3 h. ago How one Greater Manchester nursery made it out of special measures and regained its good rating

The nursery received a critical review from Ofsted earlier this year

Politics

10 h. ago Football transfer rumours: Gianluigi Donnarumma to Manchester City?

Today’s rumours are celebrating a new Sorry albumIf you had suggested, as Gianluigi Donnarumma’s Brobdingnagian hands were extinguishing Arsenal’s Champions League hopes in May, that Paris Saint-Germain would bundle him out the door marked Do One a few months later, you’d have been laughed out of the football WhatsApp group faster than you could say ‘Toxic Hipsters’.Who’s laughing now? You are! Or at least you would be had the above scenario been a representation of reality rather than the Rumour Mill’s exhausted imagination. Luis Enrique wants a different profile of goalkeeper – imagine if someone had used that phrase within earshot of Brian Clough or Bill Shankly – and Donnarumma may well be using his giant frame and even bigger aura in the Premier League this season. Continue reading...

Sport

3 d. ago Lily Phillips: Crying review – laughing through the toxic positivity around childbirth

Monkey Barrel, EdinburghAmusing vignettes about arrogant consultants and undignified poos keep things light as Phillips documents a harrowing hospital experienceExpectations and reality don’t always align when it comes to childbirth. Lily Phillips (not that one, she assures us, getting good mileage from her porn star namesake) thought she was well informed. She’d gone through a long process of IVF to get there, attended NCT classes, and, when labour started, she was ready for the if not serene then empowering birthing experience and magical moment of immediate love that would follow.Instead, she discovered that “birth is barbaric and early motherhood is brutal”. Yet even her NCT WhatsApp group, where she turned after a harrowing hospital experience, requested “no negative birth stories, please”. Crying does a lot to redress the balance and cuts through the “toxic positivity” surrounding childbirth that left Phillips feeling alone. Continue reading...

Events

6 d. ago Mafia The Old Country review – a beautiful but trivial take on what a crime gangster epic should be

This story of greed, crime, and forbidden love is wonderfully stunning to look at, yet disappoints for how unabashedly old-fashioned it is in almost every other regard.

Events

8 d. ago Ayrshire chip shop given 'faultless' review by critic after 'perfect' meal

"This is spectacular."

Politics

9 d. ago World in $1.5tn ‘plastics crisis’ hitting health from infancy to old age, report warns

Plastic production has increased more than 200 times since 1950 and hits health at every stage from extraction to disposal, says review in the LancetPlastics are a “grave, growing and under-recognised danger” to human and planetary health, a new expert review has warned. The world is in a “plastics crisis”, it concluded, which is causing disease and death from infancy to old age and is responsible for at least $1.5tn (£1.1tn) a year in health-related damages.The driver of the crisis is a huge acceleration of plastic production, which has increased by more than 200 times since 1950 and is set to almost triple again to more than a billion tonnes a year by 2060. While plastic has many important uses, the most rapid increase has been in the production of single-use plastics, such as drinks bottles and fast-food containers. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago Pissants by Brandon Jack review – is this novel a critique or a celebration of toxic masculinity? Even it isn’t sure

The former AFL player’s debut novel barely has a plot, following a group of aggressive, entitled footy players as they get wasted and treat women like propsGet our weekend culture and lifestyle email“Virgil and Homer would recognise these hulking airborne men,” Helen Garner wrote of AFL players in her most recent book, The Season. As the celebrated author and footy tragic watched her grandson play in an under-16 league, she found in the sport “a kind of poetry, an ancient common language between strangers, a set of shared hopes and rules and images, of arcane rites played out at regular intervals before the citizenry”.Garner has enthusiastically blurbed the scabrous debut novel of former AFL player Brandon Jack: Pissants, a book mostly dedicated to the arcane rites that play out off the oval – preferably as far from the citizenry as possible. Whereas Garner lovingly traces the epic dimensions of teenage footy in the suburbs, Jack depicts AFL culture as a crucible for addiction, miso...

Events

1 week ago Lions respond to changing room incident that sparked criticism as review called

The Lions have come in for some flak after an incident during the stoppage in the third Test in Sydney

Politics

1 week ago The Count of Monte Cristo review – you’ll have to pause every 45 seconds to shake your head at its daftness

Jeremy Irons and Sam Claflin star in this extraordinary adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ ludicrous 1844 novel. It’s full of howlers, wooden acting and terrible dialogue, but at points it’s so bad it’s funAre you ready for some bad, fun TV made from a bad, fun book? Of course you are! It’s high summer and the air is heavy with promise, so come inside, get comfy on the sofa and prepare to binge an eight-episode adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ ludicrous potboiler The Count of Monte Cristo.This series from Greg Latter and Sandro Petraglia stars Sam Claflin (last seen on the small screen being very good as the main man of the sextet in Daisy Jones and the Six) as one of the most wronged men in history, Edmond Dantès. Gosh, he goes through the mill. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago Karen Pirie Season 2 on ITV review: this show is criminally good

This intricate puzzlebox of a series captures much of the same magic as its predecessor

Events

3 w. ago First criminal conviction linked to Capture referred to Court of Appeal

An application was made on behalf of Patricia Owen to the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Events

3 w. ago New ‘cosy crime’ series Bookish hailed as ‘next best thing’ to Sherlock

Series has been compared to the works of Agatha Christie

Events

3 w. ago American Primeval creator has just made Netflix's True Detective that could last for years

Our review of Netflix's latest crime thriller

Politics

4 w. ago New probe into 'Britain's most corrupt cop' after Mirror reveals 'flawed' inquiry

The British Transport Police say "additional resources" are being ploughed into a review of Det Sgt Derek Ridgewell's crimes after a Mirror probe revealed a previous inquiry was just nine pages long

Politics