Parks are for all, not just paying festivalgoers | Letters
Emma Warren, who is quoted in your article (What are public parks for? Inside the debate sparked by London festival row, 24 May), could not be more wrong when she says the Protect Brockwell Park campaign is about “a small number of people trying to limit a larger number of people’s access to space”.Parks are open to everyone, all year round, except during the weeks leading up to and during such festivals.For centuries, local parks have preserved the sanity of parents with young children, allowed children to meet each other and create play with the simplest of means, and permitted elderly people a break from the loneliness of being stuck at home.Parks need preserving because they are egalitarian and provide a meeting space that helps build communities.Very few object to short festivals that treat a park and the local community with respect.
What we are seeing now is events companies preying on cash-strapped local authorities to get concert venues on the cheap, make a quick buck from large, prolonged events and move on, often leaving the park with extensive damage that takes months to repair.There is very little transparency as to what changes hands, how much money is actually made, what it is used for and how much the damage costs to fix.Years of savage local authority cutbacks have left parks with skeleton staffing, inadequate to produce the regeneration that these events necessitate.The effects can be cumulative and permanent.The chief executive of the Association of Independent Festivals says the local authority is “a representation of the local community”.
Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Not many local people feel so represented.Victor PaceForest Hill, London The imposition of loud music on others is as unacceptable in public parks as it is from a phone on the bus or a speaker in the garden.The elementary social decency of not inflicting stressful noise on neighbours and fellow travellers is rapidly disintegrating.And public parks belong to all, not just the minority who want to attend pop concerts.Paul KeelingWelling, Kent 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.
China accuses US of ‘seriously violating’ trade war truce; UK factory output shrinks again – business live
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.Trade war tensions are on the rise again, as relations between China and the US deteriorate.Beijing has hit back this morning against Washington, accusing the US of “seriously violating” the trade truce which the two powers agreed in Zurich last month.China’s commerce ministry also promised to take forceful measures to safeguard its interests, rejecting a claim from Donald Trump last week that China has ‘totally violated’ its trade agreement with the US.In a statement, the ministry said:“The U
Vodafone vows to invest more than £1bn in a year as it seals Three UK merger
Vodafone has promised to invest more than £1bn in expanding its network coverage in the next year, as it sealed a £16.5bn merger with its former mobile rival Three UK.The new business, named VodafoneThree, will invest £11bn in its coverage over the next decade, in line with commitments agreed with the UK competition regulator last year. It will invest £1.3bn in capital expenditure projects in its first year, the company said on Monday
Facebook and Instagram owner Meta to enable AI ad creation by end of next year
The owner of Facebook and Instagram is to help advertisers to fully create and target campaigns using artificial intelligence tools by the end of next year, in a move that sent shock waves through the traditional marketing industry.Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which also owns WhatsApp, aims to directly target brands’ marketing budgets, posing a threat to the advertising and media agencies that handle client campaigns and budgets.The AI tools under development, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, will allow brands using Meta’s advertising platform to create ads using a product image and a planned marketing spend.Meta’s platform already offers some AI tools that allow advertisers to tweak existing ads before they appear on Facebook and Instagram.However, the new tools could disintermediate the traditional advertising creation, planning and buying roles played by agencies, as well as open up a long tail of advertisers with small budgets that cannot afford to retain marketing services companies
‘Humanity deserves better’: iPhone designer on new partnership with OpenAI
The designer of the iPhone has promised his next artificial intelligence-enabled device will be driven by a sense that “humanity deserves better”, after admitting feeling “responsibility” for some of the negative consequences of modern technology.Sir Jony Ive said his new partnership with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, would renew his optimism about technology, amid widespread concerns about the impact of smartphones and social media.In an interview with the Financial Times, London-born Ive declined to give details about the device he is developing with OpenAI, but indicated unease about people’s relationship with some tech products.“Many of us would say we have an uneasy relationship with technology at the moment,” he said. He added that the device’s design would be driven by “a sense of ‘we deserve better
French Open: Zverev and Pegula in action, Gauff wins, Norrie v Djokovic to come – live
Pegula has two break-back points, and while Boisson saves the first with a pinpoint lob, the American prevails in the next rally. We’re back on serve at 3-3.After that early break for Griekspoor, Zverev has taken charge – breaking his opponent in the first game of the second, and backing up with a hold to lead 6-4, 2-0.Boisson does earn a break point, and goes for it on second serve – only to send her return wide. She gets another chance as Pegula nets, and this time the shot down the line pays off! Boisson leads 3-2 in the second set and it’s game on
Simon Yates rides away with prize of Giro d’Italia while rivals lose the plot | William Fotheringham
The Mexican standoff is a much-loved cinematic device, but the stalemate beloved of western movie script writers has rarely, if ever, decided one of cycling’s Grand Tours. The 2025 Giro d’Italia was the exception, appositely as the biggest loser was an actual Mexican, Isaac del Toro, with the unassuming Lancastrian Simon Yates the two-wheeled equivalent of the bandit who skips off with the loot, while two other bandits – in this case Richard Carapaz and Del Toro – stare each other down waiting for the other man to blink.Yates’s second career Grand Tour win, forged on the Colle delle Finestre on Saturday afternoon in a peerless display of courage and cunning, and sealed 24 hours later in the streets of Rome, will go down in cycling’s annals as one of the most improbable heists the sport has witnessed.The endless joy of the Grand Tours – Spain, France, Italy – is that they throw up all kinds of delightful scenarios, but there have been few, if any, where the decisive plot line was a frozen stalemate between the cyclists in first and second places, each waiting for the other to move while a third man skipped away to victory. This was probably the most bizarre act of self-immolation in a Grand Tour since 1989, when Pedro Delgado wrecked his race on day one by getting lost en route to the start of the prologue time trial
Tom White obituary
‘Now I do weight training’: how exercise helped one patient stay free of cancer
Exercise ‘better than drugs’ to stop cancer returning after treatment, trial finds
‘Men are not expected to be interested in babies’: how society lets new fathers – and their families – down
More than half of top 100 mental health TikToks contain misinformation, study finds
Norma Meras Swenson obituary