Serious?
Is this article serious? For some reason I was laughing the whole way through it.
Cornwalls economy would no doubt collapse without English tourism.
Celebrity chefs Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver have received an email threat from the "Cornwall National Liberation Army" (CNLA) saying the separatist group will "strike at the heart" of their restaurants at Padstow and nearby Watergate Bay. According to the Western Morning News, police are taking "very seriously" the organisation …
I'm sorry but before today I have never heard of these people (no not oliver, I've heard enough of him) wanting to get 'other' people out of their Cornish tin mine land.
How can they not want the house prices to rise, then they can all sell up and move to places that have modern values, real drinking water, and toilets that flush into a managed sewer system instead of into the sea or a hole at the bottom of the garden.
Next they will be throwing wooden clogs at tourist because they make the price of a cream tea rise........
I go down their every year for my holidays and love the place and the local businesses are only too happy to take all my money off me, so I cant see how they don't want outsiders spending and opening new business to bring in even more outside money.
Now this had made me think of the place like in Hot Fuzz, something evil underneath lurks....Yarp!
maybe I missed the point, maybe I should now think of the place like iraq and book somewhere else this year......
Read the article again outloud with a really dopey south-west-country accent. And then be afraid, be very afraid.
I like the use of 'Padstein' though, quite good. He does have a lot of business there, and could have irritated any local businesses which might have previously managed to scrape by selling second rate greasy food. Can't get away with manky chips fried in weeks-old oil any more.
Did the cottage-burning in Wales stop people moving there? Or the house prices going up? No, not really.
Having just returned from a lovely family holiday in these parts I find this article rather shocking.
It is common knowledge as to where Stein's house is, at the mouth of a bay next to a lighthouse - and although such terrorist acts may help the lighthouse with its work - I don't think its going to much good for the CNLA long-term.
However, probing at the deeper meaning behind the article - as a country we need to look at how the cult of celebrity moving to such small economies adversely effects the indigenous population.
Ginsters is not a global conglomerate though Kernlow - please don't think they could support you by themselves.
No, i doubt if they're serious. But on the other hand, Cornish people can't afford to live in Cornwall anymore - all the houses are too pretty and are snapped up by merchant w^Hbankers as second or often third homes.
My own home village - in Wiltshire, not Cornwall - is now 90% owned by people who do not live there, and i'm not talking about rental properties either - those houses are empty all week. The owners bring food and other items with them from London (usually but not exclusively) and thus do not supplement the local economy.
My best friend, the farm worker, cannot afford to live anywhere near the farm anymore. He has to drive 20 miles every day from the nearest large town.
Something's badly wrong. So no, i doubt if this is serious. But it's certainly a symptom of something which is extremely serious.
Okay guys, sit down, this might come as a shocker...
We've invented this strange hot stuff (don't get to close) and you can use it to cook food so it tastes yummy and doesn't give you the sh*ts.
To make this hot stuff, which we have named "fire" (catchy eh?), you get two dry bits of wood and rub them together very fast.
We hear of magic sticks from far away lands that make "fire" when struck along a rough surface, but as yet we have not been able to obtain any.
Now here's the really cool bit... "Fire" will actually eat things to make the heat, so if you have something you don't like, you rub the sticks together near the offending item, and the "fire" will crawl over it and eat it.
Obviously the CNLA have waaaaay too much time on their hands. Why dont they spend their time trying to improve the lives of sick/elderly/vulnerable people within the Cornish area, instead of acting like a bunch of dicks.
And when they are found, they should all be hung for treason.......
Considering that Mr Stein had the audacity to claim that local businesses should be grateful about the inconvenience he is putting them through while renovating the latest of his ventures (and causing massive disruption in the town in the process), I am not particularly surprised by some of the Cornish getting their backs up about celebrity chefs.
But I am a bit surprised by the viciousness and the threats of physical harm... Not nice.
"At a recent joint meeting, members (Bert) and financial supporters (Bert's 'wife') of the An Gof militant organisation (founded 1980 - when Bert & Irene got together - and reformed 2007 - when the sprog left home) and the Cornish Liberation Army (ol' Ernie and Edith) agreed to dissolve their respective organisations and to combine all resources (the change from behind Bert & Irene's couch cushions and ol' Ernie's Reliant Robin) and reform as the Cornish National Liberation Army (CNLA). Substantial funding (this week's benefit cheque) has been received to continue what have previously been low-key activities (grumbling about the lack of parking in Padstow) with donors from the other Celtic nations (ol' Ernie's cousin up in Skye) as well as the United States. (Bert's sprog - who's on holiday in Florida)
Yep, they exist; usually their militant activities are usually limited to writing letters to the editor of 'The Cornishman' and painting over English Heritage signs. Perhaps the pair of them have moved on to bigger targets and are now threatening fiery armageddon to over-priced fish and chip shops.
