19/04/2017 Points West

Good evening from BBC Points West. for the news where you are.

Our headlines tonight: The race for our votes.

Political parties rise to the occasion with seven weeks

The mum-to-be who suffered a vicious dog attack.

The police try to find the owner. And you could well see some light

rain around tomorrow but, either side of that,

As we've been hearing in the national news,

MPs voted today to approve a general election on the 8th of June.

A third of this region's parliamentary seats changed hands

last time around and there's sure to be plenty of close

With the story, here's our political editor, Paul Barltrop.

This is Chipping Sodbury, part of the Thornbury and Yate

constituency which the Conservatives took of the Lib Dems last time.

The majority of 1500, though, means it's the West's most marginal.

The second closest contest - well, that's Stroud.

It's a Conservative seat with Labour as the main challengers.

The Tories must also defend Bath, though there it's the Lib Dems

And the fourth closest contest is Bristol East -

a Labour seat with the Tories as the main challengers.

At the Liberal Democrat office in Chippenham,

Campaigning already underway for May's local

We were already prepared for the game - you warm up

before the match starts, and we've been ready

in the West Country since the referendum and Mrs May

Last year's Brexit vote was very significant for both

I joined a few days after the EU referendum result.

I have been a Conservative voter before that, but not any more.

I've been a member of the party for about 20 years.

But this feels quite different - a lot more buzz and

Warming up for a summer election are Somerset's Conservatives.

They were already busy campaigning to keep control

A little bit shocked yesterday, I have to be honest.

I've been campaigning for the county for a number of months now.

We thought the time had gone for the general election.

In both contests, they face strong challenges from the Lib Dems.

Fortunately, we've had the county council campaign up

and going and we will use the same people, resources

We're in a good place to launch the national campaign.

Others are still selecting candidates.

In Stroud, former Labour MP David Drew is considering standing

I'm not sure if it's good for Labour, but it's not necessarily

very good for the country because I'm quite worried

that we seem to be going on a populist bandwagon,

and I don't think that's good for our democracy.

He knows party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who last year came campaigning

in Gloucestershire, isn't doing well in the polls.

It would be nice if we had lots of people out, sticking up

bunting and the rest of it, but it isn't quite like

Maybe the Conservatives knew it was coming, but I don't even

think they knew that this was going to be what we were

Campaigning for local elections has been underway for months.

When news of a general election first broke yesterday,

it came as a surprise to many, but perhaps the bigger surprise

was the amount of attention one voter in Bristol received.

Our correspondent, Jon Kay, went back to see Brenda.

Brenda - 75 years old and suddenly an Internet sensation.

Just one comment to BBC News about being fed up

with elections and this retired secretary went viral.

Somebody here in America's saying, "Well said, Brenda."

Quite frankly, no, because I don't possess any form of technology.

She's been deluged with media office since the anti-election broadcast,

but not all the responses have been positive.

There are some people on social media saying,

Brenda is wrong here, we fought for the right

to vote in elections, we should be proud of doing this.

In my very humble opinion, there's hardly anybody

in any of the parties that you would put your

We need somebody that's got a little bit of guts to get us all going.

It seems Brenda has got many of us going -

a floating voter, now the unlikely early star of this election.

Not since her days in amateur dramatics has Brenda known

With election fatigue being expressed by experienced

voters like Brenda, I asked Chante Joseph, a student

representative at the University of Bristol, how she and her peers

feel about getting the chance to vote so soon.

I don't really feel like this was done in the best interests

of the rest of the country, particularly young

This was very much a Conservative opportunity.

Labour were announced to be 21 points behind the Conservatives

and they have the potential of having a 100-MP lead, so this

was very much an opportunity, and I feel like it's thrown a lot

of people into an awkward position, now having to go through a general

election just after we've had Brexit and people are still

trying to process that and what that means for them.

Is there an element of voter fatigue amongst young people?

I particularly think that a majority, I think it's

71% of young people, voted to remain, and I feel

like young people were not consulted or spoken to when it came

to the decision to leave the EU and we were pushed into a decision

that was never really for our benefit in the first place.

And so, on top of that, having to go through a general election,

just as we weren't listened to then, I feel like a lot of young

people are thinking, are they even going to listen to us

Will young people be listened to in these negotiations?

I feel like a lot of people don't think that's

What do you think young people actually want to hear

I feel like it's going to be a lot about ensuring

that we are at the centre of a lot of the decisions made when you look

at things like housing benefit for young people,

when you look at things like education and how much that

costs, when you look at things like even the Labour policy

for free school meals for 11-14-year-olds,

things like that, those things that really do affect us and impact us

Trying to find work as a young person is very difficult.

Are there enough opportunities when we graduate?

Are we going to be able to work abroad with all the stuff that's

These are the things that young people are concerned

Staff at BMW in Swindon went on strike today

It's the first in a series of eight 24-hour stoppages

by members of Unite Union, who are protesting over

BMW says the current setup is unsustainable and they're making

changes now to protect existing and future pensions.

A heavily pregnant woman and her husband needed hospital

treatment after being attacked by two dogs in Wiltshire.

Emma Vickery began having contractions after two mastiff-type

dogs left her with multiple bite wounds yesterday evening.

They were just charging at my stomach. At one point, I was on the

ground. I did not see how it would end. We were hoping the dogs would

sniff about go away, but the nightmare happened and they started

attacking us. Police are now looking

for the owner, described as a woman in her 60s who left the area

in a Mini. The last Concorde to take

to the skies has been unwrapped ahead of the grand opening

of a new museum in Filton. Hundreds of metres of film

protecting it from the building work The jet will be the centrepiece

of the ?19 million Aerospace Bristol centre, which it's hoped

will open in August. The rest of the week will be

overwhelmingly the dry picture that tomorrow will be one of those

exceptions, at least partially so. There will be the prospect of seeing

a bit of light rain through the course of the afternoon, but many of

you will see none of that and remain under dry conditions. Through the

course of the night, we have seen a few spots of rain falling in a few

districts, that any areas will remain dry, temperatures 4-7 C. As

we head through into tomorrow, the son of view at least, a fairly

bright start, sunshine around, but fairly quickly cloud will invade

from the north. That is accompanied by a weak warm front with light

drizzly rain. No great amounts however. Into the afternoon, many

areas dry. Just the chance of one or two showers breaking out. Most of

you will see dry weather by the way through. Temperatures tomorrow will

get into the low teens, 13 Celsius is fairly typical. As we look

towards Friday, a warm day, but a lot of cloud around. It is looking

affectively similar story across the UK. Thomas

matter has that story. Good evening, before we get to the

forecast, I want to show you a map which depicts how dry it has been

during the course of April. Brown is below average rainfall, blue is

above average. You can see how Brown the map is. Some areas in the south,

some counties have only seen a few percent so far in April. Not

necessarily a