As the priest traced a cross on my forehead with ashes during the Ash Wednesday service at Buckfast Abbey, he said “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return”. As every Ash Wednesday, these words provoked an empty feeling inside me, or rather a deep sensation of humility. The ashes are the […]
The Anglo-German Family History Society (AGFHS) is a well-established group for all those who are interested in researching their roots among people from the German speaking parts of Europe, who have emigrated over centuries and settled in Great Britain or Ireland. We have developed considerable expertise and resources, and new members are always welcome. Here […]
Dear Editor, The Munich Security Conference and yesterday’s TV mugging of President Zelensky could hardly make clearer where US government loyalties lie. And yet there are still over 60,000 US troops stationed in Europe. Whose side are they on? What is the danger that they may potentially stand aside in the event of Russian aggression, […]
Sometimes I hate being right. A year ago, my article in West Country Voices described some of my concerns about the possible election of Donald Trump as US president. With the new President in office, with Elon Musk in power and with the Handmaid’s Tale as the working agenda, I confess that my worst fears […]
With thanks to Darby Saxbe, Professor of Psychology at University of Southern California: neuroendocrinology of close relationships, particularly plasticity across the transition to parenthood. Writing the book ‘Dad Brain’ for Flatiron Books, about the neurobiology of fatherhood. Darby got this information from a program officer at the National Science Foundation ((NSF): a list of keywords […]
Asif Kapadia’s dystopian drama explores where current events and politics could lead over the next few decades. It’s the year 2073 and the worst fears of modern life have been realized. Surveillance drones fill the burnt orange skies and militarized police roam the wrecked streets, while survivors hide away underground, struggling to remember a free […]
Just over ten years ago, I wrote a biography of the British diplomat and writer, Harold Nicolson. Nicolson was an acknowledged expert on the theory and practice of diplomacy. In his 1939 study of the subject, called simply ‘Diplomacy’, he wrote: “The dangers of vanity in a negotiator can scarcely be exaggerated. It tempts him […]
This week, MPs debated the Ten Minute Rule Bill on dark money, put forward by APPG for Fair Elections Member Manuela Perteghella. The bill, which passed its first reading unopposed on Wednesday, would: Put a cap on political donations; Launch a review into where this cap should be set; Restrict donations made by foreign nationals through […]
I am an American. I wake up each morning to a country I barely recognize, gripped by a fear that no longer fades with the dawn. The streets aren’t filled with tanks, yet we are under siege. The attack is quieter, but just as ruthless. It marches with every presidential executive order that tears at […]
Numbers don’t lie – but the way we use them can. On January 27, 2025, a Channel 4 poll claimed that 52 per cent of Gen Z in the UK believe the country would be better off under a dictatorship. The media pounced. Headlines screamed about young people abandoning democracy, painting us as naive, radical, […]
Campaigners from Devon were among around 1,000 people who staged a peaceful protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Thursday 30 January. The Strand was closed to traffic as a 90-minute mass sit-in took place, patrolled by large numbers of police officers. Inside the building, judges were hearing an appeal against the […]
The UK faces serious challenges: the cost-of-living crisis, which has been with us since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is showing no signs of abating; poverty is on the rise; the NHS and other key public services are struggling to provide the services we need; our economy is stagnant; our infrastructure is crumbling; and our […]
Could there have been a more topical time to focus on social media disinformation? The day after Donald Trump was sworn in (again) as US President, a live online event on the issue took place, co-organised by West Country Voices. We saw how Elon Musk’s X became a MAGA mouthpiece during Trump’s 2024 election campaign, […]
Do you remember way back when a storm like Eowyn was something of a freak event? It was , in fact, so unusual that a certain weatherman blithely denied the threat back in October 1987. Storms did not even get names until 2015, when the Met Office and Met Eireann started a joint initiative to […]
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 […]
Which way is the wind blowing for little Britain? Little? Yes. We are a tiny, isolated, island in a corner of the North Sea, now quite alone in the world, lost, and lonely. We’ve turned away from our closest allies, our neighbours on our continent, with whom we used to enjoy a close affinity, and […]
It has been more than three years since we first wrote about the dramatic humanitarian crisis at the Polish border with Belarus. After a year of the new government, you might be wondering what has changed there. To quote our new minister of justice: “We have the paradoxical situation that all the critics are being […]
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 […]
Just before the EU referendum, the then USA President, Barack Obama, visited the UK and said he hoped that Britain would stay in the EU. Nigel Farage was having none of it. An American President, he said, had no right to meddle in British affairs. The President, in short, should “butt out”. The Daily Mirror […]
Starmer, baby, just slip a few new bills under the tree… The Climate and Nature Bill…second reading January 24. Please back it and give us a future – a GREEN future! Embrace the petition calling for a public consultation on freedom of speech and disinformation! If you aren’t up to speed with what disinformation is […]
I believe Keir Starmer when he says that under Labour we will not be joining the EU again, or its Single Market, or customs union. He has been saying that since he became Labour leader and now since he became Labour Prime Minister. He had quite a different view of migration and FOM back in […]
Back in 2019, David Milliband delivered the annual Fulbright Lecture at Pembroke College, Oxford University. The speech was titled ‘The New Arrogance of Power’ and he argued people were no longer protected from abuse by their leaders by international law and standards of behaviour and that this, in turn, had led to appalling humanitarian horrors. […]
Some context: “Starmer wins backing of billionaire BlackRock chief: ‘He offers hope to British politics’ The Independent’s headline from October 2023 Dear Editor, The Bank of England base rate is 4.75 per cent. Effectively the UK can borrow slightly below this.BlackRock private debt fund currently advertises a yield (gross profit) of 8.4 per cent, which […]
On the wet weekend of November 23-24, 2024. a parliamentary petition demanding the government ‘Call a General Election’ really took off, and has been getting many people, especially those on the right, very excited! The petition states: “I would like there to be another General Election. I believe the current Labour Government have gone back […]
If the last ten years or so have taught us anything, it should surely be that the era of the ‘good chaps’ theory of government is well and truly over, and ‘it’ (authoritarianism/oligarchy/fascism) could very easily happen here – if we don’t take steps to prevent it. It is, frankly, dewy-eyed to think otherwise and […]
Petitions did not get very far under the Conservatives, but maybe Labour will be different? Let’s see! Here are some petitions that at least seek to raise the profile of some of the deep concerns we have about the direction of travel in the UK and suggest ways to address them. Please sign if you […]
The profound and relevant insight in the title is from American poet, Robinson Jeffers (1887 – 1962). Does this explain one current issue; the inability of a section of UK voters to see and hear that our self-harming Brexit vote continues to bleed our economy and to warp our society? All reliable economic institutions including […]
A few days ago, George Monbiot posted that he was considering leaving the site and suggested that maybe we all leave in a co-ordinated fashion. We agreed and the original thought was that a mass exodus on Inauguration Day might make a point. But….and it’s a big but… the idea of hanging around a moment […]
Tomorrow, Americans may elect a fascist president. Tom Scott explores the disastrous impacts this would have on the world beyond the US. Last month the astute American commentator and expert on authoritarian kleptocracies Sarah Kendzior posted a hauntingly brilliant essay to her Substack. It included this memorable passage, which may well prove – like much […]
It starts with a flicker, almost imperceptible—a creeping shadow stretching across the soul of a nation. Books burned quietly at first, pages curling to ash in bonfires of so-called “unpatriotic” ideas, just as they did nearly a century ago, when German citizens watched words by Hemingway, Einstein, Freud—voices of the free mind—disintegrate into smoke. And […]