Having said which, Cornwall does have real economic problems - outside of Chelsea it is the area of the country needing the greatest multiple of annual income to get a mortgage, many villages are 75% holiday homes, water rates and council tax are ruinous, industry's in the crapper and no one can build new homes thanks to the entire place being divided between Prince Charles and the National Trust. The government couldn't care less since there are no Labour seats in the region, and the Conservatives were no better when they were in power.
The only thing that's been really helping Cornwall is Objective One funding from the EU which has been used to rebuild infrastructure; but that money is running out now.
get rid of the townie bastards, they cock up everything, especially those city dwelling assholes who buy quaint second homes for the weekend who use them a handfull of times a year, and mean that people like myself can not afford to live in the area we grew up in and would like to remain
stick to the bloody suburbs, just because you have had a nice holiday there doesnt mean to say the welcome u will get if u move there will be friendly
after all what use are you once we got ur holiday money?
Well, she was the one proclaiming Independence for Conrwall!
More seriously, Rich Bryant had a valid point and at the risk of coming over all Tubs, local homes should be for local people, not bankers wanting another trinket. What we really need is a good recession to flush these moneyed fools out into the open and see prices fall back to somewhere around normality.
Twelfty!.
Even though i've already stated that i don't think this is serious, i've now read the other comments.
You nasty, narrow-minded stereotyping little bigots! God, i hope it IS serious and that all your houses are on their list!
Go on, make similar jokes about black people, if you have the balls.
Try buying somewhere in London.
It is possible to understand why they don't want to be part of England, and that's because the only big city they can visit is Plymouth.
If my only experience of an English city was Plymouth I'd be pretty pro-Independence as well.
In Holland, along the northern coastline to be specific, the local authorities levy an extra "poll tax" on houses near the beach that are not occupied by the owners all year. In this country people are officially registered at their address and cannot be registered simultaneously elsewhere.
The German owners of holiday bungalows always complain about this tax, only to be explained that it was the 'occupier' that introduced it during WWII to commandeer coastal properties for 'defense' purposes.
Ah, the engineer hoist by his own petard...
Its about time these jumped up cooks were put in their place.
Personally I think theres no way that these type of restaurants, either Olivers ASBO laden '15' or Steins over priced fish bar, could survive if it relied on the locals.
The southwest has the largest gap between wages and house prices in the country!
Stein and Oliver need the London second and third homers to keep them in designer flats and patronising sea food programmes.
Cornwall has beautiful countryside, amazing beaches and a deep history, but all people from outside the South West know of Cornwall is that its where that fat tongued cockney t**t keeps his juvenile delinquents and where Stein likes to pretend to go fishing!
Get back to London and take your second homers with you, Cornwall doesn't need your false pretentious over priced menus.
People from the area can't afford to live near where they grew up. Like pretty much everywhere really. The solution - earn more ;-)
As for blaming the selfish outsiders who bought the houses - what about the former residents who "sold out" when they sold the houses. Should they have (a) taken the best price (b) sold to a "local" for less because that's all they can afford.
I know what I'd do.
"If my only experience of an English city was Plymouth I'd be pretty pro-Independence as well."
The Capital of Cornwall is Truro, a nice city with a beautiful cathedral, Plymouth is in Devon a different county.
Cornwall without toursim would actually get better btw, tourism is pretty much ruining Cornwall because that is how it is seen, as a place to go and get a tan during the summer months. You have people who own second homes here, or people who buy many homes to rent them out during the summer months to tourists.
The water rates in Cornwall, highest in the country and of course, tourists don't pay for them do they? The hundreds of thousands who come and use our state of the art water facilities, then expect locals to pay and then feel grateful that you pay people in other parts of the country to stay here.
So yep, we're so happy you come down here, that our water rates are the highest in the country, that you come litter our beautiful countryside, get drunk, make lewd suggestions at our local girls, clog up our roads, and then expect us to pay for it.
"Cornwall without toursim would actually get better btw, tourism is pretty much ruining Cornwall because that is how it is seen, as a place to go and get a tan during the summer months."
