Leafleting in Bugle division

Over the next couple of weeks, MK members and supporters will be delivering leaflets in support of our local candidate, Dr Garry Tregidga.

The leaflet will thank the 360 people who voted for Garry in the May local elections, and invite anyone interested in finding out more about MK to a meeting at the Rescorla Centre, in Rescorla, on 15th September at 7.00.

If anyone fancies helping out with the deliveries, please give me a call on 07791 876607.

Politics at Indian Queens Primary School

I was very pleased to be involved with the pupils of Indian Queens Primary School in a democracy project, which they carried out earlier this year. Steve Double MP visited the school to talk with the children, and I was one of three councillors who were grilled by them when they visited the offices of Cornwall Council and took over the council’s debating chamber.

The report can be found on the School’s website at:

http://www.indianqueensschool.org/projects/democracy.html

New website for Queens Pit

I am very proud to be a trustee of Indian Queens Pit, and pleased to be able to publicise the fact that the Pit Association has just launched a new website. It includes some historic information about the monument, as well as details about our associated community building. It will also include details about events in the Pit, as and when they are arranged.

The site has been built by Dinah Crellin (DMC IT), who lives in St Enoder Parish. 

The website can be found at: www.indianqueenspit.co.uk.

Will the size of the St Dennis incinerator undermine recycling efforts?

Cornwall Council’s “waste and recycling, street and beach cleansing” contract comes to an end in March 2020.

Work has already started on the options for the next contract, and the Council’s cabinet member (environment and public protection) has spoken about the need to protect the environment by “reducing waste and increasing recycling rates.”

I certainly agree that it is ridiculous that, across the UK, thousands and thousands of tonnes of recyclable and bio-degradable material is dumped in landfill or incinerated, when much better use could be made of such resources.

It is all summed up extremely in the “Wealth from Waste” report which was published a few years ago by the Local Government Association. This stated: “The simple fact is that taxpayers would be better off, the economy will benefit, and more people will have jobs if we grow the domestic market for collecting, sorting and reprocessing recycling … recycling actually brings in cash for the taxpayer and we owe it to today’s hard-pressed taxpayers to get as much of their money back as possible.”

But in this regard, Cornwall has a long way to go. We only recycle 36 per cent of our local waste, and our performance is significantly behind many other parts of the United Kingdom.

Just look how we compare with Wales. It has just been confirmed by the Welsh Government that they have achieved an ambitious recycling target of 64% – some three years ahead of schedule. One county, Ceredigion, even managed a rate of 70% – the proposed Welsh target for 2025.

But here in Cornwall, there is a complication. The unitary authority is tied into a multi-million-pound “integrated waste” disposal contract, structured around the controversial incinerator near St Dennis, which has just become operational.

It is well documented that I was an outspoken opponent of the incinerator and, in particular, the size of the plant.

Designed to principally deal with Cornwall’s domestic waste, it has an annual capacity of 240,000 tonnes. But each year, we generate about 170,000 tonnes of residual waste (from kerbside collections and household waste recycling centres) – significantly less than the capacity of the incinerator – and that is after we have recycling just over a third of our waste.

The reality is that if we were to meet the government’s 2020 recycling target of 50%, the amount of residual waste would be much reduced and the void within the incinerator – to be filled with commercial waste, possibly from outside of Cornwall – would be even greater.

It just seems to me that, in the minds of many people, the need to fill the over-sized incinerator in Mid Cornwall with waste could undermine or stifle efforts to boost recycling.

[This will be my article in this coming week’s Cornish Guardian].

Keeping up the pressure for a Cornish tick-box

In this coming week's Cornish Guardian, my article reports on the recent meeting between Cornwall Council and officials from the Office of National Statistics. It will be as follows:

Earlier this month, prominent officials from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) visited Cornwall to meet with representatives of the unitary authority.

The visitors included the Acting Director for the 2021 census, the ONS’s Head of Census Statistical Design & Outputs, and a senior research officer; and the main focus of the meeting was to discuss our demands for a Cornish tick-box on the next census.

In the last census in 2011, the question on national identity gave a choice of five tick-boxes: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish and British. There was also an “other” box, which invited people to “write in” their nationality.

In the event, a total of 73,220 residents of Cornwall described themselves as Cornish, which equated to 13.8% of the overall population. On a local basis, the top five parishes for self-identification were St Dennis (22.0%), St Hilary (21.6%), St Wenn (21.4%), Carharrack (21.3%) and Warleggan (21.3%); the lowest was Botus Fleming (4.0%).

It is impressive, and significant, that nearly 14% of people in Cornwall took the initiative to self-identify as Cornish in the 2011 census but, if there had been a tick-box option, the number of people registered as Cornish would undoubtedly have been considerably higher.

