The former French ambassador to the UK, Sylvie Bermann, went into print a couple of days ago to reflect on what remains of her country’s relationship with the Brits. When she left office in 2017, there was a measure of mutual trust and conversations were conducted in good faith. Since then, Boris Johnson has barged into […]
UK SOS: our human rights are under threat The Tories of this century want to abandon the human rights that Tories of the last century championed and established. It was Winston Churchill who, in 1948, advocated a European ‘Charter of Human Rights’ in direct response to the abject horrors of the Nazi regime and the […]
The cumulative effect of a sucession of scandals, incidents of rule-breaking, double standards, lies and evasions is that, for many, this government’s behaviour has become intolerable. At WCB, we’ve often praised Simon Hoare for his more sensible and moderate stance on many hot topics. We have come to expect sycophancy and slavish obedience from many […]
Brexit has had a devastating impact on the many British citizens who have second homes on the continent. Mike Zollo explains the work of campaign and support organisation Bremain in Spain. For my wife and me, as for many thousands of British nationals who spend time in Spain and/or have their own properties there, the […]
This government has a history of bad timing. During Anti-Bullying Week in 2020, news broke that prime minister Boris Johnson had decided to ignore that his home secretary Priti Patel had been found to bully her staff, and not to sack her. Then during Parliament Week in November 2021 he tried to undermine the very […]
… and that’s exactly what Priti Patel’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill aims to do. Tom Scott explains why this is yet another assault on freedom and democracy and must be opposed. In St Stephen’s Hall in the Houses of Parliament, a stained-glass window commemorates the women who fought for voting rights in the […]
Dear West Country Voices, Our PM isn’t very good with gates, actually he isn’t very good at anything – except, of course, at lying; and actually he seems to have lost his talent for that recently. You will remember when he was confused by Bill Gates on how much the UK would contribute towards Bill’s […]
No matter how you voted on Brexit, or which party you vote for, or if you trust the police, or what you think of migrants, or whether or not certain protests annoy you, what Priti Patel is up to should scare the pants off you. Last week we received notice from conscientious members of the […]
Last Christmas, I kept you apartBut the very next day, I partied awayThis year, to save donors from tearsI’ll give them all something special Once bitten and twice shyThat what they say, but it doesn’t applySleaze and corruption, so many storiesBut still you will keep on voting for Tories “Forgive me, forgive me” you all […]
Emma Monk takes a look at the ease with which Covid misinformation is created and spread and at the cognitive dissonance on display. Within days of scientists discovering a new Covid-19 variant, now called ‘Omicron’, the usual anti-science/anti-vax culprits were trying to find ways to cast doubt over it on social media. I made a […]
So, it’s that time of the year again. No sooner has the last firework fizzled down to a damp squib, and we have to turn our attention to the sprouts (to slice crosses in the stalks or not, that is the question!) And presents. As a consequence of the transport and man-power problems caused by […]
This revelatory thread is from Jolyon Maugham of the Good Law Project: “Remember the story of Matt Hancock and Alex Bourne, the publican turned medical equipmemt supplier, a photo of whose pub Mr Hancock kept on his office wall? Well yesterday, Mr Hancock went on the attack. He said Alex Bourne “never got a contract […]
Over the last couple of years the pretty lame Office for Tax Simplification (OTS) has made a range of recommendations for the reform of capital gains tax and inheritance tax. On 30 November we finally learned of the government’s reaction. As the FT notes: The UK has shelved proposals to raise capital gains tax rates to […]
Dear West Country Voices, I was absolutely fuming when I saw in the news that MP and mother Stella Creasy was told that she could not have her baby with her when she was in the House of Commons. I was completely shocked because surely this is not anything new? MPs have been taking their […]
No doubt you’ve seen the crocodile tears of some of our tabloid commentators concerning the death of 27 people in the English Channel (technically in French waters) on the night of Wednesday, 24 November. They included a young Kurdish fiancée, four other women and a little girl, and possibly an Afghan interpreter who previously worked […]
As reported by The Times today, a young woman from Iraqi Kurdistan, who was travelling to Britain to be with her husband, was among those who died in the Channel tragedy. She was Baran Nuri Muhamadamin, 24, from the town of Souran in the far northeast of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the territory meets the Turkish […]
This is a letter we have yet to receive and even the idea of it may make the blood of some of our readers boil. But does it, or a version of it, languish in draft emails on computers right across our region, addressed but unsent? It would be good to think so.Go on. Open […]
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad“. Sophocles did not, of course, have Boris Johnson in mind, but the dramatist’s line from Antigone has survived the passage of time, and two recent speeches – coupled with Johnson’s usual insouciance about the gathering storms that beset us all – suggest that Greek […]
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 […]
Right then. The Health and Care Bill. You know about it right? It’s in the Commons on Monday and Tuesday. And it stinks. There is no assault on our country quite like an assault on the NHS. An NHS already on its knees. But that’s what this outrageous government wants to do with its Health […]
Dear West Country Voices, Even the Daily Mail has been reporting on the “outside” earnings of Geoffrey Cox, MP for Torridge and West Devon. He earned £400,000 a year advising the British Virgin Islands tax haven over corruption charges and has agreed to take on two more weeks of work for that government despite the […]
As NHS watchers are only too aware, there’s constant wrangling over NHS finances: it’s a bottomless pit; it’s mismanaged; it’s a huge amount; it’s not enough; will never be enough….Where to start with all of this? Let’s take a look… Does the UK spend on healthcare match that of comparable countries? Well, no. Neither as […]
On 16 November nine people were jailed for taking part in Insulate Britain’s road- blocking activism, including one person from our neck of the woods, the wonderful west country. The government managed to keep them out of jail before COP26 convened. It wouldn’t have looked good for climate activists to be jailed just before our […]
Once again, it would appear the government is revisiting its plans, first mooted towards the start of this year, to limit the number of students studying what they deem to be inappropriate courses. Courses which they consider unlikely to create instant taxable wealth for the exchequer, and/or to lead to solid, reliable starting salaries which […]
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 […]
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 […]
As Richard Ratcliffe continues his hunger strike – his second – and grows more gaunt and grim by the day, the Foreign Office is keen to reassure him and all those who care what happens to Richard and his family. “We are doing all we can to help Nazanin get home” it says. That’s good […]
During a BBC interview on 1 October 2021, Boris Johnson added insult to injury by using the phrase: “Never mind life expectancy or cancer outcomes – look at wage growth.” Clearly, the only metric he was interested in was economic. This is deeply offensive to cancer patients and their families, and shows a total lack […]
Red is and always has been my favourite colour. I am by no means unusual in this: red is one of the top two favourite colours. It is also a colour which represents so much. Red is the colour of love, fire, blood, the sun, energy, life-force, violence, danger, anger, adventure and extremes. It can […]
For most of us in this country, war is something that happens to other people. We have lived in peace since 1945 and the wars in which the United Kingdom has engaged since then have been on foreign soil (my apologies to readers in Ireland who may feel that they spent a good many years […]