Who shoulders the burden in the end? Not those profiting from the needs of ordinary people. Last week I was given an update on my long-awaited shoulder replacement (originally planned for last August, then December, then possibly January, and then March): at my ‘consent’ appointment with my surgeon I was given the bad news that, […]
In the boardrooms that control our cortisol economies, tech executives rub their hands with glee and continue, avariciously, to guard the profits they have earned out of children’s dependency. Many of my peers describe to me how they know the impacts of social media on their mental health but just can’t stop scrolling, feeling like […]
Anita wrote to us, prefacing her piece thus: “My husband Ian Jacques wrote a few letters – mostly with a great deal of wit – and West Country Voices kindly published a few. Unfortunately, he passed away, aged 74, on January 3 2026, after a short illness. By way of an obituary, I wonder if […]
What decades of research (and millions of children in Sweden and Japan) really tell us about acetaminophen and pregnancy. It’s been a couple of weeks since Trump and RFK Junior told the world that acetaminophen (aka Tylenol or paracetamol) use in pregnancy causes Autism. Thankfully, there was considerable pushback from doctors and scientists worldwide. I want to bring […]
Last week, I participated in an incredibly moving and overwhelming experience. It’s called the Dementia Bus, an immersive, unique, scientifically designed simulation which provides a first-hand experience of what it is like to live with dementia. As someone with a family member who is living with dementia, I found the experience quite emotional and, to […]
As Donald Trump arrived in the UK on a state visit, a new tool was launched to show exactly what NHS patients would pay if Britain adopted the kind of insurance-based system pushed by Trump and his corporate backers. My NHS Bill (MyNHSBill.com) reveals the true cost of American-style healthcare by letting users enter NHS treatments […]
Today I was diagnosed with Lyme Disease. I was bitten by four ticks 30 days ago, and had a red rash come up around one of the bites that soon started spreading… As there was no ‘bullseye’, I didn’t think it was Lyme, I assumed it was just a reaction, especially as the rash wasn’t […]
Dear Anna I am deeply concerned about the announcement this week that Derriford Hospital is expected to save £67m recurrently from its budget. The trust has taken away staff cups of tea and raised staff parking fees, but this is a drop in the ocean. The only way these cuts are truly possible is to […]
Dear Editor, Seaton Hospital is an issue in the local elections on May 1. The hospital steering committee submitted a proposal for using the threatened wing to NHS Property Services nine months ago. They have still not given us an answer. We have been fighting to save the hospital since 2016, when they first threatened […]
This is a special request to all members of the 99% Organisation and readers. It should only take five minutes of your time, but it is important. Please write to your MP today about a meeting in the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday 4 March. 99% will launch our new report The Rational policy-maker’s Guide to Rebuilding the NHS at a meeting […]
We needed some good news, so it’s great to be able to report that Wes Streeting has given the go-ahead for the much-needed Women and Children’s Hospital to be built at the Treliske site, on the edge of Truro. I first spoke to Roberta Fuller, the Programme Director for the scheme, in late 2024, when […]
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; […]
‘Country gent’ Nigel Farage was enjoying a sunny October Sunday, foraging for mushrooms. He didn’t say where (this is his leisure time, after all), but posted a cheery video on X/Twitter, showing a few prize specimens picked for his lunch. “If you don’t know what you’re picking”, he said, “be careful”, then demonstrated how to […]
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 […]
Award-winning film-maker David Wilkinson discovered very recently that he had stage 4 bowel cancer. He has been sharing his experience on Facebook with his friends and admirers, of whom there are very many, including the team here at WCV. We asked if we could publish this post. We believe it’s especially important as we approach […]
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 […]
“It’s a scandal worse than the Post Office Horizon debacle,” says the retired consultant radiologist who contacted me, urging West Country Voices to look into the use of Physician Associates in the NHS. Plenty of us think we know what’s going on in the NHS. We’ve seen the charts detailing the systematic underfunding. We’ve read […]
In mid-April 2024, the Prime Minister got himself a juicy front cover on the Daily Express: PM tells sick Note Britain: Get a grip and get a job. He then put out a thread on X (formerly Twitter) claiming “We now spend £69bn on benefits for people of working age with a disability or health […]
In the bleak landscape of today’s NHS, a ground-breaking service in a Somerset GP practice is seeing patient and staff satisfaction running at unprecedented highs while reducing pressure on local hospitals. Why, then, is it closing at the end of May, after only four months, and what does the future hold? The GP Urgent Assessment […]
Mr Rishi Sunak, Good afternoon. As I brace myself for my own experiences with the NHS later this afternoon, I couldn’t help but mull over the implications of your latest proposal regarding mental health and fit notes. This latest proposal of yours seems to have spectacularly missed the mark, which to be fair, is how […]
We delivered our 20 hearts to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council (BCP) on April 14 2024, to call for an all-at-once rollout of a 20mph speed limit. BCP council is proposing some limited extensions to 20mph areas, like the one currently out for consultation in the Boscombe area. We’re in an environmental emergency and a […]
A recent episode of the hospital drama Casualty misrepresented the very serious risks that Covid still poses. Jane Stevenson wrote to the BBC to explain just how wrong they’d got it. On Saturday 9 March, an episode of Casualty was broadcast, “Trauma”, which created a lot of upset. After reading a robust Twitter/X post by […]
Dear Editor Re: Physician Associates I am writing to give my perspective on the role of physician associates( PAs). I am a recently retired Consultant Physician who was involved in the initiation of a PA programme in Devon over 10 years ago. Workforce planning in the NHS is notoriously difficult and an issue that central […]
Our NHS would collapse without migrants. Almost 20 per cent of the staff in NHS England are from overseas. Out of 1.5 million NHS staff in England, around 265,000 reported a non-British nationality as of June 2023. That’s 45,000 more than the previous year. What’s more, since Brexit, data indicates that the proportion of EU citizens working for the […]
Before Johnson gives his evidence we should consider a few things: 1. Just how bad was the UK pandemic response?2. How much could Johnson have affected this?3. What was Johnson’s intent?4. Was there any overt maleficence? 1. How did the UK perform?Badly. For many in the wider public, it will be quite obvious that the UK did very badly indeed. […]
Whitty’s testimony didn’t come with the headline-grabbing revelations of other testimonies, but it was one of the most illuminating of the Inquiry so far, particularly in terms of timeline and where the government properly failed. Here’s my impression of it and some key moments… The first thing to note is just how qualified Whitty is […]
Why this petition matters The petition was started by Seaton resident, Martin Shaw, who explains why it’s needed: The Seaton area community paid half of the cost of building the Hospital in the 1980s. The NHS agreed to own and run it with NHS services for the local community. In 1991, a new wing was […]
This week is turning out to be very revelatory…and shocking. Ed We will update as and when… From 30 October: What we see from the Inquiry is intense focus on the period between Jan 30 and March 23r. This was the nearly two month period that would affect all of our lives so profoundly for […]
Sign the petition here! Back in December 2021, journalist Stefan Simanowitz pulled together a long thread alerting people to the risks to our democracy and data privacy from Palantir, the shadowy data, surveillance and genomics firm (whose founder, right-wing, libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, was a Tump donor and one of the largest donors to the […]