William Wragg, Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs (PACA) Select Committee, made an extraordinary intervention at the latest meeting of the parliamentary body that scrutinises, amongst other things, the Civil Service. He began the meeting by reading a statement about the whips bribing, bullying, and even blackmailing Tory MPs to withdraw their letters […]
Are you worried about the state of our democracy? Our electoral system? Pollution? The climate crisis? The threats to the NHS? Housing? Social justice? We know that most of our readers care deeply about the issues we cover in our articles. We also know that whilst people want to know the truth, the seeming tsunami […]
Dear West Country Voices, The Conservative party has clearly been in power for too long and has too much power based on significantly less than half of the votes cast in the last general election (an 80 seat majority based on securing a mere 43.6 per cent of the ballots cast in 2019). The recent […]
This man will say and do anything…and we mean ANYTHING… to save himself. In case you have not seen it, take a look at this: That’s appalling, right? But it is as nothing compared with abandoning all Covid mitigations and thereby throwing the most vulnerable under the bus to save his political skin. Please write […]
The success of a liberal democracy is dependent upon active, informed, citizens engaging in debate. We can all make a difference. We all must make a difference! There are many ways our voices can be seen and heard: How to contact your MP, Select Committees, the Lords, Councillors MPs Find your MP: https://members.parliament.uk/members/commons Here’s a […]
A satirical commentary on the pigswill we’re fed by an MP’s social media. Feasting at the trough: ‘Babe’ BREAKING NEWS: The Conservative Party has made a significant investment in Facebook’s Metaverse. First amongst Devon MPs to stake his claim to a piece of alternative reality is, of course, the Captain of Complicity, the Superman of […]
The mammoth Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill(which includes such petty acts of spite and vengeance as proposing up to ten years’ incarceration for damaging a statue and the granting of police powers to seize Gypsy and Traveller homes) has been approved in the Commons before being passed for final approval in the Lords; except […]
Imagine that you run an innovative, environmentally sustainable enterprise which employs your wife, your kids and ten local people. You’ve been in the business for over 30 years and you know exactly what you’re doing. You and your family have invested decades’ worth of emotion, aspiration, knowledge and money in it. You’ve won the industry’s […]
This weekend (16/17 January) we have all been given a stunning lesson in the strength of the Conservative Party’s propaganda machine. Hemmed in by his lies, his popularity plummeting faster than a spacecraft re-entering earth’s atmosphere and hurtling towards the sea, Boris Johnson called in favours from mainstream broadcasters, three major newspapers, and his pet […]
Last week I wrote to my local MP Robert Syms. I explained the great sadness and upset I felt had been caused by the revelations of casual disregard of the Covid rules by those responsible for imposing them. While my family had been prevented from seeing dying relatives and attending funerals, they partied on. Back […]
Dear Conor, I am sorry that I have to write to you again so soon after the Owen Paterson debacle. Indeed, if truth be told, I’m also a little resentful. As well as trying to recover from the twin hits of Brexit and Covid on my career, I am also now an unpaid carer for […]
“This Bill threatens what we do peacefully because we believe in something.” Seasoned activists, people from a wide range of pressure groups, and individuals from all walks of life came together in Exeter on 15 January to show their resistance to the Bill with Priti Patel’s fingerprints all over it: the Police, Crime, Sentencing and […]
We know that Boris Johnson’s days in Number 10 are numbered now. We can’t be sure how many there still are. That his tenure will end well before the time of the next election is, however, seemingly certain. But my question is, so what? What then for the Tories, and us. The Conservative Party is […]
Dear Mr Parish, As long as laws are made in Parliament, then British people must have a legal right to protest them in Parliament Square. Democracy is not an ‘inconvenience’. Public opposition and dissent are among the hard-won rights that make our democratic system function. Seeking to limit noise levels so people cannot be heard, […]
This is a press release from campaign organisation, Grassroots for Europe. We do not usually publish these verbatim, but this is a well-worded and powerful summary of the situation we face, a situation that seems unbelievable in the UK, a situation which is a key characteristic of a repressive regime. We will be covering the […]
