Cornish Zetetics

Cornwall Council and the mysterious case of the missing migrants

2012-01-26T14:06:00.001Z

In all the many pages that accompany Cornwall Council’s Core Strategy consultation one thing is oddly absent. In the 27 pages of Planning for Cornwall: Our preferred approach the role of in-migration receives short shrift, being mentioned just twice. And even then it comes last in a series of factors producing the ‘need’ for 48,000 houses.

the level of need … comes from the number of new households that come from our existing communities, young people leaving home, family breakup, older people living longer, and through an expected level of migration into or back into Cornwall

From this migration looks like an afterthought, something topping up the numbers already needed.

Moreover, in the 334 poorly written pages of Area Discussion Papers setting out where all these new houses will go, there isn’t a single mention of in-migration. Not one.

This becomes even stranger when the Council itself in its own ‘evidence base’ tells us that natural change in Cornwall without factoring in migration is expected to lead to a lower population (Housing Issues paper, p.5). Or that

migration is the single greatest driver of population change (Population and Household Change v.2, p.5)

This understates things. Actually, migration provides all of the increase in expected population according to the ONS.

Projected population change with and without migration

But for some reason the planners don’t care to remind us of this embarrassing fact in the consultation paperwork. Instead, they deliberately avoid the question of how much of the proposed new housing is ‘needed’ for in-migrants and how much for the existing population.

CoSERG estimates that a steady-state population scenario requires just 12,500 houses. This suggests that 26% of the new housing is required for local needs and 74% for in-migrants (both permanent dwellings and second homes). But if I understand it correctly CoSERG’s calculation allows for some continued net in-migration of around 10,000 over 20 years.

If on the other hand we assume no net in-migration (in other words the number of in-migrants equals the number of out-migrants) then the smaller population of 2031 will need very few extra houses. Just allowing for genuine local need and household change might require 5,000 or so more houses on top of the existing stock. On that measure just 10% of the Council’s 48,000 houses are required for the existing population. While 90% will goes to in-migrants.

And the Council’s extra growth options at Bodmin and Saltash and its eco-communities, adding another possible 15,000 to the 48,000, will all go to in-migrants.

The Council is intentionally and wilfully obscuring the central truth of population growth. Large numbers of houses are needed to facilitate high levels of in-migration. Indeed, this Core Strategy encourages even more in-migration through its explicit bone-headed emphasis on ‘growth’.

The inconvenient truth is that cherished countryside on the edges of all our major towns is being sacrificed, landscapes that generations of our ancestors struggled to make destroyed, places that hold special meaning for us casually suburbanised. The Cornishness of Cornwall is insulted and cast aside. And for what? To accommodate even more in-migrants from England while generating substantial profits for local landlords and non-local construction companies, planning consultants and development companies.

Is this right? Is it democratic? Does anyone else shed a tear when daily we’re confronted by the loss of our land and this insensitive trampling on our heritage?

Heartlands: black hole takes shape at the heart of Camborne-Redruth

2012-01-24T16:38:00.001Z

The £35 million Heartlands project at Pool, between Camborne and Redruth, is set to open in the spring. Superb timing in a year when we have to be diverted from such distasteful reality as unfair austerity policies. The good people of Camborne-Redruth can joyfully join in a festival of flannel along with the Olympics and Royal jubilees.

Most people in Camborne-Redruth probably still struggle to see the precise point of this grandiose project. Not the local media and opinion-formers though who are getting very excited. We’ve already had the West Briton in November last year calling it a

breathtaking renewal project

It’s definitely quite tiring reading all the torrent of gushing hype. Carolyn Rule, Cornwall Council Cabinet member for economy and regeneration and chair of the Heartlands board enthused last August

Can you imagine how fantastic it will be to actually live at Heartlands?

Ms Rule lives at Mullion.

The project transforms a

wasteland

into a

self-sustaining community asset

Or so we’re told.

Actually it’s more about creating the infrastructure that helps ease the building of thousands more houses in the area. It’s all part of a ‘place-shaping’ exercise to make the area more attractive to incomers and thus ease the pressure on Caroline Quentin country.

Original Heartlands wasteland site

Heartlands apologists have never been too clear about the scale of their pet project. Originally their action plan envisaged 6,000 more houses in the district. In 2007-08 this was bumped up to 11,000. As there were only around 26,000 in the whole of Camborne-Redruth this was quite an increase. It would create 8,000 jobs we were told. Then someone realised that 11,000 houses was likely to bring around 11,000 job-seekers to the area.

So by April 2010 the plan had shrunk back to 6,000 houses, which would now miraculously create the 6,000 jobs. The latest wild guess is 5,500 jobs, thrown at the media last December.

Heartlands itself was projected to employ 50 people back in November 2009. By February 2011 this had changed to

20 jobs in total

With the senior management team in place we’re now seeing other jobs being advertised. These include

a caretaker responsible for all repair and maintenance and supervising the cleaners – for the princely sum of £14,000

visitor services assistants, hospitality and catering assistants and chefs – at £6.30-6.50 an hour. All these jobs require ‘experience’ even at this rate of pay.

The only hope for local young unemployed people without the requisite experience is cleaning staff, also at £6.30 an hour.

The current minimum wage is £6.08 an hour.

Breathtaking.

Cornwall Council cuddles up to property developers

2012-01-22T09:37:00.002Z

Cornwall Council’s Core Strategy glows with greenwash jargon deliberately designed to befuddle and befool the people. However, its real agenda is bluntly revealed in Leader Alec Robertson’s message to his councillors last Friday. Robertson positively preened himself when reporting a trip to London hosted by the Local Government Association and the British Property Federation (BPF).

But hold on just a minute though. Isn’t the British Property Federation a well-heeled lobbying body that includes

some of the biggest companies in the property industry – property developers and owners … investment banks

Its ‘lobbying successes’ include injecting ‘realism’ into the Government’s carbon reduction policies in the interests of landlords. It also strongly supports the Government’s new National Planning Policy Framework. Described by many as creating a developers’ paradise, in the BPF’s eyes this merely ‘streamlines’ the planning system.

Their members include Drivers Jonas Deloitte, Indigo Planning, Savills, and Turley Associates, who all urged Cornwall Council to build 57,000 or even more houses in last year’s round of consultations on its Core Strategy. Interestingly, GVA Grimley, Cornwall Council’s favourite consultants, again pop up as members of the BPF as does its favourite supermarket Sainsburys.

But Robertson shows not a jot of shame at being associated with this bunch. On the contrary, Cornwall Council was

one of just six councils to join this group which demonstrates our growing reputation on the national stage

For that delusion of grandeur we should perhaps read growing reputation as an easy touch for property developers. Further down the message comes the ominous news that

Cornwall has been selected as a place-based study area. This means we will be working with senior British Property Federation representatives, developers and local private sector partners to carry out a detailed analysis of potential barriers to growth in Cornwall and identify appropriate solutions

Expect the knock on the door at dawn soon then. ‘Growth’ for Robertson includes the Council’s

ambitious housing programme

which is why the BPF, developers and private sector partners are all slavering at the prospect of more profits from Cornwall’s out-of-control property boom.

Not content with the current helter-skelter journey to a million people in Cornwall by the end of the century Robertson and Cornwall Council’s Cabinet brazenly intend to speed it up. But are all the other councillors really so keen on handing Cornwall over to the property developers in this manner? Have they ever been asked?

Core Strategy: ‘ee’s sum ansum yeow

2012-01-20T17:47:00.000Z

Our guest blogger - Old Knocker

Woss on? Reading all this Core Strategy traade’s maken’ mesum maazed, I’ll tell ‘ee.

Seem’me, they boays over to planning d’reelly believe allthese new houses are ‘sustainable’. They got one o’ they SWOT analyses in theirhousen’ grawth paaper. ‘An ‘ee d’say that one o’ the strengths of building52,800 houses will be

slightly higher than business as usual

Slightly higher? Dunnaw ‘bout that but it dun seem zacklyright as they also say ‘tis a

20% increase on the level of growth experienced over thelast few years

Turns out another strength of building 48,000 or even 57,000properties for they from upalong comen’ downalong is

some impact on the environment and some green field landwould be needed – but not as much for higher growth options

Gizzon, those boays can sartn’ly spin a tale or two, I d’b’leev.There’s 596 pages of ‘sustainability appraisal’ to prove et. Turns out all theynew houses and roads and such trade will in the long run (which we d’knaw asdreckly) ‘av a negative impact on soil, water, biodiversity and the maritimeenvironment. Seems

the Core Strategy does not perform well in meeting theenvironmental objectives for Cornwall

But they reck’n it’s a proper job for most everything else.The plaace may be scat to larrups but my gar, we’m goen’ t’be some sociallyinclusive, live in fine hupstanding houses and able to drive over ta Trura fromPorthemmet whenever we fancy. So ‘ee cain’t be too bad neow, can’ee?

Gotta go lie down neow as all this is making me feel sumwisht. Cheers, pard, ‘av a braa’ weekend!

Cornwall’s store wars: convenient lures not convenience stores

2012-01-18T17:16:00.003Z

Way back in 1995 John Gummer, Tory Secretary of State forthe Environment, in a fit of temporary sanity, declared war on out of town superstores, saying that

they should not get planning permission if they harm thevitality and viability of nearby town centres.

In a sign of how far we’ve regressed since then in the lastyear alone Cornwall Council’s Strategic Planning Committee gave permission forfour new stores, three of which are basically out of town. All four of thesepermissions went to Sainsburys. Add in their new store at Helston that openedin July 2010 and they’re the clear victors in Cornwall’s ongoing store wars.

Sainsburys Helston. But could be any town.

The Sainsburys brand suspiciously suits Cornwall Council’snot so hidden agenda to gentrify Cornwall.With Waitrose waiting in the wings at the bizarrely named Truro Eastern DistrictCentre (of what? an unannounced suburb??) and TV programmes not so subtlydesigned to entice a better class of person altogether to move to Cornwall,Tesco’s monopoly looks set to crumble and Morrisons are left out in the cold.

First to get permission last year after a long struggle wasthe Sainsburys at Wadebridge. In 2010 the Committee had refused three planningapplications at Wadebridge – from Sainsburys, Morrisons and for an extension atthe existing Tesco. Tesco’s extension got the go-ahead early in 2011 but theother two were heavily rejected by majorities of 12 and 14, with mostopposition to the Sainsburys.

What a turnaround by October though. In the face of appealslodged by both Sainsburys and Morrisons the planners suddenly discovered that are-designed Sainsburys (which just happened to be on Council owned land)re-sited a full six metres, was now perfectly OK. This was despite their ownpet consultants GVA Grimley concluding that there would be a drop of 17-29%fall in takings in the convenience food sector in Wadebridge town centre and anoverall drop of 7-8%. Morrisons, although offering ‘endless’ benefits and£750,000 of Section 106 agreement ~~bribes~~ money, was refused 10-2 and Sainsburysapproved by 14-3.

Meanwhile, downalong at Hayle, the supermarket saga wasrunning and running. In February there had been four separate applications inthe field – Asda, Sainsburys, Morrisons and the Dutch bankers ING’s developmenton South Quay. In a chaotic vote Asda’s bid was deferred and Sainsburys refuseddespite the supermarket giant offering a 26 hectare nature reserve to offsetthe loss of land.

