Section: Region

Who are the real villains here? Letter to the editor

Editor-in-chief
Princetown Visitor Centre

Dear Editor, It has always been so easy to throw stones at authorities for their lack of vision and forethought, but who here are the real villains? We are informed by Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) that they can no longer afford to keep the visitor centre at Princetown open. This centre has been serving […]

‘We need large scale-mobilisation against the fascists’

Philippa Davies

You almost had to feel sorry for the far right. Having planned an afternoon rally in Torquay on Saturday, November 30, the handful who turned up found themselves vastly outnumbered by a crowd of around 200 counter-protesters, mainly from local unions and anti-racism groups. Outside the town hall, amid dozens of banners and placards proclaiming […]

Ultra-processed news – why local journalism has gone weird

Philippa Davies

If you’ve looked at a local news website lately, you may have got the feeling that something’s not quite right. Seeking stories about your own area, you click on an interesting headline and find yourself reading about a completely different place. You probably see a lot of content about motoring, shopping and so on, but […]

UPDATE: Local groups unite against proposed waste incinerator in Canford, Bournemouth

Greg Lambe

Discussions about building a proposed waste incinerator in Canford were deferred by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole’s (BCP) planning committee in September 2024. There is no confirmation, yet, about when it may be discussed, but the committee was due to meet on November 7, 2024. On that day, concerned residents, environmental groups, and local organisations came […]

Local Extinction Rebellion activists join ‘insure our survival’ week of action with Bournemouth demonstration

Extinction Rebellion BCP

Highlighting a week of protests and actions in London and across the UK focused on the “Achilles heel” of the fossil fuel industry setting our planet on fire: their insurers. Extinction Rebellion’s (XR) major national campaign, demanding that the insurance industry stops insuring the climate criminals setting the world on fire, hit the streets of […]

Questioning South West Water: evasions and inadvertent revelations

Dr David Hancock

South Hams District Council recently welcomed South West Water to the council chamber to discuss the ongoing issues of sewage discharges and the cryptosporidium poisoning in Kingswear and Brixham. It’s fair to say that anticipation was not high amongst many councillors. After all, we had invited chief executive Susan Davey, but she was too busy; […]

Wading in! The launch of the Friends of the River Teign

Editor-in-chief

The Friends of the River Teign held their launch event on October 13 on Shaldon Beach, alongside the River Teign. The event was attended by Newton Abbot MP, Martin Wrigley, (Lib Dem) who carried out a water quality test, one of a series to be carried out through the winter by the group.  The event […]

MP condemns threat to Cornwall’s promised Women and Children’s Hospital

Editor-in-chief

News that the long-awaited Women and Children’s Hospital promised for Cornwall may never be built has been described as “shocking and disappointing” by St Ives Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George. The £291m project – part of the previous government’s New Hospital Programme (NHP) – aims to combine maternity, neonatal, paediatric and obstetric and gynaecology services […]

Fiddler on the road… Letter to the editor

Editor-in-chief

I remember being amazed when I saw the sign on the A361 when leaving Barnstaple advertising 35 months of road improvements. Wow! How can they have worked out exactly how long it would take? Living in Swimbridge, we have suffered many days and nights of traffic being diverted through the village and then through Landkey. […]

Are we feeding climate change?

Plastic Free Axminster -

In the UK it is estimated that 140 meals per person (70kg) are wasted each year and that 70 per cent of wasted food comes from the home, mainly from fresh fruit and vegetables. Additionally, those statistics do not take into account the inordinate waste created by enveloping fruit and vegetables in single-use plastic.  WRAP […]

A Community Wealth fund for Cornwall?

Gavin Barker

Throughout last year, a small working group met under the aegis of Cornwall Independent Poverty Forum  to design a Community Wealth fund for Cornwall. This is a proposed £10 million  investment fund which will be used to invest in local businesses, community enterprises and university startups in a way that accelerates the transition to a […]

An undelivered address to the Tolpuddle Festival

Tony Afanasiew

For the first time this year, Dorset for Europe was offered the opportunity to run a stall at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival. Along with the stall comes the invitation to deliver a short speech to explain why we’re there and what we hope to achieve. This prompted me to gush forth an anguished tirade, wholly […]

Challenging Perenco on EU Day for the Victims of the Global Climate Crisis

Daniel Glennon

On 15 July 2024, Extinction Rebellion groups from Bournemouth, Christchurch, Poole (XR BCP), Wimborne and Purbeck, took their continuing campaign against Poole Harbour oil company, Perenco, to their offices and facility in Furzebrook. The campaign was sparked by Perenco’s spill of 200 barrels (approximately 31,600 litres) of reservoir fluid, consisting of 15 per cent crude […]

Hustings in Sidmouth, Devon, 18 June: full report

Anna Andrews

“I haven’t prepared anything and if you want to know about our policies, I suggest you look at our website.” Well, this was a first: surely the whole point of hustings is to act as a shop-window for the candidates? On this showing, the Reform candidate for the Honiton and Sidmouth constituency seemed to be […]

Escaping religion

Yvonne Quaintrell

I am an apostate. This is the term given to people who leave religion. It is not a term I particularly like, but it is the one that most people understand. As a counsellor and peer supporter, I also have professional experience of the needs of apostates. I work with apostates from high control, high […]

Kevin Foster needs reminding: “Charity envieth not”

Sadie Parker

There has never been a general election like this one. The Conservative and Unionist (Tory) Party has made gaffe after blunder after miscalculation after error after outrage. Keir Starmer could sit at home and do nothing for the next three weeks and still find himself prime minister on Friday, July 5th, so amateur and awful […]

Your guide to the tactical vote to defeat the Conservative and push them into third place

Editor-in-chief

Just because the Conservatives are set to lose power nationally, they are still able to hang on to seats where the progressive vote is split and/or ambiguous, thanks to our anachronistic and undemocratic first-past-the-post system (shared only by Belarus…) Fortunately, we can turn to the big aggregator sites like www.stopthetories.vote and Best for Britain’s www.getvoting.org […]

Action stations!

Anthea Simmons

At last, fourteen years of brutal underfunding, politically-motivated austerity, cronyism and corruption can be brought to an end on 4 July, when we can all exercise our democratic right and vote in the general election. With so many Conservative MPs standing down and dissatisfaction with Sunak growing in the Tory ranks, let alone in the […]

Let’s get filming – let’s change the world

Phil Shepherd

YouTube footage from the climate change conference COP 26 in Glasgow in 2021  reveals scores of delegates chanting “Another world is possible”. It reflected their disillusionment at the compromised conference process and at the lack of governments’ commitment to meaningful action in the face of the escalating climate crisis. While, unsurprisingly, the footage was not […]

Fawlty valves and bacterial infections

Jim Funnell

A year on from MP Anthony Mangnall’s Brixham meeting: no-one’s laughing at the farce of our water supply. Last April I attended the first of MP Anthony Mangnall’s public meetings with South West Water. They were eventually held right across the constituency, and were much publicised by the MP as an opportunity to ‘hold South […]