LMAO - you sound just like my mother. Cornwall is one of the poorest regions in the whole of Europe and you think depriving the area of its main source of income would actually help things? You clearly have no understanding of economics. I don't like the way the beaches are heaving and the roads are clogged during summer but it's the price to pay for living in such a magnificent area. That's not to say that things can't be done to improve the situation. Heavy levies should be placed on second home owners to counter the damage to the economy; other counties should be made to contribute to services like the RNLI, environmental control and water cleanup; congestion charges should be introduced for non-residents, etc. Simply hating outsiders and threatening their lives only highlights how backward some aspects of this county are.
I was born in Truro and now live in Falmouth and I am appalled by some of the local people around. Racism is quite high, apprecitation/understanding of politics is low, IQ levels are low in some aspects of the community, poverty is high, performance of schools is appalling and house prices bear no relation to local earnings. This isn't some perfect place being ruined by outsiders - a lot of the problems are our own doing. If people actually paid attention to local politics then they'd see how completely useless the local council is and could vote to change the situation. As it is people would rather moan about outisders and threaten violence than actually try to improve things. This article just highlights what a joke our separatist movement is... the joke is that we even have one. We cannot support ourselves as a region... heck, Scotland barely can! We don't have tin mining any more - we are desperately reliant upon government and European aid and the money brought in by tourists.
Having said that I can see the appeal of blowing up Rick Stein, regardless of patriotism - the irony of cooking him alive would not be missed. You've got to do something with your weekends and I can think of a lot worse ways to spend it.
"One of our activists was a member of the Free Wales Army who were responsible for the burning of English holiday homes in that Country" probably doesn't hold up to much scrutiny. Although joining the FWA was a pretty straightforward undertaking back in the day (are you one of us?), the holiday home burning campaign started a few years after the FWA fell apart.
(see Roy Clews' classic "To Dream of Freedom" for the whole Carry-On-Terrorising escapades of the pitch-fork wielding Evans the Freedom Fighter F.W.A. old devils.)
""No, i doubt if they're serious. But on the other hand, Cornish people can't afford to live in Cornwall anymore"
Um... Just like the rest of the country?""
The main difference being that wages in Cornawll are far lower than the rest of England, but Cornish house prices are rising above the rest of England (London excluded).
If you think it is easy to survive living in Cornwall, go there and live for a few years, earning Cornish wages, paying Cornish water rates, and paying Cornish house prices. Add to that, you will be paying Cornish tourist rates for virtually everything all the year round, and many of the luxury items and some not so luxury) you can buy over the counter in other counties, will likely have to be ordered and delivered by post/carrier, making them more expensive.
Your attitude would be different, I can guarantee!
Pissed off with city types moving to your town, bumping up property prices, etc?
Do what I did and move from your scabby little area* and come to London and annoy the locals with your strange accents, customs, and ideas about women and peope who have kids out of wedlock [the shame! Stone them to death!]**
Hope that helps.
Steven R
* put Thrumster into Gmaps to see where I came from...
** although as with most vehement, short sighted, not smart enough to better themselves 'local town for local people' types, they probably have no problem with marrying in the family...certainly true of all the people where I'm from who moan about holiday home owners etc. Makes Norfolk look genetically diverse.
"LMAO - you sound just like my mother. Cornwall is one of the poorest regions in the whole of Europe and you think depriving the area of its main source of income would actually help things?"
Of course it would. Everything in Cornwall now has a tourist premium added on top of it.
115,000 people went to the isles in 2001, not bad for a place with only 2,000 or so inhabitants. That means Scilly has to have the infrastructure to cope with not the 2000 people who live there, but the 115,000 people that travel there every year.
Your council tax has to pay to empty the bins filled up with lolly pop sticks, and for the road workers to pick up empty pasty bags, to repair the roads which are overused (remember, no motorway in Cornwall, just the A30). Your water rates have to supply water to the tourists, flush their toilets.
And then we get onto the job front. You wanna IT job in Cornwall? Got your qualifications that'll earn you 45k in London? Good job, you might be able to get minimum wage in Cornwall, heck before minimum wage you would have got 80p an hour.
Then we can move on to the high unemployment which keeps the wages low, with so many people going for the same job the person advertising the job knows they can put minimum wage down and still get some numpty applying.
And shall we continue onto off season? Tourists all gone, so all the people who were employed to cover the tourist season now find themselves down the job centre waiting for next year so they can wait hand and foot on people who can afford to come here on holiday.
Without tourism Cornwall would be forced to get off its lazy backside and actually try to get an industry going, it wouldnt have the tourists to blame for its high house prices or high water rates. Instead people put up with it and that is why Cornwall will continue to recieve Objective One status from the EU, why minimum wage will be the common offer and why tourism is bad for Cornwall.