This can be shown by what has transpired in Wales. In 2001, there was no Welsh tick-box on the census, but 14.4% of residents in Wales self-identified as Welsh using the “other” option. A decade on, the inclusion of a tick-box option in the 2011 census meant that 66.6% of people in Wales expressed their national identity as Welsh – a greater than four-fold increase.

In its initial feedback, the ONS indicted that they were not minded to include a Cornish tick-box in the 2021 census but, at the recent meeting, we made a strong – and I would say unanswerable – case for parity with other UK nationalities.

We pointed out how, since the last census, the UK Government had recognised the Cornish as a national minority through the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, affording them the “same status” as the “UK’s other Celtic people, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish.”

We reminded the ONS that, in their Opinion Report, the Council of Europe has made a specific recommendation that a Cornish tick-box be included to ensure compliance with the Framework Convention. And we made it clear that by excluding a Cornish tick-box from the 2021 census, the UK authorities would be actively discriminating against the Cornish national minority that they themselves had formally recognised in 2014.

The discussions with ONS are ongoing and Cornwall Council is preparing additional briefing information for the organisation. I will report back again soon on what progress is made.

Diplomacy and international relations

My article in last week's Cornish Guardian pondered international relations in the age of Donald Trump and his Presidency of the United States. It was as follows:

August 9th 2017 marked the 72nd anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, which had followed the nuclear attack on Hiroshima three days earlier.

All in all, more than 140,000 people died in the initial blasts over the two cities, or lost their lives as a consequence of their injuries, radiation poisoning and other factors.

Just over twelve months ago, Barack Obama, in his final months as US President, visited Hiroshima. Speaking at the main memorial in the settlement, he told a large and sombre crowd: “On a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.”

He spoke about how the “image of a mushroom cloud” that twice rose in the clouds over Japan was a stark remainder of “humanity’s core contradiction” and that the “very spark that marks us as a species,” such as “our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our toolmaking, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will,” also equates to a “capacity for unmatched destruction.”

How right Obama was to urge the world to “choose a future when Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not considered the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening.”

This week, I have read a number of personal recollections of people from Nagasaki and the terrible horrors they experienced in 1945 and the years that followed.

One man called Hirotami Yamada, who was a child at the time, has recalled how “the flash and heat from the detonation felt like the sun had fallen from the sky; then everything went dark. When the light returned, much of Nagasaki had been vaporised in a cloud of smoke and dust that barrelled a mile up into the clouds.”

Most of his family initially survived because they were some distance away from the centre of the blast, but in the coming days he had to watch heartbroken as his siblings succumbed to death.

Such awfulness should never be forgotten and it must reinforce why everyone should be working to get rid of all weapons of mass destruction.

It is therefore truly disturbing that it was on “Nagasaki Day” that the new President of the United States, Donald Trump, intensified his war of words with the belligerent leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un, threatening "fire and fury like the world has never seen;" before following this up with a statement that his military was “locked and loaded.”

Such outrageous and intemperate language makes the world a much less safe place, and world leaders need to rise to the challenge to put real diplomacy at the heart of international relations.

Continuing the campaign for a Cornish tick-box

Last week, I was one of the four councillors present at a meeting with senior officers from the Office of National Statistics about the need for a Cornish tickbox on the 2021 census.

It was a positive meeting and we left the ONS in no doubt about the significance of this issue.

Further representations are planned and a press release has been published today by Cornwall Council. It is included below for information.

Cornwall Council press release
Council pushes for formal recognition of the Cornish in 2021 census

The Cornish could be recognised in the 2021 Census if the latest efforts by Cornwall Council are successful.

Last week Cornwall Council Deputy Leader Julian German, Cornwall Councillors and Council officers met with senior officers from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in Truro to discuss the inclusion of tick boxes for the Cornish and Cornish language on the Census.

In March 2017, in its Fourth Opinion to the UK Government on the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, the Council of Europe made a specific recommendation to the ONS stating it should “take the necessary measures to include the possibility to self-identify as Cornish, through a ‘tick-box’ in the next census.”

In the last census in 2011, the Cornish did not have the option to tick a box to say they identified as Cornish like the Welsh, Scottish, Irish and Northern Irish and could only write Cornish under the ‘other’ option.

Deputy Leader Julian German said the meeting was an important milestone. “Cornish people have a proud and distinct identity. We are proud of our history and language and want this to be reflected in the way the census captures data so it’s not an ‘other’ field in the language and identity section.

“We believe this will provide a more accurate reflection of the number of Cornish in Cornwall and across the UK.

“An accurate count of Cornish language speakers is a key factor in influencing funding and devolution – this is key to helping us get a better deal and more funding for Cornish people and culture,” the Deputy Leader said.

