Editor: Once more we turn to @russincheshire for one of his twitter threads. This time, it’s a brilliant summary of the Brexit/trade/GFA situation. Please share it with those who’ve been subjected to government spin and gaslighting. If you are interested, you can read the Belfast Agreement/Good Friday Agreement yourself. Doing so will mean that you […]
Boris Johnson may think he has managed to sweet talk abstaining and objecting MPs into backing his heinous Internal Market Bill, but some, it seems, remain resistant to his blandishments and see the issue for what it is: an attempt to legitimise/democritise (make the MPs carry the can) the breaking of international law. Sir Geoffrey […]
Spare a thought for Boris Johnson. On 16 September, he had to face his worst nightmare across the dispatch box at Prime Minister’s questions (PMQs): a bona fide working-class woman. He was obliged to be careful and remain polite, because people in the former “Red Wall” seats might be watching to see how he treated […]
Here’s Neil Parish, MP for Tiverton and Honiton. Sometimes he’s a really good guy, like when he proposed an amendment to the Agri Bill in an attempt to get our EU-derived food and animal welfare standards enshrined in law. It was defeated because, yeah, the government has given assurances that there’ll be no race to […]
“I may be wrong,” tweeted Tory MP Michael Fabricant the morning after a late night before, “and please correct me if I am – but aren’t all the Conservative MPs (and former MPs) now campaigning against the government’s pragmatic UK Internal Market Bill all ones who campaigned vigorously against Brexit? #plusçachange #correlationcoefficient #yawn” He was […]
There are tragedies that transcend the normal accidents of life, searing themselves into the public consciousness. The fire at Grenfell Tower on 14 June 2017, in which 72 people lost their lives, 74 more people were injured, and 151 homes were destroyed, is one such event. Many children were among the dead and, in some […]
South West Devon’s MP, Sir Gary Streeter, along with his neighbour in Torridge and West Devon Sir Geoffrey Cox, witheld their support for the Internal Market Bill. Sir Gary articulated his reasons for so doing in clear and unequivocal terms. We have his permission to share them here. His fellow Conservative MPs would do well […]
As Conservative and DUP MPs vote to break international law, threatening trade talks, EuroDog contemplates what no-deal means for UK canines.
Events on both sides of the Atlantic this week have heightened fears that the US and the UK are sliding towards autocracy under their right-wing populist leaders. In the US, Trump has hinted heavily that he will not accept an election result that goes against him, prompting an alarmed Pentagon to insist that the US […]
As this economical-with-the-truth government continues to claim that testing is working fine, the facts on the ground tell a completely different story. Here is a message for our Prime Minister from a Devon mum with young kids, caught up in the testing chaos. Dear Prime Minister, This is what your handling of the pandemic is […]
The figures for positive covid-19 tests have been climbing inexorably since a lull in the summer. Figures of 3000 new cases a day, despite the shambolic breakdown in testing carried out by the private sector (Pillar 2), look very much like the beginning of the second wave and have coincided with the return of schools […]
We had to share this. It explains how things will unfold. Possibly. Brexit Trade Talks: UK: We don’t like our deal EU: Why not? UK: We only get 95% of what we want EU: It only gives us 95% too. That's how negotiating goes UK: We want a new deal that gives us everything we […]
Where is our humanity? In a week in which the UK Government is further shamed by its willingness to break international law over the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement, Border Collies team up with Newfoundland sea rescue dogs to demonstrate a more compassionate welcome to asylum seekers crossing the Channel.
