Signs were put up across the 4,000 acre Spitchwick Estate on Dartmoor this summer forbidding swimming along 17km of the River Dart, including at popular beauty spots. Forty right to roam campaigners held a ‘protest swim’ at Spitchwick on Sunday 10 September in defiance of the ban. Groups included Right to Roam, The Stars Are […]
Nature is in decline on Dartmoor – like in most of our National Parks. [Please see video in Twitter post below in which Guy talks to Tom Heap Media about how bad things are. Ed] So the government’s Dartmoor review, underway now, could help turn things around – or make things even worse. Here’s how […]
A closure of sorts for BCP, as an independent report is revealed at the recent Audit and Governance Committee. The audit covers the 2021-23 era of former Conservative leaders Drew Mellor & Phil Broadhead, and slams their chaotic time in government. The headlines:Red flags were raised against BCP’s financial management, governance, efficiency and effectiveness.Auditors found […]
We have had enough! Our rivers are full of poo because water companies haven’t updated ageing sewage systems. They prefer to pay millions to shareholders and in bonuses to directors. The government says water companies must reduce the dumping of raw sewage, and of course customers must pay, so our bills could go up by […]
Local community organisation, Exeter Community Alliance, is highlighting Devon County Council’s (DCC) current climate-messaging inconsistency. On the one hand, DCC’s own website tells local concerned citizens to be ethical and green in their choice of bank saying: “Finding banks with a strong ethical investment policy is an amazing way to make sure that your money […]
On a visit to Cornwall at the weekend, the Green Party’s co-leader Carla Denyer slammed Michael Gove’s plan to tear up the rules preventing water pollution by property developers. Speaking alongside Green Party Truro City councillors beside the Truro River, opposite the Newham Road pumping station that dumped untreated sewage into the river 28 times […]
On Friday September 1, activists from Extinction Rebellion Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (XR BCP) travelled to Hanover Square in London. Why? To continue our campaign against Perenco, following the spill of reservoir fluid into Poole Quay in March 2023. The spillage occurred just days after it emerged that Perenco were warned in June 2022 by […]
Hello South-westerners, My name is M I Birtwhistle, retired secret service officer, and I live in a small Somerset village where I’ve kept my neighbours up to date on government thinking almost every month for the last fifteen years. By a strange quirk of family history I recently found I was entitled to a place […]
Did you know that nearly 200 parliamentary seats have not changed party hands since WWII? Conservative East Devon hasn’t changed hands since 1835! West Dorset has been Tory since 1857. That’s 200 seats where the incumbent MPs (or their successors) have felt pretty relaxed about retaining their jobs. No need to panic, come election time! […]
Around a dozen activists, including members of Extinction Rebellion, protested for two hours outside Newton Abbot Railway station on Thursday August 24, lobbying passengers about the proposed closure of Newton Abbot ticket office and giving out leaflets urging people to respond to the public consultation by September 1. I spoke with one of the ticket office […]
Suella Braverman is the kind of person who cuts corners and ploughs on regardless. Nothing gets in her way. Not our constitution. Not parliamentary sovereignty. Not the rule of law. Now, in her latest project, the Bibby Stockholm detention barge for asylum seekers, those behaviours have put the lives of people under her department’s care […]
Dear Editor, A pair of ringed plovers has raised two chicks in the fenced area at the tip of Mudeford Sandbank, on Christchurch Harbour, for the first time since 1984. The fenced area was created in 2020 by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council and Christchurch Harbour Ornithological Group (CHOG), after oystercatchers bred there in 2019. […]
What follows is information from event organisers, Wild Card. There are details of a zoom to explore the strategy and plans for the day at the end of the article. Ed Dartmoor is dying, its wildlife is declining and disappearing, and the time to do something is now. Will you be a voice for nature? […]
Dear Editor, As a campaigner who has been arrested eight times for obstructing roads, gluing myself to paintings, blocking Rupert Murdoch’s printing press and smashing his headquarters’ windows, I can’t throw the people protesting at the Heavitree & Whipton Active Travel trial under the bus. Their bold actions – ripping out bollards, blocking the bus […]
On Sunday 13 August, Extinction Rebellion held a ‘Dirty Water’ protest at Dawlish seafront in Devon. [What follows is an edited version of their press release.] This is part of ‘Wave Four’ of an ongoing Extinction Rebellion campaign running throughout 2023. Through a combination of theatrics and public engagement, protestors yet again peacefully highlighted the fact […]
