Cornwall

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!

[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

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

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

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

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

The Grand Bard is real, rosesarered . If you do Google images you can see her in her blue robes. There are other bards as well, I think they also have them in Wales. People's hobbies are fine and good luck to them but it seems a bit odd to me.

Grockles are Devonshire and Emmets are Cornwall. We used to have great fun as my mother's surname was Emmett - Emmett by name and Emmet by nature

Grockles are Isle of Wight as well.

Yes, they are. I'm from the Isle of Wight too! West Wight which is of course different from East Wight

I hope Eric Pickles knows where Cornwall is,anno. He was in Somerset when the floods were on. As he's the minister for localism, couldn't someone give him a map?

Countryfile is in Yorkshire. Yorkshire should definitely be a separate entity. It's got lots of languages of its own, not just one.

Do you mean Yorkshire dialect ? Or the different languages that I heard on the streets of Bradford last year, in which case , yes, there certainly are a lot, but mainly from Pakistan and Poland.Or do you mean something else entirely?
Yorkshire may be the largest county, but does that mean it should be a separate entity [like Cornwall, you mean?]
Countryfile on tv is set in all the different counties isn't it? Adam's farm is in the Cotswolds.

Yes, please explain!

South and West is best, goldengirl. My family hail from Ventnor and Bonchurch. DD1 was born at St. Mary's and DS in a cottage just outside Freshwater.

I said Countryfile is in Yorkshire as I was watching it at the time I was writing.
Today Countryfile was mainly in Yorkshire. It's 75 years since The Dalesman magazine first appeared, so Countryfile was following the trail of 75 Yorkshire icons, as voted for by Dalesman readers.
Of course, you could have just switched on BBC1, but never mind. You missed a treat, Ian McMillan sitting in front of the Cow and Calf, reciting the great Yorkshire poem, On Ilkley Moor, in thick fog.

A county is an entity. Yorkshire is a separate county from its neighbours and it is an entity. There. Sorted as a separate entity.

Separatism is silly.

And it doesn't have lots of languages.

Deedaa that's brilliant. My OH has always told me it was the other way round. It's not something you would get wrong given the name, so .....that means ..... He wuz wrong

When we first moved to Cornwall in 1975 Emmet was a very long standing name for tourists and upcountry people generally. We only seemed to hear about the word grockle being used in Devon some years later. ( Of course we may just have been typically Cornish and insular and not noticed)

Deeda we moved to Cornwall in 1974 [ beat ya by a year.]Because it's such ages ago I couldn't remember which way round it was [the grockle/emmet thing.]Emmets are ants .Grockle was the word in use then for tourists in Devon [because I worked 'over the border' in Plymouth and that's where I first heard it.] It's all coming back to me now , through a dim and distant mist of time.
durhamjen I always record Countryfile to watch when I have the time, so didn't know it was set in Yorkshire in the last episode.I like Ian McMillan so look forward to watching that.I may even watch it baht'at . I have jumped up and down a few times on the Cow and Calf as a child, and even tried to inscribe my name there [huge boulders, people, not real animals.]
Used to jiggle the night away at the disco nearby as a teenager [Cow and Calf Hotel.But even though I grew up in Yorkshire[with Yorkshire family for generations] I would not wish for anymore counties to think they are so special that they must be separate in some way.Or even for North or South 'assemblies'.In the immortal word of Brian Ferry 'let's Stick Together'.

It's almost like a 'My gang is bigger/smarter/got a better language than yours' competition!

We used to have a business in the Blackpool area years ago and the tourists were called 'grockles' there too.

Well I've left the grockles in my Devonshire home town and am currently an emmet in St. Ives and very nice it is too. I'm here with a friend for a few days rest after a very busy few weeks and have just had a lovely day wandering through the town. I've had an afternoon tea and a fish and chip dinner, with a glass of wine in a pub separating the two events. I'm now on my bed in my pj's with a cup of tea having admired the waning daylight over the bay.