Although no commitment has been made from the ONS on the inclusion of the Cornish as a tick box option, the Office reaffirmed their commitment to support ethnic groups across the UK.

“Our meeting identified some really helpful points in the development and operation of the next census where ONS and Cornwall Council can work together to have a successful census in 2021,” said Ben Humberstone, Programme Director, 2021 Census, ONS.

The meeting is the latest push to gain more recognition for the Cornish and comes three years after the UK Government gave Cornish the same status as other Celtic communities the Scots, Welsh and Irish. This recognition by the UK government within the Framework Convention is not affected by Brexit.

The media and being a Cornish nationalist ...

The headline speaks for itself. My article in today’s Cornish Guardian is as follows:

During the last few weeks, I have been approached by a number of “up-country” journalists. All were keen to find out more about Cornwall and, in particular, Cornish nationalism.

It would have been nice to think that Mebyon Kernow had generated this interest; possibly through specific campaigns that we had been running, or due to some of the key arguments we had been making for a better deal for Cornwall.

But sadly, the journalists were following up on the widespread and irresponsible reporting of the "fake news" of alleged terrorist activities in Cornwall.

For those of you that missed it, there was an electrical fault at a bin store, associated with fish and chip shop in Porthleven. This lead to a localised fire, for which an organisation claimed “responsibility.”

It was, of course, all nonsense, but that did not stop newspapers such as the Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Mail, printing a series of unfortunate articles.

One local man – a former MP – interviewed for a feature on Radio 4 was cheeky enough to suggest that the claims were some sort of “Cornish humour” to see how many of the “metropolitan elite” would be daft enough to give credence to the claims.

That said, I do find it extremely infuriating that legitimate political and other stories from Cornwall – such as the 50,000 declarations for a Cornish Assembly in 2001 – are so often ignored by the mainstream media and “Fleet Street,” and yet they fall over themselves to publish stories lacking in substance.

In the recent interviews that have followed, I have often been asked what it means to be a Cornish nationalist. At this time, I thought it would be good to share my response in this article.

To me, the answer is quite simple. Cornwall is a historic entity with its own distinct identity, language and heritage. It is a nation – just like Scotland and Wales.

Every person who seeks the greater recognition of the nation of Cornwall or campaigns for self-government for Cornwall or positively promotes Cornish identity, is therefore, by extension, a Cornish nationalist.

What is important is that our approach to politics is inclusive and outward-looking. I am particularly proud that we campaign for a better deal for all the people of Cornwall and are never afraid to make a stand on global issues with significance far beyond our borders.

Cornwall does need to be “brave and bold” …

My article in last week’s Cornish Guardian addressed the two-year anniversary of the so-called Cornwall Devolution Deal and the “state of Cornwall” address by the leader of Cornwall Council. It was as follows:

In recent days, there has been quite a focus on the two-year anniversary of the “Cornwall devolution deal,” with senior elected members on the unitary authority and council officers talking up the “historic” nature of the arrangement.

It would be churlish not to admit that the “deal” contains many elements of merit, such as the achievement of Intermediate Body status which allows Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly some greater local control over the allocation of EU funding to projects.

But overall, it does not include the shift of meaningful political power to elected politicians in Cornwall.

For example, in this past week, I was twice at meetings which covered the heritage aspects of the “deal.” Part of this related to a “study of the cultural distinctiveness of Cornwall's historic environment.” Obviously, I welcome this, but the “deal” included no powers over heritage policy or the management of state-owned historic assets in Cornwall.

From my perspective, what was agreed two years ago was not devolution as understood in other nations such as Scotland and Wales. It was an accommodation between the UK Government and local government here in Cornwall on a range of specific issues, but which still left central government in the driving seat.

And while this “devolution” debate has been ongoing, central government has offloaded certain local functions to unelected bodies such as the Local Enterprise Partnership, which is hardly an advert for democratic reform.

In his “state of Cornwall” address to the unitary authority at last week’s Full Council meeting, council leader Adam Paynter spoke about Cornwall being “brave and bold” and pushing for “more powers” and “greater autonomy from the Government.”

Adam also called for politicians to “work together” and “put the future of Cornwall first.” But having spoken about the primacy of Cornwall, he went on to undermine that by arguing that we should submerge ourselves into some kind of “strong south west offer” when dealing with the centre.

Recent history shows that whenever Cornwall is incorporated into a south west block, it inevitably loses out to Exeter, Taunton or Bristol.

I do agree with Adam Paynter when he says that we need to be “brave and bold,” but surely that means always standing up for Cornwall as a distinct unit in all things. And it means not allowing Cornwall to be seen merely as the western tenth of a synthetic south west region.