Sainsburys promptly did a deal with ING and popped up againat South Quay in October. At that meeting Morrisons’ application was refused15-5. Then Asda went the same way 12-5, before the Committee voted 13-6 toapprove Sainsburys in its new location.

In the votes four councillors (Mann, Bull, Pascoe, Nolan)voted to approve more than one of the three applications. On the other handonly one (Cllr Pearce) could steel himself to approve none of them.

Also in October, Sainsburys applied to redevelop Penzanceheliport, replacing the boring old helicopter to the Scillies with yet anotherout of town supermarket (aren’t the two existing stores within a quarter of amile from the heliport enough?) and offering the council the lure of a park andride into the soon-to-be retail desert of Penzance. Now park and rides are guaranteedto get councillors drooling and their pulses racing as they’re the latest big daftidea, offering less congestion but in fact encouraging more traffic.

Sure enough, the Committee voted overwhelmingly for approvalby 14-5 and Sainsburys number 3 was a done deal. They then followed that up in Decemberby giving Sainsburys yet another approval to build their biggest store yet inthe west at Ponsharden, Falmouth.Again despite an estimated inpact of 11-12% in reduced takings in Falmouth town centre. Butthen town centres are so old Cornwall.

Helston - no-one around

And in a parallel universe councillors still insist they cancontrol these over-fed corporate monsters despite all the evidence to the contrary. Indeed, the decline of town centres is blamed on us consumers for notshopping in them rather than the Council committee members with stars in theireyes from that bottomless pit of goodies the supermarket chains dangle in frontof them.

Go for growth but garnish with greenwash

2012-01-16T16:56:00.000Z

Cornwall Council has a not so cunning plan for us. It plansto give us more of what we’ve been getting for the last 60 years. More people,more houses, more second homes, more congestion. Indeed, it desperately wantsto up the rate of growth of all these, having concluded that more of what we’vehad since the 1950s will sooner or later be good for us.

Its ‘strategy’ amounts to cross your fingers, stick aconfident smile on your face and hope. This is a ‘vision’ that embraces a highdensity future, sparkling with park and rides that will be seen from space. Suburbs will sprawl ever deeper into Cornwall’s landscape. Populationwill rise inexorably until by the end of the century it hits a million.Supermarkets will sprout, temples of joyful consumption offering satisfactionand solace to multiplying numbers of contented Cornish folk, old and new.

If only Cornwall Council would come clean and admit thisgrowth agenda openly so that we could have a proper debate about it. But itdoesn’t. In the Core Strategy it’s buried under a torrent of greenwash. ThePreferred Approach for a Core Strategy document oozes with fine-soundingphrases that on closer inspection turn out to be so much inane and meaninglessdrivel.

We’re told Cornwallwill

take a lead in the green agenda … achieve a leading positionin sustainable living … be a green peninsula … reduce greenhouse gas emissions… make the most of our environment

‘Make the most of our environment’ is revealed later as boilingdown to ‘building all over our environment’. All the embarrassing greenwash gibberish isthen promptly ignored as the Core Strategy goes on to focus on

providing at least 48,000 houses in the period 2010-2030

We will, it assures us, in some curious but unexplained way

prosper through housing

Levels of greenwash appear to correlate with rates of growth.As the latter rise so do the former. Instead of using an environmentallycuddly discourse to mystify and confuse those of us gullible enough to swallowthis fatuous flim-flam, why doesn’t the Council come clean and drop itsthreadbare cover for the same old growth policies?

Perhaps the final ludicrous straw is reached on page 13 ofthe Preferred Approach. Here Cornwall Biodiversity Action Plan Priority ProjectAreas are proudly wheeled out. These will help to

build a stronger ecological cohesion and network of multifunctional green infrastructure in Cornwall.

On the map a pale green sinuous path wends its way through Cornwall from Lanson toLands End. Whatever could it be? Oh, it’s

Cornwall’sSuper Green Spine

Cornwall's backbone - its Super Green Spine

Which most of us know of as the A30! Is the Council about toreveal a partnership deal with MacDonalds whereby the familiar packaging thatdecorates the roadside verges and advertises the company to food tourists isall repainted a tasteful pale green? Or were the planners all as high as a kitewhen they pulled this absurd flummery out of their collective hats?

If the A30 can be described with a straight face as ‘Cornwall’s Super GreenSpine’ then I suppose anything’s possible. Building 48,000 houses for another100,000 people is a

careful use of natural resources

And pushing up population growth will

maintain the cultural distinctiveness of our communities

Cornwall with Caroline Quentin: just sooper, darling

2012-01-14T17:39:00.002Z

The difficulty we face in developing a properly sustainable policy for Cornwall is starkly illustrated by the ITV programme 'Cornwall with Caroline Quentin'. Screened at peak viewing time this series is described by its makers – TwoFour Broadcast – as an ‘observational documentary’.

It’s better described as an ‘advertorial’, a lifestyle programme selling a brand and changing behaviour. In this case unashamedly appealing to the luxury tourist market, encouraging people to holiday in and then move to Cornwall, place of

‘iconic landmarks’ and ‘secret culinary hideaways’ just waiting for ‘hungry tourists’.

You can almost feel the ripple of excitement coursing through the Home Counties as, behind the net curtains, images of a ‘beautiful and rugged county[sic]’ are avidly consumed. Just the place in fact to get away from it all, chill out with that laid back lifestyle, enjoy the peace and quiet. As long as there’s lots of supermarkets and foody places that is.

In reality, such programmes feed the romantic desires of the suburban classes and stoke up the pressures of in-migration even further. It was commissioned by Diana Howie of ITV, who’s looking for undemanding

programmes in early evening that appeal to an older audience with “old-fashioned” tastes

Just the sort of dynamic in-migrants who’ll rejuvenate Cornwall.

TwoFour Broadcast are one of the UK’s biggest independent media companies, originally based in Plymouth but now with offices in London, the States and Abu Dhabi. Their Arab operation’s website invites their followers in the region to have

a great weekend – have a fun one

though it’s not clear whether this includes Syria. But perhaps they’re having a fun weekend in the occupied territories of Palestine.

Founded by the brother of a hedge fund trader reputedly worth £200 million, TwoFour Broadcast can think of no better company to tell the stories of Cornwall because of

the company’s ties to Plymouth and Quentin’s connection to Devon’ and its ‘strong west country roots’.

Reach for the sick bag - Caroline's coming

Its approach was clear last summer when it was spotted inviting people in the catering and leisure trade to take part in the series. In an odd phrase, the company was reported to

especially like to hear from anyone in the art, horticultural, history or hospitality business which best sums up Cornwall

‘Best sums up’?! ‘Best sums up’ only though the rose-tinted spectacles of the English tourist trade that is. This is saccharine Cornwall, a sentimental, make-believe fairyland where the Cornish have walk-on roles as ‘amazing characters’, extras lurking in the background scenery of the unfolding drama of the transformation of Cornwall.

Postcript
If you've nothing better to do you can find an amusing discussion about this programme here

The rotten core of the Core Strategy: unsustainable population growth

2012-01-12T11:38:00.003Z

We’re familiar with corporate politicians who talk one way and walk completely differently. There are those at the top who parrot about ‘fairness’ while putting the boot in on the disabled and the homeless yet moving at a snail’s pace to curb the greed of the super-rich.

And then there are those at the bottom who smugly sing enticing ballads about sustainability while in reality planning for massive population growth. This is the worm at the core of Cornwall Council’s Core Strategy currently out for ‘consultation’ for another seven weeks.

Plenty of empty verbiage in it about

'economic growth within environmental limits'

But the usual refusal to specify exactly what those limits might be or even admit there are such limits. And stultifying silence about the long-term results of the insane process they’re locking us into.

Here’s the basic data.

Population has grown by 295,000 since 1961. In each of the last two 20-year periods (the period of the Core Strategy) it’s been just under 80,000. A stable absolute growth means a falling percentage growth (21.0% for1971-91 down to 16.9% for 1991-2011).

However, we’re told this falling relative growth is set to rise again over the next 20 years. The key here for the planners are the population projections provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Although these change wildly every time they’re updated they’re treated as some sort of holy grail. At the moment they’re predicting a jump to 97,500 (or 18.1%) over the period 2011-31. That’s 12% higher than the historic growth rate.

But what the architects of this exercise in futility don’t or won’t admit is that even at the absolute growth rates of the past 40 years the population of Cornwall will be 939,900 by 2111.

On the other hand if we assume population grows by the ONS holy grail absolute figure over each 20 year period in the next century that rises to 1,024,000.

Now, 97,500 extra bodies that the ONS predicts for the next 20 years will require around 42,000 houses according to Cornwall Council’s own consultants in 2010. Yet the Council is actually proposing a minimum 48,000 housing target, equal to a 111,000 population growth. So despite all the rhetoric about sustainability the Council is planning for at least 1,049,900 people by 2111.

And it doesn’t end there. There are even worse scenarios. Take the average 18.65% growth rate of the three 20 year periods between 1971 and 2031 and extrapolate that forward. In that case the population of Cornwall becomes 1,263,000 by 2111.

Can we step off the escalator? Cornwall's population

Interesting isn’t it that Cornwall Council seems to be deliberately proposing a housing target above the ONS projected level? For this recognises that planning policies can in fact affect the rate of growth. But if the Council can plan for extra growth they could also plan for reduced growth rates as part of a long-term strategic plan to slow down this unsustainable growth rate. They could. But they won’t. It’s apparently much more important to keep the profits flowing to up-country developers who build houses for people from up-country rather than plan to provide decent houses for our own people while protecting our environment for future generations.

MPs lose marbles

2012-01-10T09:38:00.000Z

Our parliamentarians have learnt the lesson of Goebbels well. If you’re going to fib, tell the biggest lie possible.

Take the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly LEP, that august body which appears to contain just two Cornish people on its eleven-member Board. The LEP is a thinly disguised front organisation for Cornwall Council, as can be seen in its endorsement of an Enterprise Zone to prop up the Council’s exercise in hubristic futility at Newquay Airport. Now, as Illogan Blogger alerts us, the LEP has £4.2 million to play with from the Government’s Growing Places Fund.

This money stems from a belated recognition by the Government that the economy has to be stimulated by some Keynesian style spending in order to offset the effects of its austerity for the poor project. A fairly paltry £500 million is being pumped into infrastructure via this fund.

Now, boosting economic activity and creating jobs could conceivably involve spending money on all sorts of things – harbours, community centres, renewable energy projects, sports stadia even. But this doesn’t. It focuses on addressing ‘infrastructure constraints’ and promoting the ‘delivery of jobs and houses’.

In other words it’s a subsidy for housebuilders who won’t have to cough up so much money in sweeteners (known as Section 106 agreements) in order to bribe local planners. This deeply undemocratic and corrupt device for financing infrastructure, rather than taxing developers’ profits and allowing local authorities to decide how to spend the tax receipts, is itself a scandal. But of course typical of that crony corporate house-building which is driving us towards a deeply unattractive future.

Step up Sarah Newton, MP for Truro-Falmouth. Cosy house-building stitch-ups between council and developers are not the issue for Sarah. The million plus who’ll be living in our land by 2100 is an inconsequential detail not worth the mention.

No, Sarah welcomed the £4.2 million. It

will unlock much-needed local infrastructure and get the homes we need built.

