Section: Region

Restoring Dorset’s iconic fingerposts

Dorset CPRE

One iconic image that is unique to Dorset is its fingerposts, the old road signs featuring a white or occasionally red metal roundel or finial. Since the Dorset CPRE grant scheme was launched in 2017, the charity has paid out £22,337.50 towards the restoration of 160 traditional fingerposts, helping to keep these local treasures and […]

Tree-planting in Tiverton!

Franny Armstrong

A record-breaking 74 Tiverton Tree Team volunteers turned up on February 8, 2025, to help create a new wildlife recovery zone on the banks of the river Exe just outside Tiverton. At the top of the site, running parallel to the existing Devon hedge, a 200 metre line of hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, dogwood, elderberry, dog […]

A plague of plastic pellets

Philip Strange
Charmouth beach

When numerous small plastic pellets were spotted littering the beach at Charmouth in west Dorset, a diverse group of people, united by their love of this special place, began to delve in to the problem. After a tortuous investigation, two kinds of pellet were identified on the beach at Charmouth: nurdles, the pre-production raw material […]

Anger at proposed waste incinerator at Canford, Bournemouth

Greg Lambe

Local residents joined Extinction Rebellion (XR) Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole (BCP) and XR Wimborne, who once again gathered outside Bournemouth’s Civic Centre to demonstrate against the building of waste incinerators in the area. They are concerned about the detrimental effect of the proposed incinerators on local residents’ health, the local environment and increased global warming. […]

Do Labour give a fig for rural areas?

Anthea Simmons

It’s beginning to look as though Labour are either determined to demonstrate either that they are a) metrocentric (as opposed to London-and-wealthy-donor-Conservatives) or b) that they simply do not have any understanding of what goes on in the lower population-density rural areas of England. First there was the more-than-clumsy mishandling of the farmers’ inheritance tax […]

“Planning policy should meet need, not greed”, says Cornish MP, as yet another development reneges on affordable housing and green space percentage

Editor-in-chief

Press release from Andrew George, MP for West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly: The government’s announced planning policy risks putting “greed before need” and is “destined to fail”. Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, launched changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, which the government says will meet its ambitious housebuilding targets – one and […]

Who are the real villains here? Letter to the editor

Editor-in-chief
Princetown Visitor Centre

Dear Editor, It has always been so easy to throw stones at authorities for their lack of vision and forethought, but who here are the real villains? We are informed by Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) that they can no longer afford to keep the visitor centre at Princetown open. This centre has been serving […]

‘We need large scale-mobilisation against the fascists’

Philippa Davies

You almost had to feel sorry for the far right. Having planned an afternoon rally in Torquay on Saturday, November 30, the handful who turned up found themselves vastly outnumbered by a crowd of around 200 counter-protesters, mainly from local unions and anti-racism groups. Outside the town hall, amid dozens of banners and placards proclaiming […]

Ultra-processed news – why local journalism has gone weird

Philippa Davies

If you’ve looked at a local news website lately, you may have got the feeling that something’s not quite right. Seeking stories about your own area, you click on an interesting headline and find yourself reading about a completely different place. You probably see a lot of content about motoring, shopping and so on, but […]

UPDATE: Local groups unite against proposed waste incinerator in Canford, Bournemouth

Greg Lambe

Discussions about building a proposed waste incinerator in Canford were deferred by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole’s (BCP) planning committee in September 2024. There is no confirmation, yet, about when it may be discussed, but the committee was due to meet on November 7, 2024. On that day, concerned residents, environmental groups, and local organisations came […]

Local Extinction Rebellion activists join ‘insure our survival’ week of action with Bournemouth demonstration

Extinction Rebellion BCP

Highlighting a week of protests and actions in London and across the UK focused on the “Achilles heel” of the fossil fuel industry setting our planet on fire: their insurers. Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) major national campaign, demanding that the insurance industry stops insuring the climate criminals setting the world on fire, hit the streets of […]

Questioning South West Water: evasions and inadvertent revelations

Dr David Hancock

South Hams District Council recently welcomed South West Water to the council chamber to discuss the ongoing issues of sewage discharges and the cryptosporidium poisoning in Kingswear and Brixham. It’s fair to say that anticipation was not high amongst many councillors. After all, we had invited chief executive Susan Davey, but she was too busy; […]

Wading in! The launch of the Friends of the River Teign

Editor-in-chief

The Friends of the River Teign held their launch event on October 13 on Shaldon Beach, alongside the River Teign. The event was attended by Newton Abbot MP, Martin Wrigley, (Lib Dem) who carried out a water quality test, one of a series to be carried out through the winter by the group.  The event […]

MP condemns threat to Cornwall’s promised Women and Children’s Hospital

Editor-in-chief

News that the long-awaited Women and Children’s Hospital promised for Cornwall may never be built has been described as “shocking and disappointing” by St Ives Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George. The £291m project – part of the previous government’s New Hospital Programme (NHP) – aims to combine maternity, neonatal, paediatric and obstetric and gynaecology services […]

Fiddler on the road… Letter to the editor

Editor-in-chief

I remember being amazed when I saw the sign on the A361 when leaving Barnstaple advertising 35 months of road improvements. Wow! How can they have worked out exactly how long it would take? Living in Swimbridge, we have suffered many days and nights of traffic being diverted through the village and then through Landkey. […]

Are we feeding climate change?

Plastic Free Axminster -

In the UK it is estimated that 140 meals per person (70kg) are wasted each year and that 70 per cent of wasted food comes from the home, mainly from fresh fruit and vegetables. Additionally, those statistics do not take into account the inordinate waste created by enveloping fruit and vegetables in single-use plastic.  WRAP […]

A Community Wealth fund for Cornwall?

Gavin Barker

Throughout last year, a small working group met under the aegis of Cornwall Independent Poverty Forum  to design a Community Wealth fund for Cornwall. This is a proposed £10 million  investment fund which will be used to invest in local businesses, community enterprises and university startups in a way that accelerates the transition to a […]

An undelivered address to the Tolpuddle Festival

Tony Afanasiew

For the first time this year, Dorset for Europe was offered the opportunity to run a stall at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival. Along with the stall comes the invitation to deliver a short speech to explain why we’re there and what we hope to achieve. This prompted me to gush forth an anguished tirade, wholly […]

Challenging Perenco on EU Day for the Victims of the Global Climate Crisis

Daniel Glennon

On 15 July 2024, Extinction Rebellion groups from Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole (XR BCP), Wimborne and Purbeck, took their continuing campaign against Poole Harbour oil company, Perenco, to their offices and facility in Furzebrook. The campaign was sparked by Perenco’s spill of 200 barrels (approximately 31,600 litres) of reservoir fluid, consisting of 15 per cent crude […]

Hustings in Sidmouth, Devon, 18 June: full report

Anna Andrews

“I haven’t prepared anything and if you want to know about our policies, I suggest you look at our website.” Well, this was a first: surely the whole point of hustings is to act as a shop-window for the candidates? On this showing, the Reform candidate for the Honiton and Sidmouth constituency seemed to be […]