Our government’s overuse of the word ‘opportunity’ in relation to Brexit is beginning to grate. At a recent meeting of the European Scrutiny Select Committee — for which a more accurate moniker would be the European Scathing Select Committee, given how dyspeptic, hostile and Brexity it is — the question of ‘opportunity’ in brave, new […]
Thank you for publishing the fascinating and thought-provoking diary entry of the late John Evans. As someone has already commented, he was, like my father, a member of a generation that knew at first hand the horrors of a Europe divided against itself. My father had to volunteer to join the British Army when World […]
John Evans’s diary (courtesy of his daughter Jane Welby) Jane Welby: ”My Dad, a lifelong Tory voter and Telegraph reader, died last summer aged 93 and we have been reading through diaries we never knew existed. I found this thoughtful and prescient entry from October 1971 rather poignant:” Thursday 28 October 1971 “Tonight our Westminster […]
If any question why we died,Tell them, because our fathers lied. So reads one of Rudyard Kipling’s Epitaphs of the War. Substitute “Matt Hancock” for “our fathers” and it could serve as an epitaph for the many thousands of vulnerable elderly people and hundreds of care home staff who were consigned to die in the […]
Many will be aware of the boiled frog analogy. The unfortunate creature is in a pan of cold water which is slowly, slowly being heated up. The frog adjusts his tolerance levels as the water changes from a pleasant coolness to a mildly uncomfortable and then increasingly uncomfortable warmth. Poor froggie stays put throughout, seemingly […]
Dominic Cummings’ testimony in front of the joint session of the Commons Health, and Science and Technology committees was brutal, shocking and damning of this government – and of Johnson and Hancock, in particular. In seven hours of evidence, the former chief advisor to Johnson laid bare a catalogue of delays, mistakes, falsehoods and stupidities […]
We still do not know the final details of the Australia trade deal signed off by cabinet last week – but what we do know is the ‘shape of the deal’. Australia is to obtain tariff and quota free access to the UK market in agricultural goods – with domestic farmers protected by having this […]
The UK elections of 6 May 2021 revealed a fragmented political landscape. Although the results showed, as do most national polls, that the combined support for the opposition parties continues to exceed the Conservatives’, they showed no sign that Labour alone would be likely to oust Boris Johnson’s increasingly authoritarian and nationalist regime in the […]
West Country Voices contacted Mr Liddell-Grainger for a comment for our article earlier today (24 May) and he responded with this, giving us permission to use it however we liked. We’re showing you the original document and the text, in case it’s not clear on your device. “The “spoof website” that eclipsed the start of […]
Let me start by saying that I am not a farmer, and I voted to remain in the EU. Until last year, when I got involved with the Save British Farming campaign, I bought into the general idea that the vast majority of farmers had voted to leave. I wasn’t a big fan of the […]
We have written not one, not two, not three but FOUR stories about the proposed changes to local government in Somerset and we are not done yet! The latest development threatens to plunge the whole matter into the realms of farce but it will be no laughing matter if the events are used to call […]
Towards the end of my first year as an undergraduate in 1979 I desperately wanted to switch to my subsidiary subject, art history. I had no idea that this even existed as a degree course when I applied to university, but it proved to be a mind-blowing, intellectually rigorous course of study that ignited a […]
“As I approached one of the drowned corpses on the beach, that of a young lad, the mobile phone in his pocket began to ring; I guess it was his mother or girlfriend ringing to ask if he had arrived safely …” The words of a Spanish Red Cross worker dealing with bodies washed up […]
Dear Editor, On 6 May, much of the country went to the ballot box to select county council representatives. “On the doorsteps people told me that ‘politicians don’t listen to us anyway’ ”. So said Ruth Rollin, Liberal Democrat candidate for Brockenhurst. She continues, “I’d like to hope that we would all welcome a voting […]
On 17 May reports began to emerge of a split in Cabinet. In one corner, Liz Truss and David Frost advocate throwing British farming under the big red bus of lies by signing a 0-per-cent tariff/quota deal with Australia. This is a deal that will only yield 0.01 to 0.02 per cent of our 2018 […]
