OPENNESS with the public must be at the heart of the process of building new councils in Dorset.

Many will welcome the Secretary of State’s decision to approve the council merger, indeed many among the huge new influx of people into Bournemouth and Poole in recent years will have wondered, as they cross the ‘border’ from Westbourne into Branksome, why the two towns have not long been under the same umbrella.

The status of Christchurch remains a bone of contention, but the process perhaps has too much momentum now for that borough's determined campaigners to derail it.

The key issue now is ensuring that the new councils are formed against a backdrop of true democratic principles, and that they are accountable to residents. And the first step in achieving this is full transparency and openness from our representatives during the restructuring process.

In particular, taxpayers must be kept abreast of costs and savings in detail. Any transformation on this scale is difficult, and the transfer of cash is one way in which shortcuts can be taken to ease its passage.

Our councils must trust the electorate to fairly consider whether the costs incurred with their money are justified.

The farce awakens

I FINALLY got around to watching The Death of Stalin, the latest film from The Thick of It, Veep and I’m Alan Partridge creator Armando Iannucci, which is now out on disc.

The film was to some extent marketed as a successor to 2009’s black, cynical, quickfire Iraq War satire In The Loop, but to my mind had more in common with surreal and Kafka-esque Brazil, by Terry Gilliam, with a touch of Dr Strangelove thrown in.

It is a truish-to-life account of the political machinations after the dictator’s death, which mixes farce, absurdity and pitch black comedy.

It is extremely funny, although you may be left scratching your head as to why, but blends the humour well into the horrific backdrop of one of the darker periods of human history.

The whole cast – an ensemble of terrific character actors including the veteran Steve Buscemi at his best, Paddy Considine, Jason Issacs, Arrested Development’s Jeffrey Tambor and a welcome return to the screen for Michael Palin (who was, of course, in Brazil) – gels perfectly.

The standout performance though is stage regular Simon Russell Beale as Lavrenti Beria, head of the NKVD.

Not long into the film, his very presence on screen becomes unsettling, and his ultimate fate will induce an unexpected mix of emotions.

My favourite scene however, saw the Politburo assemble to plan their next steps. With death or worse in store for those who fail to read a change in the wind, and each decision to be made ‘unanimously’, the scene is the perfect visual representation of the absurdity of seeking consensus in politics at the expense of honesty.

Monsters munch

THE great panoply of human villains stretches through history and literature but few archetypes can be so odious and intolerable as the person rustling plastic at the opera.

It has been extensively remarked upon elsewhere, and not always with the most rigorous evidence, that the modern attention span is shorter than it was in the past. The sporadic outbreaks of luminosity in a theatre auditorium during the quieter periods of performance may attest to this, although how people can so readily allow themselves to be drawn away from a sumptuous melodrama to the tawdry tedium of online gossip I will never understand. Yet such distractions pale into insignificance compared with the kind of human detritus who cannot sit still for an hour without stuffing their face with food.

And if these swine must eat, let them prepare the trough in advance, rather than keeping up a constant barrage of white noise at the edge of our hearing, like a blown headphone.

Also, shut up in the cinema.