Refugees: how to normalise the abnormal in 75 easy steps. 1) Flood public discourse with falsehoods and straw men, to ensure there are no commonly accepted facts; making serious discussion of a complex issue impossible. 2)Relentlessly conflate asylum with immigration, knowing that the media will play along. 3)Call legitimate asylum seekers “illegal migrants”, confident that […]
A very happy Christmas and New Year to all our readers from the team at West Country Voices. We are going to take a bit of a break and detoxify (oh my, how we do need to detoxify!)from Westminster for a few days but urge you, if you have a few idle moments, to have […]
Training young As soon as I got home from my primary school – if the weather was OK – I would meet up with my friend Norman to go train spotting at the railway line, which was about a mile away. I was very proud of my Ian Allen Trainspotters booklet, with so many venerable […]
The High Court’s decision of 19 December 2022 has a number of severe ramifications, particularly for child protection, while also imposing limitations on the Rwanda policy which effectively make the government’s arguments for proceeding with it meaningless. Why is it a child protection issue? Surely the government has said it won’t send unaccompanied children to […]
Richard Haviland on the Clarkson incident. For those who do not know what he said and wish to, you can read it here. Be warned. It cannot be unread. No decent editor would have let it go to press. Ed Even by the usual standards of non-apologies, it was dire. A classic non-apology will tell […]
The most difficult thing about writing about economics at the moment is working out why it is that those who are in charge of our economy think that anything that they are doing makes any sense any more. As most economists would agree, when faced with a recession and the likelihood of rapidly falling inflation […]
I had made up my mind last night to write about lying before I read Chris Grey’s superb blog out today, December 16. I strongly recommend you read it, too. “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”― George Orwell I was provoked into addressing the issue by a clip of last […]
A few thousand bedraggled, desperate human beings have crossed the English Channel to seek our help. They are unarmed and come in peace from war-torn and devastated countries. In many cases, their plight was caused by the bombing of their homes by us and our allies. Under international law, they are not considered to be […]
Dear West Country Voices, I am 70 years of age and started my career in the scientific civil service Chemical laboratories (Ministry of Defence) at Porton Down, Wiltshire. After four years I left, and worked in the food industry, both in production and research and development, finally becoming quality assurance manager in a major baby […]
In the bars and tea-rooms of the House of Commons there is always gossip. So when, at times, the level of gossip diminishes, to be replaced by a proportionate increase in discrete whispering, every Westminster watcher will instantly sense that something is afoot. But what? To begin with, that is not at all easy to […]
After 12 years of Conservative government, the UK faces serious and rapidly growing problems on multiple fronts: 1) economically, 2) in terms of the financial, physical and mental health of the population and 3) in human rights and democratic safeguards. Last week we showed how far the UK economy is falling behind other leading economies and how its population […]
“It’s the most controversial World Cup in history and a ball hasn’t even been kicked.” Ever since FIFA chose Qatar back in 2010, the smallest nation to have hosted football’s greatest competition has faced some big questions. From accusations of corruption in the bidding process to the treatment of migrant workers who built the stadiums, […]
Our social contract – the ‘deal’ that makes us a civilised country – is under grave threat both practically and philosophically. And we are not talking about it. Practically, the UK is in a grave situation. We are in the midst of a serious cost-of-living crisis which will plunge over half of the UK population into fuel poverty […]
Recently I saw a story on West Country Voices. Two women wanted to sign up for a meeting with an MP to ask him an inconvenient question. As a result, they have been paid a visit by the police officer. This story never got attention it deserves. And it should. Because this is not only […]
I watched agog as Nadim Zahawi went on the media rounds to brief – predictably- against our brave nurses and their strike action. With zero sense of self-awareness, he tried to paint their reasonable request to be paid what they are worth as “unfair” and “unpatriotic”, even at one point claiming it was “playing into […]
