Section: Region

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Next year, Exeter will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of being twinned with Bad Homburg in Germany.  The town of Bad Homburg lies at the foot of the Taunus mountains, about a 15 minute drive north-west of Frankfurt. It is a beautiful spa town with a castle and splendid woodland surroundings. It is considered to […]

Plymouth City Council are still not listening to community concerns or valuing our trees. Eighteen months after the reputation-trashing act of eco vandalism carried out by Plymouth City Council (PCC), where they cut down more than 100 trees at night, it seems that no lessons have been learned by our decision makers. The council might […]

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 […]

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 […]

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; […]

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 […]

I am happy to admit that having camped extensively as a girl guide in my youth, I have no plans to wild camp again in my twilight years, even though there genuinely is nothing to beat that enveloping, cossetting stillness and powerful sense of connection to the land to be felt beneath the star-studded velvet […]

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 […]

Friends of the Dart has found evidence of illegal dry spills in 14 different areas of the River Dart dating from 2021 to 2023, the worst of which occurred in Rattery where a total of 15 hours of sewage was found to have been released into the river. What is a Dry Spill? A dry […]

Dear Editor, My example of what I believe to be an unjust car parking fine. At 10.25am I received a parking fine of £100 for parking in a disabled bay with no Blue badge displayed in my car. I had been having a coffee in Castlepoint Shopping centre, Bournemouth, for 30 minutes that morning.  There […]

We received this email: I am writing to you because of the car park penalty notice for we have just received from RCP. On 12th September we visited Bigbury on Sea, which was lovely. On arrival we tried to pay, but the machine was not working. Next we tried to open the QR code but […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

It’s hard to focus on anything beyond July 4 and the results on July 5, but if you can get to Dartington Hall on Saturday 6 or Sunday 7, or both, you can still get tickets to attend the sessions that West Country Voices are hosting – and they are absolute bangers and wholly in […]

“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 […]

No doubt there are many Conservative MPs who were complacently confident about the safety of their seats only a few months ago. And no doubt many of those are now realising that that complacency was misplaced. The growing Conservative fury and desperation manifests itself in many ways, from the tetchy belligerence of Sunak, to the […]

I am an apostate. This is the term given to people who leave religion. It is not a term I particularly like, but it is the one that most people understand. As a counsellor and peer supporter, I also have professional experience of the needs of apostates. I work with apostates from high control, high […]

There has never been a general election like this one. The Conservative and Unionist (Tory) Party has made gaffe after blunder after miscalculation after error after outrage. Keir Starmer could sit at home and do nothing for the next three weeks and still find himself prime minister on Friday, July 5th, so amateur and awful […]

Just because the Conservatives are set to lose power nationally, they are still able to hang on to seats where the progressive vote is split and/or ambiguous, thanks to our anachronistic and undemocratic first-past-the-post system (shared only by Belarus…) Fortunately, we can turn to the big aggregator sites like www.stopthetories.vote and Best for Britain’s www.getvoting.org […]

An open letter to Sir Liam Fox MP Dear Sir Liam, Thank you for the North Somerset Residents Survey form, which you kindly sent me. It is a rather tasteful shade of green – an interesting change in Conservative branding. The party has, I think, traditionally used blue ever since my grandfather was a Conservative […]

We are aware that Labour has announced a candidate for South Devon. Some are implying on social media that he intends to run a serious campaign. But we would be very surprised if that’s his plan, after being dropped in by national HQ just weeks from the election. It would be a tragedy if a […]

At last, fourteen years of brutal underfunding, politically-motivated austerity, cronyism and corruption can be brought to an end on 4 July, when we can all exercise our democratic right and vote in the general election. With so many Conservative MPs standing down and dissatisfaction with Sunak growing in the Tory ranks, let alone in the […]

YouTube footage from the climate change conference COP 26 in Glasgow in 2021  reveals scores of delegates chanting “Another world is possible”. It reflected their disillusionment at the compromised conference process and at the lack of governments’ commitment to meaningful action in the face of the escalating climate crisis. While, unsurprisingly, the footage was not […]