Nice picture of Steve Double MP for St Austell and Newquay showing his ‘support’ for food and farming businesses in the UK. Shame he didn’t vote for fellow Conservative Neil Parish’s amendment to enshrine our food and animal welfare standards in law, but hey! That’s not what we are writing about here. West Country Voices […]
Margaret Boyde is not happy. She is unamused that the NFU have sent wheatsheaf brooches to all MPs and beyond livid that the 51 who voted against measures to protect our food and animal welfare standards in any trade deals are wearing this mark of support for farming ahead of ‘Back British Farming Day’ . […]
Note from the editor: there are some great, informative tweets out there that need to go way beyond the twittersphere. Here is one such. Please share widely. We’ve had enough of the lies. Time for truth. I’ll give you one example of how devastating #NoDeal will be. AstraZeneca is a British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant. It accounts […]
Imagine the surprise in Devon, Dorset and Somerset when people awoke to discover that Robert Jenrick — he of regeneration-funds-for-votes and cash-for-planning-favour infamy — has initiated a massive land-grab of their counties. Wielding a Henry VIII clause, the millennial Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (HC&LG) has drawn up Statutory Instrument 2020 […]
“The most inept and incompetent administration in my lifetime.” “Incoherent and indecisive.” “Authoritarian and arrogant.” So began a cracking speech by Sir Christopher Chope, MP for Christchurch, in the House of Commons, as he read out snippets from letters from his constituents. Sir Christopher Chope? Really? The MP who is infamous for blocking private members’ […]
A message from the Editor-in-Chief:It’s not clear whether the Johnson government is playing games or kite-flying with this outrageous idea that it is considering whether to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement by bringing in legislation which will override international treaties*. These are people who like to try to inure us to future outrages by trialling […]
Aviation is a huge and successful industrial sector, directly contributing at least £22 billion to the UK economy. The British airline sector alone accounts for 84,300 jobs worldwide. Yet the ability to hop on a safe, reasonably affordable flight to almost anywhere in the world is relatively recent. Within living memory, overseas travel meant just […]
This is a government that is careless with words when it chooses and a Prime Minister who believes that the truth is whatever comes out of his mouth at any given moment. But it’s the even darker misuse of language and the assignment of more sinister meanings to innocent and generally positive or neutral words […]
Why do nations sometimes lurch into spectacular acts of self-destruction? A strange fervour that seized the Xhosa people of South Africa in the 1850s may shed some light on Brexit, writes Tom Scott. The history of southern Africa is not short on plunder, cruelty and betrayal. But as a student of it some years ago, […]
Appointing an Australian misogynist, homophobe and climate science denier as joint president of the UK Board of Trade may seem bizarre – but not when you look at Tony Abbott’s ideological affiliations. Abbott is on the advisory board of the so-called Initiative for Free Trade (IFT), an opaquely-funded lobby group. It styles itself as a […]
So what do populist leaders do when they’re in trouble? Answer: the same things they did to gain power. You don’t need the Cummings playbook to work out that it’s one of two things (or, better still, both): it’s play the blame game – blame the Jews, blame immigrants, play on people’s fears and prejudices; […]
Examgate finally laid bare the hollowness of the Tory “levelling up” mantra, which helped them win over voters in the so-called “Red Wall” seats in the 2019 election. Was this utter catastro-shambles merely an unfortunate accident, or was it a deliberate act —the Government’s boldest move yet in a covert class war? Looking back over […]
Despite the guidance to help classrooms to be safe, the likely realitydemonstrates the urgent need for a Plan B…
Does it not fill your heart with dread, when a minister in the current government states that a proposed new organisation will become “world-renowned”? Well, Health Minister Matt Hancock has recently said this about the body he is planning to set up to replace the battered Public Health England (PHE). PHE, itself, was only established […]
Message from the Editor-in-Chief: We’ve only been going five weeks, but we’ve already built up what we think is a pretty strong back catalogue of articles with a long read-by date. We thought you might like to catch up on a few grouped by author. We kick off with the articles from Tom Scott, the […]
‘CIA! CIA!’ the man wobbling towards me on his bike shouted as I tried to take his photograph. It was a shock. My embarrassed companions moved me on. We were standing in the main road through a small village deep in southern Belarus in the early 1990s where foreigners were a rare sight indeed, probably […]
