We need smaller councils, not larger ones | Letters
For blinkered politicians in the Westminster bubble, perhaps the country can be easily divided into neat new portions (Voters like councillors more than MPs – so why is Labour wasting time destroying local democracy?, 3 March).Urban centres will benefit because their local representatives can carry on supporting a reasonably homogenous area.But for the Isle of Wight, the prospect of integration with Hampshire is a disaster.It’s bad enough that successive governments have been indifferent to our unique circumstances, happy to persistently underfund our schools and medical facilities, and overlook the catastrophic effect of excessively expensive ferry travel, while pouring billions into other cities’ transport.We have paid our taxes, yet it seems everyone else benefits from subsidies that we contribute to.
Why should we now want to subsidise yet another decision-making machine over the water?Polly Toynbee is right.We need smaller councils, not larger ones.Local town and parish councillors are closer to voters and far more likely to raise difficult questions in a local forum to find local solutions to local problems.Yvonne WilliamsRyde, Isle of Wight The reduction in the number of councillors in the latest reorganisation is of a piece with the amalgamation of hospital trusts, the absorption of housing associations into ever larger conglomerates and, so far as Labour is concerned, the gradual elimination from council candidacy of those who might have a shadow in their past or too strong a hint of proletarian sympathies.Mayors can be more easily bought off than council leaders because they can be singled out.
The extent to which this is deliberate is debatable, but I’ve little doubt it’s a pleasing side-effect of the centralising tendencies to which governments in recent years have been addicted.Robert JonesNiton Undercliff, Isle of Wight Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Stephen Colbert on Trump: ‘A sack of incompetence and malice’
Late-night hosts discussed how Donald Trump is tanking the US economy while also detailing the absurd attempts to de-woke the military.On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert started by talking about the daylight savings leap over the weekend, saying he has “never been more grateful to be one hour closer to the end”.This week has seen the stock market plummet with the Dow Jones index falling 890 points. Despite attempts, there is “no good way to spin the story” and the news has been “bumming out everybody on Wall Street” with those who work there reportedly exhausted.“Do you know how hard it is to exhaust Wall Street?” Colbert asked before joking that they wake up to a “hot cup of cocaine and then just to take the edge off, more cocaine”
The Beguiled: 1971 Clint Eastwood film is a sweaty, southern hothouse
On paper, Don Siegel’s 1971 southern gothic melodrama The Beguiled appears the perfect candidate for a remake: a critical and commercial failure in its own time, its infamous reputation helped it linger in the margins of popular consciousness. Sofia Coppola would have thought as much when she directed her own take on Thomas P Cullinan’s source novel in 2017. While Coppola’s version is full of distinct beauty, Siegel’s original stands alone in its unyielding thorniness.That may have seemed like a career misstep for star Clint Eastwood upon its initial release but it now stands clearly as one of the most potent subversions of the masculine archetype he helped popularise.Eastwood plays John McBurney, an unscrupulous corporal fighting for the Union during the waning days of the American civil war
Womadelaide 2025: Róisín Murphy, Khruangbin and others lead a blissful, sweltering weekend
Botanic Park, AdelaideDespite the heat, this year’s festival was full of magical moments and big sounds, with musicians making fascinating genre connectionsAs the sun set on day three of Womadelaide, under the bat colony at Tainmuntilla (Botanic Park), the audience were in a trance. The Brooklyn-based Colombian musician Ela Minus mixed her voice with synthesisers, prompting a roar from the crowd; strobe lighting pulsed over the moving mass of bodies. The surrounding pine trees somehow seemed to make the reverb echo even stronger, lifting us up through the canopy to the open stars above.Minus’s music is complex and expansive, pop music meets house. We were all hypnotised, dancing as one, slick with a day’s worth of sunblock and sweat
Art with Cantona and puppet animals lined up for Manchester international festival
A giant herd of puppet animals raising awareness of the climate crisis and artwork inspired by footballers including Eric Cantona are part of the 10th edition of the Manchester international festival (MIF), whose organisers want visitors to have “a moment to reflect”.The former Manchester United footballer Juan Mata, the art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and the writer, filmmaker and curator Josh Willdigg have put together the event’s “set piece”, a celebration of the beautiful game where artists and footballers collaborated on purpose-made artworks.The England Lionesses midfielder Ella Toone, the former Netherlands and Juventus enforcer Edgar Davids, and the Manchester United great Cantona are among the footballers taking part in Football City, Art United, which will take place in Aviva Studios and include sculpture, sound installations and animation.It was inspired after a conversation between MIF’s artistic director, John McGrath, the poet Lemn Sissay, Obrist and Mata, who saw MIF’s Poets Slash Artist show, where visual artists and poets collaborated, and asked if something similar could be done with footballers. Mata also featured in 2023’s edition of the festival, working with Obrist and Tino Sehgal
#MeToo movement ‘began to catch up’ with Noel Clarke, court hears
Women began discussing Noel Clarke’s past sexual misconduct in response to the #MeToo movement, the high court in London has heard, as he began giving evidence in his libel claim against the Guardian.Cross-examining Clarke for the Guardian, Gavin Millar KC told the actor he had begun to panic because the movement “began to catch up with you”.But during often combative cross-examination on Monday, the former Doctor Who star, said his female accusers were variously “lying”, “seeking attention” and had “jumped on the bandwagon”.He said the Guardian had “smashed my life for four years with this rubbish, this nonsense … I did not do this, I would not do this. I have got children, this is not true
‘It sounds terrible but I listen to it 30 times a day’: how the Lumineers made Ho Hey
‘We were moving away from bar band covers to doing our own songs. So shouting “Ho hey!” from the stage got people’s attention. We were doing it to be heard. Then suddenly everyone started listening’After growing up in Ramsey, a small town in New Jersey, we moved to New York to try to make it in music but found it a very difficult circuit to break into. Bars would let you play because they wanted your friends to buy drinks, but then they’d kick everybody out to get the next group in
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