Thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 we know that the next General Election will be on 7th May 2015. This means that small parties with few resources and little flexibility now have the same chance to plan ahead as the London-based big battalions with their ear to the ground at Westminster. WR President Colin BexContinueContinue reading “May It Be”
Tag Archives: elections
Frying-Pans & Fires
With the dust now settled on the Euro-elections, let’s take a look at who will be speaking for Wessex in Brussels and Strasbourg. Well, not just Wessex. We have 16 MEPs, 6 of them shared with Cornwall and the other 10 shared with just a few of the more peripheral parts of the Londonian region.ContinueContinue reading “Frying-Pans & Fires”
A Voice in Europe?
Postal ballot papers for the Euros have started to arrive, allowing some of us to see what ‘choice’, if any, the ‘democratic’ process has thrown up this time. Although WR has contested European elections in the past, this was when the constituencies were smaller, single-member ones that did less damage to regional identity. We haveContinueContinue reading “A Voice in Europe?”
Review of 2013
Every year when we submit our accounts to the Electoral Commission we are also required to provide a ‘Review of Political Activities’ covering the year just gone. The 2013 Review has recently been agreed and here is what it says:“The Eastleigh by-election in February provided an unplanned but welcome opportunity to raise the Party’s profile. ContinueContinue reading “Review of 2013”
Ashdown Reveals Defection Terms
As we await the result of the Eastleigh poll, we can provide a little of the background to the coverage our candidate received on Wednesday’s Newsnight. (Catch it on iPlayer while you can: starting at 6:14 in and ending at 6:43.)Colin reports: “I was able to crash in on some publicity given to Paddy PantsdownContinueContinue reading “Ashdown Reveals Defection Terms”
Right Here, Right Now
According to London newspaper The Guardian, “the fringe candidates have been great value”. Colin “has spent many chilly hours on Market Street patiently explaining exactly where Wessex is and why the ancient kingdom should not be controlled by Westminster”.Ancient kingdom? Is that how Scotland, Wales or Cornwall would be described? Anyone would think we’re aContinueContinue reading “Right Here, Right Now”
Constitutional Engineering: Fail
British parties of the far Right are often treated as interchangeable. No-one on the Left can be really bothered to explore what nuances separate them. But the differences can be quite significant. Clearly, the English Democrats want a centralised England, having given up any hope of a re-centralised Britain: they’re a rearguard party that regardsContinueContinue reading “Constitutional Engineering: Fail”
The Long View
“Economics, said Mr Stanley [Oliver Stanley, then President of the Board of Trade], is 50% psychology … What we need, apparently, is not statesmen but hypnotists, not scientists, but witchdoctors, not confidence born of scientific prediction of the future, but confidence created by a political confidence trick. There is nothing surprising in this. It isContinueContinue reading “The Long View”
Winners & Losers
Writers on Bristol, from the Rev. George Heath in the 18th century to Bryan Little in the 20th, have seen in it ‘the London of the West’, a city that would dearly love to outshine its larger rival but is not above copying its every move. So ‘a Boris for Bristol’ stands firmly in thatContinueContinue reading “Winners & Losers”
No Heritage Soon
Where did the inspiration come from for our National Health Service? Historians have a habit, given that Nye Bevan was a Welshman, to look to Wales, to the miners’ and metalworkers’ mutual aid schemes at Tredegar and elsewhere.Wessex has at least as good a claim. The Mechanics’ Institute at Swindon, opened in 1855 and paidContinueContinue reading “No Heritage Soon”
Wessex Regionalists 