We? Who’s this ‘we’ then? Does Sarah not realise that at least three quarters of the extra housing will go to in-migrants?

Even more bizarrely, she goes on to claim that pushing up the population in this way will

improve the lives of local residents in Truro and Falmouth and … reduce congestion

Dear of her. Sarah Newton

We have truly arrived only a quarter of century late at that 1984 dystopia where white is black and black is white. This is a never-never land where more houses and roads miraculously result in fewer of us morons driving along to the supermarket. The same dreamworld where calling a new housing development an ‘eco-community’ will mean none of its residents will drive a car or rely on a 9-5 job, that world where park and rides do not create extra traffic, or where green fields are in fact brown fields.

This is that never-never land where the implications of doubling the population of Cornwall must never ever be addressed, let alone debated. It’s a land in which all corporate politicians live, together with most councillors and the whole of a planning fraternity whose role is to soothe the masses while guaranteeing the right of developers to maximise profits.

Another denizen of this Alice in Wonderland is Lib Dem Cabinet Minister Danny Alexander. Parroting Sarah, or was it Sarah parroting Danny? He also thinks the Growing Places Fund will

improve the lives of local residents

and

reduce congestion

Must be so then.

Unsustainable growth: why Cornwall Council is the problem, not part of the solution

2012-01-08T11:24:00.002Z

In the old days planning authorities were regarded as the wise owls that ensured the environment was safeguarded and the people’s interests protected from the ravages of a market driven solely by profit. Those days are now long gone.

Cornwall Council, which is deciding on the housing targets for Cornwall in its Core Strategy and therefore the acceptable future population of Cornwall, can no longer be distinguished from the developer lobby. There is no level playing field any more. Now judge is not only jury but accused as well. For Cornwall Council has enthusiastically signed up to a growth at all costs agenda, one that threatens to make already unsustainable rates of housing and population growth catastrophically worse.

The evidence mounts up. For example.

1) The Office for National Statistics produces detailed estimated population projections. These vary wildly from one projection to the next but currently project a massive growth of 97,500 in Cornwall’s population over the next twenty years. This will take it to 637,000 by 2031 (nearly double what it was in 1961).

If that wasn’t bad enough the Council’s consultants on its Employment Land Review in 2010 - Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners (nearest office Cardiff) - pointed out that the ONS forecasts

do not take account of policy aspirations for growth within the county

They calculated that even Cornwall Council’s ‘low growth’ scenario of 45,000 houses equates to a 104,560 population growth.

2) Or take the much-derided Can Do Cornwall document, Cornwall Council’s pitiful attempt to transform itself from a democratically elected body to a private limited company. In this it states that the Council

is designing an ambitious 10-year programme to deliver 30,000 … homes

Yet its own ‘preferred’ housing target is supposed to be 48,000 in 20 years. The 30,000 suggests the really preferred agenda is 60,000 houses or more.

3) Or there’s the Masterplans, for which up-country consultants are paid ridiculous amounts of money to tell us to cover our land in concrete in order to accommodate more in-migrants. The Council’s Planning Advisory Panel unanimously accepted a consultation on the Bodmin Masterplan, despite the fact that this plan blithely proposed building 5,000-6,000 houses in Bodmin. This more than doubled even the highest insane building scenario in the Council’s own original Core Strategy proposals. But it was tamely legitimated rather than treated with the contempt it deserved.

The Core Strategy: enough is definitely enough

2012-01-06T08:43:00.002Z

Eagle-eyed readers of the local press will this week have noticed an announcement from Cornwall Council. This states that consultation on the Council’s preferred Core Strategy begins next Monday and continues for the next eight weeks.

This isn’t just some tedious piece of bureaucracy, of no interest to anyone but planning anoraks. Or at least it shouldn’t be. The Core Strategy is the plan that sets out the framework for development over the next twenty years. The council, in partnership with developers, most of whom are from up-country, want massive housing growth to continue over this period. While the Core Strategy will contain a number of issues, its central element is the housing target.

The higher this figure the easier it is for developers to argue for specific developments such as the massive plans in the pipeline for Truro, or the various proposals that keep re-surfacing near St Austell, or the Duchy’s greedy drive to suburbanise land around Newquay. If those are turned down they can go to appeal citing the ‘requirement’ for a large number of houses in the holy grail of the Core Strategy.

Conversely, if the housing target is lower it becomes more difficult for developers to get away with this argument. And easier for planning committees to reject building plans.

Don’t be fooled by the argument that in the current economic climate these houses are unlikely to be built. This is a 20 year plan and the housing market will sooner or later recover. Markets rise and fall. Moreover, the well-funded developers’ lobby is certainly not letting the current depression distract them. They campaigned hard for as high a housing figure as possible in the earlier consultation on the Strategy. The developers realise that if they win the battle of the Core Strategy then the war is also half-won.

Despite that, the vast majority of comments on the first round of consultation from individuals, organisations and parish councils with no vested interests came down on the side of housing totals much lower than the Council’s preferred 54,000. (Actually 81% of individuals, all parish councils and all voluntary organisations wanted fewer. Needless to say, the Council ignored all these in favour of the 87% of businesses who wanted more.)

Many of those arguing for a lower total were excellent submissions - look for Core Strategy Options Report Chapter 3 Response Report here. All now need to be re-submitted. And we need thousands more to add their voices to these, to stand up and say enough is enough.

For the consultation background papers – available to read here from next Monday – will no doubt be extremely coy about the core issue of the Core Strategy. They much prefer us to argue about where to place the deckchairs rather than point to the looming iceberg ahead.

Let’s not lose sight of that iceberg:

The vast majority of housing is ‘needed’ in order to ‘accommodate’ in-migration

Cornwall’s population has grown by 172,000 (the equivalent of seven or eight Penzances, Truros or St Austells) over the past 50 years. This 50% growth in half a century has signally failed to solve our economic problems. Though it’s succeeded in diminishing our quality of life and degrading our environment.

On current trends Cornwall’s population is set to top a million before this century is out

Do you want a Cornwall in your grandchildrens’ lifetime that will contain twice as many people as it now does? And more than three times the built-up area? Whose Cornwall is it? Ours or the profiteers’?

This Core Strategy ‘consultation’ – even in its flawed form – gives us the opportunity to make a stand against the Council-developer partnership that is quietly and with no democratic mandate steamrollering us towards a Cornwall which treats our landscape as just a convenient cash-cow. To reject the grim, grey, growth scenario being engineered for us we have to reject this Strategy and its housing targets. Mindless growth needs to be replaced by a Core Strategy that puts local needs and Cornish distinctiveness at its heart, allowing our land to recover from a half-century of ‘place-shaping’ in the interest of profits.

The twelfth day of Christmas: 1.2 million people

2012-01-05T07:43:00.001Z

On the twelfth day of Christmas my council gave to me

1.2 million people*
1100 Truro houses
Ten developers
Nine brave councillors
Eight top consultants
Seven % second homes
Six useless MPs
Five eco-villages
Four supermarkets
Three point four million pounds for an airport
Two Truro park and rides
And a stadium [not] entirely for free

...............................................................................

* by 2100. That’s over twice the current numbers in Cornwall. Who will live in a Cornwall with three or four times the current amount of built-up land.

It could well be higher if Cornwall Council’s current plans become reality.

But don’t worry. The Council has a ‘Green Cornwall’ policy and the Government think all development is ‘sustainable’.

Just don’t mention the 1.2 million. Because no MP or councillor is.

Crime rates in Cornwall: update

2012-01-04T16:56:00.001Z

As our neighbours in England indulge in their customary post-Christmas ritual of topping each other it’s time to update the crime map of Cornwall.

Unfortunately, the latest available statistics at (very old) ward level take us only to March 2011. Bang up to date detailed data exist –right down to street level – if you want to check on what your neighbour has recently been up to. But these don’t use the same boundaries as the crime maps and the two datasets are not easily compatible, a frustrating but annoyingly common feature of data in the UK.

No matter, in the year to March 2011 where were the places inCornwall with the most crime, the ones where the natives are restless and the ‘new Cornish’might prefer to avoid? Which places are ignored by lifestyle peak-time TVprogrammes designed to lure even more people to Cornwall?

And on the contrary, where are those places which are most crime-free, quiet arcadia of peacefulness, places to enjoy that leisurely pace of life, with only the distant drone of the helicopter ferrying the super-rich to their second home and the remote roar of the A30 to disturb those suburban dreams?

Here’s the top 20. With the annual number of reported crimes per 1,000 population.

1. Redruth 94
2. Penzance 84
3. Liskeard 83
4. Newquay 82
5= Truro and Bodmin 66
7. Camborne 65
8= Lanson and Hayle 64
10. Penryn 63
11= Falmouth and St Austell 62
13= Callington and Bude 58
15. Illogan 51
16. Looe/St Martin 47
17. St Ives 45
18. Ludgvan/Towednack 44
19. Helston 43
20. Camelford 41

Penzance has lost its first place to the somewhat less deprived Redruth, with Liskeard also shooting up (?) the table to come a close third. Other movers are Camborne, up three places, while Hayle is a new entrant in the top ten. Meanwhile, the university town of Penryn slips seven places despite all those unruly students. Saltash and Torpoint, with rates of 40 and 36 respectively, retain their status as the least crime-affected towns of Cornwall.

Keeping the streets safe in Redruth. 'Ere, drop that litter, did 'ee pard?'

The bottom 20 are as follows.

1. Lynher 10
3= Week St Mary/Whitstone, St Keverne, Valency (near Boscastle) and South Petherwin 12
6. Meneage 13
7. St Endellion/St Kew 14
9= St Cleer/St Neot, Goldsithney, Probus and Marhamchurch 15
12= St Ewe and North Petherwin 16
15= Stithians, Grenville, Landrake/St Dominick and Feock/Kea 17
18= Devock/Sheviock and Mullion 18
21= Roseland, Stokeclimsland and Altarnun 19

The least crime–ridden spot is Lynher, on the eastern slopes of Bodmin Moor, which enjoys ten times less crime than Redruth. It doesn’t need an Oxbridge-trained criminologist to tell us that the areas with the least crime are all rural, all better off, and all have lower population densities.

But don’t fret. Cornwall is urbanising very rapidly and Cornwall Council’s cunning plan is to increase that particular growth rate. So the rural areas will gradually shrink, population densities will equally gradually rise and our children can look forward to rising rates of crime.

The eleventh day of Christmas: 1100 houses

2012-01-04T07:42:00.002Z

On the eleventh day of Christmas my council gave to me

1100 Truro houses (not forgetting 400 more. Oh, and another 1,100 on top of that right next door)*
Ten developers
Nine brave councillors
Eight top consultants
Seven % second homes
Six useless MPs
Five eco-villages
Four supermarkets
Three point four million pounds for an airport
Two Truro park and rides
And a stadium [not] entirely for free

..................................................................................

* Oh dear. It appears that, although ignored by 16,000 supporters and many Cornish nationalists, the stadium near Truro isn’t free after all.

It turns out it comes with 1,500 houses attached, part of a bigger plan for a bloody great suburb of 2,600 houses west of Treliske. Seems that the developers have been cosily chatting to Cornwall’s planners for over a year. They get the houses; the council gets the land for the stadium.

