Sadie Parker explains why we need to act now to arrest the erosion of our democracy and rights. In January 2022, two of the worst Bills ever conceived by a British government return to the House of Lords: the Nationality and Borders (NB) Bill on 5 January, and then on 10 January it is the […]
The FT reports this morning that: Households facing a “cost of living catastrophe”, including soaring gas and electricity charges, in April could yet be spared a £100 levy on their bills which had been intended to recoup the money to cover recent energy company failures. Ofgem, the energy regulator, is looking to spread the cost of the […]
Canon Robert Murch pays his own tribute to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, recalling a meeting in the mid-sixties in Wells, Somerset. I spent 1965/1966 as a theological student at Wells Theological College. A recently retired army officer, I knew little about the Church of England and even less about theology, but it was an education which […]
If there’s one thing that’s just as divisive as Brexit, it’s the ‘cat/dog’ schism. OK, I’ll admit it: I’ve always preferred cats, and over the 50 years or so we’ve had our own home, we’ve usually had one or more moggy sharing our space. As for dogs, I’d be the first to admit that I’ve […]
Yes, it was a few months ago, but it brought some sunshine into the Editor-in-Chief’s day! Dear West Country Voices, I don’t know whether this is the sort of thing you’d be interested in, but having visited your beautiful part of the country in the summer and in light of all the debate prompted by […]
Dear West Country Voices, First of all – thank you so much for bringing the shocking measures proposed in the Nationality and Borders Bill to the attention of the public. Having monitored current affairs since publication on 10 December 2021 of your ‘Remove Clause 9 from the hideous Nationality and Borders Bill’ article, notable is […]
How many of us have experienced, or can begin to really comprehend, what it is to be without a home? How many of us have known the unsettling insecurity of living in rented accommodation at the whim of a landlord who might at any moment, once the fixed term contract is up, issue a Section […]
UK SOS: our human rights are under threat The Tories of this century want to abandon the human rights that Tories of the last century championed and established. It was Winston Churchill who, in 1948, advocated a European ‘Charter of Human Rights’ in direct response to the abject horrors of the Nazi regime and the […]
Dear West Country Voices, I was absolutely fuming when I saw in the news that MP and mother Stella Creasy was told that she could not have her baby with her when she was in the House of Commons. I was completely shocked because surely this is not anything new? MPs have been taking their […]
No doubt you’ve seen the crocodile tears of some of our tabloid commentators concerning the death of 27 people in the English Channel (technically in French waters) on the night of Wednesday, 24 November. They included a young Kurdish fiancée, four other women and a little girl, and possibly an Afghan interpreter who previously worked […]
As reported by The Times today, a young woman from Iraqi Kurdistan, who was travelling to Britain to be with her husband, was among those who died in the Channel tragedy. She was Baran Nuri Muhamadamin, 24, from the town of Souran in the far northeast of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the territory meets the Turkish […]
Credit unions represent the quiet approach to community action. While some groups, like Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion, seek to bring about change by hitting the headlines, credit unions are rarely in the news and not well understood. Yet figures published by the Bank of England show that they serve some two million members in the […]
My eye was caught today by this thread from Colin Yeo, a barrister passionate about immigration law and a campaigner for the rights of all those who fall foul of this government’s hostile environment. He founded and edits the widely-read Free Movement immigration law blog and last year published Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System. Colin’s […]
In the UK, the life of ordinary citizens is cheap, taking second place to short-term economy and profit. I remember the scene vividly. We were in a supermarket car park, and before us, about 500 yards below a slight incline, lay the mangled wreckage of the trains that had collided at Ladbroke Grove, a few […]
Mansplaining is bad enough at the best of times, but when it’s telling women what they should do to be safe on the streets, it makes a woman’s blood boil. And when it’s done in the context of the brutal rape and murder of a young woman by a then-serving police officer, it makes the […]
