“We don’t need stuff, we need cash” says the Mayor of Rabka Frome has a direct link to the war in Ukraine – and a way for you to help Ukrainians fleeing from the terror. Frome is twinned with three European towns. It is a four-way twinning, with representatives of three towns each visiting the fourth on […]
A satirical commentary on the pig swill served by MPs’ social media feeds. Perusing Kevin Foster MP for Torbay’s Facebook feed is like perusing the remains of John Gummer’s beefburger. You remember that – the one fed to his four year old daughter in 1990? Babe’s long enough in the snout to remember Gummer as […]
Speech made at the Vigil for Ukraine outside Truro Cathedral on 27 February. Thank you all so much for coming here today to express your solidarity with the people of Ukraine. These are very dark times for Europe and for the whole world. We’re seeing a peaceful, democratic nation under violent attack by a fascistic […]
Dear Derek, I have skin in this game. My Mum was a young girl in Driebergen, Holland, in 1939 when the Germans came.She and hundreds of thousands of civilians packed what they could and took to the roads. You’ll have seen the harrowing photos of endless lines of haggard, terrified refugees, stretching as far as […]
Torbay MP Kevin Foster may think it’s acceptable to view Ukraine’s beleaguered citizens as the UK’s fruit and daffodil pickers of the future (see The tweet heartless Kevin Foster didn’t want you to see – West Country Voices). But more than 100 members of the public gathered today at the Ukrainian Cross on a country […]
I have written today about the government’s callousness towards Ukrainian refugees, cloaked in a nicey-nicey, flag-sporting charade of fake sympathy. The reality is that there is NO effort being made to offer sanctuary to men, women and children fleeing the war. Patel and now Torbay’s Kevin Foster have been gaslighting the British public, pretending that […]
Dear Sheryll Murray, I hope that you are well in these difficult times. I feel so utterly powerless to do anything so tragic.You, however, have power as part of our parliament. Please use your power to maximize help for Ukraine. I am very concerned and frightened by how much our country is mixed up with […]
Steve Bray will be familiar to anyone who watches the news or current affairs programmes. His anti-Brexit, pro-democracy protests have upset the government so much (touching endless raw nerves) that Priti Patel even tried to write a specific clause in the Policing Bill to outlaw his presence. You might wonder what he does each day, […]
I’ve learned through teaching and writing for children and young adults that we ‘grown-ups’ underestimate the young at our peril. Many of them are more clued up, more engaged and more inclined to mobilise than many an adult. Anya Haywood is a great example. She’s eight and fighting to save a stretch of countryside that […]
You might have read about the government’s commitment to safeguarding wildlife and conserving the environment which is, according to Defra’s newly-published road map, to be “the cornerstone of the government’s new agricultural policy, based on the principle of paying public money for public goods, such as clean air and water, thriving wildlife, engagement with the […]
And we start with a two for one offering! Ed Dear Sheryll It seems you plan on keeping your loyalty to a liar, cheat and general criminal, who broke the laws that he himself set and then refused to do what you could bet your bottom dollar he would ask any other PM to do […]
Dear West Country Voices, Boris Johnson has been a good thing for this country, and no, don’t worry, I haven’t gone totally insane after years of gaslighting and government lies, so please hear me out. He has been so awful that he has finally and fully shown that the current parliamentary system based on “gentleman’s […]
Ed: In case you missed it, Tim Smit, of Eden Project fame, launched a bit of an attack on the Cornish (in a podcast) saying, amongst other things: “You feel, and I don’t, but you feel like saying ‘well if you were a bit more f- – -ing articulate you could speak up for yourself […]
In early 2021 Plymouth’s “Look II” sculpture by Sir Antony Gormley was in the headlines. Opinions on the sculpture varied, but publicity focused on its price. I welcomed new grant-funded public art to the city, but because Plymouth City Council refused to disclose the cost of the sculpture, I shared other people’s concerns about secrecy. […]
“When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber,” Winston Churchill once said of blathering back-bench MPs. An eagle silenced by death in Dorset had erstwhile pork-pie plotter, Chris Loder, now shamefully returned to the back-bench Borstal of Boris-backers, jabbering on social media recently. It is not known how the rare young eagle came […]
The charity Climate Action Taunton was founded in August 2021 to set up a climate emergency centre in the county town. This vibrant town centre hub will act as the focal point for sharing information and nurturing partnerships, to inspire and support action at individual and community level to tackle the climate and ecological emergencies. […]
Perhaps the journalist for Bournemouth Echo had guessed that Jacob Rees-Mogg was about to be handed the ‘exciting’ challenge of proving the advantages of Brexit. None seem to be immediately discernible. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) released a report on 9 February, which revealed that “the only detectable impact so far is increased costs, paperwork […]
Dear Anthony On the Government’s own projections, the UK is set to miss the 6th carbon budget and our Paris commitment by a huge margin. We will be approximately 100 per cent over the 6th carbon budget! You have said that work is ‘underway’, but that work clearly falls far short of what’s required. You can see from the […]
I have long been incensed by politicians, particularly members of the current government, claiming they know what the ‘public’ want and the ‘people’ think. The Prime Minister is an expert at this: perhaps the only thing he has expertise in, along with lying and hiding in fridges. I can’t think of one single occasion when […]
Dear West Country Bylines, I have this to say to Sheryll Murray after she stood up to heap praise on Johnson at PMQs: Boris has now said he will stay and “fight on”. Who exactly is be fighting? Is it the bereaved families he laughed in the faces of by holding more parties in lockdown […]
Dear Mr Burns, Hoping this finds you well. I move around a lot in social circles as an ‘after-hours musician’, and whenever I engage in conversation, which is a lot, this particular question goes around like a wildfire all the time: “How long can Boris Johnson cling on to his job?” For us normal people, […]
Last week in West Country Voices, I wrote about a Brixham-based, family-owned company which has – somehow – managed to continue exporting live mussels to the Netherlands, despite the many and varied obstacles placed in its way as a direct consequence of Brexit. I have no connection with this enterprise other than as a writer. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
“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 […]
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, […]
“The poorest households spend three times more of their income on household energy bills than the richest households spend. As long as we are in the EU, we are not allowed to cut this tax,” Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Gisela Stuart claimed in an article written for The Sun on 31 May, 2016. “When […]
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 […]