The stadium legitimates the suburb. And no-one seems to have noticed. Or if they have, they don't mind in the least.

The tenth day of Christmas: 10 developers

2012-01-03T07:42:00.001Z

On the tenth day of Christmas my council gave to me

Ten developers*
Nine brave councillors
Eight top consultants
Seven % second homes
Six useless MPs
Five eco-villages
Four supermarkets
Three point four million pounds for an airport
Two Truro park and rides
And a stadium entirely for free

.............................................................................

* Those who called for the Council’s still undecided Core Strategy to include provision for 57,000 or more houses to be built over the next 20 years, therefore increasing the building rate by an eye-watering 30% (and their own potential profits – what a coincidence) included

Bell Cornwell, town planning consultants based in Exeter

Catesby Property Group: residential and commercial developers from Stratford on Avon

Cranford Developments Ltd: a land and development company from Staffordshire

Drivers Jonas Deloitte: commercial property consultants with offices in London, Slough, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Scotland

Hawkstone SW Ltd: property developers with their registered office at Coalville in Leicestershire

Linden Homes SW: offices in Saltash but part of the UK-wide Galliford Try building group, which includes Midas Homes, Stanford Homes, Rosemullion Homes and Gerald Wood Homes

Persimmons Homes SW: a UK-wide building firm with its HQ in York

Taylor Wimpey: the UK’s largest housebuilder with its head office in High Wycombe

Tetlow King Planning: a planning and development consultancy from Bristol which on its website boasts of overturning a rejection of 67 houses at Padstow on appeal

Wain Homes: based in Okehampton

They were backed by

Cornwall Development Company – Cornwall Council’s own economic development service!

The headlines we’re unlikely to see in 2012

2012-01-02T17:17:00.005Z

HUNT EMBRACES AUSTERITY OLYMPICS: ‘IT’S ONLY FAIR’

Olympics - off

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt today axed funding for the Olympics. He announced ‘spending £9 billion of public money on a sports event is manifestly indefensible when the country has no money, as we keep pointing out. We do not intend to repeat the same mistakes the Greeks made in 2004 when they went into debt over the Athens Olympics. And it’s just not fair that people in places like Cornwall are being asked to subsidise an event which benefits London, where household income is 30% higher.’

Cameron - contrite

CAMERON TO COMPENSATE CORNWALL

David Cameron has apologised to the Cornish people for the gratuitous insult that was the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act. ‘Now that the Government has at last recognised the Cornish as a national minority it is anomalous to treat their homeland as a mere English county. I deeply regret our actions last year when thoughtlessly consigning Cornwall to a status less than that of the Isle of Wight. Remedying this gross insult will be a priority for us. We intend to draft a statutory instrument to amend the Act and make Cornwall a special case as a matter of urgency.’ Rumours persist that Mr Cameron is urging Deputy PM Nick Clegg to admit serious errors over Devonwall and tender his resignation.

George - jumping

GEORGE GOES. ‘A MATTER OF HONOUR’

MP for St Ives Andrew George today revealed his intention to resign from the Liberal Democrats with immediate effect. Serial parliamentary rebel George said ‘I have examined my conscience and realise that I cannot go on propping up a Government so utterly mendacious and detestable. Indeed, to continue on that path is a standing insult to the good sense of all those who voted for me. Instead, I shall represent the interests of Cornwall and its people fearlessly, telling truth to English power from the privilege of the Commons opposition benches.’

Duke - redemption

DUKE BINS BUILDING PLANS

The Duke of Cornwall has ordered his minions to cease their building projects across Cornwall. Forthwith. ‘Covering the land with concrete, tarmac and twee retro-housing projects while calling them eco-communities is entirely at odds with my stated policy of embracing the environment and small furry creatures. I’m afraid my people got rather out of hand and over-enthusiastic about adding to my income, which at £18 million a year is ample for one who wishes to tread lightly on this earth’

The Duchy has pulled out of plans to build a supermarket and add to traffic congestion by placing a park and ride on fields at the eastern end of Truro. It will also be consulting with local residents at Newquay about new plans to turn its land there into a wildlife reserve to be granted in perpetuity to the people of the town.

Eustice - europhile

EUSTICE IN PLEA TO LEARN FROM EUROPE

After a short holiday in Europe Conservative and Ukip MP for Camborne-Redruth George Eustice stunned Westminster yesterday. ‘My fact-finding tour to the eurozone convinces me that we have much to learn from our European friends. I never realised so many of them could speak English and be so chummy. Take the growing problem of discarded plastic supermarket bags in Cornwall for instance. The regional government in Brittany years ago abolished these in negotiation with supermarket chains. Amazingly, Breton shoppers seem to have no problem doing their shopping. And while I’m on the subject of regional government, wouldn’t it be nice to have more elections in Cornwall to bring us in line with our fellow democrats across the water.’

Lavery - lucid

LAVERY DEMANDS RATIONAL LOCAL GOVERNMMENT

Cornwall Council supremo Kevin Lavery surprised seasoned observers of County Hall this week when he called for a fundamental shake-up of Cornwall Council. In a press statement he said ‘The Government’s Localism Act allows councils to opt for a committee form of government rather than the over-centralised and authoritarian style we currently have in Cornwall. Cornwall can show a lead by being at the forefront of efforts to re-democratise our local government. Elected members should provide vision and leadership rather than rely on over-paid bureaucrats such as myself. As an example I have voluntarily offered to work on half-pay and forgo £100,000 of my current salary until my redundancy package is agreed.’

Kaczmarek - konverted

COUNCIL FIGHTS FOR SUSTAINABLE POPULATION

In a shock announcement Cornwall Council has decided after consultation on its Core Strategy to seek the building of 13,000 houses in Cornwall over the next 20 years. Housing portfolio holder Cllr Kaczmarek, said ‘We have been convinced that the current growth rate of 48,000 houses or even more will result in an entirely unacceptable population by 2100 of well over a million. Cornwall will be bursting at the seams. This is clearly bonkers. We have to find an alternative to our tired and failed old policy of “accommodating in-migration”. We have decided to adopt a policy of‘democratic development’ to meet local needs and ensure a steady-statepopulation. May I personally apologise, having last year been duped by intense lobbying from housing developers and the advice of my own planners, who were unfortunately captured by that same lobby.’

The Council has begun work on developing a set of policies that work towards a stable and sustainable population.

The ninth day of Christmas: 9 brave councillors

2012-01-02T07:41:00.001Z

On the ninth day of Christmas my council gave to me

Nine brave councillors*
Eight top consultants
Seven % second homes
Six useless MPs
Five eco-villages
Four supermarkets
Three point four million pounds for an airport
Two Truropark and rides
And a stadium entirely for free

..........................................................................

* On December 15^th councillors on the Strategic PlanningCommittee almost rejected the Council’s own plans (with its partners in environmental crime the Duchy and Waitrose) to build the curiously named Truro Eastern District Centre.

The vote was frustratingly tied at nine for refusal and nine against. Only the chairman’s casting vote saved the day for the developers.

Had their plan been refused would Cornwall Council have gone to appeal against itself??

Cornwall Council's plans to gentrify boring fields east of Truro

The eighth day of Christmas: 8 top consultants

2012-01-01T07:40:00.001Z

On the eighth day of Christmas my council gave to me

Eight top consultants*
Seven % second homes
Six useless MPs
Five eco-villages
Four supermarkets
Three point four million pounds for an airport
Two Truro park and rides
And a stadium entirely for free

.............................................................................

* Early in December the Western Morning News was (easily) shocked to discover that Cornwall Council was doling out £75,000 a day in consultants’ fees. So who are the top earning consultants for whom the Council is a convenient cash cow?

Taking the last three months of available spending figures (June to August) and focusing only on payments of over £20,000 described as 'consultancy' they were

at number 8, Dyer and Butler,a civil engineering contractor with its headquarters in Southampton.They earned £103,000 for work on the St Austell rail/bus interchange.

Coming in at number 7 was Wales & West Utilities, the privatised gas distribution company based in South Wales.Wales & West were paid £104,000 for work at the Tolvaddon Business Park Spine Road extension.

A surprising entry at number 6 was the Cornwall Development Company, Cornwall Council’s own ‘economic delivery arm’. The Council already finances this to the tune of £2.2 million this financial year, down by 10% from 2010-11. The cut may to some extent be made up from the consultancy fees of £106,000 paid to CDC for its ‘externalisation’ work (?!) on Newquay Airport. Yes – even more money thrown at this dying albatross.

At number 5 we have Tibbalds. Not a pet cat but a planning and urban design company from London. Tibbalds were paid £131,000 for their Port of Falmouth Masterplan.

Fourth in the consultants charts was Kendall Kingscott, architects and surveyors with their main office at Bristol. Kendall Kingscott were paid £126,000 for PFI contract work involving Pool Business College and fire damage at Treviglas School.

At number 3 we arrive at the global consulting firm of Parsons Brinckerhoff (head office in New York). The directors of its UK operations have seen their salaries rise by 52% over the past seven years. In 2009 Parsons Brinckerhoff were bought by Balfour Beatty, who were heavily involved in CornwallCouncil’s Penzance Harbour fiasco. Despite that, they still made £259,000 from consultancy work relating to transport studies, moves facilitation, highway design, consultancies for CPR as well as lapping up EU money for consultancy work on Hayle Harbour.

At number 2 we reach the really big earners. Kier Regional is another global construction and property group based in Bedfordshire and one that’s making £millions out of the various lucrative PFI scams beloved by Labour and Tory Governments alike. Their pre-tax profits in 2011 rose by £14 million to £72 million. For all his hard work their highest paid director received £753,000 (not forgetting the private health insurance and company car). Cornwall Council’s contribution to this was £1,205,258 via its PFI schools contract.

Finally, at number 1 and well out in front with £2,403,000 from our taxes was Midas Construction. This Devon company has established itself as a firm favourite of Cornwall Council. In this period they were paid for consultancy work relating to Heartlands at Camborne-Redruth, Gyllyndune Gardens at Falmouth and Weeth at Camborne

Midas Construction’s six directors in 2010-11 earned a relatively modest £39,000 each with the highest paid taking home a mere £95,000. Hang on though. Turns out three of these directors also make up three of the four directors of the parent Midas Group. And their remuneration from that job amounted last year to a cool average payment of £274,000, with the highest paid getting £316,000.

The puzzle here must be why Cornwall Council persists in defining all this as ‘consultancy’ when a lot of it looks like straightforward construction work.

Exclusive: Lys Ker-Now’s amazing Day of Self-Congratulation

2011-12-31T17:03:00.003Z

Lys Ker-Now’s puppet press has widely reported dear respected comrade and Permanent Secretary to the Supreme Leader, fatherly general Kev Lav-Ery’s progress report to the ominously titled Corporate Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee before Christmas.

This includes the Permanent Secretary’s astonishing attack on Lys Ker-Now’s previous regime. This had been riddled with conflict, he informed the assembled masses.

It was like World War Three

However, more details of the regime’s stupendous self-congratulation day of 13^th December have now leaked out.

Kev Lav-Ery extolled the ‘improvement journey’ the regime had adopted.

The ‘Fix, Prepare, Transform, Excel’ agenda was still relevant

Employees are reliably reported to silently mouth this mantra on setting out on their daily tasks.

