Anthea Simmons is an award-winning children's author, editor and activist. She grew up in Cornwall and Devon before spending twenty plus years in the City in institutional asset management. Her areas of interest include diversity and inclusion, the environment and electoral reform. She is editor-in-chief for West Country Voices
He’s at it again! No shame, whatsoever. He finds time to dash into the house to vote through amendments to social care and the health and social care bill that will make many of his constituents poorer or more vulnerable to poverty and then it’s back to the day job! Even the BBC covered this […]
In Part 1, I looked at the state of our electoral system, the iniquities of first-past-the-post and the measures this government is intent on taking to cement its stranglehold on power. Now I am going to look at the key institutions that exist to keep our politicians honest, to scrutinise and to police, as well […]
We’ve written about the Geoffrey Cox second job saga and, whilst he has done nothing illegal, it has clearly annoyed his constutuents to discover that he has been swapping Devon’s sewage-affected beaches for the crystal clear turquoise waters and golden sands of the Carribean and earning very tidy sums advising a foreign government on corruption. […]
Get Brexit done! Remember that old chestnut? The catchphrase which landed Johnson and his cabal an 80 seat majority and the power to really get stuck in to dismantling our democracy and economy? It was a con, of course. He and his bellicose sidekick, the inappropriately-ennobled Lord Frost, rushed to sign a deal that, it […]
In the context of the tsunami of sleaze that has been coming at us over the past few weeks, the theyworkforyou.com website’s name has acquired some extra irony. It is also ironic that searching an MP’s voting record brings up this message: Geoffrey Cox, MP for Torridge and West Devon, was hampered rather more than […]
The government is pursuing its by now familiar strategy of ramming through hideous legislation on very short timescales with no time for scrutiny. Why else did the government publish its plans late on Friday? In the hope that we would have no time to analyse or react. BIG MISTAKE. Feargal Sharkey posted this today, alerting […]
Ask people what they understand by ‘democracy’ and I am guessing that most will say that it means voting or elections. And it does. In part. But there’s a whole lot more bundled up in this word that we bandy about so freely, and that we all assumed described the political system under which we […]
So, today, only Simon Hoare, MP for North Dorset had the decency (amongst the Conservatives in our area) to vote against a measure that got a man found guilty of breaking lobbying rules off a 30 day commons’ ban. Ten of our region’s MPs did not vote for whatever reason. Let’s be kind and call […]
Our prime minister and wannabe eco-hero is photographed here sitting next to the greatest living eco-warrior and true hero, Sir David Attenborough (aged 95). Johnson is breaking the conference rules. Of course he is. It’s what he does. He is showing zero regard for the health of those around him. Of course he is. He […]
If the rain, the dark evenings and the (even darker) news are getting you down, you need an art fix – an encounter with creative energy and a feast of colour, art you can gaze at until you forget everything but the image in front of you. Distraction. Absorbtion. Escape. Well-known Lyme Regis artist Christine […]
On 26 October, we held a panel event to discuss the impact of Brexit on music specifically and the Arts generally. We were joined by David Knopfler, singer-songwriter and founding member of rock group Dire Straits; Ben Osborn, based in Berlin, composer, musician who also works with asylum seekers and marginalised people using music to […]
One of our readers gets emails from the Conservative Party and was shocked to read that they are using a government document to generate funds for the party. Are there no depths to which they will stoop? We’re looking forward to seeing you online tomorrow at 6:45pm for our in-conversation Budget day event with the […]
Here’s a collection of news stories that probably won’t be covered in any detail by the BBC or much of the mainstream media. We’ll try to put a selection together for you at least once a week. There’s no shortage of material with this government! Russian interference in our democracy: Remember the Russia report into […]
This government is trying to con us into believing that the trade deals being struck benefit the UK. They don’t and now there is talk that the NFU are resigned to the demise of cattle farming in the UK and are prioritising compensation for farmers put out of business by Brexit. And this film from […]
Back in July 2020, we ran a story (which you can read by clicking on the image above) in which, Mike Temple explained how Dr Cathy Gardner, from East Devon, a microbiologist with a doctorate in virology, had recently challenged the government in the High Court for not protecting elderly people in care homes, with […]
