Latest news with #SwimmingPool
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Health
- Telegraph
Councils turn down swimming pool temperatures to cut energy costs
Swimming pool temperatures have been turned down as councils grapple with rising energy costs. Some 15 per cent of councils have turned down the temperature of pools they run across leisure centres and other facilities since 2020, according to a Freedom of Information (FOI) response. The Local Government Association (LGA) linked the reduction to the financially 'fragile position' of authorities. Five of the authorities laid part of the blame on sustainability and net zero targets, the BBC reported, with critics saying they feared it could put people off swimming. Tiffany Watson, who used to swim to help her muscular dystrophy, which is muscle weakness that worsens over time, urged councils to reconsider the move. Out of 256 councils across the country, 39 admitted they had reduced the temperature of their pools in the past five years. Some 33 local councils had reduced it permanently, in at least one main pool, or a learner pool. However, no council lowered the temperature below the guidelines issued by the Pool and Water Treatment Advisory Group, the standards body for swimming pools in the UK. South West England had the highest percentage of councils that had reduced their pool temperatures, with 27 per cent of authorities making the change. More than 30 of the local authorities admitted they had done so due to energy price hikes following the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The price of electricity has risen since 2019, more than doubling in that period from 12.9 p/kWh to 28.39 p/kWh in 2023. A spokesperson for the LGA said that 'rising energy and operational costs' had forced councils to reduce, or close altogether, their leisure facilities. A Department of Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson said the government was 'absolutely committed to building a healthier nation and reducing pressure on our NHS'. The department said that they were working with the sport and leisure sector as part of a £400m pledge to support grass roots facilities, promote 'health, wellbeing and community cohesion' and help 'remove the barriers to physical activity for under-represented groups'.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Senior Golden Retriever Enjoying His New Massive Swimming Pool Is Pure Wholesome Goodness
Senior Golden Retriever Enjoying His New Massive Swimming Pool Is Pure Wholesome Goodness originally appeared on PetHelpful. With the weather being so hot this time of year, many people and animals are hitting the pool in order to cool off. That includes Monk, the adorable senior Golden Retriever, who was recently given a fantastic gift by his human parents: his very own, massive swimming pool! As this video shows, Monk is definitely a happy camper when he gets to cool off and play in the water on a hot day. And knowing that this pool is his very own, only makes each splash that much sweeter! And when we say that this pool is massive, we really mean it! In fact, this pool had to be lifted into the backyard by a giant crane. Installing this thing in their backyard was definitely no small endeavor! But hey, in the end it was totally worth it. Just look at how happy Monk is as he doggy paddles around the pool. His fluffy, old face is white as snow against the blue pool water, and his golden body; this is what a refreshing swim looks like!And while Monk definitely enjoys doggy paddling around his new pool, he also has a good time hanging out on the steps to the shallow end of the pool with his humans and canine siblings. This is not what people are referring to when they talk about the 'dog days of summer,' but after seeing this video, we think it should be! As this other video shows, Monk and his Golden Retriever sibling also double as pool sharks. No, they are not sinking the eightball or anything like that. They are just a couple of cute dogs with some adorable shark fin lifejackets, swimming around like some good little sharkies! Monk's canine sibling is younger than him, and thus a little spryer and more active in the water. He swims all around the humans and the pool, and even plays with one of his chew toys while sharking around. Who knew that sharks could be so fluffy and cute, LOL. Looking for more PetHelpful updates? Follow us on YouTube for more entertaining videos. Or, share your own adorable pet by submitting a video, and sign up for our newsletter for the latest pet updates and tips. Senior Golden Retriever Enjoying His New Massive Swimming Pool Is Pure Wholesome Goodness first appeared on PetHelpful on Jul 21, 2025 This story was originally reported by PetHelpful on Jul 21, 2025, where it first appeared. Solve the daily Crossword
CBS News
18-06-2025
- General
- CBS News
Stockton's newly renovated McKinley Park reopens after 10 years
STOCKTON -- With a splash, McKinley Park and Swimming Pool is back. Getting to the moment of cutting the ribbon during Tuesday's ceremony took an entire decade of effort. "The building was brown and dingy. There was a fence around it, but people still scaled the fence and would go in here, which is why we then ended up having problems," Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi said. "This is night and day from what it looked like." McKinley Park and Swimming Pool started as mineral baths in the 1990s, but after decades of vandalism, the city decided to shut its doors in 2015. Over the past 10 years, the area has sat empty with no pool access and a withering park. Then, in 2021, the city gathered enough money to begin the design process. After four years, the project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. For neighbors who have seen the progress of this park over the past decade, this reopening means much more than just beating the summer heat. "Transformative, it really is," south Stockton resident Shawn Bennett shared. "I look forward to being here almost every day, bringing my friends here, my family here. It's like what the mayor said, it's generational right here. This is it. This is the real thing." Fugazi was the first to cannonball into the brand new pool. As a Stockton native, she can't wait to see the park bring the community together. "We're one Stockton," she said. "When we do stuff like this, the South community feels like they're part of that one Stockton. We're all in this together."