Dear Sheryll Yet another lockdown party at Downing Street has been exposed. I have written to you several times in the past and I have never really got any satisfactory kind of answer as to what your feelings are about the rule-breaking parties that took place at Number 10 last year whilst millions of us […]
Some might feel that Brexit is trying to take us back to the rather quaint England portrayed in Dad’s Army, a world in which the country had its back against the wall fending off an evil foe, when patriotic, nationalist spirit was generated by its leaders and xenophobia was fostered to fuel the determination to […]
The ‘not guilty’ verdict in the trial of the Colston-4 has been a gift to those within the Conservative party who favour culture war over doing something practical to improve our lives. Better by far to have us angry, divided and at each other’s throats on social media rather than noticing their policy failings, authoritarian […]
Jury trials are the latest in a long list of things which have displeased the government. Its reaction looks like it is following a familiar – grim – pattern. Phil Syrpis explains. Every time ‘events’ prompt an institution, beyond the direct control of the government, to take a course of action which displeases the government, […]
No one of sound mind can, I think, work out the reasoning of Lord Geidt when deciding to very largely exonerate Boris Johnson of all charges relating to the funding of the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat in letters published yesterday. By refusing to reopen his original inquiry and by permitting himself to only […]
It seems that democracy is under assault on multiple fronts from voter suppression measures and attempts to curtail tactical voting in the Elections Bill to the attack on our right to peaceful protest in the Police, Crimes, Courts and Sentencing Bill. Couple this with a government elected on lies and misrepresentation and hostile to any […]
Words matter. Every second around 6,000 tweets are sent worldwide, equating to 500m a day – that’s 200bn tweets of 280 characters every year – you can watch it happening in real time at Internet Live Stats. It’s a lorra words. And 2021 was full of them. 2021 was the year of what was said […]
This is the tale of one man’s attempts to hold a politician to account for his public utterances – utterances which some would say represent an over-sized helping of double standards. If this interests you and you are one of those who, like me, are inclined to exclaim, “You effing liar” whenever a current Tory […]
Has there ever been a British government this rotten, this out of touch with the public and this much of a danger to British democracy, public well-being and our international reputation? Judge for yourself as we take you on a whirlwind tour of the highs and lows of 2021, a year many of us might […]
Ah, the review of the year! An opportunity to look back and see how far we have come, only in the UK’s case there is more than a whiff of Groundhog Day and zero evidence of any great moment of enlightened self-awareness or contrition from this government. Take our first highlight from January from Cornwall […]
While Putin engages in sabre rattling on the Ukrainian border, his acolytes in former Yugoslavia are also on the move. In this short but disturbing piece, Eric Gates alerts us to what is going on. Although Bosnia (officially Bosnia and Herzogovina or BiH) has been out of the headlines in recent years, and the Dayton […]
Various reasons are given for the Liberal Democrats’ stunning by-election win in Leave-voting North Shropshire on 16 December. In Helen Morgan, they had a strong, local candidate who fought a vibrant, positive campaign and was able to inspire tactical voting by members of other progressive parties, notably Labour. The Conservative candidate, impressive on paper, was […]
With the author’s grateful acknowledgements to ‘Louise’ and ‘Don’ (not their real names) for their personal insights into the North Shropshire by-election. “It was as if they had no real concept of democracy in action.” So says Louise, talking about the North Shropshire by-election in which the LibDems (Liberal Democrats) won such a stunning victory. […]
What was that he said about Brexit? “I’m very pleased and proud to have led a great UK team to secure today’s excellent deal with the EU. Both sides worked tirelessly day after day in challenging conditions to get the biggest & broadest trade deal in the world, in record time.” Or something like that. […]
This 2019 article is from Tom Scott and Molly Scott Cato’s Cabinet of Horrors blog. It remains extremely pertinent, especially so given Truss’s move to ‘negotiate’ Brexit following Frost’s resignation. That’s the same Brexit Johnson and Frost claim to have got done… It would be easy to dismiss Liz Truss as an intellectual lightweight, and […]