back to article Cornish separatists take aim at pasty students

Cornish separatists have launched a campaign to scare students out of the county, along with second homers, surfers and celebrity chef Rick Stein. The Cornish Republican Army was apparently behind a graffiti outrage in Penryn this weekend. The chilling words "Penryn has had enough of students" with the tag CRA were visible to …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cornwall to declare independence

    They should as well, there are not too many roads going into Cornwall, and they have the sea.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Cornish Republican Army?

    ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.....that's funny.

    Anonymous, well, just in case ;-)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Missed opportunity

    Cornish Republican Army, Penryn. Too easy? How about the perpetrators being full of that Cornish Republican Army Patriotism. Full of it indeed.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    speaking from experience

    having worked in Penryn for two and a half years in the past, i can say the town is pretty backward. much like the Cornish (generally speaking, there are of course exceptions)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Just a few drunks I wonder

    As I have a large amount of Cornish relatives, I am down there quite a bit, I can mention that I have never heard of them.

    As to incomers, it depends entirely on the person.

    I am OK as both parents are Cornish so I could claim nationality

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Independant Republic of Cornwall (IRC)

    OohArrA - that's a good one... :-)

    Just give them their own government etc, dig a big trench to cut off Cornwall from the mainland and let them declare themselves their own sovereign state or something. While you're at it, do Scotland and Wales the same way too.

    BTW - what does the Uni of Cornwall offer you can't get in Manchester, Liverpool, London, Birmingham, York.... ? Surely there's other places those poor put-upon students can go that are used to those miscreants.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Cornish Republican Army

    Are thought we were the Repblican Army Of Cornwall?

    No that's him over there...

    SPLITTER!

  8. Grant Nurden

    PFC?

    Not the People's Front of Cornwall? Or maybe the Cornish People's Front?

    It had to be said...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Shooting ourselves in the foot

    I live in Cornwall and what these nutters should be more worried about is money leaving to county to big business'es like the supermarkets rather than students bringing some money in. Jeeez, if these chip on the shoulder muppets had their way we'd be a separate state run with a dreckly attitude, so that b*gger all would get done to resolve the real problems of a poor rural county that is slave to the tourist industry. The tin's gone, the fish has gone ... face up to it guys we need all the money we can get.

  10. Dan 7
    Grenade

    Sad muppets

    Sorry but the Ooh-Arr-Aayy quite obviously are a bunch of sad whiners with nothing better to do.

    They can't even maintain a cohesive group, constantly restarting/renaming themselves every 5 minutes.

    These are not the IRA or ETA, who are proper terrorist organisations (they might like to claim that they are freedom fighters, but freedom fighters don't oppress the very people they are supposed to be fighting for.) The Ooh-Arr-Aay should just grow up, and sod off down the pub and grumble in to their beer

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    @Missed opportunity

    During the "troubles" in Northern Ireland the army were normally very precise in refering to PIRA (i.e. Provisional IRA) and not just IRA. Maybe after the next cornish independce split they'll develop a "provisional" splinter which will be referred to as Cornish Republican Army (Provisional).

    [n.b. to ward off pedantary ... this is unlikely as I don't think there's a provisional Cornish government from the past that they could recognise as providing the enduring basis for the legitimate government of cornwall]

  12. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    I know some of the members of the CRA

    Grew up in Cornwall and know a few of the guys that are part of / in charge of the CRA.

    They're all for the independence of Cornwall, which is a great *idea*, however they cease to understand that without famous chefs (refer to Jamie Oliver's restaurant bomb threat by the CRA a couple years ago), and students (Truro College being the most wealthy establishment in the county), Cornwall would have no tourists (another thing they're against), and therefore no money.

    I'm all for the concept of Cornish independence, but truly the Cornish aren't a violent people (despite fighting against the British with the vikings), these guys are just nationalist (or anti-nationalist I suppose) pigs.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC 14:58

    The sea in cornwall is a lot warmer than the sea in birmingham

  14. Tony S
    Pint

    @AC 14:58

    As an emmit living in Kernow, I feel bound to respond.