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"How can they not want the house prices to rise"
Because it's extremely inflationary. You can only want anything to become more expensive if you are selling it at a lower price than you bought either it or it's replacement and if that isn't the case then it is exremely uneconomical. Rising house prices do not create wealth.
Now that Scotland has it's own parliament and Wales at least has an assembly it's time for some federalisam in England and put an end to oppression from London and the South East! Centralisation has been consistent government policy since the mid 1970's
For the People's Republic of Mancunia!
An awful lot of Cornish people are racists who are indignant that so many "immigrants" come in to do agricultural and building work which they can't afford to do because they refuse to accept low wages and/or a lower standard of living. Without these immigrants and tourists there would be even fewer jobs / income for those employing them. Tourists do pay indirectly for their use of water and sewerage by paying inflated prices for accommodation. If people want second home owners to pay for their luxury they should vote for a political party that has the balls to tax them appropriately - yes, I know there isn't one. Oh, and by the way, when the arse fell out of the mining industry many Cornishmen became immigrants the world over. Stop whingeing Cornwall and get on with it. BTW I'm an "immigrant" from Devon living in Cornwall.
I know a little bit about extremism, having been up against some, both in the Army, and later, the Police. I note with interest the info about the "imported" arsonist from Wales. We sure had problems in Wales a while back, and at the time of the investiture of Prince Charles at Caernarvon,, MI5 ran an operation here. Recent evidence suggests that the KGB, and, in later years, the IRA, tried to capitalise on our problems. Let us hope the imported dork has the expertise of the two who scored an "own goal" when trying rto blow up Prince Charlie's train route. These people need watching. however, as outside acencies not best dispposed to us. (Can I call Britain us, or are we that far gone?) are all too quick to jump on the bandwagon. The IRA, in the early 60s supplied the Free Wales Army with some weapons, which, once the recipients realised how deep in the brown stuff they now were, dumped them in a reservoir. We then had a SERVING soldier,( a sergeant in the Royal Army Dental Corps no less1) whoi took it on himself to construct bombs for these people. He was caught along with his comrades. A lot of your contributors rightly point out how small the membership of this crowd of idiots is, but it doesn't take many to start trouble. And NO, we don't want our firebomb"expert" back. If he doesn't blow himself, and his team up, keep him!
Country boundarys have always been fluid, the old 18th century divisions of countries by the then powers are being recognised as the artificialities that all country boundaries are. On the one hand you have larger regional conglomerations such as the EU forming, on the other, existing distinctive groups want their own identity and their own lands, like the Basques, the Scots and the Cornish.
The other part of it is a problem the world over, rich people move in and buy up the quaint housing in cheap rural areas and the locals have to move out. Vast areas of the Australian coast are now wall-to-wall tourist towns, the only full time residents being cashed-up retirees.
"Of course it would. Everything in Cornwall now has a tourist premium added on top of it."
Great, so now all those unemployed people formerly employed by the tourism industry can afford the slightly cheaper prices... oh, wait, they haven't got any money.
"Without tourism Cornwall would be forced to get off its lazy backside and actually try to get an industry going"
So we'll get rid of all the jobs in catering, hospitality, entertainment, cleaning, etc and do what exactly? It's not like those Computeach qualifications can actually turn dustbin men into CEOs of multinational IT companies. Last time I checked you can't just make an economy out of nothing.
"Your council tax has to pay to empty the bins filled up with lolly pop sticks, and for the road workers to pick up empty pasty bags, to repair the roads which are overused (remember, no motorway in Cornwall, just the A30). Your water rates have to supply water to the tourists, flush their toilets."
Yes, because that obviously costs a lot more than the money tourism brings in. /End sarcasm
Whats wrong with the Cornish minority? Are they frightened that 'new blood' might dilute their stagnant gene pool and prevent them from inbreeding?
I'm not surprised they have someone from the faux Free Wales Army, both groups seem to have an IQ that verifies centuries of inbreeding.
Statements such as "English Out" are proudly used by both groups, but ask them this simple question: "OK, I'll get out of Wales/Cornwall, but can send all the Welsh/Cornish fsckers back?", they kinda go geo-stationary!!!
Scots, Welsh, Irish, Cornish - At this rate, how long before the Angles and the Saxons decide that they can't stand each other anymore, and want to split from the rest of England and from each other?
Soon, you'll need to get three different visas to travel all the way down to the neareat pub!