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 […]
DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT >>>CALENDAR WILL FOLLOW SOON What’s on! if you want to add your event, please contact campaigns@westcountryvoices.co.uk Discussion on housing crisis/housing need, 24 March, online PETITION Johnson to withdraw and apologise re Starmer/Savile lie PETITION on saving access to judicial review. Liberty PETITION to reject government plans to switch to the less democratic […]
Want to help? Here’s where you can find organisations and campaigns to join. Let us know if we are missing yours from the list. NB: this is a work in progress! Action Network: resources, toolkit and ways to mobilise Climate Crisis/Environment Climate Outreach Extinction Rebellion Friends of the Earth Fridays for Future Green New Deal […]
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 […]
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 […]
Dear Sheryll The House of Lords is soon to be reading and amending the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill. Protest is a fundamental part of our democracy and any measures, however seemingly innocuous, that aim to curb peaceful protest in any way should not be included in any of the laws of a modern free […]
Dear Editor, I’m exhausted by the Covid pandemic. I think we all are. The ongoing worry that every little sniffle I get might be Delta or Omicron and that I might pass it on to my household and elderly relatives; the constant mental weighing up of how many people I should safely meet while cases […]
Dear Editor, I have been disappointed by the lack of outrage over the government’s Nationality and Borders bill, specifically Clause 9, which disproportionally affects black and brown residents in the UK, allowing the government to remove people with dual citizenship or with parents who were born abroad, without warning. However, this Clause does much more […]
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 […]
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 […]
As a former banker is put in charge of NHS England, Sunak meets US healthcare giants in California, the health and social care bill opens the gates wide for private providers to grab more business and the poor staff are brought to their knees by the mismanagement of Covid, the NHS is under attack like […]
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 Anthony. This week, we’ve read that the Antarctic Thwaites Glacier could collapse within 5 years. It’s the size of Great Britain, and will wreak havoc, raising sea levels by 65cm – not immediately, but far faster than thought. What does that mean for the Hope Cove sea wall or our only rail connection east? […]
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 […]
Dear West Country Voices, All morning I’ve been reading posts by healthcare professionals who have been working long shifts and going the extra mile for months now. Metaphorically-speaking, they are physically and mentally on their knees, and now in a state of astonishment at learning prime minister Boris Johnson’s new plans at the same time […]
Dear West Country Voices, On June 10, 2016, Central Devon Tory MP Mel Stride wrote to a local newspaper and said about the £350m a week which Boris Johnson had promised the NHS after Brexit: ‘It’s a lie’. Enjoy the animated pigs flying over this misleading whopper’. Now he, all other Tory MPs and in […]
Dear West Country Voices, When news about ‘the party’ first came to light, Johnson and his crew tried to spin it as a ‘Westminster bubble’ story. To everyone else, it looked as if they were just thumbing their noses at the suffering of ordinary people who had followed the rules and suffered greatly as a […]
Dear West Country Voices, I would imagine you are inundated with responses to that editorial. If not, you should have been! Whilst I have never been a member of the Conservative Party I have voted Conservative in parliamentary elections since getting the vote at 21 in 1968. (With one exception. I refused to vote for the […]
The cumulative effect of a sucession of scandals, incidents of rule-breaking, double standards, lies and evasions is that, for many, this government’s behaviour has become intolerable. At WCB, we’ve often praised Simon Hoare for his more sensible and moderate stance on many hot topics. We have come to expect sycophancy and slavish obedience from many […]
Dear West Country Voices, Our PM isn’t very good with gates, actually he isn’t very good at anything – except, of course, at lying; and actually he seems to have lost his talent for that recently. You will remember when he was confused by Bill Gates on how much the UK would contribute towards Bill’s […]
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 […]
This is a letter we have yet to receive and even the idea of it may make the blood of some of our readers boil. But does it, or a version of it, languish in draft emails on computers right across our region, addressed but unsent? It would be good to think so.Go on. Open […]
Dear West Country Voices, At a time when Devon parents were expecting to receive consent forms for their children to receive the nasal flu vaccine in schools this Autumn term, we have instead received a letter from Virgin Care informing us that the flu vaccine schedule has been significantly delayed and our children will not […]
Dear Tobias I am now retired, but I worked in the NHS (as a nurse, then a health visitor) for 28 years, then for a further 20 years in an NHS-funded post in a university, in teaching and research. I have, therefore, seen and worked through very many changes and reorganisations in the NHS: often […]
Dear West Country Voices, I don’t know whether people have had the chance to view the ‘Farage at Large’ show broadcast on Thursday 18th November, with Anthony Mangnall MP. It raises some serious questions over judgement as well as how we, either as ‘regular’ individuals or as Constituency MPs with responsibilities for the way we […]
Dear West Country Voices, Even the Daily Mail has been reporting on the “outside” earnings of Geoffrey Cox, MP for Torridge and West Devon. He earned £400,000 a year advising the British Virgin Islands tax haven over corruption charges and has agreed to take on two more weeks of work for that government despite the […]
Dear West Country Voices, The Government sleaze and corruption scandals continue, with MPs’ second jobs now in the news. I was always taught that people should treat others the way they wish to be treated themselves. This is a high standard and hard to meet all the time. Still, the furore and debate about MPs […]
As part of COPnes26, the novella in verse – ‘Brixham Chimes‘ – will be performed to live music and lights in St Mary’s Church, Totnes, on Saturday 13 November at 18:30. Written by the film maker who made Sky Atlantic’s series ‘Fish Town’ about Brixham, this book sets an apocalyptic story firmly in the Brixham area and uses local […]