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8 hours ago
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The Guardian view on new musicals: sex, drugs and song ‘n’ dance | Editorial
Adaptations of hit novels like One Day and Trainspotting help keep the genre in tune with the timesSingin’ in the Rain it will never be, but Trainspotting the Musical is not as improbable as it seems. The yellow-brick road from cult novel to film to blockbuster musical is so well trodden that it was only a matter of time before an all-singing, all-dancing adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s gritty 1993 novel about a bunch of heroin addicts in Edinburgh hit London’s West End. Danny Boyle’s 1996 film, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last month, had already established Trainspotting as a story with a soundtrack. The musical will have specially written songs too.From Oliver! and Les Misérables to Matilda, Wicked and The Devil Wears Prada, many of the biggest hitters in the West End today started out as books. Even the global hit Hamilton was inspired by a hefty 800-page biography of the 18th-century American founding father Alexander Hamilton. Last autumn, Paddington the Musical joined their ranks. A musical version of another hit novel about the 1990s (although published in 2009) – David Nicholls’s One Day – opened in Edinburgh this month. The romance between Emma and Dexter might be more typical musical fare than the drug-fuelled antics of Trainspotting’s Renton, Sick Boy and Spud, but that doesn’t mean that the latter don’t belong in a musical. Welsh has revealed that this latest incarnation will “broaden” to include contemporary addictions to mobile phones and the internet.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
The Guardian
8 hours ago
Girlguiding didn’t have to do this to its trans members. There was another way | Zoe Williams
Girlguiding’s response to last year’s supreme court ruling is not the humane option – and changes the organisation’s identityGreat work, Guides; you’ve taken some members you had no idea even existed, and expelled them from your organisation with effect from September. This gives trans girls a humane half-year to extricate, because that’s definitely what kids want: to participate for six months in a uniformed, voluntary, social organisation that has explicitly kicked them out, while they look for somewhere more welcoming.“Like every charity, we have to follow the law,” Girlguiding says in an online info pack whose FAQs are almost comically Stasi-lite. “Will volunteers be expected to carry out additional checks or ask for proof?” (The good news, folks, is that they won’t; the mind boggles at what those additional checks might be that didn’t breach at least some safeguarding protocols.) “How should volunteers check that trans girls have left?” (Some sort of dunking stool? In actuality, again, they won’t check.)Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnistGuardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets hereDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
The Guardian
16 hours ago
The Guardian view on a recovering NHS: public confidence has risen, but not enough | Editorial
Wes Streeting pronounced the UK’s health system ‘broken’. An upbeat survey does not mean that it is fixedFor the government, news that public satisfaction with the NHS has increased for the first time since 2019 came as a huge relief. After 20 difficult months in office, ministers can point to proof that one public service at least is getting better, in spite of doctors’ strikes. The annual survey also found that the proportion of people who are dissatisfied with social care provided by councils has fallen, although the change here is less marked.Given the low base from which this boost has been measured, and ongoing problems in multiple areas, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, was careful to temper his evident glee in a speech on Wednesday, with pledges of further improvement. Since the NHS is widely regarded as his party’s proudest achievement, and the UK’s most cherished institution, a figure of 26% declaring themselves to be satisfied, compared with 51% who are dissatisfied, sounds more like a cause for concern than celebration.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
The Guardian view on China and Iran: the war poses bigger questions for Beijing than where to get its oil | Editorial
The limits of its partnership with Tehran are unsurprising. But this conflict raises broader issues for the superpowerFor years, official Chinese rhetoric on Iran invoked their shared historical status as grand civilisations that have struggled against western aggression. Bilateral ties date back more than half a century. In 2021, they signed a comprehensive strategic agreement pledging $400bn of Chinese investment. And China’s economy is already flagging; it has just set its lowest growth target since 1991, underlining the importance of stability for Beijing.So its muted response since the US and Israel launched their war is striking. Beijing condemned the attack, but it was Washington that postponed the summit between their leaders because of the conflict. As Gulf states that previously mediated back away, China shows no interest in stepping up.Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
How will we know Labour is really cleaning up party funding? When Reform and the Tories fight like hell to stop it | Polly Toynbee
