Dear West Country Voices, I would imagine you are inundated with responses to that editorial. If not, you should have been! Whilst I have never been a member of the Conservative Party I have voted Conservative in parliamentary elections since getting the vote at 21 in 1968. (With one exception. I refused to vote for the […]
From time to time, West Country Voices highlights the work of a voluntary group that is making a real difference for people in the south west. The article below, describing the work of Somerset Trust for Arts and Recreation (STAR), was contributed by its chair, Maggie Forkes. If you know of a local group or […]
If any organisation embodies the best of British values it is the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). It is funded by donations and almost entirely staffed by volunteers. It is a charity independent of government, wholly dedicated to saving lives at sea. Its volunteers are ready to risk their own life to help others, 24 […]
A regular satirical commentary on the pig swill served to constituents via an MP’s social media feed ‘Slurping at the swill for everyone in Totnes & South Devon’ – Babe PeppaPiggate may have overshadowed the Paterson and sewage affairs, but Babe isn’t letting Mangnall off the hook… This social feed retrospective tastes disconcertingly familiar. It’s […]
Extinction Rebellion activists from Totnes and surrounding areas staged a peaceful sit-in outside Barclays Bank in Newton Abbot to raise awareness of the bank’s ongoing support for fossil fuels. The bank was due to close its doors for good at noon. XR’s protest was designed to bring that forward by half an hour, though customers […]
Did you think all that ever comes out of Dorset is fossils? Or that most political Brexiters are crusty, scrofulaic old men with questionable hygiene, an onanistic fetish for the past (the more forgettable the better) and misty-eyed nostalgia for things like the Norfolk Island penal colony, public beheadings of entire families, and the good […]
A train trip back in time “Going anywhere nice today?” Taking the drink from the young woman at the station kiosk, I replied: “We’re off to Newbury, to Greenham Common. It’s the 40-year anniversary of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp. My mum was one of the Greenham Women. We’re going to see the events […]
While East Devon constituents were asking MP Simon Jupp to vote against the Health and Care Bill on 23 November, he stepped in to delete comments and blocked further remarks. The move to censor comments on his Facebook page comes after a torrid few weeks of being challenged by his constituents (and by me) on […]
Dear West Country Voices, At a time when Devon parents were expecting to receive consent forms for their children to receive the nasal flu vaccine in schools this Autumn term, we have instead received a letter from Virgin Care informing us that the flu vaccine schedule has been significantly delayed and our children will not […]
On Monday, Conservative-led Cornwall Council announced with a fanfare that flights between Newquay and London will be resuming next month. Curiously, it omitted to mention just how much this will be costing council taxpayers in Cornwall. Tom Scott explores the inequity behind the headlines. The so-called public service obligation (PSO) deal struck between Eastern Airways, […]
Social care may well prove to be Alexander Boris de Pfeffel’s Johnson’s Waterloo, and deservedly so. Out of the blue, less than a week before parliament was to vote on the matter, Number 10 tabled a new proposal (New Clause 49 to the Health and Care Bill) on the social care cap. It significantly watered […]
On Thursday 18 November, our MP Anthony Mangnall chose to appear on Nigel Farage’s live TV show. Like most people, Mr Mangnall knows who Farage is, knows his agenda and his politics, but decided that this was the kind of show he should be on and dignify as our constituency MP. The result was singularly […]
Dear Tobias I am now retired, but I worked in the NHS (as a nurse, then a health visitor) for 28 years, then for a further 20 years in an NHS-funded post in a university, in teaching and research. I have, therefore, seen and worked through very many changes and reorganisations in the NHS: often […]
Dear West Country Voices, I don’t know whether people have had the chance to view the ‘Farage at Large’ show broadcast on Thursday 18th November, with Anthony Mangnall MP. It raises some serious questions over judgement as well as how we, either as ‘regular’ individuals or as Constituency MPs with responsibilities for the way we […]
November 5: Parliament Week. As the fallout from the Owen Paterson affair began to crescendo in Westminster, and Boris Johnson considered making a speedy escape north, one MP made his own trip down to his home constituency. The MP for Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood, visited the local grammar school on Friday afternoon to meet its […]