Moreover, in what some outside observers have described as a fit of remarkable complacency, he went on to claim that

Failing services [inherited from the despised ancien regime] had been fixed, basic services were improving and Cornwall Council was one of the fastest improving authorities

in the universe

Crowds eagerly assemble in Truro to hear about progress on the improvement journey

Responding to fears of a behind the scenes power struggle in this rogue state, Kev Lav-Ery promised that the Supreme Leader, Rob Er-Son

was always prepared to attend open and frank interviews with the local press

However, those responsible for the totalitarian regime’s Propaganda Unit were admonished that

It was important to ensure that stories were correct and to celebrate successes

As the Permanent Secretary finished his report various supernatural occurrences were reported from across the land.

Weeping owls were said to have escaped from the Owl Sanctuary and deliberately flown into vehicles on the state-sponsored A30. Mysterious flashes of light were spotted in the skies above Newquay Airport, thought to herald the arrival of a plane sometime in 2012 and the glorious take-off into everlasting prosperity of the Local Enterprise Zone. And clouds in the shape of a pasty were seen hovering over the site of the proposed People’s Stadium at Threemilestone.

Meanwhile, Supreme Commander and High Toryness Rob Er-Son was quoted as describing the regime as

completely eccentric

This was later corrected to

Cornwall-centric

The seventh day of Christmas: 7% second homes

2011-12-31T07:39:00.001Z

On the seventh day of Christmas my council gave to me

Seven % second homes
Six useless MPs
Five eco-villages
Four supermarkets
Three point four million pounds for an airport
Two Truropark and rides
And a stadium entirely for free

..................................................................................

* One in fourteen houses in Cornwall is a second home. Another one in fourteen is a holiday home.

The council have called on the Government to scrap the 10% council tax discount for second homes.

In 2012 will it make a clear demand that council tax on second homes is doubled? This would raise up to £16 million a year (thus removing the need to cut libraries, bus services, facilities for the disabled etc.) or alternatively drastically reduce the number of second homes.

Or maybe we’ll see councillors make the call for a tourist tax so that temporary visitors can pay their fair share towards the cost of local facilities.

The sixth day of Christmas: 6 useless MPs

2011-12-30T07:39:00.001Z

On the sixth day of Christmas my council gave to me

Six useless MPs*
Five eco-villages
Four supermarkets
Three point four million pounds for an airport
Two Truro park and rides
And a stadium entirely for free

...............................................................................
* Cornwall’s MPs pledged themselves to fight the Coalition Government’s obliteration of Cornish distinctiveness and the reinforcement of our status as an insignificant English county by resolutely opposing a cross-border Devonwall constituency.

Steve Gilbert and Sheryll Murray rally for Cornwall

All six MPs ended up voting for the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act which introduced this.

Cornwall is now regarded as less worthy of special treatment than the Isle of Wight.

Clegg: still confused about fairness

2011-12-29T17:55:00.000Z

While we’re on examples of shameless hypocrisy let’s notforget that curious ritual of British corporate politics – the new year message.Last year the ~~Tory~~ Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg produced a masterpiece ofhalf-baked mendacity. This concentrated on a few small insignificant examplesof Lib Dem ‘influence’ while conveniently omitting to mention such minor thingsas conniving with the Tory plan to cut the living standards of the 95% ratherthan tax the obscene wealth of the 5%.

This year he seems to have learnt nothing and forgotten everything. Not a word about single-handedly destroying the chances ofobtaining a fairer voting system for another generation. Or whittling away ourdemocratic rights by reducing our opportunities to vote. Or conspiring withCameron to use the UK’smembership of the EU merely for boosting the financial sector and reducingeverybody else’s wages.

No, instead Clegg repeats the sad Lib Dem deception that

thanks to the Liberal Democrats, the Coalition has beenhelping people get through these difficult times with measures to make lifefairer and easier.

That’s ‘fair’ as in the 2010 budget

or again in 2011

In Clegg’s dreamworld the Government is

rebalancing [the economy] away from the City of London

In the actual nightmare world we live in this translatesinto

Clegg doesn’t care to mention the following

Perhaps because he’s one of that top 10%.

And in Cleggspeak the Government’s welfare reforms aren't an attack on the powerless

While the Inland Revenue doesn’t let the powerful offwith a handshake.

The Lib Dems promised at the last election to close taxloopholes worth £12 billion (the actual level of corporate and super-rich taxavoidance is estimated variously as between £25 billion and £100 billion). InMarch this year Osborne finally offered to recover £1 billion, described by TaxResearch UKas a ‘token gesture’.

Are there any Liberal Democrats left in Cornwall with a social conscience or an ounceof compassion for their fellow subjects? How can they continue to support aparty led by those who spout such flimsy falsehoods?

P.S. Meanwhile, in his message, Ed Miliband says

Tough times expose your values, because they force you tochoose.

As in choose not to support the public sector workersstriking to retain half-decent pensions presumably.

The fifth day of Christmas: 5 eco-villages

2011-12-29T07:38:00.003Z

On the fifth day of Christmas my council gave to me

Five eco-villages*
Four supermarkets
Three point four million pounds for an airport
Two Truro park and rides
And a stadium entirely for free

.............................................................................
* Cornwall Council is an enthusiastic supporter of the plan for Swiss-Egyptian company Orascom to make a shed-load of money from building five eco-villages (and an eco-marina) in the clay country.

These come with liberal lashings of greenwash and the enthusiastic backing of the Eden Project. This is a tourist theme park next to Cornwall’s largest car park - a frighteningly huge emitter of hot air which is recklessly topping up levels of greenhouse gases.

Not to be outdone, the Duchy of Cornwall, fresh from getting permission to plonk 170 houses on the last unbuilt-on piece of land in Newquay (originally kicked out by the planners but you can’t keep a good developer down) are poised to present its plans for another eco-community in mid-Cornwall.

Now you see them: soon you won't. The green fields about to be sacrificed in order to support the Duke of Cornwall's lifestyle

We can look forward to plans for more thousands of houses for more thousands of in-migrants and all to be built on Newquay’s green belt. This will no doubt be met with grateful and deferential delight in the streets of Newquay, as residents rejoice at such a display of tender loving care for their environment from the Duke of Shameless Hypocrisy.

The fourth day of Christmas: 4 supermarkets

2011-12-28T07:37:00.006Z

On the fourth day of Christmas my council gave to me

Four supermarkets*
Three point four million pounds for an airport
Two Truro park and rides
And a stadium entirely for free

.................................................................................

Over the past year permission has been given for not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR new superstores in Cornwall – at Wadebridge(Sainsburys), Hayle (also Sainsburys), Penzance (ah, that one happens to be a Sainsburys) and Falmouth (errr, looks like another Sainsburys). How thoughtful of the council to provide some colour contrast in the highways and byways of Cornwall, adding orange Sainsburys plastic bags to the ubiquitous blue and white Tesco offerings that litter our 'green' Cornwall.

Oooh, yes, please

Superstores are estimated to reduce the turnover for shops in nearby town centres by between 10 and 15%. But supermarkets also cough up large amounts of conscience money for town centre managers to manage the decline.

More on the current state of Cornwall’s store wars coming on this very blog in the new year.

Tourism: the serpent continues to slither

2011-12-27T17:31:00.002Z

In an all too brief flash of lucidity immediately following the award of EU Objective One funding to Cornwall a decade backalong, some of Cornwall’s ruling clique belatedly recognised that tourism compromised their grand plans to boost the Cornish economy. They wanted to diversify. While not exactly spelt out, the corollary of this was plain. The role of tourism - even though only around 10% - had to be reined back.

Since the 1890s anyone who has cared to think about such matters has recognised that tourism is a blight. For instance, it condemns Cornwall to a low-wage economy, soon to be exacerbated by Tory/Lib Dem plans for local wage bargaining. If this happens Cornwall – with the lowest wages and a greater than average proportion of employees in the public sector and weak unions – will be amongst the worst hit areas in the UK. (Whatever would we do without those three doughty Lib Dem defenders defending our corner in the government I wonder).

No, that's not the Amazon, dear

But tourism brings with it much, much worse effects than poverty wages and seasonal unemployment. It reinforces external representations of Cornwall as just a place to holiday in, not somewhere to be taken at all seriously. In the longer run it encourages past holidaymakers to become present residents.

Tourism has locked us into a dire demographic regime of excessive and unsustainable population growth. This is fundamentally reshaping Cornwall’s culture while it thoughtlessly tears up our familiar landscapes in what appears to be a cruel and heartless joke.

In short, tourism is an insidious serpent slithering into the Cornish body politic. Or, if you prefer another metaphor, a leech fastened onto our institutions, sucking the life blood from them, corrupting and distorting policies and encouraging colossal and extremely wasteful policy follies.

We’ve seen how tourist interests captured the Olympic torch relay route decision. Questions have also to be asked about the new Local Enterprise Partnership, already used merely as a front for propping up Cornwall Council’s environmentally disastrous promotion of Newquay Airport.

The tourist lobby seems to be over-represented on the LEP board. Given its share of the economy, it should have one of the eleven board members. Instead two are directly involved with tourism and another couple have close links. Several of the rest clearly share traditional tourism-generated myths about Cornwall.

Gaynor Coley is the Managing Director of the Eden Project tourist theme park, while Simon Tregoning runs Classic Cottages, marketing 700 holiday cottages. He also chairs the Partnership Board to VisitCornwall (the pro-tourism propaganda unit) and various shadowy lobbying groups such as the Cornwall Commercial Tourism Federation and the Cornwall Association of Holiday House Agencies.

Ominously, Simon calls for the

Cornwall brand

to be

really exploited

which is enough to cause a quivering in the pit of the stomach.

Then we have Alec Robertson, leader of Cornwall Council, which funds VisitCornwall, and with a background in the ‘hospitality’ trade. Not to mention Robin Teverson, previously adviser to the group with a substantial interest in The Beach, the massive Crinnis beach second home development.

The third day of Christmas: £3.4m

2011-12-27T07:36:00.002Z

On the third day of Christmas my council took from me

Three point four million pounds for an airport*
Two Truro park and rides
And a stadium entirely for free

...............................................................................

* at Newquay. Every year. Over £100 million of public money has now been spent on the feeding frenzy required to keep this product of Liberal Democrat hubris in the air.

Thus subsidising second home owners and adding to Cornwall’s carbon emissions by up to twelve-fold by 2030.

At the same time in an indication of their warped sense of priorities Cornwall Council’s transport gauleiter Graeme Hicks is trying to cut up to £2.2 million from the bus subsidies.

Poor people travel by bus. The rich prefer planes to buses and trains.

The second day of Christmas: 2 park and rides

2011-12-26T07:35:00.003Z

On the second day of Christmas my council gave to me

Two Truro park and rides*
And a stadium entirely for free

..................................................................................

*plus

a medieval village

and a Waitrose

not to mention a Cornish food hall

and all on a very pleasant greenfield site owned by the Duchy of Cornwall.

Brownfield site?

Unfortunately, most councillors seem to have swallowed the nonsensical claims about the park and ride hook, line and sinker. A woeful lack of critical faculties sees most of them parroting the planners' assertion that the park and ride will reduce congestion.

Expect more of this

If it does it'll be an excellent example of Cornish difference. For academic research on park and rides elsewhere shows that they consistently increase general levels of traffic. That’s increase, not decrease. So any temporary reduction in congestion on the road into Truro will be more than made up for the growth in traffic to the park and ride. (And most park and rides aren't sited right next to a supermarket!)

