We had to share this. It explains how things will unfold. Possibly. Brexit Trade Talks: UK: We don’t like our deal EU: Why not? UK: We only get 95% of what we want EU: It only gives us 95% too. That's how negotiating goes UK: We want a new deal that gives us everything we […]
Nice picture of Steve Double MP for St Austell and Newquay showing his ‘support’ for food and farming businesses in the UK. Shame he didn’t vote for fellow Conservative Neil Parish’s amendment to enshrine our food and animal welfare standards in law, but hey! That’s not what we are writing about here. West Country Voices […]
Margaret Boyde is not happy. She is unamused that the NFU have sent wheatsheaf brooches to all MPs and beyond livid that the 51 who voted against measures to protect our food and animal welfare standards in any trade deals are wearing this mark of support for farming ahead of ‘Back British Farming Day’ . […]
Note from the editor: there are some great, informative tweets out there that need to go way beyond the twittersphere. Here is one such. Please share widely. We’ve had enough of the lies. Time for truth. I’ll give you one example of how devastating #NoDeal will be. AstraZeneca is a British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant. It accounts […]
Imagine the surprise in Devon, Dorset and Somerset when people awoke to discover that Robert Jenrick — he of regeneration-funds-for-votes and cash-for-planning-favour infamy — has initiated a massive land-grab of their counties. Wielding a Henry VIII clause, the millennial Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (HC&LG) has drawn up Statutory Instrument 2020 […]
A message from the Editor-in-Chief:It’s not clear whether the Johnson government is playing games or kite-flying with this outrageous idea that it is considering whether to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement by bringing in legislation which will override international treaties*. These are people who like to try to inure us to future outrages by trialling […]
Aviation is a huge and successful industrial sector, directly contributing at least £22 billion to the UK economy. The British airline sector alone accounts for 84,300 jobs worldwide. Yet the ability to hop on a safe, reasonably affordable flight to almost anywhere in the world is relatively recent. Within living memory, overseas travel meant just […]
Why do nations sometimes lurch into spectacular acts of self-destruction? A strange fervour that seized the Xhosa people of South Africa in the 1850s may shed some light on Brexit, writes Tom Scott. The history of southern Africa is not short on plunder, cruelty and betrayal. But as a student of it some years ago, […]
Appointing an Australian misogynist, homophobe and climate science denier as joint president of the UK Board of Trade may seem bizarre – but not when you look at Tony Abbott’s ideological affiliations. Abbott is on the advisory board of the so-called Initiative for Free Trade (IFT), an opaquely-funded lobby group. It styles itself as a […]
So what do populist leaders do when they’re in trouble? Answer: the same things they did to gain power. You don’t need the Cummings playbook to work out that it’s one of two things (or, better still, both): it’s play the blame game – blame the Jews, blame immigrants, play on people’s fears and prejudices; […]
Examgate finally laid bare the hollowness of the Tory “levelling up” mantra, which helped them win over voters in the so-called “Red Wall” seats in the 2019 election. Was this utter catastro-shambles merely an unfortunate accident, or was it a deliberate act —the Government’s boldest move yet in a covert class war? Looking back over […]
This article is reproduced by kind permission of the author and first appeared on www.ukhaulier.co.uk Descartes Systems Group, the global leader in uniting logistics-intensive businesses in commerce, today announces the findings of its Brexit Readiness research to understand the readiness of UK businesses that trade with the EU for the end of the Brexit transition period […]
The arrest of far-right propagandist Steve Bannon in the US on fraud and money-laundering charges has sent shock waves through far-right populist circles around the world. Bannon, who was arrested by agents of the US Postal Service aboard a super-yacht belonging to a Chinese billionaire, is accused of running a fraudulent fundraising scheme. The indictment […]
There will be more… #TheWeekInTory 1. The govt launched a “Fix your bike” voucher website 2. It broke in less than an hour 3. The govt said we should all lose weight 4. The govt is still issuing vouchers to help us buy burgers 5. It was revealed the govt spent £400m buying a bankrupt […]
You could be forgiven for feeling exhausted. Since the general election in December 2019 – in itself a tiring and dispiriting event – it seems as if bad news, government incompetence and poorly judged behaviour have been relentless. When Boris Johnson dreamed of being “World King”, is this the type of prime minister (PM) he […]
When he first visited Russia in 1995, Peter Barker found post-Soviet chaos meant medicine was in short supply. As the UK faces breaking of supply chains at the end of 2020, might we be facing a similar plight? I was involved in French twinning before I moved to Exeter. When I came here, I was […]
A constitution based on unwritten rules and gentlemen’s agreements is a poor defence against shameless and determined rule-breakers. Listening to interminable lectures on UK constitutional law many years ago, I little thought it would be at the forefront of a political power struggle some 40 years later. Yet such is the battleground for the current […]
This article references some vile, racist language which we have reproduced, rather than hide just how morally-repulsive some individuals are. Editor. George Eustice has risen from obscurity to become the smooth-talking frontman for some of the worst aspects of Brexit. In February, Environment Minister George Eustice was loudly booed by an audience of farmers at […]
I’m not much a Zoom enthusiast but the invitation to listen to Defra secretary of state George Eustice give a “major” speech on the environment, via Green Alliance, seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. So, having finally got zoom to work on my computer, I sat and listened to him talk for 15 […]
“The evil that is in the world nearly always comes from ignorance.” This is a central message of Albert Camus’ La Peste. It’s also, to my mind, the message most relevant to our struggles against coronavirus and Brexit. La Peste is the story of a (fictional) outbreak of plague in the (real) city of Oran, […]
Britain’s Vanguard submarines, each armed with eight US Trident ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, have been patrolling the seas since 1994. An issue bitterly contested in the 1980s has now, for most of us, sunk beneath our consciousness like…well, a submarine. But will it stay that way? In the 1980s, US ground-launched cruise missiles were […]
Anita moved from the Netherlands to Cornwall with her family in 2014. They were blissfully happy here. Then the referendum came and her husband was diagnosed with cancer… Young Matt: “I get so angry sometimes. People are so unthinking. They say ’We just don’t want any more newcomers, that’s all. People that are here can […]
Welcome to the first edition of West Country Voices, a new online paper for people in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. Run by volunteers and showcasing local writers, West Country Voices will be scrutinising and calling out those in power, challenging the narrative spun by the mainstream media, and giving a voice to those with […]
At long last, we can read the Russia Report prepared last year by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). Boris Johnson had gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent this document ever seeing the light of day, and succeeded in blocking its release before the general election in December 2019. Arron Banks of Leave.EU had […]
Only a government as intellectually incoherent as this one could publish in the same week two important documents with absolutely no consistent philosophy underpinning the policy objectives behind them. Worse, the objectives themselves seem diametrically opposed. On Monday, we got the border operating model setting out all the new barriers to trade the government intends to […]
