The former Barcelona striker fronts The Rest Is Football podcast alongside former footballers Micah Richards and Alan Shearer with the series airing as a daily TV show on Netflix for the 2026 World Cup to cover events in the US, Canada and Mexico, where the tournament is being held.

The findings, released by the GMB union, suggest at least 1.4 million court summonses were issued by 200 local authorities across Britain during the 2024/25 financial year.

However, the true figure could be even higher because not every council responded to Freedom of Information requests submitted by the union.

The figures have reignited concerns about the growing pressure facing households as council tax bills continue to rise across the country.

Rachel Harrison, GMB national secretary, described the findings as evidence that the current council tax system is no longer fit for purpose.

“These horrifying figures show our council tax system is completely broken,” she said.

The union argues that councils are increasingly relying on enforcement action to recover money as they struggle with stretched budgets and rising costs.

Ms Harrison said: “Not only is the banding system woefully out of date, but forcing cash-strapped councils to pursue one-and-a-half million people through the courts just to make ends meet can’t be the right way to do business.”

The warning comes as many households continue to face financial pressures from rising living costs, housing expenses and higher utility bills.

The GMB says years of underfunding have left councils with little choice but to take tougher action against residents who fall behind on payments.

“Austerity left deep scars on all our public services, which will last a generation or more,” Ms Harrison said.

She added that funding pressures also affect the workers who deliver essential local services.

“Meanwhile, the lack of authority funding often means low pay for the people we rely on to look after our loved ones, to take our rubbish, to keep our towns and cities running.”

Recommended reading:

The union is calling for major reforms, including changes to council tax and business rates, alongside increased support from central government.

Ms Harrison said: “To fix all this, we need more guaranteed central government funding, progress on council tax reform so the richest pay their share, and changes to business rates so that authorities get more to regenerate our high streets.”

The figures were due to be discussed at the GMB’s annual congress in Blackpool, where delegates are expected to debate the future of council funding and local taxation.

The consultation document said: “We believe that interest-only and part interest-only/part repayment lending could support some FTBs (first-time buyers) in getting on the property ladder, however the changes we are proposing are targeted, and would not make interest-only mortgages universally accessible.”

Station Commander Wayne Bloomfield, who attended the scene, said: “Firefighters have been working hard to extinguish a fire at a recycling centre. At the height of the fire, a large amount of refuse and a warehouse unit were alight. There are currently no reports of any injuries.

Police have arrested one man and remain at the scene

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A man has been rushed to hospital with serious injuries after a stabbing in north Belfast.

Police were called to the scene of the incident in Kinnaird Avenue at around 10:30pm on Monday, June 8.

A local resident explained the “chaos” as graphic videos shared online appear to show a man be stabbed several times in the head.

PSNI have confirmed a man has been arrested in relation to the incident. A large police presence remains in place with cordons in the area.

An eyewitness told the Belfast Telegraph, “three men, one armed with a hurl, got the fella with the knife off the victim.”

A spokesperson for PSNI said: “Police in north Belfast are currently in attendance at Kinnaird Avenue following the report of a stabbing incident shortly after 10.30pm on Monday 8th June.

“A man has been arrested in relation to the incident and is in police custody while a second man has been taken to hospital with serious injuries.

“Officers will remain in the area to conduct their enquiries and would ask anyone who witnessed this incident, or who may have captured dash-cam or CCTV footage from the area which could help with their investigation, to call them at Tennent Street on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference number 1654 08/06/26.”

The Tuesday letters page struggles to understand the Xbox exclusivity policy, as a reader encourages more games to go head-to-head with GTA 6.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Direct assumption
So the Nintendo Direct we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. 50 minutes of pure Nintendo showcase, ready to disappoint us all!

Will the Zelda: Ocarina Of Time remake be there? I have no idea, but I do know that Nintendo will hate the idea that it leaked and that if there’s anything they can do to shuffle it around the schedules, and not make it this year’s game, they will. But yeah, overall I think it’s likely.

I just hope they don’t waste too much time on Splatoon Raiders and Fire Emblem and other things we already know about. That quote from the boss seems to prove they know they need to impress but I’m not convinced, Nintendo hates to do the obvious and they did say it was only games for this year.