The first day of Christmas: a stadium

2011-12-25T07:30:00.004Z

On the first day of Christmas my council gave to me

A stadium entirely for free*

..............................................................................

* On 17^th November Cornwall Council approved outline plans for a Sports Stadium at Threemilestone. This is to be sited alongside the busiest road in Cornwall and miles from the nearest railhead.

This illogical and just slightly unsustainable location has been backed by a petition signed by more than 16,035 people. They include prominent Cornish nationalists and cultural activists such as Dick Cole, Graham Hart, Conan Jenkin, Loveday Jenkin, Rod Lyon and PhilRendle who all seem to think that the stadium is being provided courtesy of Father Christmas and has no connection at all with anything else.

Sadly, they’re living in Tir Comolen an Gog; everything comes with a cost but they don't seem to be aware of the cost of this stadium. We now know the Cornish version of the old saying

For a nation to be free, 'tis sufficient that she wills it

must run something like

For a nation to be free, 'tis sufficient to mortgage our future for a possible stadium

Lys Kern-Ow. More rumours of regime change

2011-12-24T14:06:00.001Z

Following the heavily denied hearsay earlier this week concerning the Great Leader Rob Er-Son’s imminent demise, more thinly veiled indications of continuing turmoil at the top of this closed and secretive western tyranny are seeping out. Despotic Permanent Secretary Kev Lav-Ery is reliably reported this week by the state’s puppet press to have removed former right hand man Tom Flan-Gan from his £135,000 a year post as Corporate Director of Environment, Planning and the economy.

In a cryptic remark that Kernologists are desperately poring over, Lav-Ery thanked Flan-Gan for all his work on

The disgraced Flan-Gan
reputational issues of managing Newquay airport

This is widely believed to refer to the Great State Flying Project. The spiralling costs of this mammoth regime status symbol are fatally undermining the entire economy of this impoverished far-western country.

It has already led to the adoption of extreme austerity measures which threaten famine in some remoter coastal communities. Many villagers are reported to have fled, leaving their run-down properties to a class of regime apparatchniks from the cities locally termed ‘second home owners’.

All the news that isn't fit to print. Convergence Office economises on truth

2011-12-24T06:48:00.000Z

Just before Christmas used to be a perfect time to bury bad news. But now it seems it's easier just to quietly ignore inconvenient facts. Take the revelation that Cornwall’s economy, as measured by gross value added (GVA) per head, fell by 2.9% in 2009, which was the worst performance in the UK.

Indeed, something curious is happening as large injections of EU money don't appear to be having the effect so confidently predicted by their gatekeepers, even on their own terms. True, from 1999 to 2004 Cornwall’s economy grew faster than that of the UK. GVA per capita rose from 59.3% of the UK’s to 64.9%. But this was before Objective One spending really kicked in.

Just as that spending - on such things as the Tremough Campus, the Peninsula Medical School at Treliske or the Eden Project - should have begun to affect things … they didn’t! OK, GVA continued to ‘converge’ with that of the UK from 2004 to 2009, but only by a miserable 0.7%. At that rate it’ll take until at least 2061 before we get up to the UK average. And by then coastal areas are likely to be under several metres of water.

And last week the Office for National Statistics (ONS) informed us that even this modest ‘progress’ was in reverse gear. It appears the Cornish economy was hit more seriously by the bankers’ crisis than anywhere else. But the Convergence Partnership Office, which spends our money churning out at least half a dozen press releases a week, remains curiously silent about this relative stagnation.

On the 14^th December, the same day as the sub-regional GVA figures were being announced by the ONS, the Convergence Office instead pumped out a feel-good press release about the £16 million government grant towards another road between Camborne and Redruth. Cornwall Council’s hapless Transport fuehrer Graeme Hicks was quoted welcoming the prospect of 7,500 more houses in the area as ‘good news’.

Needless to say, that press release was then dutifully reprinted virtually word for word in this week's West Briton. Shamefully though, the paper didn’t think it necessary to inform us this was actually a press release from the Convergence Office and therefore might be providing just a very slightly rosy picture. Let alone seek to provide some 'balance' - such an old-fashioned concept in these post-modernist times.

Back in 2007 Carleen Kelemen, Director of the Convergence Office, was quoted in one of her own press releases as saying, with very curious syntax,

I am confident that in the future of the Cornish economy continues to grow

Carleen Kelemen not telling us the Cornish economy languished in 2009

Nigel Jump, chief economist for the RDA said at the same time

We believe Cornwall made further … progress in the last two years.

It didn’t. So what do these Nostradamuses of the regeneration-hype business now make of these latest dismal figures?

Olympic Torch Relay Route: Tracking down the local experts

2011-12-22T17:17:00.007Z

The Olympic Torch Relay Route has been designed, so we are assured, to bring the torch to 95% of a breathlessly expectant population. Strange then that in Cornwall it takes utmost care to avoid our largest urban conglomeration completely, steering well to the south of Camborne-Redruth. George Eustice, Tory MP for that benighted and blighted area and down to earth farmer or wily PR operator depending on the phases of the moon, was not at all pleased.

Personally, I’d have thought this was the occasion for wild rejoicing on the part of the inhabitants of Camborne-Redruth, saved the awful embarrassment of being herded out to gawp at a flaming torch. But no. For George it was a ‘cock-up’. He asked

what on earth were the organisers thinking

Well, what were they thinking? The London 2012 Organising Committee claimed in the local press (10th November) that the route was decided

using local expertise

Looks like a Freedom of Information request is on the cards to find out who these local experts were then. Except that as a private company the Committee conveniently doesn’t have to answer FOI requests.

But visit their website and we discover that the route was decided after a series of workshops involving

local authorities …plus representatives from tourism, heritage, sustainability, culture, education and sport

The workshops were organised on the basis of the ‘regions and nations’ of the UK. So, as the Cornish nation has to be ignored on the orders of Nick Clegg, did ‘local expertise’ reside at a regional level?

It appears not, as we find out there are County [sic] Working Groups and a ‘Team Cornwall’ that is bent on ‘engaging the county [sic] in the world’s greatest sporting and cultural festival’. Let's ignore the tiny issue of when the Olympics became a cultural festival. We're told Team Cornwall is a ‘multi-skilled’ partnership involving:

Cornwall Sports Partnership (which includes agencies of Cornwall Council)

School Sports Partnerships (with a heavy involvement of the education authority which is of course Cornwall Council)

Cornwall Museums

Visit Cornwall (funded by Cornwall Council)

Cornwall Council Leisure (part of Cornwall Council)

Cornwall Council Economic Development (also part of Cornwall Council)

This body is therefore heavily connected with Cornwall Council, which directly runs three of the six partners and indirectly has a major say in two of the others. Sure enough, the County [sic] Working Group is chaired by Adam Paynter, Lib Dem Cornwall Councillor for Lanson North. And it’s serviced by Cornwall Council, which provides its secretary. However, despite being funded by public money, it provides no publicly accessible minutes of its proceedings.

In the absence of transparency or evidence to the contrary, we can only assume that the ‘local expertise’ involved in advising on the choice of route lay not a million miles from Truro. Which is presumably why Council Leader Alec Robertson was distinctly unsympathetic towards the whinges from Camborne-Redruth’s MP. He said

While we appreciate that some communities may be disappointed that LOCOG has not chosen their particular town or village as part of the official route, this does not mean they won’t be able to join in the party, as the aim is for those areas to host the Olympic Torch Relay on behalf of their surrounding communities.

To find the identity of those who ignored Camborne-Redruth, once Cornwall’s ‘central’ district but now it seems just towns and villages surrounding Helston and Breage, George Eustice might profitably look no further than Truro. For the ‘local experts’ turn out to be Cornwall Council, heavily involved in advising and supporting a route designed solely to boost Cornwall’s ailing tourist industry.

The great brownfield land myth

2011-12-20T17:25:00.003Z

Back in October at a Cornwall Council meeting Jim Currie, Cabinet portfolio holder for corporate resources, got very shirty with Ruth Lewarne. Cllr Lewarne had implied that planning officers might have been tempted to propose approval for the Dutch ING Group’s plans for Hayle’s South Quay, involving a Sainsburys supermarket, cinema, shops, 30 houses and various other goodies, because Cornwall Council have 7% of its pension fund invested with ING.

Perish the thought. Ridiculous idea fulminated the irascible Currie. It was

far fetched and an insult to the professionalism and integrity of Cornwall Council’s planning officers

In Currie-land planning officers are of course always precise, accurate, objective and scientific in their appraisals. Take the Duchy Business Park at Tuckingmill, between Camborne and Redruth, for example.

On 20^th October a proposal for 87 houses and then a second for 296 houses from the Duchy Business Park were agreed by the Council’s Strategic Planning Committee, with no-one voting against and just one abstention, following officers’ advice. In the planning officer’s report the second site was described as

a mix of Greenfield and Brownfield land

But in the reasons for approval given in the minutes of the planning meeting this had casually transmuted into

the site was considered to be a predominantly Brownfield site

This is what it actually looks like.

Planning officers are no doubt extremely professional and stuffed with integrity. But they seem to be colour-blind.

Cornwall mourns loss of Great Leader

2011-12-19T14:29:00.001Z

A distraught nation learnt this morning that our Dear Leader, Rob Er-Son, was unexpectedly stepping down. A tearful Radio Yokel presenter made the shock announcement at 7.09 a.m. ‘It is our people’s biggest ever sadness’, he sobbed, barely able to utter a coherent sentence.

Suffering in Stratton

The official Cornwall Council News Agency was reported to be urging the people to rally behind Rob Er-Son’s ‘Great Successor’, the shadowy figure of Kev Lav-Ery. For many months Kev Lav-Ery has been suspected of being the man pulling the strings. His supreme power is believed to flow from his role in the mysterious organisation SER-CO, suspected of exercising a major influence in the secretive and cloistered world of intrigue that is known as Lys Ker Now.

People in the streets of Truro broke down and wept uncontrollably as reports of the Great Inspiration’s demise filtered through. Christmas shoppers stood grief-stricken and paralysed, unable to take in the news. Meanwhile, it was reliably reported that Council staff were ~~whooping~~ weeping hysterically at the traumatic turn of events.

Grief in Goldsithney

Expert observers of the Truro regime report increasing cynicism internally as it proves incapable of meeting basic economic needs or safeguarding the Cornish environment. Harrowing accounts have been trickling out of this closely controlled society about large numbers of dissidents consigned to the prison camps of Cam Borne and Red Ruth where they are forced to purchase all their consumer goods at charity shops. Even worse, unconfirmed stories persist about some of the regime’s opponents being banished to the ghastly wastes of New Quay or St Aust-Hell for political re-education.

The authorities in neighbouring Wales, Brittany and Devon are reported to be on a heightened state of alert in case of instability in the western approaches.

Correction

Cornwall Council newsroom is categorically denying this story. A spokesperson states

These rumours are a scurrilous attempt to sow discord in our land of happiness, siblinghood and unity. Our Beloved Leader has absolutely no intention of stepping down. Ever. On the contrary he is looking forward to working 18 hour days over the next fortnight safeguarding all the loyal children of our nation of the setting sun as they relax over the Christmas period, ready to return to work – if they still have any - refreshed and with eager hearts in order to meet the Great Leader’s five year Mounting Austerity Plan.