    "give them their own government " - it's called the Cornish Stannary Parliament or "Seneth an Stenegow Kernow". Stannary courts and parliament have been around since the 1200s (although not so much recently). And we don't have so many problems with corrupt politicians.

    "dig a big trench to cut off Cornwall from the mainland" - it's called the river Tamar and runs from the south at Plymouth all the way to the north just a few miles from where I live and with a little bit of digging could easily separate the county from the uncivilised masses.

    "what does the Uni of Cornwall offer you.. " - the finest pasties in the world! (Plus really good surfing dude.)

    I'll drink a pint of Doom Bar any time.

  15. DR

    Well perhaps all the students should leave Cornwall

    then all the Cornish universities would close and local jobs would be lost.

    and the Cornish LEA can pay the LEA percentage of fee's to other universities outside of their county and help other people who aren't Cornish get jobs and expand their businesses.

    and then what would happen?

    Cornwall is already a county pretty much dependant on tourism, I'd suspect a little extra local income not so weather dependant might be nice...

    guess I was wrong.

  16. Benedict

    ha!

    I actually used to work in Penryn, the most exciting things there are the Rowes pasty shop and the (not so) Famous Barrel pub.

  17. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Pint

    Re: Cornish Republican Army

    IT should be

    Cornish Replublican Army (Provisional) C.R.A.P

    Ok, I'm leaving. Off to get a pint of St Austel Tribute.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Welcome

    Does it work the other way?

    In a hypothetical world where the Cornish People's Front (arf) get their way, are 'mainland' university towns allowed to reject Cornish applicants based upon their race? In much the same way that Scottish and Welsh universities reject appli...oh wait. What a half baked piece of logic. They might be sick of students, and they might want political independence, but I hardly see how the two issues as being inextricably linked. Why not just start referring to themselves as 'The Cornish Intolerance Party' or 'The Down-With-This-Sort-Of-Thing Club'?

    Bitter idiots who gang together in pubs and rue the day the first hotel opened in Newquay.

  19. Steve Foster
    Joke

    "pasty students"?

    That'd be the undergraduates in Computing Science, then.

    (and gives us our IT angle, to keep those commentards happy)

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmm...

    "Where is the people's republican army of Cornwall?"

    "He's over there"

    "Splitter!"

    In other news, it's a county not a country.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    More like Cornish Hens

    Yeah, you know; them little tasty one-bite chicken things.

  22. Stevie

    Eh?

    I thought the Corns were all Breton rather than Celt.

    I guess when everyone has left them alone they can go back to the historic economic model of the area and make a living by luring ships laden with rum onto the rocks instead of luring tourists into Ye Olde Gifte Shoppes.

    I expect they'll want the gratuitous "St Aargh" remarks retconned out of the remastered "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" too and the burning of all extant prints of "Poldark" next.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    iee Cornwal is not parta the Great Britian!

    its a Duchy (see under Imperiolious Royal Hunting Retreat), its not even fully goverened by british laws, its more like a annexed bit on the end where we couldnt suppress the locals hard enough to break thier will!

    which is why that whiney good for nothing prince charly has not allowed the county to actually be dragged into the 20th let alone 21st century.

    that and the fact that the MOD did a large land grab during the WW1 & 2 for all the choice bits of land,

    poor sodding locals are left with bugger all cept uninhabital stratches of mining waste land and places where even the sheep dont want to be!

    the bits left are where all the younger generation are crammed into...

    its no wonder they all left if some twit of a poncy knob decides he likes the place to look like an impoverished outer hebrides deserted island (where all the piss poor locals died off from smallpox/typhoid/colera).

    i mean there are some nice bits, but it all got grabbed by the (never seen for 11 months of the year londerners)

    yeah i support full independence for cornwall, starting with toll charges on the tamar bridge same as in wales and kicking out all the easterner invaders.