We are not, as a rule, a nation that takes to the streets. More’s the pity, many would say and some would point to Stop the War and the People’s Vote marches, both huge, and ask what they achieved. On the face of it, not a lot. But to dismiss these marches (and pro-EU groups […]
The clean water sign from Shaldon Parish Council based on Environmental Agency data could lead to dangerous decisions. Investigation by Lee Morgan (The PRSD) and Stuart Reynolds, with findings no doubt repeated right around the UK as the sewage scandal deepens. This article first appeared in The PRSD and is reproduced by kind permission of […]
Dear Editor Thank you for your great article on gaslighting. It made me wonder if there’s a ‘how to spot a climate change denier’ type exercise or set of questions anywhere? There seem to be various myths which are trotted out in meetings or conversations as excuses for inaction – not just fear of change […]
Dear Editor, The extract below is from the Holocaust Encyclopaedia. Just substitute the word ‘Jews’ and ‘Nazi’ for refugees and Conservatives and you have the basis of the Tory government campaign against the refugees crossing the channel. ‘The use of propaganda and laws to define the enemy as a cohesive group was a key factor […]
There is something disconcerting about wild creatures behaving in an unnatural way, like the pigeon that turned up in our drive one Saturday afternoon. However close we got, he made no attempt to move away from us, seemingly unable or unwilling to fly. It was a hot day, so we gave him water and he […]
Campaigners are celebrating today’s decision to overturn the controversial ruling earlier this year that made camping illegal on Dartmoor without landowner permission. Lewis Winks, a campaigner with The Stars Are For Everyone, said: “A permission is not the same as a right – and today the court has seen sense and re-established people’s right to […]
Trainers. Comfortable, ageless and fashionable, whether you’re a committed runner or a sofa-based Olympics’ fan! We probably all own at least one pair, and for some people they’re an obsession, but the facts around their production and its effect on the environment are pretty stark. Approximately 25 billion pairs are made every year, most from […]
We’ve all trodden on it and got it lodged on the sole of our shoes; we’ve found it lurking under the rim of a table at a cafe or stuck to our clothes! The original chewing gum was made from chicle, a natural product from the sap of trees native to Mexico. Now it is […]
Listen up! Pay attention! This affects us all! There can hardly be a politician anywhere in the world who does not yearn for economic growth. It was the mantra that won Liz Truss the key to number 10, and now economic growth is central to Kier Starmer’s vision for the future: he wants to achieve […]
Jane wrote to her MP, Cherilyn Mackrory (Truro and Falmouth) to object to the illegality and inhumanity of the despicable ‘illegal migration’ bill. We are publishing the cut and paste letter she received in response and then her own final, infuriated and exasperated reply. She emailed us, saying: ‘Dear team, I’m so incensed by the […]
Bournemouth residents today joined Extinction Rebellion Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole (XR BCP), who gathered at Horseshoe Common while chanting and ringing bells. The group cycled around Bournemouth in a mass bike ride, in support of better sustainable transport infrastructure. Cars were slowed by the procession cycling around Bournemouth centre, while protesters carried placards and flags […]
As a young man I took a holiday in the West Country in my van, carrying a small home-built sailing boat, looking for beaches and slipways from which to access the endless ocean. The map showed a slipway in one small town on a beautiful Cornish estuary, so I headed off the main road and […]
Chris Packham lends Dorset campaigners his support for local ‘COP’, urging Dorset attendees to ‘shout above the noise for the future of humanity’. Three of Dorset’s leading climate action groups have come together to organise a pioneering event with the aim of spurring the local community into urgent action to combat the threats posed by […]
We are currently living under a regime which is happily removing rights willy-nilly and, in most cases, appearing to get away with it. It seems that most people are quite relaxed about the fact that a child born in England (specifically) today has fewer rights than one born 13 years ago. That should bother all […]
Nature in Dartmoor National Park is in a poor state. A new piece of legislation being debated this week in the House of Lords could help change that – and put nature’s recovery at the heart of the purpose of all our National Parks and AONBs. But will the Government do the right thing? Dartmoor […]