Personally, I’m guessing maybe a couple more Switch 2 editions (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, anyone?) and maybe this rumour about a new Wario Land game, or something else small scale. That and The Duskbloods and you’re doing okay, although I really don’t see 2026 being a classic year for Nintendo overall.
Bagul

Small hopes
I’m excited about the idea of a Zelda: Ocarina Of Time remake as anyone but at the same time, does it not seem a bit disappointing that the biggest game of 2026 from Nintendo is going to be a remake? We’ve had virtually nothing from them so far this year (even their best game, Pokémon Pokopia, they didn’t actually make themselves) and Splatoon Raiders and Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave are hard to get that excited about.

And what else will we have other than Zelda, if that is true? Probably not much else. Maybe some smaller games but I can’t imagine them suddenly pulling two or three triple-A games out of the bag, that are all going to be released this year. I agree with GC’s summary of the Switch 2’s first year, it’s not been a disaster, but it’s certainly been a disappointment.
Cubit

Just as you remember
Anyone a bit disappointed by Persona 4 Revival reveal? I was left feeling silly for expecting the graphics and character models to be a bit more lifelike; I mean of course it’s anime style (duh). But I’m therefore wondering what the point of it is. In fact, the graphics themselves still look last gen at best.

Meanwhile, I think Fumito Ueda’s new project looks very exciting. I recently played through ICO again on the PlayStation 2 and it has aged so well, even the graphics. There’s an example of perfect art direction.
Owen Pile (NongWen – PSN ID)

GC: Persona 4 is also a PlayStation 2 game, so there are improvements in the remake. But we agree, it doesn’t look any different than you remember it, especially as it’s clearly using the Persona 5 engine.

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

The only way is up
Yes, good bring back exclusives. Either people want Xbox to have exclusives or not, which is it? Seems to me they can’t win either way, people will complain regardless. Besides, the only annoying thing about that showcase for me, as a Xbox Series X owner is that I know I don’t have the time or money for all those games.

I haven’t played Gears Of War and Halo since the sequels, but I will go back to Game Pass for those two games.

I was kind of hoping Xbox would announce a price cut, no matter how modest. Or perhaps £25 off the Xbox Series X25, which would be clever marketing, I think.

Also, I have to mention Metro 2039. Wow, it looks incredible. Metro Exodus, in my opinion
had one of the best campaigns for a first person shooter I have ever seen, with such well written characters. So I’m really looking forward to that one.
Stephen

GC: Thanks to the memory crisis, hardware prices are never coming down, for anything.

The long haul
I hate falling for the rumour bandwagon.

There is some great stuff coming out in the next year, but as nostalgic as I am, I was excited to see a new WipEout game from Sony, but I think they do not realise how important the original games sold the PlayStation in Europe, and helped establish the brand they are today.

Also, another gripe. Where are the PS5 Pro official console covers already?
GarBo

GC: If the rumours are correct – that Sony is only now looking to bring back some of its older brands – that would mean any new entry is many years away from actually coming out.

Logical decision
I have been struggling to come up with an explanation for Microsoft’s exclusive announcements and I just can’t do it. Nothing about it makes any sense, including everything they’ve said to try and explain it.

Maybe they’re doing it to please hardcore Xbox fans but you’re talking about a noisy minority there, that’s never going to be happy with anything you do. You have two exclusives they’re going to demand four and more until they’re not satisfied with anything but all of them.

The obvious problem with doing it, is that you’re not making as much money, because you’re not selling on PlayStation 5 and less people have an Xbox nowadays. Plus, you’re not getting people into the Gears Of War franchise, which is especially going to annoy those who bought last year’s remaster and planned to get E-Day as well.

But at the end of the day the question that cuts through all the nonsense is why those two games? Why are Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution exclusives but others aren’t? Either they made that decision based on logic that they can explain to us or they just picked them at random, which is it?

What worries me is that the answer is likely to be closer to the random explanation, because I really don’t have any confidence Xbox knows what it’s doing anymore.
Focus

Counter-programming
I think it’d be neat to see more games going up against GTA 6 this November that are completely different to it. A collection of Barbie games is pretty extreme but I’m sure there are plenty of other games that are nothing like GTA and would interest people that are not interested in the game.

I mean, statistically, there’s got to be far more people that don’t care about GTA 6 than do, so I don’t see why you can’t release some cosy games, strategy games, maybe even some horror games, since it will be dark out by that point. GTA 6 isn’t going to cover any of the angles and some people are going to prefer that kind of thing to just another gangster sim.
Taylor Moon

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Wrong audience
It’s been obvious for a while now that the average age of gamers is skewing very old (in comparison to the stereotype of what a gamer is). As someone in their thirties this should please me, as it should mean that companies will try to design games more to please people like me.