Dear West Country Voices, The Government sleaze and corruption scandals continue, with MPs’ second jobs now in the news. I was always taught that people should treat others the way they wish to be treated themselves. This is a high standard and hard to meet all the time. Still, the furore and debate about MPs […]
Any parallels drawn between Lee Majors’ six-million-dollar man of the 1970s and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s six-million-quid man of the 2020s can only be for the purpose of highlighting polar opposites. While the six-million-dollar man was intent on doing good, six-million-quid man — let’s call him “Squid” for short — seems wholly focused on filling his boots […]
After the MP expenses scandal in 2009, anybody could be forgiven for expecting the bad old days of MPs making specious claims on the public purse to be over. Back then, voters were furious that MPs who had inflicted austerity on them in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis were claiming the costs of […]
Decarbonising transport – we’ve got it sorted. The UK government has been vocal in its support for electric cars as THE carbon-free future for travel. The transport carbon challenge solved! Or is it? The generously-funded motor lobby is powerful at getting its message across. We could be forgiven for thinking that electric cars are the […]
As part of COPnes26, the novella in verse – ‘Brixham Chimes‘ – will be performed to live music and lights in St Mary’s Church, Totnes, on Saturday 13 November at 18:30. Written by the film maker who made Sky Atlantic’s series ‘Fish Town’ about Brixham, this book sets an apocalyptic story firmly in the Brixham area and uses local […]
Dear Editor Imagine a job where all the responsibility for difficult decisions has been delegated to your organisation. You just need to turn up and vote the way you are told and, should any of your fellow workers or members of the public question ‘your’ decisions, the organisation will craft a standard reply to send […]
Johnson lied to the people of Cornwall and so did the six Conservative MPs in Cornwall who helped perpetuate the lie that Brexit would be good for their constituents… Here is Johnson in Truro, Cornwall on 11 May 2016, campaigning for Brexit, saying why send money to the EU when it can be sent to […]
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 […]
Credit unions represent the quiet approach to community action. While some groups, like Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion, seek to bring about change by hitting the headlines, credit unions are rarely in the news and not well understood. Yet figures published by the Bank of England show that they serve some two million members in the […]
Dear Editor, MPs’ payments, hospitality and gifts from outside interests are under the spotlight. The Government has U-turned on their shocking plan to overturn the parliamentary standards process to help their friend Owen Paterson avoid suspension as an MP for 30 days, after he was found by the parliamentary standards committee to have broken the […]
Reader Phil Biles has been frustrated by his attempts to get this letter in the Bournemouth Echo, not least because another letter writer seemed to secure publication of his letters on a weekly basis, despite his assertions “having no basis in fact”. Here is the letter which failed to get exposure: In response to the […]
The government’s proposed amendment comes to parliament 8 November and was sneaked out late on Friday night in an attempt to bypass scrutiny. It would allow water companies to claim compliance with the law if they reduced outfall by 1/1,000 a year. Not good enough. As Feargal Sharkey said of the amendment “it will […]
The government’s proposed amendment comes to parliament 8 November and was sneaked out late on Friday night in an attempt to bypass scrutiny. It would allow water companies to claim compliance with the law if they reduced outfall by 1/1,000 a year. Not good enough. As Feargal Sharkey said of the amendment: “it will […]
The government’s proposed amendment comes to parliament 8 November and was sneaked out late on Friday night in an attempt to bypass scrutiny. It would allow water companies to claim compliance with the law if they reduced outfall by 1/1,000 a year. Not good enough. As Feargal Sharkey said of the amendment: “it will allow […]
The government’s proposed amendment comes to parliament 8 November and was sneaked out late on Friday night in an attempt to bypass scrutiny. It would allow water companies to claim compliance with the law if they reduced outfall by 1/1,000 a year. Not good enough. As Feargal Sharkey said of the amendment “it will […]