Cornwall

Of course he will know, who do you think eats all the pasties?

durhamjen, what did you expect? He may not know where Cornwall is.

I've been trying to find out what Eric Pickles says about Cornwall and I cannot find anything anywhere.
Can anyone else?

roses. I think you are right, Conish Grockles and Devonshire Emmets but not 100% sure.

Honestly, your DH and family not even born and bred in Kernow. Grockels [or is it emmets in Cornwall?] INCOMERS! shout the locals, waving their pitchforks.

[roses] I'm not upset on here and have found the discussions most interesting. Do worry greatly about the future of England though.

OH's family all moved away from Cornwall and they are not true Cornish anyway having moved (down)from Hereford, but they all rave about the place, sticking the Cornish flag everywhere. I like it but not to the same extent - OH and I lived in Newquay for 2 years and my parents took me on holiday there many times. My family still live in Exmouth and Exeter but I rarely get the chance to revisit my old haunts.

Think it is getting to me: OH is dressed in a tee shirt with the writing: 'Ark at Eee'. I grumbled that he was rubbing it in, only to be told 'it is Zummerset, bought locally by our daughter' - a true Somerset lass! Oops! We will probably be speaking again by the end of the weekend but there will be no more Cornish butter passing our portals; for a few weeks anyway

DebNcreme don't let yourself get upset about this. In fact, if your DH comes from Cornwall and you have to go and visit relatives /friends there you will need to put a 'face' on it. I would do the teenage shoulder shrug 'whatever' if people brought the subject up, rather than get into a heated debate about the pointlessness of it all.I still have friends there[I shall be interested to see their reactions, as they are Cornish born.]If your Dh is swanning about with a gloating grin all day, I can see how you may feel though.
Some people obviously feel a bit raw about what they see as the North/South divide. I feel I can comment, as I am from the North myself.
There is a lot of poverty in and around London, far from being paved with gold, the streets are cracked dirty concrete.If taxes were collected locally in every county [which sounds very Sheriff of Nottingham] then some poor counties would do very badly indeed.Taxes need to be collected from the whole UK and distributed fairly.There is money and the rich everywhere, not just in London, and there HAS to be, it's what the economy runs on as long as we are a democracy and not a communist country.Even when the USSR was in it's communist heyday there was still an elite, oh yes!
Busking goes on everywhere but they are drawn to tourist-y places, of course. All kinds of people do it. Here in Oxford the musical standards of busking are incredibly good [for the most part] because, yes, they are music students.There are beggars as well, drawn to easy pickings just as there always have been, mainly fit young men with drug habits being towed by small dogs on bits of string.All major towns and cities have them.
Tourists don't have a lot of time, and they want to see London, Stratford, Oxford, York, Cambridge, Lake District above all else.It's understandable that they are not queueing up to visit Preston, Luton,or Launceston [Lanson, as the Cornish pronounce it.]Though after the depiction of Launceston in Jamaica Inn [ the muddy horse market] tourist trade may now soar there, eager punters hoping to be sold a dodgy horse by a handsome gypsy, with lashings of rain, mud and decrepit old inns.
The Grand Bard of Cornwall Rubysong ? Did you make that up?I'm guessing that depressingly, you did'nt and it's all too true. Hey nonny no no no no NO!

Quite so, Papaoscar and seasider.

I vote for special status for Blackpool which is officially Europe's Capital of Fun!
Also one of the most deprived areas in the country along with most seaside towns. We cannot charge the extortionate prices they do in Cornwall !

Those counties, JaneA, are the heart of Old England and will remain so. They do not need any pointless nationalist embellishment.

Well said penstemmon
The other thing about the denizens of counties like Cornwall claiming special status for themselves, is the question of then what happens to rather colourless counties like Staffordshire, Northamptonshire, or Worcestershire for example, which have very few claims to fame other than a natural modesty which is perhaps the very essence of Englishness?

