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    Cornwall

    Rather eccentric post by Peter Tatchell on Comment Is Free:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/10/cornwall

    He rather admits that the 1.5% support for independence might be a bit of a problem, but apparently it will go up a lot if PR comes in. This might change in time, of course, but not holding my breath.

    The language sounds great but I'm far from convinced it's the best use of school time for deprived English speaking children. And before it even happens, I'm already fed up with rich people educating their kids in minority languages and claiming that it's language rather than social class that's led to their miraculous results.

    Btw, the language would be entirely recovered, wouldn't it? Not that this would matter in a period of time, but doesn't this rather weaken the emotional pull of this language?

    As ever the idea seems to be of independence in the EU. Are they expecting optout from the common fisheries policy or something?

    All seems a bit of sideshow when there are much more serious problems to put right in Cornwall.

    #2
    Cornwall

    By including this veto in the 1508 Charter, the English monarchy was, in effect, guaranteeing a substantial degree of control over Cornish affairs to the Stannary Parliament.

    Indeed, in 1977, the British government acknowledged that recognition of the Stannary Parliament and its right of veto has never been withdrawn.
    That's a leap of sequential history that even the most ill-informed Welsh "nationalist" wouldn't dare to pray in aid.

    And of course it's true that just about any county in England that you care to name is "losing" money compared to the "other" parts of the UK - Scotland, Wales and NI - in terms of the balance of UK redistribution of taxes and spend, not to mention EU money. That's because - as Tatchell himself points out in the article - Cornwall as a whole, despite any of the moans of particular locals, is actually very prosperous, while some other bits of the UK are on their fucking arses.

    The Cornish language, btw, survives in about the same way as the Welsh one does. Revived and taught in schools and therefore spoken by about 40% of the population, most fervently in the houses whose Dads fly the black and white Kernow flag in the front garden. Actually "needed" (when they set foot in a room with any "foreign" English speakers) by about, oh, let's call it zero per cent.

    Still, I'm all for the break-up of the UK. Absolutely, 100%. There's no such thing as England, and even if there were, Cornwall certainly wouldn't be in it. Let's break the UK up, and expatriate all the Scots back out of London to Sauchiehall Street. Brown, Darling, and Ferguson can be on the first National Express Coach home.

    Comment


      #3
      Cornwall

      You've lost me.

      But on the first bit about the treaty, is he in effect saying someone in 1977 discovered that it didn't say what people thought? That doesn't really prove it wasn't part of England for that time, does it?

      Comment


        #4
        Cornwall

        No.

        "Wales" never "existed" as a previous and legal separate entity, either, certainly not in any real sense since "Mercia" and "Wessex" were also and equally separate entities.

        Comment


          #5
          Cornwall

          I'm not bothered by that at all. As long as there's a sense of separateness over a period of time, then I accept that. Wales certainly fits that criterion.

          But the status of Cornwall here is cited as evidence for its separateness. He doesn't mention anything between Henry VII to Jim Callaghan. How much did that treaty mean over the years? I'm pretty sure that Cornwall County Council couldn't veto legislation about tin mining throughout that time. To say the treaty hadn't been amended in that time and that this makes Cornwall separate is legalistic.

          Comment


            #6
            Cornwall

            I remember staying about 15 years ago, together with my then wife, with an old Cornish friend of hers at her home in Lostwithiel. Our hostess was well into her Cornish issues. One day she came home from a brief shopping trip well chuffed and announced that she'd just heard her first real life example of a business transaction being conducted in the Cornish tongue. "Which shop was that in?" I asked, the answer being that it was in the market, at a stall specialising in Cornish language books.

            Comment


              #7
              Cornwall

              I was under the impression that the last native speaker of Cornish died in the 18th century, and that the version of the language circulating now is a modern construct based on the old tongue, much like Hebrew. Is this wrong?

              I was also under the impression that the Cornish revival movement was tiny, and had very little traction. Rogin's claim that 40% of the population speaks it, and that it is taught in schools, is rather surprising.

              Comment


                #8
                Cornwall

                Did I imply "spoken" as in "fluently as a language", sorry, no, that's certainly not right (although 40% is possibly about right in terms of "proper" Welsh speakers in Wales). "Spoken" as in "have been taught to say "hello, how are you" and "my name is ... " that kind of thing, in primary schools, is probably about right, though. (My 40% statistic is an entirely unreliable one based on the fact that I know about a dozen people who live in Cornwall, and around half of them say their kids learn Cornish at that level, more as a project as anything else).

                Comment


                  #9
                  Cornwall

                  40% of Welsh people speak Welsh?
                  Sir i doubt that very very much.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Cornwall

                    I note also that Peter Tatchell mentions PR here. Is it just me or have a lot of people on the left started to support it fairly recently? I think their entirely right to do so, but Tatchell here seems to forget that you have to do deals with other parties to get things done. Let's say the Cornish nationalists multiply their vote by 10 and get about 17%. It would still take some doing finding another 34% from somewhere.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Cornwall

                      Wikipedia says that 20% of the population of Wales can speak and understand Welsh, and about 16% are literate in it. The number of people fluent in Cornish is a few thousand tops.

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