What is to be done? Tackling the Cornish crisis.

2011-12-17T10:14:00.003Z

The Conference finally draws to its close. As I relax with a complimentary post-Porthemmet conference massage from a ~~dusky~~ dusty bal maiden – aah, nothing beats the gentle touch of the spalling hammer – the answer to our long-suffering crisis seems obvious.

Dottie Penluny, Porthemmet's head masseuse

For a fundamental contradiction lurks at the heart of Cornwall Council’s growth plans. And if anyone is in any doubt about what those plans really are take a geek at their recent publication ‘Can-do Cornwall’. This appallingly written document, replete with meaningless management-waffle and jaw-dropping jargon, happily converts Cornwall Council from a democratically elected body answerable to the people to a private company answerable to no-one, proudly calling it Cornwall plc. (Strangely, you can find this nowhere on the Council's website. But try here.)

It also loftily claims that

We are designing an ambitious 10-year housing programme to deliver 30,000 well-designed and energy efficient new homes

But wait. In the ten years from 2001 to 2010 22,800 houses were completed in Cornwall. Over the same ten years the population grew by 39,900, or 8.1%. Even at that rate of growth the current population of around 540,000 will be around 1,100,000 by 2100. Doubling the population means the amount of built-up land will triple.

This is the unsustainable building spiral we’re locked into, erasing the Cornishness of Cornwall to accommodate the insatiable demand of people in the south east of England to come and live here and the insatiable desire of developers, construction companies, landlords, consultants and others to make money.

Yet even this mad rate is apparently insufficient for Cornwall Council. For they want not another 22,800 houses in the next decade but 30,000!!! In the process increasing the rate of growth from 8.1% to 11.8%. At that rate we’ll hit a million before 2070 and the numbers in Cornwall by 2100 will be 1,460,000, a truly insane plan.

But the denizens of County Hall are deaf and blind to such implications. The clarion call rings out through the corridors - speed up the suburbanisation of Cornwall. More people, more supermarkets, more cars, more everything. For ever and ever. Without end. (Only make sure the signage is in Cornish.)

Weary conference delegates wait for ferry

This becomes the mad mantra of the swivelled-eye mandarin political clique at the core of our mini-stalinist state. It’s echoed by their corporate allies and a more traditional ruling elite in Cornwall who long ago leaped at the chance to sell our birthright for their profits.

Yet in this gadarene rush to sterilise our land and make it safe for colonisation lies the basic contradiction. It becomes ever more difficult to persuade the consumer-subjects who live here that tearing up cherished and much-loved local environments is somehow in their interests. Vast housing developments that scar once green fields can contain as many ‘public open spaces’ as can profitably be included but cannot escape the inescapable fact. Cornwall is being well and truly trashed. Sacrificed for suburbs. Cleansed for cars and commuters.

Popular disquiet simmers and grows, as we are beginning to see from Penzance to Bodmin and beyond. The seeds of a broader movement will sooner or later blossom into righteous anger at what is happening to our land and our heritage. A popular movement that links the disparate groups inevitably waits in the wings, pregnant with possibilities, only needing a spark for ignition.

Will 2012 see the genesis of that movement to challenge the interests that are quietly selling off Cornwall? The always excellent George Monbiot cites the radical theologian Walter Wink. Wink says that to challenge a dominant system we must first name the powers, then unmask those powers, before engaging with the powers.

This and other blogs can go some way to naming and unmasking the powers destroying our land. But a single-issue cross-Cornwall group focused on the long-term implications of the crisis of unsustainable hyper-development is required to engage with them on their own political ground. Use the democratic machinery still left to us to throw a giant spanner into the works of the soulless Moloch and his disciples. And we can start by asking whose Cornwall this is. Theirs or ours?

What’s Cornwall Council for?

2011-12-12T10:23:00.003Z

I feel I owe the dwindling band of loyal readers of this blog, exquisitely described by one fan as ‘libellous, inaccurate bollocks’ and ‘paranoid tosh’, an explanation for recent inactivity. The truth is that I’ve been on retreat, attending the biannual International Cornish Studies Conference at Porthemmet.

Porthemmet Conference Centre

Huge and enthusiastic crowd for the keynote paper on ‘Gone missing: did a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative exist in medieval Cornish?’ Fascinating. I escape the assembled obsessive-compulsives for a brief moment. Shall I be tempted by the contribution from VisitCornwall entitled ‘The fifth horseman of the apocalypse: why a tourist tax in Cornwall would mean the end of civilisation as we know it’? No, I’ll give it a miss and get some fresh air.

While taking a stroll along the strand, my mind idly turns to the questions that are never asked, either in the rarefied atmospheric mists of intellectual irrelevance that shroud Porthemmet, or in the everyday world of churnalism where exploited wordsmiths toil ceaselessly day and night to keep us completely confused and distracted.

Professor Tresoddit about to lecture on 'Foreshore or foreskin? Duchy discourses of the 1850s'

Questions such as

What is Cornwall Council for?

Local government has always had two functions. On the one hand it’s an agent of the central state; on the other it represents localities to the centre. When the latter threatens to get out of hand, the state has, if it can get away with it, never hesitated to abolish local government. Such as in the 1980s when the GLC and Metropolitan Counties were axed. But this merely continued a fine old British tradition. For example, in the early 1800s democratic open parish vestries were replaced by ‘select’ vestries, chosen only by the richer ratepayers.

In this light the abolition of a whole tier of Cornish local government in 2009 and its replacement by a unitary Cornwall Council was nothing new. The more local a council is the more susceptible it is to popular influence and the popular will. So much easier to distance government from the people by getting rid of the most potentially responsive level of local government and ensuring a popular mandate is only needed once every four years rather than two.

Easier that is for central government, left to deal with only one institution rather than seven. Easier as well for bureaucratic cadres at County Hall who could enhance their power. And easier too for the local political clique, Tory, Independent and Lib Dem, who like to think they run things and luxuriate in the glow of their own pompous self-importance.

For these groups emasculating local government and halving the number of elections in Cornwall at a stroke was completely logical. A more remote and centralized Cornwall Council with weakened popular oversight plays very nicely indeed into their hands, tidying up lines of decision-making and deepening the democratic deficit.

Others also benefit. One council enables more effective lobbying from well-funded and organised business interests. Land speculators and house-builders, keenly aware of the profits to be made from selling a Cornish lifestyle, cluster around the new authority like bees to nectar (or should that be like flies to shit).

The housebuilding lobby adopts a two-pronged strategy. The large construction companies have successfully lobbied the Tory/Lib Dem Government to give the green light to any and every large ‘development’. At the same time they press local government in Cornwall to build as many houses as possible, bribing them with sports stadia, new schools, roads, supermarkets, public open spaces or whatever.

Captured by the profiteers, Cornwall Council attaches itself ever more blatantly to a mindless ‘growth’ agenda. Abandoning any pretence of even-handedly trying to control the tiger of speculative hyper-development it jumps on its back and becomes a leading player in the great sale of Cornwall. It now acts more as a conduit for funnelling public funds to SERCO, SITA, other global corporations, and a host of up-country consultants, than as a representative of local communities.

Its role is to drive through ‘development’ at any cost, manipulating opinion and controlling public discourse in the process. Space for democratic debate shrinks. Internally too, the Cabinet system centralizes control. Councillors are effectively neutered. Those few councillors unhappy at being a mere cipher and with the initiative or ability to question things are efficiently co-opted, contained or marginalised.

A tiny mandarin class and a political elite – it’s difficult to know which is in the driving seat – sits in the centre of the spider’s web. All potential predators are safely muzzled, the fourth estate feeble and ineffective, voters and councillors alike kept at a safe distance. A Stalinist climate of fear and suspicion descends. The result is a one-party state that lacks even the redeeming feature of a party. Politics is diminished. Alienation is rife, the people disillusioned and disheartened.

Politics in Cornwall were changed fundamentally by the coup of the mandarin elite back in 2008/09. We have still to wake up to its implications. As I sleeplessly wander the plush corridors of the Porthemmet Conference Centre I shall ponder the next obvious question.

What is to be done?

Conference delegates relax at the bar

Heartlands road to boost population growth

2011-12-06T14:50:00.004Z

Despite regularly peddling the tiresome lie that ‘we have no money’ the Government yesterday found £41 million for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games and today we’re told it’s going to find £170 million to build more roads. One of these, costing £27 million, will be between Redruth and Camborne. You’d think the existing two would suffice but the mind boggles at the demand to drive to and fro between these places.

Local Tory MP George Eustice crows that the new road will

unlock the potential of derelict land and create thousands of new jobs.

What George didn’t like to mention is that it will ‘release’ land (not by any means all ‘derelict’ either) for building another 7,500 houses.

But isn’t this the same George Eustice who used to think that the 11,000 or so houses originally planned for Camborne-Redruth by the Labour Government (a whopping 168% increase on the 4,000 or so built in the last two decades) was ‘bonkers’?

In its Core Strategy, Cornwall’s Tory/Independent Council is proposing somewhere between 4,600 (still a 12% increase in the build rate) and 12,100 houses for Camborne-Redruth. The land ‘released’ by the road will go a long way to providing this figure.

The road has always been part of the Council’s plan to dump as many houses as possible in Camborne-Redruth. They intend to take advantage of this relatively deprived area by cruelly dangling the vague promise of ‘thousands’ of jobs and never-ending prosperity in front of its bemused inhabitants.

Heartlands: just what we need - lots more houses

What this in fact shows is that the Heartlands ‘so-called’ regeneration scheme is basically all about tarting up the area in advance of new settlements, thus keeping the prices of new houses up. Heartlands is just a phase in a larger place-shaping project designed to legitimate a massive shift of population into the district. Like the stadium at Threemilestone its function is to fool the people while ratcheting up unsustainable population growth and making lots of money for developers and others.

Another huge demo against the cuts in Cornwall

2011-12-05T09:41:00.001Z

Let’s continue last week’s theme and warm ourselves on the sparks of anger that are threatening to ignite a righteous blaze of indignation. A fire soon to be fanned into a veritable conflagration that will consume the corporate cronies and their political stooges in the furnace of the people’s retribution …

Sorry, getting carried away. Must check what they’re putting into that organic muesli these days.

Yet if you were in Penzance on Saturday morning you might have seen an even bigger demonstration than last week’s rally in Truro and a growing determination to confront the cuts. An estimated 2,000+ turned out to express their anger at the steady mothballing of West Cornwall Hospital as services are progressively transferred to Treliske.

They were addressed by local MP Andrew George who said

restore these services

Which would be fine except that when I last checked Boy George was still a member of the Liberal Democrats. That’s the Liberal Democrats who are part of the coalition government. The government that is making the cuts in the NHS’s budget, the same people that are encouraging the centralisation of services.

And the government that’s driving through its widely despised privatisation ‘reforms’ to open up the NHS even further to the global healthcare corporations. You know, the same one that’s decided that the poorer you are the more you pay for the bankers’ crisis.

As Andrew George claims to oppose all this (not to mention the Devonwall constituency, the new developers’ charter that will rig the planning system even further in favour of the profiteers, cuts in local bus services and most other things that his party signs up to) perhaps he would care to do the honourable thing and resign from the Liberal Democrats. Come on, Andrew, give us a lead.

