A blog by Cllr Mark Haworth-Booth
10/02/2025 / 10/02/2025 by Mark Haworth-Booth
Making a difference? I wonder, quite often, how much difference I am making as a district councillor. This week I found that I had helped in a way I had not expected. I serve on the joint committee (with Torridge District Council) of the North Devon Crematorium. At our meeting last Friday afternoon, the Crematorium […]
Read more »
03/02/2025 / 04/02/2025 by Mark Haworth-Booth
Spring – Snowdrops in St James’s Churchyard, Swimbridge Last Monday was Holocaust Memorial Day and, like many others, I listened on the radio to heart-rending testimonies broadcast from the Auschwitz death camp. They were followed by short updates from Gaza. I was not alone in feeling that the Holocaust visited upon millions of innocent Jews […]
28/01/2025 / 28/01/2025 by Mark Haworth-Booth
Welcome to my latest blog post… I am a member of the Taw Torridge Estuary Forum, which met last Monday evening. Louise Wainwright, chair of Avon River Champions in South Devon, was our special guest. She gave a rousing speech about the abject state of our waterways and our dysfunctional regulations but proposed a solution […]
20/01/2025 / 20/01/2025 by Mark Haworth-Booth
This week I’m writing about two of my meetings as a local councillor and also reflecting on the sentencing of the Just Stop Oil activist, Dr Patrick Hart, the memorial service of Dame Elizabeth Esteve-Coll and the 24th demonstration for Gaza in London. At Full Council on Wednesday there was a warm welcome to the […]
13/01/2025 / 14/01/2025 by markhaworthbooth
Cookham-on-Thames Over the past week I was involved with the sudden crisis in local government inflicted on us by Labour ministers, while also spending time with the paintings of one of England’s most popular artists and with my comrades in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. First, following on from Blog 2, Devolution (Devo) and Local Government […]
08/01/2025 / 09/01/2025 by markhaworthbooth
How strange it was to find the Labour government giving the country three weeks to consider sweeping new changes to local government that no one had asked for, while simultaneously specifying three years for a new report by Lady Casey on Social Care – a subject on which everyone is desperate for action. Could this […]