Yes, Hon. members, lets not resort to nastiness about a very serious issue - that is how best to protect and encourage our remarkable regional ethnicities against a surging tide of London-based centralism and privilege. Perhaps a system of federalism within the UK, based on the Swiss Cantonal or German Lander models, would provide more opportunity for regional self-expression, opprtunity and equality of treatment. Maybe its time to blow some fresh regional air into the stuffy, pompous, corridors of Westminster!

Give it a rest Durham and let's not resort to insult please.

Durhamjen

I am simply not surprised there are more buskers in York than Middlesborough and Hull, why wouldn't there be, York has a totally different foot fall and it will be more lucrative. It is not the case a busker is necessarily homeless, as you said.

Was your son homeless when he was busking? He would have been perfectly understanding of the fact he would get more in York than Hull because of the tourist trade.

To be honest, if as you say, buskers your son and yourself have met managed to earn sufficient to pay rent, pay for gas and electric, pay for food etc. etc, thus no longer being homeless is a bit of an eye opener. I did not think you could earn so much money.

Sheep rustling has been ongoing for years, probably forever. This time of year is worse because of the lambing season and a thief will always be a thief.

Many York buskers were homeless and penniless until they busked. I lived near the centre for ten years, but obviously knowing some of them is not considered the voice of reason. Some buskers are students. Some came from Hull, Leeds, even Nottingham to busk in York as they knew they would get more money there than in their own cities.
My son is a musician and used to talk to the buskers when he visited us. He busked in York before they brought in the system where you had to get a licence to busk. He's busked in Hull, Newcastle, Winchester, and Southampton.
However, as usual, you know better, Ana and Aka, the voices of reason.

I wish I knew the answer, Deeda. The Isle of Wight has been struggling for years and I hate to say it but I think a 'Celtic' theme park is preferable to crumbling decay. When I was in my early twenties we were all leaving the Island in droves. We are now all retired and some of our friends have returned to live in retirement bungalows. We were tempted but remoteness is a scary option.

Yes but it seems awful to have the place filling up with some of them. Look at all the hooray henrys who congregate round Rock.

The question is can the economy be revived so that there are jobs for Cornish School leavers and houses for them to live in or do we resign ourselves to Cornwall becoming a "Celtic" theme park full of second homes and boutique hotels. I imagine the same is true of the Isle of Wight there always seems to be news of businesses closing over there.

I feel the same about the Isle of Wight, Deeda. We had to leave in 1971 as DH's qualifications were in arable farming. I understand what you're saying about programmes like Caroline Quentine's but what's the alternative? Surely any money is good for the local economy? Boutique hotels will need tourists to fill them.

Cornwall may get plenty of publicity on TV but, sadly, a lot of it is the same calibre as Caroline Quentin's dire series about twee upcountry incomers amusing themselves with quaint pastimes or opening boutique hotels and generally wrecking the local economy.
My family originally came from North Devon but I found Cornwall completely different from anywhere else I had been. We had to leave eventually when we could no longer scrape a living, but if it was possible I'd be back in a heartbeat.

The voice of reason, Aka. Not all buskers are homeless and penniless.

York University has an excellent Department of Music and many of the buskers are students, hence the high quality. I know this as a friend is a musician and music lecturer there.

You get a lot more people busking in York than in Hull or Middlesborough, POGS, so it's not the same everywhere. Homeless go where they can beg the most from the richest.
It's interesting that sheep rustling is reappearing in the North Pennines. Border reivers back again.

Not too much made of it in today's Cornish Times, just a small piece on the back page. One worrying thing was the 'Grand Bard of Cornwall' saying she looked forward to the Cornish language being a regular subject on the school timetable. This would be such a backward step as the school curriculum is already overcrowded and time spent studying to speak Cornish would mean children missing out on other education opportunities and reducing their chances of future prosperity. I have no problem with anyone learning it for fun, our as an after school club but not on the timetable.