24/05/2025 / 30/05/2025 by Mark Haworth-Booth
As Planning meetings are held at the Barnstaple Rugby Club I can easily cycle there (electrically-assisted) from home – about five miles. Last Wednesday’s meeting was particularly heartening. We were asked to consider how S.106 money – funds due to a local council from a developer to create social value – should be allocated in […]
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22/05/2025 / 22/05/2025 by markhaworthbooth
Last week’s blog was mostly about the White Cross wind farm onshore cable route planning decision – reported in the North Devon Journal on 15 May HERE> Thanks to Alison Stephenson for her reporting. This is the wildlife tower built by Cllr Simon Maddocks above Croyde, which he formally opened last Saturday (10 May). It […]
12/05/2025 / 12/05/2025 by markhaworthbooth
On Tuesday the University of Exeter ran an in-person and online launch for We Are Here, a deeply moving book of poems by the Ukrainian soldier poet Artur Dron’. The university formed an editorial team – including Fiona Benson (see Blog 19) – to help translate this major book. The translator, Yuliya Musakovska (also a poet […]
06/05/2025 / 06/05/2025 by Mark Haworth-Booth
The news came on Friday, just before we sat down for lunch with friends at the Jack Russell in Swimbridge, was a rare treat. The treat became rather more of one, with a bottle of Prosecco, when we saw how emphatically Cllr Sara Wilson, our excellent candidate, had won the county council seat for Ilfracombe […]
29/04/2025 / 29/04/2025 by markhaworthbooth
Photo: Caroline Lucas MP addressing Extinction Rebellion demonstrators 1 May 2019 A few days ago I chatted with Extinction Rebellion (XR) colleagues in North Devon about the movement and its future. I found myself stressing that XR had already achieved a major objective by prompting the House of Commons to declare a Climate Emergency on […]
22/04/2025 by markhaworthbooth
In a week of so much horrible news, I start with something very positive – the waterwheel turning at Hele Mill in the video above. Rosie and I visited Hele, just east of Ilfracombe, to deliver leaflets for Cllr Sara Wilson, the splendid Green Party candidate in the county elections on 1 May. Hele Mill […]