Author: Anthea Simmons

Anthea Simmons is an award-winning children's author, editor and activist. She grew up in Cornwall and Devon before spending twenty plus years in the City in institutional asset management.​ Her areas of interest include diversity and inclusion, the environment and electoral reform. She is editor-in-chief for West Country Voices

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Creamo’s! The wonderfully wacky craft ice cream from Ashburton

Anthea Simmons

We are very keen to showcase small businesses from Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. The stories these entrepreneurs have to tell make a very welcome change from the news, escaping from which, however briefly, is a privilege not afforded to many, we know. I met Matai and Rachael to talk about how they got into […]

Pizza and positivity: feeding Ukrainian refugees at a Polish border aid camp

Anthea Simmons
Pizza prep at refugee camp, Poland Ukraine border

It’s day 8 for David Fox-Pitt and his team at the Medyka crossing point on the Polish/Ukrainian border and they’re working non-stop, 24/7, to feed the women and children arriving in their thousands from war-torn cities, towns and villages. I spoke to David via WhatsApp. Thank goodness for modern tech! ‘It’s like Groundhog Day,’ says […]

The tweet heartless Kevin Foster didn’t want you to see

Anthea Simmons
Kevin Foster MP for Torbay

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 […]

Actions speak louder than flags

Anthea Simmons
Johnson in front if UK and Ukraine flags

This is a government that relies for its survival on big promises, three-word soundbites, gesture politics and the exploitation of situations it judges will boost its (flagging) popularity. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is no exception. Set aside the huge story of Russian funding and influence in the Conservative party and the compromised approach to sanctions, […]

The Foundations of Geopolitics: Putin has been doing it by the book

Anthea Simmons
Aleksandr Dugin

This is Alexandr Dugin, a Russian philosopher, strategist, political analyst and author of a several books including Foundations of Geopolitics (1997), and who in 2014 called for the eradication of the Ukrainian identity, following disappointment that Putin did not come to the aid of pro-Russian insurgents. As I highlight some key elements of the book […]

Cat toys: do they pass the Percy test?

Anthea Simmons

Kittens will be…well, kittens! I had forgotten just how inquisitive, energetic and naughty kittens could be and as I watched Sir Percival of Ashburton ping from one work surface to another and then surf across the paperwork on the desk, tailed fuzzed up like a bog brush, I wondered how on earth I was going […]

“First homes, not second homes!” MP Luke Pollard is on a mission

Anthea Simmons

Housing. It’s in crisis across the UK but nowhere is that crisis more acute than in the south-west, battered by the perfect storm of beauty, inequality and wealth. It’s not as if we don’t know what damage second, holiday and empty homes do to a community. There’s enough research out there, let alone the daily […]

Devon’s housing crisis: the champions of change

Anthea Simmons

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 […]

Remove Clause 9 from the hideous Nationality and Borders Bill

Anthea Simmons

It is savagely ironic that dozens of Conservative MPs are spitting out their dummies over the ‘outrageous’ curtailment to freedom that results from being obliged to wear a mask and to produce a Covid passport to gain entry to various venues and amenities and yet they happily wave through legislation that includes some of the […]

Where’s Geoffrey? Not in Tavistock!

Anthea Simmons

We’ve written about the Geoffrey Cox second job saga and, whilst he has done nothing illegal, it has clearly annoyed his constutuents to discover that he has been swapping Devon’s sewage-affected beaches for the crystal clear turquoise waters and golden sands of the Carribean and earning very tidy sums advising a foreign government on corruption. […]