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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
So, today, only Simon Hoare, MP for North Dorset had the decency (amongst the Conservatives in our area) to vote against a measure that got a man found guilty of breaking lobbying rules off a 30 day commons’ ban. Ten of our region’s MPs did not vote for whatever reason. Let’s be kind and call […]
There’s been quite some furore on social media regarding product-labelling in supermarkets geared, seemingly, to play well with a Brexit-supporting customer. The trend for union-flag-badging of some groceries to denote them as 100 per cent British has encompassed such items as bananas (!) and tomatoes (that were also specified as being from Spain in the […]
In recent weeks, the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and the EU has once again been making headlines. Bob Hancké reports on a recent study which suggests not only that the agreement has made trade in goods between the UK and the EU very difficult, but that it has also severely limited Britain’s ability to […]
This week saw the Conservatives’ announcement of major changes to the way the alcohol taxation system will work from February 2023. At first the hype created by the Treasury’s PR department was as if they had reinvented the wheel. What they had actually done was pull a major con on the public. The proposal to […]
Covid-19 has prevented just about all music touring, but it will start afresh. Bands, orchestras and choirs will travel the planet again. They will play to packed houses, festivals and stadiums as soon as people are free to attend. But touring for all types of UK musical performers after Brexit is beset with administrative difficulties, […]
Paul Newberry is a consultant aerospace engineer and he’s saddened by Brexit and the loss of opportunity and restriction of freedom it brings to people young and old. He is witnessing its negative impact in his industry and on the career prospects for young people (including his son who followed him into the business). It’s […]
On 26 October, we held a panel event to discuss the impact of Brexit on music specifically and the Arts generally. We were joined by David Knopfler, singer-songwriter and founding member of rock group Dire Straits; Ben Osborn, based in Berlin, composer, musician who also works with asylum seekers and marginalised people using music to […]
[This letter is to Cornish MPs but many of the points made could be applied with equal force and justification to all Conservative MPs across our region and beyond. Ed] Dear George Eustice, Cherilyn Mackrory, Steve Double, Sheryll Murray, Derek Thomas and Scott Mann, At the last general election, all of you stood on a […]
George Eustice, Conservative MP for Camborne, Redruth & Hayle, and Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The professional Cornishman stood for that famously green political party UKIP in the 1999 EU Parliament elections. He lost. He doesn’t promote his former affiliation on his website, of course, but if I were George Eustice […]
Here’s a collection of news stories that probably won’t be covered in any detail by the BBC or much of the mainstream media. We’ll try to put a selection together for you at least once a week. There’s no shortage of material with this government! Russian interference in our democracy: Remember the Russia report into […]
This government is trying to con us into believing that the trade deals being struck benefit the UK. They don’t and now there is talk that the NFU are resigned to the demise of cattle farming in the UK and are prioritising compensation for farmers put out of business by Brexit. And this film from […]
When we arrived in Spain recently, we commented that it felt reassuring to be arriving in a ‘grown-up country’. It struck us as soon as we started our drive south, immediately becoming aware of the fact that everyone was wearing face-masks, as required in indoor public places; a high number of people show the same […]
One of the oddest aspects of Brexit is that those who were angriest beforehand – “Politicians are all liars!” ; “They’re only in it for themselves!”; “I’ll never trust one ever again!” – were and remain those most likely to vote for, defend and even champion the worst liars of all. The most dishonest bunch […]
Shirley Williams Memorial Lecture. October 15 2021 19:00 POWER AND FEAR – THE TWO TYRANNIES Before I begin, I’d like to offer my sincere condolences to the whole of the Amess family – what happened today is not just a tragedy for them but for all of us who believe that democracy must operate free […]
We’re all a bit tired of pretending that Brexit is fine/will be fine, aren’t we? There are even a few cracks appearing in the BBC’s propaganda wall. Plausible deniability is over. A Brexit-supporting Question Time audience can see it for what it is: a disaster. The government is turning itself inside out trying to spin […]
It is really hard to believe they are serious. A predictable shortage of labour because of Brexit, dismissed in the referendum campaign as ‘project fear’, has suddenly become part of the plan all along. Loyal Tories have apparently swallowed Johnson’s claim that crises in the supply chain show we are moving to a high-skill, high-wage […]
In the UK, the life of ordinary citizens is cheap, taking second place to short-term economy and profit. I remember the scene vividly. We were in a supermarket car park, and before us, about 500 yards below a slight incline, lay the mangled wreckage of the trains that had collided at Ladbroke Grove, a few […]
Watching Priti Patel tossing chunks of glistening legislation to the rapt audience at the Tory Party Conference is to be powerfully reminded of feeding time at the zoo. The same Pavlovian flutter of audience hands at the applause lines; the same salivating eagerness for yet more blood, yet more political protein; the same smacking of […]
“…This government has always been quite comfortable with importing… more food from abroad – cheaper imports – and not worrying about our food security and producing at home here, and I think that philosophy is starting to show now…” (Nick Allen, CEO of the British Meat Producers’ Association, on the BBC’s Farming Today on 6 […]