We’re all a bit tired of pretending that Brexit is fine/will be fine, aren’t we? There are even a few cracks appearing in the BBC’s propaganda wall. Plausible deniability is over. A Brexit-supporting Question Time audience can see it for what it is: a disaster. The government is turning itself inside out trying to spin […]
Mansplaining is bad enough at the best of times, but when it’s telling women what they should do to be safe on the streets, it makes a woman’s blood boil. And when it’s done in the context of the brutal rape and murder of a young woman by a then-serving police officer, it makes the […]
Ever get the feeling that the current crop of Conservative MPs – especially Brexiters – fail to think things through? Brexit is itself the most monumental example of a failure to understand (in fact, wilfully mis-understand) the consequences of shooting ourselves in the foot. There’s an endless stream of nonsense from John Redwood whose Twitter […]
This government don’t do honesty. They don’t get irony. But, boy, do they max out on hypocrisy! UN Human Rights Council 48: UK statement on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protests – UK statement: The United Kingdom welcomes today’s discussion. Peaceful protests play a positive role in the […]
Dominic Langdon and Niall Jones took up the challenge posed by Vissla and the Surfrider Foundation to convert waste into something that can be used in the ocean and created a surfboard that is made out of…surfboards! More specifically, those single use bodyboards that tourists buy and then discard once their holiday is over. The […]
I first met Jonathan Cooper when I was prompted by a mutual friend, Georgina Allen, to cover the Totnes Passport story, which she felt was due a fresh look six months into Brexit. I had already heard about Jonathan – a passionate and highly-effective campaigner for LGBTQI rights, a champion of European values and a […]
“It’s crazy that our banks and pensions are investing in fossil fuels, when these are the very things that are jeopardizing the future that we are saving for.” Sir David Attenborough Campaigners from across the South West set up camp on the lawn outside Devon County Hall in Exeter for four days to demand that […]
MP for Yeovil Marcus Fysh is on fire at the moment. He’s become an expert epidemiologist and virologist in the space of a few days and now he is acting like a business development exec for private healthcare insurance companies. At first it seemed as though he and Newton Abbot MP Anne Marie Morris were […]
MP for Yeovil Marcus Fysh has miraculously become a medic – and an epidemiologist and virologist to boot. Perhaps he’s piloting a new government strategy aimed at filling the shortages in experienced staff across a whole range of sectors whereby an individual has only to express a nodding acquaintance with a subject or a function […]
We are upcycling this old one because – guess what – they (you know who we mean!) are at it again…running own the NHS to soften us up for health plans and privatisation. YouGov (which has a certain bias…) have conducted a poll which managed to make 58 per cent of us feel dissatisfied and […]
Make lying in the House of Commons a criminal offence “The Government should introduce legislation to make lying in the House of Commons a criminal offence. This would mean that all MPs, including Ministers, would face a serious penalty for knowingly making false statements in the House of Commons, as is the case in a […]
Our sister publication, Sussex Bylines, has been publishing a series of eye-opening articles – “Toxic Shock“ on the dirty practices of Southern Water. The same appalling abuses and breaches of regulation are occurring right across the country. Readers have been horrified to learn that it is cheaper for these companies to pollute and pay the […]
This is a compilation of some of the interviews, tweets and videos documenting deeds, lies, ignorance and incompetence that in any other time would have resulted in sackings and resignations. We feel it is important that these are neither normalised nor forgotten. These people are serial breakers of the ministerial code and unfit for office. […]
About a fortnight ago we saw medics and commentators expressing concerns over shortages of blood bottles. Research indicated that this was a worldwide phenomenon created by the massive hike in demand as a consequence of the pandemic. Now it appears that Brexit is exacerbating an already difficult situation with supply chains interrupted by border issues […]
On 19 August Health minister Sajid Javid tweeted that he was on his way to open “one of the new 48 hospitals” promised by his government. Only he wasn’t. He was going to open a new cancer unit, part of an existing hospital: the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle, Cumbria, opened by Tony Blair in 2000. […]