New York Times
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘When Fall is Coming' Review: Cooking Up a Mystery
For 'When Fall Is Coming,' the French filmmaker François Ozon has cooked up a little mystery and an enigmatic heroine. A sleek, modestly scaled entertainment about families, secrets and obligations, it features fine performances and some picture-postcard Burgundian locations. It's there in the heart of France, in a picturesque village in a large, pretty house, that Michelle (Hélène Vincent) makes her home. With her kind eyes, guileless smile and upswept hair, she looks the very picture of a sweet old lady. Looks can be deceiving, though, as we're reminded, and as Ozon's movie goes along, that picture grows amusingly slyer. Ozon's efficiency and polished style are among his appeals — his films include 'Under the Sand' and 'Swimming Pool' — and he lays out this movie with silky ease. In precise, illustrative scenes he takes you on the rounds with Michelle, mapping her pleasant environs, charting her routines and introducing her small circle of intimates, including another local, Marie-Claude (Josiane Balasko), a longtime, charmingly earthy friend. For the most part, the pieces fit together, though a few things seem off. For one, Marie-Claude's son, Vincent (Pierre Lottin), is in jail when the movie opens (though soon out); for another, Michelle's daughter, Valérie (Ludivine Sagnier), is viscerally, inexplicably, hostile to her mother. Michelle's life and the setup seem so pacific that the movie initially teeters on the soporific; which works as a sneaky bit of misdirection. Because just when everything seems a little too frictionless, someone prepares poisonous mushrooms for lunch, and someone else eats them, a turn that puts you on alert (where you stay). Ozon, who also wrote the script, continues to lightly thicken the plot but also withholds information, and before you know it, this obvious story has become an intrigue. One bad thing leads to another (and another), and the air crackles with menace. Michelle and Valérie argue, Marie-Claude falls seriously ill, Vincent takes a suspicious trip. Yet the more that things happen, the less you know. Ozon sprinkles the story with hints, summons up the ghost of Claude Chabrol (bonjour!) and, during one vividly hued autumn walk, evokes Grimm's fairy-tale 'Snow-White and Rose-Red,' about two sisters. He also foregrounds doubles: The sisterly Michelle and Marie-Claude don't have partners, and each has a difficult adult kid. Despite their nominal similarities, Valérie and Vincent are notably different; he and his mom are openly loving, for one. By contrast, the minute that Valérie and her son, Lucas (Garlan Erlos), drive in from Paris to visit Michelle, the mood turns ugly. Valérie is petulant and nakedly greedy, and she soon asks for Michelle's house. 'I'll owe less in taxes when you die,' she says before taking a swig of wine. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Independent
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
François Ozon: ‘I was a very perverse child – I loved the idea of my aunt trying to kill us all'
When he was still in his teens, sometime in the late Eighties, the filmmaker François Ozon asked his little brother to kill their family for him. Before anyone panics, this was play-acting, and for a movie. Photo de Famille was a scrappy, seven-minute blueprint for the kinds of films that would, a decade later, transform Ozon into the mischievous French prince of lust, provocation and psychosexual chaos. His brother agreed to it. As did his family. In the film, 'my brother gave some poison to my mother and smothered my father', Ozon remembers. 'And he cut the throat of my sister with a pair of scissors.' Did they mind participating in such a thing? Ozon grins. 'My mother said, 'yes, we will do that in your film because we know you wouldn't do that in reality'.' Even with that origin story in mind, Ozon's creative penchant for sex and death tends to be overstated. Yes, the 57-year-old's most internationally successful movies – the candy-coloured whodunnit 8 Women (2002), or the Charlotte Rampling murder mystery Swimming Pool (2003) – are awash in the stuff, but his output bends more diverse. There's the bittersweet coming-of-age tale (2020's Summer of 85), the Hitchcockian psycho-thriller (2017's Double Lover), the other one involving Rampling and a body of water (the tender, mesmeric Under the Sand from 2000). He's made more or less a film a year since 1997, and likes to sew a degree of tonal unease into most of them. Just when you're getting comfortable in a particular genre, out comes another one. Take When Autumn Falls, his 24th feature, which is in cinemas this week. It begins as a bucolic slice-of-life drama, with Hélène Vincent – playing Michelle, a retiree and devoted grandmother – tending to her garden and meeting with friends in a village in Burgundy. Then her stressed daughter Valérie (Swimming Pool 's Ludivine Sagnier) arrives, then a poisonous mushroom lands her grandson in hospital, then her very dysfunctional past comes to light. There are apparitions and police interrogations. Cryptic ex-cons fresh from jail. By the time a character mysteriously plummets to their death at the midpoint of When Autumn Falls, all you can do is let the film's pure, unadulterated Ozoniness wash over you. The film was loosely inspired by an incident in Ozon's own childhood, in which his aunt accidentally poisoned several members of the family with wild mushrooms. 