Editor preface: As the BBC looks set to make money out of telling the Jimmy Savile story, the issue of historic child sex abuse is back in the spotlight. Amongst the very many lies, obfuscations and offensive statements made by Boris Johnson in the course of his political career, perhaps the most hideous and reprehensible […]
I first met Jonathan Cooper when I was prompted by a mutual friend, Georgina Allen, to cover the Totnes Passport story, which she felt was due a fresh look six months into Brexit. I had already heard about Jonathan – a passionate and highly-effective campaigner for LGBTQI rights, a champion of European values and a […]
Further to Valerie Huggins’s recent excellent article on universal credit (UC), I’d like to offer the following experience of a family reliant on UC: Over the last couple of years, my local church charity group has been in a position to help a ‘distressed’ family. Confidentiality prevents me from giving any details; suffice to say […]
Dear Editor-in-Chief, Johnson really just wants to destroy Great Britain. Quite why I haven’t worked out yet, but I am struggling to find out! Every single policy has been to the detriment of the British and to the advantage of the USA. Our major defence industries have been sold to Americans. Our NHS is in […]
At the beginning of August, the headline in the Guardian stated “Johnson faces rebellion over ‘intolerable’ hunger and poverty in home counties”. Steve Baker, MP for Wycombe in Buckinghamshire (and lead Brexiter) was apparently shocked by the crisis in food insecurity after a study by Sheffield University researchers revealed that his constituency is one of […]
When we say Atmos will build 62 truly affordable homes, and that Totnes is experiencing a housing emergency, it is easy to lose sight of the human stories behind that. So @SaputoInc, we’re going to tell you one of those stories. Let’s call our teller ‘Sandra’… It matters that you hear her story, Saputo Inc. […]
Dear Editor, Re: Let’s not mince words: the mass murder in Plymouth was an act of terrorism I worry society is becoming too quick to judge and that we are too easily convinced we are right on every issue (having tapped into the opinions of people ‘like us’ on social media). During the Brexit campaign […]
My first reaction on hearing of the horrific events in Plymouth on Thursday evening was concern for relatives living in the city. My sister-in-law and her husband walk their dog in a park not far from where it happened, and reports that the victims had included dog-walkers were far from reassuring. They were fine. My […]
Meet the latest culture wars ‘warrior’, Archbishop Stephen Cottrell, the second most powerful cleric in the land, admired by none other than that living embodiment of Christian values, Nigel Farage. Since we appear to be returning to a Henry VIII-style era, with a much-married autocrat dominating the political stage empowered by the eponymous powers of […]
There is a lot to unpack in this story. We had just finished watching dramatic scenes on @TheBlock 2017 (#renovators highly recommend!), getting all tucked up into bed, when I heard a young woman crying outside our window. Living in a town centre, this sort of thing was not unusual. She was on a video […]
In August 2018 the government set out proposals for the creation of ‘garden communities’, intended to tackle the chronic shortage of housing in the UK and raise the standard of building development. The name consciously harks back to the ‘Garden City’ vision of Ebenezer Howard but also reflects one of the stock cliches of property […]
The Police Federation of England and Wales have announced that they no longer have confidence in Home Secretary Priti Patel. Patel-watchers will be wondering which of her many egregious acts, opinions or policies brought the Police, at long last, to the realisation that she is not deserving of anyone’s confidence. Was it because they suddenly […]
The issue of trans rights is being used by the right as a wedge to divide the left. And, as the resignations of Sian Berry and Jonathan Bartley as Green Party co-leaders show, the left has fallen headlong into this trap. This is an article I really didn’t want to write, prompted by the decision […]
First of all, I must apologise for yet another article about football. I don’t even like it that much. I certainly don’t know anything about the actual game from a technical point of view. But, like it or not, football has come to be something of a focal point for our nation’s values and outlook […]
Whatever the result of the final of the Euros, Gareth Southgate has already won. To rise to the heights of playing for England, only to miss that penalty against Germany in the EUFA Euro 1996 semi-final, but to then pick himself up, continue to play for his country for a further 8 years, until becoming […]