Banning crypto donations is a start, but here’s what Keir Starmer really needs to do to make his the party of decent politicsGood. Yet again the government has done a good thing. But yet again it is not enough, and too weak a political klaxon to signal what Labour stands for. Overcaution and opportunity missed is so often the story, as the government fails to imprint the best of itself on the public mind. But there is still time to act, with hopeful signs behind the scenes that it is considering stronger reforms to how politics is funded. Bring it on, fast – and this time with panache.Crypto donations to political parties have been banned, instantly leaving no time for shovelling more truckloads of dubious cash from mysterious sources into British politics. Donations from Britons abroad have been capped at £100,000 – still high for those paying to influence tax-and-spend decisions without paying UK tax. Many good recommendations from the report by Philip Rycroft will be debated and included in the current representation of the people bill, after his severe warnings about the influence of Russia, Iran, China or indeed US billionaires inside Trumpworld: all of them enemies. He offers an example of this kind of malevolent interference, noting the sharp drop in aggressive commentary on Scottish independence during Iran’s internet blackout. Who knew Iranian ayatollahs were so interested in the SNP? Enemies relish a broken-up, enfeebled UK.Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnistGuardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader. Book tickets here Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
Netanyahu claims that victory over Iran would bring peace to Israel. He should look closer to home | Dahlia Scheindlin
As Israelis grow weary of sheltering from missile attacks, their prime minister is using the war to distract from the Palestinian issueAn opinion poll conducted in Israel two weeks into the war on Iran demonstrated what looked like euphoria: surveys by thinktanks such as the Israel Democracy Institute and the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) show that nearly 80% of the public supported the war. Among Israel’s Jewish population that figure rose to 91%.The true picture is more complicated. The INSS also found that among Arab citizens, who are predominantly Palestinian and make up about 20% of the Israeli population, about two-thirds were opposed to the war. And reality is always more complex than polling figures: from Tel Aviv, I can see that the Jewish Israelis driving the sweeping support are simultaneously exhausted after what is now more than three weeks of running from missile attacks day and night, and by the economic, social and physical damage of the war. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 day ago
Huw Edwards hates the TV dramatisation of his life. Maybe he should have thought of that before … you know | Marina Hyde
He’s done it again. The convicted sex offender, creator of victims, has gone and created another one – himselfI see Huw Edwards is still not the subject of any of his verbs. The BBC’s former iconic newsreader (trademark: Huw Edwards) has emerged from a minibreak in the wilderness to excoriate Channel 5’s forthcoming dramatisation of his downfall. “Mental illness is misunderstood by many but can never be an excuse for criminality,” Huw informed the public, the overwhelming majority of whom are already well across this particular point. “It can, however, at least help explain why people sometimes behave in shocking and reprehensible ways, and why things fell apart for me in the way they did.” Fell apart because of you, I think you’ll find.Anyway, there was a lot more of Edwards’s lengthy statement. “I have been open about my struggle with persistent mental illness over a period of 25 years,” he continued. “What is less well known is the severity of that condition, which was managed successfully until the downward spiral which led to an appalling outcome.” Again, note the tragic passivity of “an appalling outcome”, as though a flow chart and not a person has led us somewhere we’d very much rather not be.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
The Guardian
3 days ago
Attacks on synagogues and Jewish shops in the UK, Europe and the US don’t hurt Netanyahu. They just hurt ordinary Jews | Jonathan Freedland
Too many want to cast acts of violence and antisemitism as blows against Israel’s government. But the fear and terror land on real people, thousands of miles awayLet us begin with a brief exchange on GB News, confirmed this week as the TV arm of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Following an attack on a synagogue last week in Michigan, in which a gunman drove a car packed with explosives through the entrance to the building before opening fire, a pundit on the channel sought to clarify what the attacker actually meant by his actions. “This was an Israeli temple,” she explained. “It was aligned with Israel.”By way of evidence, she cited the name of the synagogue – Temple Israel – apparently unaware that Jews have referred to themselves as “the people of Israel” for millennia, long before there was a state of that name, and that there are, for that reason, countless synagogues in the US called Temple Israel. No, for her, the Michigan house of worship, with its on-site school where more than a hundred children were in lessons that day, was a de facto embassy of the Israeli state and therefore an understandable, if not legitimate, target. Hold that episode in your mind.Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...
The Guardian
1 week ago
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The Guardian
9 months ago
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