However, I do not find this to really be the case. We are seeing a slight turn towards more single-player games at the moment but mostly publishers seem frustrated that the average age is creeping up and that young people are not buying their games, and so they target them even more.

Sony and Ubisoft aren’t making these endless live service games to appeal to thirtysomethings. Coming up with the new Fortnite is not something that’s going to excite anyone that’s 37.

It makes me think of The Mandalorian and Grogu movie, which was made primarily for younger audiences. Except they weren’t interested in it and since older fans never wanted it in the first place it ended up being a movie for no one.

I think there’s a danger of a lot of games falling in the same category, because at the end of the day companies prefer to have younger fans, because then they can get their claws in early and keep them spending for decades.

They know that anyone approaching their middle age and beyond is going to have less time to play games and probably won’t fall for microtransactions gimmicks as much, so we’re not really the audience they want.
Gaston

Inbox also-rans
The big Nintendo Direct we’ve all been waiting for is Tuesday? You better have that Mario peaking from behind a curtain photo or it won’t be tradition!
Onibee

GC: You betcha!

It was so weird to see the Activision logo come up and it wasn’t for Call Of Duty. Even better that it was Spyro. Let’s hope it’s Prototype next!
Stoz

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Progressive city council member Nithya Raman has advanced to a November runoff against Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, setting up an unexpected matchup between two Democrats and former political allies to run the struggling city of nearly 4 million.

The outcome means Spencer Pratt, a Republican and former reality television personality from “The Hills,” is out of the running. His candidacy had drawn national attention because of his celebrity and willingness to challenge liberal governance in a city dominated by Democrats, but the buzz did not translate into enough votes to make the runoff.

Raman made a last-minute entry into the race, after she had endorsed Bass for reelection. She was elected to the council with the support of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the election will test whether voters in the heavily Democratic city want to move further to the political left to address long-running problems of homelessness, buckled streets and sidewalks and climbing rent and home prices.

The race also has historical markers. Bass is the first Black woman to hold the post, and Raman could be the first South Asian woman in the job.

“If you’re as frustrated by the broken status quo as I am, I hope you’ll join our movement to build a city that works for everyone,” Raman said in a statement. “For too long, City Hall has prioritized giving political advantage to powerful interests that fund elections. Meanwhile, working people pay the price in higher rents, depleted services and a city that has stopped working for them.”

“A campaign against Nithya Raman, who allows encampments near schools and cuts the police force, is one Mayor Bass looks forward to winning,” said Bass campaign strategist Douglas Herman.

The mayoral matchup sets the field in one of the state’s two marquee races. In the other, the California governor’s race, Democrat Xavier Becerra has advanced to the general election but it’s not yet clear if he will face Republican Steve Hilton or fellow Democrat Tom Steyer.

The mayoral race was technically nonpartisan, so the candidates appeared on the ballot without party identification next to their names.

The election was not a vote of confidence in Bass, who according to incomplete returns received under 35% of the vote, a vulnerable position for an incumbent.

Raman had been running in third until Sunday, but she gained more votes with every update provided by election officials in Los Angeles since June 2, primary day.

Bass represents the Democratic establishment as the incumbent mayor, and she’s backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, along with influential labor unions. She served in the state Legislature and Congress before becoming mayor in 2022 and was under consideration to be former President Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020.

Raman — in her first run for citywide office — has promised to speed up housing construction, bring back entertainment industry jobs and improve services in a city known for dirty streets, gridlock and homeless encampments that are commonplace in many neighborhoods.

“What we are doing right now is just not working,” Raman says. “LA’s primary strategy for homelessness has been to move encampments from one block to another, from your block to your neighbor’s block and back again. … It’s political theater.”

California’s vote count takes a long time

It took nearly a week to determine who would face Bass in November due to California’s notoriously slow vote-counting process. Ballots are mailed to every eligible voter and they are counted if they are postmarked by Election Day and arrive at an election office within seven days.

Los Angeles, like other counties in California, processes and counts mail ballots in roughly the order they are received, so the last ones returned are the last ones counted.

On Tuesday night after polls closed, Los Angeles released results from mail ballots that had been returned early and already processed as well as votes cast that day. Those votes put Bass in the lead with Pratt running in second and Raman behind in third. Since then, the county has been processing and releasing results from mail ballots that arrived later.

Election data shows that large numbers of Democrats held onto their mail ballots and returned them in the race’s final days, which helps explain why Bass and Raman have been doing better than Pratt in the votes counted since primary day.

Raman’s political positions have shifted

Born in India, Raman moved to the United States as a child and earned degrees from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied urban planning.