The weekend before the May election the front pages of certain Conservative-supporting newspapers were excitedly reporting that ‘Boris’ was about to announce that foreign holidays were coming back! What a boost to give people just before an election. Especially when you are hoping that the general public will forget the 128,000+ official Covid-19 deaths caused […]
The government’s legislative programme announced in the Queen’s speech on 11 May gave particular prominence to the idea of ‘levelling up’, promising “bold new interventions to improve livelihoods and opportunities throughout the UK”. Central to this vision is the reform of vocational education, described as offering new lifelong learning opportunities for adults. The prime minister […]
Like most French voters over the age of 40, I will never forget the shock result of the first round of the presidential election in 2002. The two candidates to qualify for the second round were the right-wing Jacques Chirac and the extreme right-wing Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the ‘Front National’. French voters of […]
Can you imagine Fiona Bruce, with a straight face, asking the BBC Question Time audience, zooming in or otherwise, “What is the point of the Conservative and Unionist (Tory) Party?” The sinister coupling of a further erosion of civil rights, even as this Tory government restores some freedoms it temporarily suspended for public health reasons, […]
Brexit was supposedly about “controlling our borders”. But when controlling our borders became a matter of life and death, Johnson’s government has proved pathetically inadequate.. There is as, far as we know, not yet any spread of the super-infectious Indian coronavirus variant in the South West. But this is unlikely to be the case for […]
What is it with the current Conservative government and democracy? Voter suppression via ID cards, switching from a progressive proportional representation voting system to the regressive first past the post system (FPTP) for mayoral elections. (And that’s because, as we have seen, under FPTP a party can get a stonking majority on a minority of […]
We are reproducing this Twitter thread with the kind permission of investigative journalist and campaigner Stefan Simanowitz so that it can be read beyond the twittersphere. A year ago today, I broke the #CareHomeScandal The reason so many had died in care homes was because the government had INSTRUCTED hospitals to send people “who may […]
“The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe […]
On 5 September last year I was part of the Extinction Rebellion group that blockaded Rupert Murdoch’s printing press. We knew we were going up against a powerful group of men who own the Sun, The Times, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, all of which are printed at Rupert Murdoch’s printing press in Hertfordshire. […]
The government’s plan to introduce compulsory photo ID for voters has gone down like the proverbial cup of cold sick. Allegedly, the measure is being proposed to eradicate voter fraud of which there have been a vanishingly small number of instances. In fact, as Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis pointed out, UK data shows 0.00001 percent of […]
Labour early day motion. More to follow. Motion text That this House expresses dismay at the Government’s White Paper, The Future of Health and Care, published on 11 February 2021 which rubber stamps the US care models for the UK; notes that the Bill is a Trojan horse for deregulated privatisation and that language on […]
This is a press release from the Make Votes Matter team. Multi million pound police and mayoral budgets could be controlled by officials that most people simply didn’t vote for under new voting Bill The British public is being urged to tell the Government not to impose First Past the Post for mayoral and police […]
The local elections in Cornwall have seen the Conservatives take control of the council with the votes of fewer than 15% of registered voters. In the 18th and early 19th century, Cornwall was notorious for having more so-called ‘rotten boroughs’ than anywhere else in England. The historian Lewis Namier described Cornish politics in the 1760s: […]
Today’s election count for the Wiltshire Police and Crime Commissioner will be interesting. The Conservative candidate, Jonathon Seed, has stepped down because he has a conviction for drink driving which means he is barred from standing. We pick up the story from the Liberal Democrats, whose candidate Liz Webster will be at the count. If […]
Every day it becomes more obvious that our first past the post system is not fit for purpose, Around sixty percent of the electorate are unrepresented, disengaged, disenfranchised and disillusioned. We must have electoral reform. West Country Voices is hosting a Q&A session on this burning issue with a cracking panel drawn from campaign organisations […]