    Pyrates,,, yarrr cos we luv them cheeky chapies on the clifftops with them lanterns, yarrr rums up lads :)

  24. Pasty Muncher
    Flame

    What a lot of tosh

    Well, thanks Northerners (you all are to us) for your gushing sentiments for the beleagured Cornish nation. I'm deeply impressed - this only goes to show how little you know about us and why a small portion of the population feel it necessary to make their voice heard.

    Do you have any idea how poor Cornwall is? Do you really know what it's like not to be able to afford a house anywhere near where you were brought up? Don't bother telling me it's costly in the South East - it is, however there you have some options as to where you reside and where you work. You have an enviable (believe me, you do) transport system. You might not think so, but try living in Cornwall where in some places you never see a bus. Ever - well unless it's lost or full of gaping tourists. When you get to work you might get a decent days wage, and if not you can find somewhere else close by to work. We have little option - other than moving abroad (i.e. England). Good jobs in Cornwall are few and far between. And house prices are astronomical compared with the average salary.

    You might also whinge about the traffic - well believe me you've never seen traffic like it until you're in many Cornish towns during the summer months. And yes - we're lucky to live in such a lovely place but it's been ruined by tourism.

    When I was a lad Padstow was just a small fishing village - similar to many around the country. Rough, hard working folks lived there. Now it's full of hoorays, who have priced everyone out of the place. What was once a thriving community is now dead in winter. It's the same all across the county. Local shops have little or no trade in the winter and many have gone to the wall. Isn't tourism great? It giveth with one hand but taketh with the other.

    Tin - well there's plenty of it here folks, however it's been rendered too costly by overseas imports. And before you bleat about that being a fair market, ask all those folks across the UK who have lost their jobs to India/Phillipines/elsewhere. Cornwalls economy is knackered, however it's a sign of things to come in the whole of the UK. If people feel aggrieved enough then they revolt - I don't suppose you morons are old enough to remember the miners strike but if you were you might have some idea of what a lot of people are going through in Cornwall.

    So, spare a though for us and don't judge others unless you are in the same position.

    Nos dha.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @AC Shooting feet

    Inport more sardines. That will solve both your fish and tin shortage.

  26. Dayjo
    Thumb Up

    @Benedict

    Rowes? Are you serious? Guessing you've not had Philps' mate :)

    mmm pasty

  27. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    ..right..

    So, how about every county becomes seperatist, eh? So Devon becomes an entrenched County that blocks off all roads to Cornwall and Dorset.. let's see how that works for the CRA..

    This smacks of too many beers down the pub after reading about Korea..

    Shame as the tiny minority are ruining a bloody fantastic part of Great Britain (isn't every part??)

    A POV not shared by this Cornish chap - no, not on your blinking life.

    Twats.

  28. The Mighty Biff
    Flame

    Priced out ?

    Not wanting to be too picky, but who sold all those houses at vastly inflated prices to the hoorays ? Would that be the locals then ? Hmm. I guess it must be...

  29. Paul Ross
    WTF?

    i say

    Get on, shagger!

  30. Tzael
    WTF?

    Penryn resident here

    Wow, my town of residence makes its way into an El Reg article!

    The locals who oppose the building of student flats are only upset because it seems like buying a house in Cornwall is an impossible task unless you're very rich. Property being allocated to student populations who will only be in the county for two or three years is seen as detracting from the possibility of building and allocating properties to local long-time residents.

    Having said that, the damn idiots should wake the **** up and realise that the student population brings more commerce to this town (and Falmouth, our neighbour) than many of the traditional businesses and industries that exist in the area. If the education facilities were not located here then a good number of people would find that even if they don't directly work for the university campus, their business income would be affected.

    Cornwall has a backwards attitude to what they refer to as the 'emmit' population. I'm from the North of Scotland where we have a good rep for welcoming visitors with open arms and fleecing them for all their tourist pennies. The Cornish prefer to tell visitors to 'eff off and would rather starve than accept the fact that they can't survive without tourism and the 'emmit' population.

