Somerset Confidential®
Nearly a year after we launched our sister newsletter business, Somerset Confidential® we have a growing number of subscribers. This is now a major part of our news service and allows us to go into more depth on specific topics.
Over the course of the past year we have covered:
- How missteps by the authorities helped avian flu come to Somerset
- Why most of our roads aren’t gritted and what you can do about it
- The Pig Gate scandal
- A 3 part investigation into the state of the NHS in Somerset
- Meltdown at Porlock Parish Council
- Somerset MPs in the Conservative Leadership crisis
- Where is David Warburton?
- Pow’s legacy of intreated sewage pouring into the Levels
- How bus back better not bus back best
In short if you want to know everything you need to know about what’s going on in Somerset, you need Somerset Confidential®. You can get your copy delivered direct to your email inbox by subscribing:
- Free: you can subscribe for our free weekly (ish) service. Every Monday we send out new material highlighting our big story of the week.
- Paid for service: This comprises all the free weekly newsletters plus at least 12 “specials”. More in depth or time sensitive reporting. It costs just £30 a year which works out at 58p a week.
When you sign up to subscribe you’ll be offered both options. Simply choose the one you prefer.
We promise the same standard of journalism, the same awkward questions as before. And now an opportunity to read stories in between editions of the hard copy Leveller®.
Why not join the hundreds of Somerset readers who have signed up already to get Leveller® Confidential. If you want to take a look you can go there now https://levellerconfidential.substack.com/
And please help us to spread the word by sharing with friends, colleagues and anyone else who you think might be interested.
Resonating with this ‘octogenarian’ Northcliffe’s ‘dictum’ let light e’re shine on power, less that power corrupts’ the ‘escutcheon’ of the ‘lamented’ Reg Dickenson, sometime Editor in Chief, Western Daily Press, member of Reuters, on retirement ‘consultant’ to Sir Ray Tindle’s West Country Publications; fashioned in the ‘mould’ of ‘ink-journalism’ pace ‘Lesser’ Columbus! We live in ‘troubled’ times, pace algorithms & the ‘false’ panacea of everything digital; whither the ‘journalist/proprietorship’ of yesteryear? A salutary lesson, the demise of the ‘written-word’!*
What this ‘octogenarian’ gives witness in the ‘wilful’ emasculation of the Bristol & ‘local’ publications’ without a journalistic ‘whimper’ with notable exemptions, a ‘latent’ acquiescence across the industry, compounded in an ‘inept’ Cairncross Review ‘shuttled-off’ to the House of Lords. Reach Plc Trinity Mirror) the ‘transitory-custodians’ never read Publish & Be Dammed, Hugh Cudlipp a ‘History’ of the Harmsworths? (Sunny ‘spinning’ in his grave!)
What the LEVELLER has achieved in a ‘decennial’ against the odds of the false ‘panacea’ of everything digital; embraced by Bristol Cable & contemporary ‘pamphleteers’ (Chapter VI On Ink-Spilling: WDP) the ‘largest’ circulation, Somerset ‘NEWSPAPER – Truth to Power’! The writer a fervent belief in the next local-authority ‘quinquennial’ a ‘pan-publication’ LEVELLER across the ‘historic’ Shire County of Somerset; a hunger & thirsting to quote ‘nonagenarian Sir Ray Tindle whose 220 titles from the Abergavenny Chronicle to the Cowbridge Gem, in a valedictory message asserted “Local news in depth is what people need” supported by someone at the opposite end of the media food chain, Sir Martin Sorrell former head of the world’s biggest advertising company, advocating advertiser should keep ‘faith’ with newspapers; therein the challenge!
C B Fawcett, Professor of Geography, Newcastle University, who did all the basic work & drew up boundaries for Bristol’ Province’ decades ago; therein what should be the ‘vision’ for WECA/Somerset/Shire/Unitary/City & County of Bristol, the latter by its history, the ‘administrative’ capital?
“So now the Mirror of the Day,
The gift most lavish, and the last,
Lies waiting, Woman, in your way,
To show your face, to hold the past,
To catch each ray the time outpours,
And flash it back.The glass is yours”. (Dedication in the first issue of Northcliffes daily news-paper for gentlewomen.)
*Greater Bristol: Lesser Columbus: Pelham Press Ltd. Chapter VI On Ink-Spilling (WDP)
Burning the Books: Richard Ovenden: ISBN 978 – 1 – 529 – 37875 – 7)