Some things what happen in Bridgwater and some equally personal thoughts about them by Westover Councillor and Town Council Leader Brian Smedley. All opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily not bonkers. Oh and are definitely not official Labour Party policy, God No, they wouldn’t want people to think that.
10 Jun
Extending the (Petanque) Hand of Friendship
Of course, we’ve all seen the first ever motion picture ‘Train arrives at a station’. The plot is a bit simple. A train arrives. At a station. But did you know that the station in question was La Ciotat station ? That’s Bridgwater’s twin town in France. A first. And another first was the game of ‘Petanque’. Or ‘Boules’. That was ALSO invented in la Ciotat. And for the past 6 years we’ve held an international ‘Petanque’ tournament here in Bridgwater at Victoria Park where representatives (and locally based twinners) (well, mainly locally based twinners) from our twin towns turn up and play a major tournament. The French won.
Continue reading “Extending the (Petanque) Hand of Friendship”
3 Jun
That it should come to this…and how it did
Following my extremely informative and balanced ReformUK Party article last week many people said to me ‘Bri, tell us more about your early footballing career for Llanallgo 10-year-olds on the island of Anglesey’. But instead, what I thought I’d do was take off any political hat I might be wearing and have a look…. from a historians perspective….which is what I am…at Bridgwater’s politics today.
From a totally neutral and unbiased perspective.
So, we’ll start with the bloody Tories.
Continue reading “That it should come to this…and how it did”
27 May
‘Reform’ then….Let’s have a think about this…
There’s a really telling photo on the front of the new ReformUk leaflet of Nigel Farage pointing at you and laughing. Never was there a more appropriate image. Reform tells you that ‘Britain is broken’. If it is then they broke it. The biggest single harm to Britain these past 20 years has been Brexit. The far right of British politics has morphed between different shape shifting entities over this time, back then it was UKIP, then it was the Brexit Party, now its Reform UK. They’re all the same point on the hard right of British politics and united by the crocodile smile of multi-millionaire commodities trader Nigel Farage who uses a party and its members until he’s got fed up with them and then changes to another one. Pointing at you….directly at YOU and laughing as he does it.
Continue reading “‘Reform’ then….Let’s have a think about this…”
20 May
Stranger Danger

According to the documentary ‘What it’s like to die on every planet’, on Venus the extreme temperature and sulphuric acid clouds in the atmosphere would get you within 20 minutes, whilst on Mercury solar radiation will destroy your internal cooling system and you’ll collapse onto the planets burning surface within 15 minutes. But the worse by far is landing on Uranus. This colossal gas giant will devour you within 5 minutes. That’s if the hideous winds of Uranus don’t get you first.
13 May