'I loved the idea of my aunt trying to kill us all,' he laughs. 'I was a very perverse child, as you can see. Or just a future director.' Sitting in the corner of the cavernous library of London's French Institute, Ozon is dressed in a crimson jacket and black trousers, a scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. His sunglasses are on, and mostly stay on. Looking at Ozon is akin to looking at an illustration of a Frenchman drawn from memory, and he speaks in a boyish, lightly dishy register. He tells me he loved working with the 81-year-old Vincent on the film because she really looks like an 81-year-old. 'Some French actresses have so much plastic surgery that they don't have age anymore,' he says. 'I won't give you names, but you know who I'm thinking of, don't you?' He giggles. 'And I've worked with them!' In all seriousness, though, he says he understands social and industry pressure to maintain a youthful appearance, but also loves lines and loose skin – he'd sometimes shoot Vincent in extreme close-up just to show it off. 'That's not possible for some actresses. Sometimes you prefer not to go too close with the camera because it's not real anymore. You don't see the expression.' Whether their faces move or not, female actors of a certain age have lined up to work with Ozon for more than 20 years, ever since he revitalised Rampling's career with Under the Sand. He was in his early thirties at that point, but had enough resolve to insist upon her casting despite worry from the film's backers. 'She was considered, at that time, totally forgotten,' he says. 'Her career was stopped. All the French financiers said to me, 'don't work with her – she's finished'. Helpfully, I didn't follow them, and the film was successful.' That led to 8 Women, in which he pulled together a murderer's row of divas – including Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Fanny Ardant and Emmanuelle Béart – to play the suspects in a country house crime. 'When the cast was announced, everybody wanted to come to the set to see the catfights,' he laughs. 'All the media was convinced it would be a disaster, and impossible with so many egos on the same film. But they were wrong.' He thinks it would have been different if it were called 8 Men. 'Actresses are clever. They are cinephiles. They are not afraid to work with young directors. Men?' He shrugs. 'The egos of male actors can be huge. For women, there is a kind of sisterhood and solidarity.' 8 Women arrived at a time in Ozon's career that saw him shift away from the barbed, button-pushing sensibility that had defined his early work – 1998's Sitcom, which shot him to fame, was an overheated satire of the modern family, boasting orgies, sadomasochism and full-frontal nudity. It saw him dubbed the enfant terrible of Nineties French filmmaking, with more shades of his American contemporary Todd Solondz than an Éric Rohmer or a Michel Audiard. 'I was looking for me,' he says. 'It was instinctive. Maybe I was more provocative in the form?' He shrugs again, admitting that he struggles to look back at his older films. 'They are like children I've abandoned,' he laughs, 'and I don't analyse them.' He points at me. 'That is your job.' He's evolved, at least. Much like Spain's Pedro Almodóvar – who, god forbid, panned away from a sex scene in one of his recent films – Ozon's modern eroticism tends to be a little more tasteful than it used to be. It's not by design, he insists. It's cultural. 'You can see so many sex scenes on your telephone today, so sex naturally felt more transgressive 20 years ago. Sometimes I think directors would actually welcome back the Hays Code [the puritanical guidelines for American filmmakers in force between the years of 1934 and 1968] just so you can rebel against something.' The filming of sex scenes is also changing, as he's learnt while planning his next movie, an adaptation of Albert Camus' The Outsider. 'I need to work with a coordinator of intimacy,' he says. 'It didn't exist before.' He says he's not had an issue with shooting them himself. 'I always share information with my actors – what position I want them in, which part of the body I want to show, and I ask for their point of view. It's never been a problem. But it's better now – there are some directors, especially in French cinema, who push the limits when it comes to making sex scenes.' That's partly because filmmakers in France, he says, hold enormous cultural and social sway. People don't tend to say no. 'The director is king. We have the power.' And it's also one of the reasons he's never been tempted by America, despite fielding offers to direct Hollywood films in the aftermath of Swimming Pool. 'All they proposed to me were remakes, or erotic thrillers that would mean I was repeating myself.' And, he says while finally slipping off his sunglasses, 'I wouldn't have final cut.' It's a power thing, he adds. 'As a filmmaker, you have none in America. There, the director worships the producer. It is the director who helps the producer to win an Oscar.' He hoots, dismissively. This is a man who convinced his family to die on camera in the living room for him – fat chance anyone's going to be able to boss him around.
