pressure has gone too far

In Samira Shackle’s “Has poppy mania gone too far?” (The long read, 5 November ), she dwells on the increasing policing of those in public life over their wearing of red poppies at this time of year; she also mentions in passing the white poppies of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU).

But she fails to question the basic premise of the remembrance industry – namely that the military in particular, and even more particularly “our” military, deserve more consideration than do other victims of war.

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Helen Gourlay on why the numbers don’t add up for students or universities. And Yassin El-Moudden says turning students into consumers has warped tertiary education economics

Re university fees, the numbers don’t add up, and never did ( Editorial, 4 November ). Assumptions by George Osborne and colleagues of high graduate earnings, based on times when far fewer people went to university, were unrealistic. The current “solution” is no better. If fees have not changed since 2017 and inflation since 2017 is 29% then tuition fees rising by several hundred pounds next year still leaves universities with massive cuts in funding.

There are few (if any) angles from which it makes sense. Graduates who work as key workers, eg nurses, are unlikely to earn enough to pay off their loans. If fees are to be thought of as a graduate tax, why would a just society ask those doing a service to society (such as nurses) to pay more tax? And, if it’s a graduate tax, why are we not taxing all graduates, rather than only taxing young people – those who went to university after New Labour introduced fees?

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UK has had average of just three hours of sun over past week, but skies should start to clear from Sunday

An “anticyclonic gloom” has been blamed for cloudy weather across parts of England, with one village receiving absolutely no sunshine since October.

Odiham, in Hampshire, has reportedly recorded zero minutes of sunshine since October, but forecasters are predicting that the fog, drizzle and low cloud should start clearing from Sunday.

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Campaign under way to identify subjects of images shot in 1970s and 1980s by Westra, one of New Zealand’s best-known social documentary photographers

When a black-and-white photo of a man and a woman sitting on a patterned sofa outside an old weatherboard house appeared on a billboard in central Wellington recently, Arthur Uruamo’s phone lit up.

“A lot of people have rung me about that photo,” Uruamo tells the Guardian.

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From a book that reveals the stories behind the record-breaking singer’s songs to her favourite kind of red lipstick, these pressies picked by our music editor will delight the Swiftie in your life

Despite the rise of a new class of pop star – Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan, Charli xcx – 2024 unarguably belonged to Taylor Swift. Her Eras tour smashed records; she deepened her catalogue with a surprise album, The Tortured Poets Department , and she even brought a new audience to American football after she started dating Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce.

An already monumental fanbase grew even larger – meaning you’ll doubtless have at least one Swift fan in your life to buy for this Christmas. Swift’s quippy lyrics and love of cats have seen her face (and cats’ faces) plastered over all sorts of unofficial plasticky tat – but here’s a more thoughtful way to buy Swift-inspired gifts, for recipients young and old. There’s a blank space on the label: write their name!

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Robert Smith says getting first chart-topper since 1992’s Wish is ‘enormously uplifting’ and ‘genuinely heartwarming’

The Cure have scored their first UK No 1 album in 32 years, with Songs of a Lost World.

The band’s frontman Robert Smith said: “It is enormously uplifting, genuinely heartwarming to experience such a wonderful reaction to the release of the new Cure album. To everyone who has bought it, listened to it, loved it, believed in us over the years – thank you!”

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• Captain rallies team to ‘go out and play with courage’
• England are odds-on to beat struggling Wallabies

Jamie George has called on his England side to have the bravery to stick to their guns and go for the jugular against Australia rather than go into their shells after making a losing start to their autumn campaign.

England will be seeking an 11th win in 12 matches against Australia, who arrive at Twickenham ranked ninth in the world, but Steve Borthwick’s side have lost four of their past five matches after slipping to a third straight defeat by the All Blacks last weekend.

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Exclusive: Official in Zelenskyy administration expresses frustration with Starmer over lack of missiles

Ukraine’s relationship with the UK has “got worse” since the Labour government took power in July, officials in Kyiv have told the Guardian, voicing frustration over Britain’s failure to supply additional long-range missiles.

The UK prime minister is yet to visit Ukraine four months after taking office and a frustrated Kyiv has said that a trip would be worthless unless Keir Starmer committed to replenishing stocks of the sought after long-range Storm Shadow system.

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