She has opposed efforts to prohibit homeless people from setting up tents within 500 feet (152 meters) of schools and daycare centers. However, she appears to have softened her opposition to no-camping zones, which were intended to curb the spread of encampments and clear streets. She voted against dozens of them on the council but later said she would not block them if elected mayor.

Raman’s positions on policing in the city have also changed.

She once talked of a department that would be much smaller and posted “defund the police” on social media in 2020. She did not support the mayor’s 2023 police contract, which she said was too expensive for the financially strapped city.

More recently, she said the Los Angeles Police Department should remain at its current size, about 8,600, down from about 10,000 in 2020. The police union has taunted her in ads, calling her “Flip Floppin’ Raman.”

In diverse Los Angeles, mayors are elected by building coalitions, ethnically and geographically. And to surpass 50% of the vote and win, Raman will need to find more supporters.

“I don’t think it’s impossible, but she is going to have to expand beyond her ideological base,” said Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, who sees Bass as vulnerable.

“The people who didn’t vote for Nithya weren’t voting against her, they were voting for somebody else. Karen (Bass) had a good number of people who were voting against her,” Carrick added.

Though Raman and Pratt are political opposites, both have attracted voters who aren’t happy with the city’s status quo.

Tanika Vickers, who works for a housing nonprofit in Los Angeles, said that she felt like she was part of a group of people who work and pay taxes but have been “forgotten.” She said she was frustrated with the way tax dollars were being spent, especially “throwing” more money toward homelessness without results.

She said she voted Raman for mayor because she was most qualified to execute her plans and fulfill what the city needs.

“I think that we are all looking for change,” she said.

Police were called to the scene of a stabbing in Kinnaird Avenue, north Belfast, at around 10.30pm on Monday – a man has been taken to hospital with serious injuries and a suspect has been arrested in connection with the incident

A man has been taken to hospital with serious injuries following a stabbing – with video footage capturing the moment hero bystanders stepped in to wrestle the attacker to the ground.

Police were called to the scene in Kinnaird Avenue, in north Belfast, at around 10:30pm on Monday, 8th June, after reports of the attack.

A local resident described the “chaos” that unfolded, as disturbing videos circulating online appear to show a man being stabbed multiple times in the head. In the footage, two bystanders appear to step in to try to help the injured man on the ground, before telling police officers who arrive ‘he’s trying to cut his head off’.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland [PSNI] confirmed that one man has been arrested in connection with the incident, as a significant police presence remains in the area with cordons in place.

An eyewitness told the Belfast Telegraph that “three men, one armed with a hurl, got the fella with the knife off the victim.”

A PSNI spokesperson said: “Police in north Belfast are currently in attendance at Kinnaird Avenue following the report of a stabbing incident shortly after 10.30pm on Monday 8th June.

“A man has been arrested in relation to the incident and is in police custody while a second man has been taken to hospital with serious injuries.

“Officers will remain in the area to conduct their enquiries and would ask anyone who witnessed this incident, or who may have captured dash-cam or CCTV footage from the area which could help with their investigation, to call them at Tennent Street on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference number 1654 08/06/26.”

The new restrictions surrounding children and dangerous dogs are due to come into force on November 1 and will become part of the legal conditions for keeping an exempt dog

Children under the age of 12 will be banned from being left alone with dangerous dogs including XL Bullies under new rules due to be announced later today.

Owners who leave children unsupervised with banned breeds could face prosecution and even have their dog seized.

The new restrictions will come into force on November 1 and will become part of the legal conditions for keeping an exempt dog. The changes are designed to prevent children being attacked but to also allow responsible owners to keep their pets, The Sun reports.

Animal Welfare Minister Baroness Hayman said: “No child should ever be left alone with a dangerous dog.These rules are about putting safety of children first.”

A Statutory Instrument bringing in the change is due to be laid before Parliament today. It comes after dog attacks have nearly doubled since the pandemic with more than three occurring an hour on our streets and in our homes.

In 2025 alone, new data obtained by the Mirror reveals, at least 29,400 out-of-control dog attacks causing injury offences were recorded by police, equivalent to 81 a day, or 3.4 every hour. The massive number is a significant five percent increase on the already high number of attacks recorded in 2024 – the year violent XL Bully dogs were banned – when police logged 28,000 attacks. Pre-Covid just over 16,000 were recorded.

The fresh numbers show attacks have almost doubled since the pandemic began, painting a grim picture of a booming trend that has left people dead, disfigured, and permanently disabled.