  31. David Evans
    Thumb Down

    @Pasty Muncher

    Oh boo hoo. Cry me a river. You're nothing special and the South East you sneer at is full of people in exactly the same position as you; couldn't get a decent job or home in their home locale (Welsh, northern, Scottish, you name it) so the went where the work is. How on earth do you think having a pop at students, who at least bring in some income, will improve the lot of the Cornish one iota? And what would independence get you? A bunch of new bureaucrats and sod all else.

  32. Jon Green
    Terminator

    The Cornish Republican Army

    ...has run out of paint. Could someone please get him another can?

  33. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Flame

    RE: Pasty Muncher

    ".....What was once a thriving community is now dead in winter....." Sorry, but you really need to think outside the tiny Cornish box! I grew up in Devon and Cornwall, and I moved eastwards to get both a degree and work. I really, really loved the countryside and the coast, but there is SFA chance of me ever moving back to either Devon or Cornwall as neither has the IT job prospects I want. In my old home in Devon, we used to joke that if someone died in the winter that their body got propped up in the bus shelter to make the place look busy! Without the tourist industry, our village would have been like that all year round, not just in winter. Just about every kid in my class was resigned to the fact that if they wanted any form of career then they were going to have to move at least as far as Bristol.

    "....Do you have any idea how poor Cornwall is?..." When I was there, there was no way in-county that I could study a degree in computing, despite a massive slew of development grants and subsidies from London and the EU, which meant I was forced to leave to study. Other poor counties had unis offering computing degrees, even those in Scotland and Wales had! I moved first to London, where rent was four times anything in any part of Cornwall, then out to the 'burbs, where property prices would have made your Cornish eyes water. A few lads I knew from Devon that worked in the City spent their cash buying up properties in Devon and Cornwall to sell on to "emmits" and "grockles", so that was your own selling you out, not some group of "evil invaders". They came from old, dairy-farming families which still own large chunks of the Devon and Cornish countryside, but have (since the late '80s) been buying up farmland in Eastern Europe, taking advantage of poor people in other countries. They now employ people to manage their farms rather than farming themselves, so the idea that all Cornish are poor and down-trodden is just whining from the minority that never got off their backsides and made a go of it.

    My parents left Cornwall when the they got sick and tired of the backward attitude. Local politicians couldn't see beyond their own wallets, and the noisy minority of the "Kernow now!" group was making any form of enterprise a farce. Development was a joke! Because they couldn't find skilled people locally (the locals with the skills and a clue had left!), they had to employ people from as far afield as Liverpool. Becasue they employed more non-locals than locals they got constant harrassment and had Cornish flags graffitied onto their home. After they left, their business flourished outside Cornwall. When they retired it was not back to Cornwall.

    "...You might not think so, but try living in Cornwall where in some places you never see a bus...." Try anywhere in the UK outside of a major city. Since the bus system got privatised the bus companies have concentrated on the lines that make them money, which means anywhere but rural areas. The Cornish whiners need to get a clue and realise the system penalises EVERYONE not living in a major city. Oh, could that be because cities are the largest concentrations of voters? Therefore politicians tend to think of city-dwellers first, second and last. Having said that, before I saved up for a car, I used to cycle sixteen miles to college in Devon - on yer bike!

  34. MJI Silver badge
    Black Helicopters

    I looked at moving there - out of my price range

    We looked at newbuild on the edge of Falmouth, above Swanpool. Prices were high, more than I could afford, about 20% more than where I currently live. I feel at home in Cornwall, that is where most of my family came from. Any plans now shelved due to secondary school.

    I am in IT so not poorly paid, what chance do a lot of the locals have?

