To really appreciate the importance of Exeter’s Respect Festival, just imagine some of the reactions if a two-day celebration of anti-racism, equality and diversity in the city was proposed for the first time today. It would prove divisive. Many people would love the idea, but you can bet there’d be some pushback, with the word […]
The review commissioned by Plymouth City Council (PCC) in order for them to learn lessons from the Armada Way tree felling fiasco is complete and the report has been published. It is damning. The Armada Way Independent Learning Review (AWILR) panel was tasked with looking into the decision to approve the development of Armada Way […]
George Monbiot’s article in The Guardian (27 May 2025) will resonate with many on the progressive side of politics, and especially with those who are involved in street campaigns to counter the alarming rise of the far-right. When we talk to people on the streets of south Devon’s towns, we consistently pick up a growing […]
Inspired by a meditation, devised through an unexpected collaboration, and created on a site where it fitted like the missing piece of a jigsaw: the Tipton St John labyrinth is almost a metaphor for itself. If that seems a bit complicated – welcome to the multi-layered world of labyrinths. A labyrinth is not a maze, […]
Thousands of people are expected to rally at noon on Haytor on Dartmoor this bank holiday Monday (26 May) to call on the government to pass a new Right to Roam Act. The rally comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s unanimous verdict upholding the right to wild camp on Dartmoor, quashing a long-running […]
It may not look like a major uprising , but this is part of something huge. This was Exeter’s first Tesla Takedown protest against Elon Musk’s assault on democracy and human rights in the US, and his wider support for the far right. On Saturday, 3 May, local activists including Devon-based Americans demonstrated outside the […]
This is Piles Copse, the largest remaining fragment of high-ground temperate rainforest on Dartmoor. It’s a tiny speck of green in a dismal, human-made desert. Prepare yourselves for a story of breath-taking perversity. Even in fairly recent history, it used to be much bigger, to judge by two lines of evidence: a few surviving oaks […]
Summer is Ready! Field System’s May Day Celebration, Thursday 1 May and Saturday 3 May. This Beltane, why not head for the historic stannary town of Ashburton, where Field System Gallery and Ashburton Arts Centre present a town-wide and inclusive celebration of the arrival of summer. This is a May Day celebration for our time. […]
Nature-rich peatland habitats are to be better protected under plans set out by the Government today (Monday 31 March), which would ban burning on peat in the uplands, improving health and wellbeing of people in nearby communities. This is a very welcome statement from the government today. It recognises the value of our precious peatlands […]
Dear Editor, Seaton Hospital is an issue in the local elections on May 1. The hospital steering committee submitted a proposal for using the threatened wing to NHS Property Services nine months ago. They have still not given us an answer. We have been fighting to save the hospital since 2016, when they first threatened […]
“Wherever it is found, hunger highlights the fault lines of inequality that run through that society.” In our society, that could indicate the effects of political austerity measures, including the latest benefit cuts. On a global level, it could point to the people in the world’s poorest nations whose crops are being destroyed by the […]
Celebration lunches, chocolates and a glass of fizz will be on the menu this Sunday, 30 March, as families get together for Mothering Sunday. But for one group of women in Plymouth, the table will be bare – except for leaflets, stickers and other material demanding an end to child hunger and poverty. Six local […]
I’m incandescent, furious, overflowing with rage at Dartington Trust’s ability to continually make the wrong decisions, decisions that show they are out of touch with pretty much everything. In particular, it has just been announced that they plan to revoke the wonderful Agroforestry Research Trust’s lease on their extraordinary temperate forest garden on the Dartington […]
“Tax our wealth” – that’s the message from millionaires across the UK who are taking their campaign out on the road ahead of the Government’s Spring Statement. Patriotic Millionaires UK has commissioned a fleet of mobile billboards to tour towns and cities across the country to tell people and constituency MPs: a tax of two […]
UPDATE: The latest from Martin. Not great. “This afternoon our landlords have released a public statement (https://www.dartington.org/forest-garden-update/) which contain a number of misleading statements which we feel we have to correct. “We have had constructive and productive discussions with Martin over the past week.” No, we had one meeting on Weds 19th March when positive noises […]
“We watched as the beaches emptied, and the car parks emptied, and there was a sense of ‘this cannot keep happening’.” It was the worst possible time for yet another serious sewage pollution incident in Exmouth. On Wednesday, 14 August 2024 – right in the middle of the summer tourist season – a sewage pipe […]
A record-breaking 74 Tiverton Tree Team volunteers turned up on February 8, 2025, to help create a new wildlife recovery zone on the banks of the river Exe just outside Tiverton. At the top of the site, running parallel to the existing Devon hedge, a 200 metre line of hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, dogwood, elderberry, dog […]
Totnes Make Votes Matter (MVM) group are participating in the national MVM’s action day on Saturday 1st February between 10.00 and 13.00. We shall be outside the Mansion in Fore Street, Totnes with a huge Valentine’s card saying how much we would all love proportional representation (PR) for Westminster elections. We hope to fill […]
It’s beginning to look as though Labour are either determined to demonstrate either that they are a) metrocentric (as opposed to London-and-wealthy-donor-Conservatives) or b) that they simply do not have any understanding of what goes on in the lower population-density rural areas of England. First there was the more-than-clumsy mishandling of the farmers’ inheritance tax […]
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 […]
We’ve all seen them, haven’t we? The earth-shade painted, faux-timber-clad housing estates with their strips of fake grass, their crescents of executive homes in the best spots, and, overall, the dead, sterile look of a film set for the Stepford Wives. This pop-up townlet and its maze of little ‘streets’ boast dreamily bucolic names, often […]
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 […]
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 […]
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; […]
Plastic Free Axminster has been carrying out a ‘slow-burn’ campaign to raise awareness in the community about the dangers of cigarette littering. We have been talking to retailers, hospitality outlets and businesses in the town about this and encouraging them to display our posters, to make customers, clients and staff more aware of the dangers […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]