The Office for National Statistics recently published their results from the 2021 Census on ethnic group, national identity, language and religion. Fairly soon after, Nigel Farage and others tweeted that London, Birmingham and Manchester were now ‘minority White’ cities. Now call me sceptical, but I thought I would check the data for myself, so I […]
Good companies know that they are most successful when they invest in their people. Ditto good countries. Back in the 1990s the then Tory government, under the premiership of John Major, developed a plan to encourage businesses in Britain to invest in their people. It was the start of the new Investors in People accreditation, that companies […]
Nu komt de aap uit de mouw A couple of hundred years ago, Dutch sailors returning from long voyages sometimes tried to smuggle monkeys into the country. Hidden inside their coats an unfortunate pet would, on occasions, poke their head out of the smuggler’s sleeve at the dock gates and give the game away. This is the […]
Sick UK What a headline … “Reino Unido, atrapado en su propio laberinto político y económico” (the United Kingdom, trapped in its own political and economic labyrinth). Enough to make you feel proud to be British? Or to acknowledge that our friends and neighbours pity us for what is happening to the UK? This was […]
We have become resigned to the fact that many of the policies pursued by the present administration are inhumane, whether they relate to desperate people seeking asylum or poor children denied free school meals. We have also become accustomed to administrative incompetence – there is no need to think further than the Truss-Kwarteng budget for […]
It has been widely reported that Conservative Peer Baroness Michelle Mone and her family had received almost £29 million from a firm on whose behalf she had lobbied. She helped PPE Medpro to win government contracts worth over £200 million for providing personal protective equipment (PPE) during the pandemic. As the Financial Times writes: “The government came […]
𝗘𝗨 𝗠𝗘𝗠𝗕𝗘𝗥 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗦 𝗔𝗥𝗘 𝗙𝗥𝗘𝗘; 𝗨𝗞 𝗠𝗘𝗠𝗕𝗘𝗥 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗦 𝗔𝗥𝗘 𝗡𝗢𝗧 So, the Supreme Court has ruled that Scotland’s government is not allowed to have an advisory-only referendum on whether its citizens want to leave the United Kingdom. Permission must be given first by the ‘ruling’ government based in England, the court stipulated. Funny thing, really. […]
This is the Home Secretary appointed by Truss and Sunak. Let us park for one moment the fact that this woman was obliged to resign having been caught out sharing official documents on her private email and spent only a few days in the ‘sin bin’ before being reappointed to one of the highest offices […]
I had a long discussion with a radio producer on what I thought was wrong with the Autumn Statement. We discussed the numbers but what I said is most important is not what was said, but what was not. That’s where the frightening bits are. It was a very long time ago that I realised […]
So, in a straw poll of Twitter users organised by the new Chief Twit, Elon Musk, Donald Trump has been ‘elected’ back onto the platform after being banned in 2020 for reasons we all know. “The people have spoken,” tweeted Mr Musk. Haven’t we heard that phrase before, ad nauseam, since 24 June 2016? Musk’s […]
The American mid-term elections are over and the election denialists seem to be losing ground over there. We can hope this might set a trend, as there seem to be any number of causes based on denying at the moment. Denying the severity of Covid-19, or the science behind vaccinations or masks, or of the […]
There were 12 Apostles. There are 12 days of Christmas. There were 12 knights of the round table There are 12 members in a jury. There are 12 months in a year. There are 12 numbers on a clock. There are 12 pairs of ribs in a human being. There were 12 pence in a shilling. There are 12 eggs in a dozen. There are 12 cranial nerves in the human body. There are 12 stars on […]
As a photographer, I have frequently had to temp to top up my income. Working in customer service for social housing providers was the worst job I had. In the wake of the horrifying, avoidable death of Awaab Ishak, this is a record of my experiences. In training I was told how to “overcome objections” […]
We are in a cost of living crisis. People are struggling to juggle heating their homes and feeding themselves and their children. It is utterly ridiculous to think that headlines like “asylum seekers are living in luxury hotels” won’t cut through. The simple fact of the matter is that, for the most part, the hotels […]
Jeremy Hunt is saying we cannot max out the national credit card this morning. This is total nonsense. There is no national credit card. Instead it’s the job of government to make the money we use. And since it can always make that money, it can never max out on credit. Hunt wants you to […]