    Villages are having great difficulties getting planning permission for homes for young people, a cousin and his wife are living in rented accomodation behind a garage, they have been fighting for planning permission for years, usually stopped by retired people. The land is already set aside for them, it is unusable farm owned land. He cannot move away, he works in the same village as a farmer.

    Noone I know dislikes tourists in general, their lane driving can leave a lot to be desired, but hate - no - they bring money in and provide employment, if you are polite and friendly you get the same back.

    Most hate seems to be aimed at townies (boy racers in towns) rather than anyone visiting. Second home buyers are generally unpopular, but retirees settle in.

    The area my relatives live is on the edge of a big boating area, there is a lot of money coming in from them, mooring fees, boat yards ect ect.

    Holiday lets, hmm, two minds over them. They bring in money, but are not usable then for local housing, but a lot of them are in awkward locations, and also are rather small.

    I bring my accomodation with me and park it in a relatives garden!

    It is not black it is a shadow of a ASR Sea King (yes I know it isn't)

  35. lukewarmdog
    Badgers

    a house is a home

    If you can't afford a house where you live... move.

    Novel idea I know, people have only been doing it since industrialisation meant you could find a similar job to the one you were doing somewhere else.

    If you live somewhere without a bus service.. move.

    Those big places on the maps where all the roads converge? Called cities mate, you should check one out.

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Separatists Miss the Point

    As described here: http://realityinfo.org/main.htm#Slide=10

    there is nothing separate about any of us.

    By showing just how tiny minded they are I feel that giving them a block of land the size of Cornwall would be WAY too much for them to handle: Is Sealand still on the go? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand )

  37. Budley.Sama
    Grenade

    @ Pasty muncher

    do you really know what it's like not to be able to afford a house anywhere near where you were brought up?

    Why yes i do, i can't afford a house full stop, or a car, insurance or the petrol to go in one but instead of whinging about it and blaming others for my own problems i am spending all my money on getting an education that will improve my chances of getting a job (in fact i will have to move if i plan to get a job as anything other than a teacher, factory worker or mental health worker, which i'm sure are valid job options where you are).

    When you get to work you might get a decent days wage, and if not you can find somewhere else close by to work. We have little option - other than moving abroad (i.e. England). Good jobs in Cornwall are few and far between.

    The same as anywhere else in the country except major cities, i live in a fairly large town (in fact the largest town in europe) yet the only jobs available are warehousing jobs (minimum wage only) and teaching (less than 14 - 15k a year) or hospital work (under 18k a year), everything other than warehousing requires at least a year of higher education.

    My one question to you would be this, how can you expect anyone to improve their chances of getting a good job or ever affording a house if you want to get rid of higher education? Yeah great idea lets get rid of students and learning, lets make anyone with any talent in cornwall have to go somewhere else to get an education, that will help! Stupidity like this will only hasten the decline of cornwall, not help it so stop focusing on your own backyard and take a look at the rest of the country, the same things are happening everywhere.

  38. AlistairJ
    Happy

    Braying ninnies

    Ha pasties are crap and surfing is waay overrated. Those Cornwallians have just woken up to the fact they live in the _worst_county_anywhere_ plus now they have nothing but a bunch of braying home-counties trustafarian would-be students on their dorrstep, doing surfing studies or whatnot, smoking dope and whingeing about how crap Cornwall is while trying to get a shag from a pasty-shop worker .... I could go on.

  39. elderlybloke
    Linux

    What about Prince Charles?

    He owns most of Cornwell .

    He could sell it if offered a good price.

    He could then be allowed to stay as tenant , and continue his good work as promoter of all things "Green".

    Like my OS.

  40. VeNT
    Pint

    Having lived in penryn

    I don't mind all the cute female art students you get around now.

    tbh without them the town would have closed down even more. there's little enough there before anyway! now we've even got a CAFE! the chippie's re-opened and the pub's seem busier too!

    lots of them are from down here and those that arn't can't afford the houses any more than we locals can.

    the people inflating the prices are the estate agents not the buyers! they want to pay LESS!

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