Press fury at strike success

2011-12-01T17:42:00.004Z

The state pension in Britain is among the lowest in Europe – only better than Estonia, Latvia and Cyprus. But I wonder where Britain ranks for the quality of its press. Take the papers’ reporting of yesterday’s anger over the Tory/Lib Dem attack on pensions for example.

According to the Sun the strike was ‘a flop’ and just an excuse to go shopping (no doubt spending all those exorbitant wages).

The Mail took the same line as it reported that

Militant union leaders failed in their campaign to bring Britain to its knees yesterday.

Both papers uncritically gave pride of place to Cameron’s airy dismissal of the strike as a ‘damp sqib’.

The Scottish Daily Express must take the prize for diving furthest into the gutter.

Attacks on public sector workers were more muted in the Telegraph but its headline still read

Funny how we're regularly told by these same papers that the public sector is a parasitical drain on our resources and then they worry that two million public sector workers will bring everything to a standstill. So which is it? Essential or unecessary? Make your minds up chaps.

Amazingly, we have to turn to the Western Morning News for something approaching fair reporting. It headlined the story as

STRONG SUPPORT FOR STRIKE IN THE WEST

and accurately reported yesterday's ‘massive rally’ in Truro. A pity though that you can’t read their story as for some strange reason it doesn’t appear in their online version.

Congratulations due to the Morning News then. But has it undergone an ideology transplant since I last looked? Then it was just a thinly disguised newsletter for the Countryside Alliance/Ukip.

Public sector pensions passion

2011-11-30T13:26:00.003Z

According to smarmy public school twit Gove and his mates in the Cabinet of millionaires the country [sic] is being held to ransom today by greedy public sector workers. These parasites - all on gold-plated pensions - are being unwillingly forced on strike by militant union leaders. The poor dears.

The patronising Gove ought to have been in Truro this morning. It was standing room only at the Hall for Cornwall (capacity 969) with hundreds more waiting outside to march/amble around Truro before mingling with the Xmas shoppers. An impressive turnout and an indication that there is a righteous anger boiling away at the cuts being imposed by Cameron and Clegg on behalf of their class.

Labour comrades debate whether to support strike or go on holiday

Some claims made at the meeting show us why (I haven't had time to check these out yet).

£10 billion in pension tax relief goes to the top 1% of earners
Francis Maude and Eric Pickles' annual pensions will be £43,825 for 27 years service
MPs' pensions are still calculated on the basis of the retail price index not the consumer price index like the rest of us (which reduces the value of our pensions by up 15% at a stroke)
The CEO of SERCO earns £3 million a year

And of course, never forget that we're all in this togeher.

Democracy in Cornwall now minority interest

2011-11-28T10:01:00.001Z

Much excitement surrounding MK’s victory in the Wendron by-election. And congratulations to them. But let’s not get too carried away. After all, more people still voted for the Tory/Lib Democrat candidates, despite their programme to make the poorest pay for the economic crisis, than voted for MK. But for once MK benefited from our bizarre electoral system as the vote for the corporate parties nicely split.

And let’s look at it another way. The turnout – at 27.8% - was way down on the 44.3% of 2009. If we convert the votes into percentages of the registered electorate we get the following

MK             10.1%
LD           6.2%
Con       5.4%
Ind    2.8%
Lab     1.9%
non-voters 72.2%

For comparison, the votes in 2009 were

Ind            17.1%
MK       8.8%
Con      6.9%
Ukip   5.7%
LD             4.5%
Lab        1.4%
non-voters 55.7%

Little change in support for the parties then. Some growth for MK and, to much puzzlement, the Lib Dems. A small decline for the Tories and big drop for the independents. But the clear winners are still the non-voters. People are sitting on their hands. How can they be enthused, angered, impassioned by politics? What will it take to re-engage them with the democratic process?

Managing waste and moulding opinions: Cory Environmental and Hallenbeagle

2011-11-25T12:24:00.007Z

A couple of weeks ago Cory Environmental held a ‘public consultation event’ about its plans for a waste processing facility at Hallenbeagle, near Scorrier and just outside Redruth.

With the help of beguiling photos of happy residents swooning over the plans Cory claimed

a successful public consultation event last Tuesday. This was attended by nearly 100 people including local councillors and residents …We were delighted with the response from members of the public and the support shown for our recycling initiative.

How very unfortunate then that just a week later a packed meeting at Blackwater attracted 130 people protesting against the very same scheme.

Many of those attending complained about the lack of consultation. Which is less surprising when we consider that these so-called ‘public consultation events’ are more designed to massage public opinion than listen to objectors’ concerns.

Cory Environmental has picked up the baton dropped in 2009 by SITA and, courtesy of the Tregothnan Estate who own the land, intend to build a waste transfer and recycling centre there.

Although it’s a bit difficult to understand why another such centre is needed when Cornwall Council is so confident it’s going to impose its incinerator scheme on the people of St Dennis. The contract for that requires 240,000 tons of waste a year for the next 30 years. We’re now informed that the Scorrier facility will handle a total of 150,000 tons of commercial and domestic waste every year. Most of this will be recycled but some will be burnt and some shifted elsewhere.

No wonder Cornwall Council are so keen on population growth. With the output of waste per person falling, they’ll need a lot more residents in order to keep up our rubbish production in order these plants can continue to operate at full capacity and make profits for their owners.

Cory Environmental are one of the big six waste management companies in the UK, with a revenue of £189 million a year. They’ve just been awarded the £125 million contract for all rubbish collection and recycling across Cornwall until 2020. So they’re well in with the Council.

Cory is owned by a confusing combination of private equity firms. In 2005 Montague Private Equity bought it, only to promptly sell it on just two years later at a massive 100% profit. Its owners now include ABN Amro – a global banking services company from the Netherlands, Finpro SGPS, based in Portugal, and Santander Private Equity, the investment arm of the Spanish Santander Bank, well known for its excellent customer relations in the UK.

I assume Cornwall Council took full account of the shaky state of the Spanish and Portuguese economies when it awarded its contract to Cory. A contract that runs to 2020 shows great confidence in those economies and nerves of steel at County Hall in the face of the possible over-exposure of Cory to the collapse of its private equity backers.

Spain swings to regionalists

2011-11-23T07:51:00.001Z

Strange how the British media tended to ignore the above story. The Telegraph, along with a lot of other ‘pundits’, lazily headlined it

In a particularly shallow report, the BBC called it a

resounding victory

for the conservative Partido Popular (PP) and focused on the defeat of the ruling Socialists who, like Labour, merely offered more of the same cuts. Meanwhile, at the Guardian, the message was the same.

But did the Spanish really flock to the polls so overwhelmingly to support conservative austerity in place of socialist austerity? Or was it just the usual charade of the politics of the pendulum as voters, frightened and ignorant, turn from one corporate party desperately applying the sticking plaster to finance capitalism to another?

If you’d looked really hard you’d find this, tucked away at the bottom of the Telegraph report.

Smaller and regional parties also did well as the traditional socialist voters turned away from the PSOE. A new party in the Basque country secured several seats in the national parliament.

And right at the end of the Guardian’s report there was this.

Among a series of smaller parties to benefit from the socialist collapse was the communist-led United Left party, which increased its number of deputies from two to eleven.

Reflecting their ideological agendas the Telegraph hadn’t dared to upset its readers by mentioning the leftist United Left (Izquierda Unida - IU) and the Guardian drew the line at identifying the Basque parties.

Turns out as well that in reality the ‘landslide’ equates to the PP increasing their vote by just half a million, from 10.3 million in 2008 to 10.8 million last weekend. Or from 39.9% to 44.6%. Their majority is courtesy of a disproportionate electoral system (although better than ours). The Socialist vote on the other hand fell by 4.3 million. So where did all those Socialist voters go? Clearly not to the PP.

Some abstained. Turnout fell from 74% to 72% (which means that actually fewer than 32% of Spanish voters were daft enough to vote for even more austerity – far fewer than the 38% of Brits who plumped for Tory/Lib Dem austerity last year).

Some went for the IU which saw its vote rise by 3.2% across Spain as nine seats were gained to add to the two won in 2008.

But the other winners outside the PP was a variety of regionalist parties. The total vote for the main regionalist and nationalist parties rose from 7.3% three years ago to 10.5% now, while they increased their seats from 29 to 38.

The Catalan Convergencia I Unió saw its share of the vote in Catalonia rise from 20.9% to 29.4% as it gained six seats, while the leftist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya held on to its three seats.

The biggest swing to the nationalist parties however occurred in the Basque Country. There the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), whose vote rose somewhat, was just pipped in terms of both votes and seats by a new coalition of leftist Basque parties – Amaiur. Together the PNV and Amaiur won over 50% of the votes in the Basque Country (and 11 of the 18 seats there) and 27% in Navarra.

Two other regionalist parties – the Coalición Canaria and the Bloque Nacionalista Galego – maintained their position. Meanwhile the Coalició Compromis in Valencia and the Asturian Forum in Asturias also won seats for the first time. The Partido Regionalista de Cantabria also polled well without gaining a seat.

Add this resurgence of support for regionalist and nationalist parties in Spain to the highflying SNP and perhaps there’s hopeful omens in the wind for MK after all.

School spending slides under Lib Dems

2011-11-21T10:55:00.000Z

Back in September 2009 Nick Clegg promised this:

He said

one of the things I’m absolutely adamant about is that it would be madness to cut support for schools in order to deal with the poisonous legacy of this recession. If we want this country to recover from this huge economic shock we’ve suffered; we’ve got to start with our children. Sacrificing their life chances to fill the black hole left by Gordon Brown will only make it more likely that we will not be able to return to sustained prosperity in the future.

Two years on and the Institute of Fiscal Studies finds:

They say

spending will fall by 13% in real terms between 2010-11 and 2014-15. In England, the deepest cuts are in school buildings, higher education, 16-to-19 provision and early years.

Nick Clegg is Deputy Prime Minister. Presumably he's off his trolley.

Cornish language hits doldrums

2011-11-19T11:59:00.006Z

If you happen to be in the vicinity of Grampound Road you can now find some decent bread, baked by brothers Ben and Tim Hawkins. However, while the bread may go down a treat the name of their bakery is likely to stick in the throat.

The bakery states that

The only slight problem with this is that it isn't. For da bara is meaningless gibberish. It’s like opening a newsagents called ‘News Good’. Full marks then for trying to use the Cornish language. No marks for getting it completely wrong.

Such a name should be widely held up to ridicule until the mistake was corrected. But the sad thing is that da bara isn’t. Instead it only leads to witless food ‘critics’ wittering on excruciatingly and embarrassingly that

'Da Bara' in Cornish, means ‘good bread’. (And dese are da brothers that make da good bread).

What a pity that the Hawkins brothers, presumably local, hadn’t bothered to check out the Cornish with someone. It shouldn’t have taken anyone with a passing knowledge of Cornish more than ten seconds to have pointed out their error.

As it is, a well intentioned and admirable attempt to make use of our historic language ends up making it even more of a laughing stock.

Liberal Democrats: still as dozy as ever

2011-11-17T15:27:00.006Z

So Nick Clegg is to deign to meet with a delegation of MPs and the Cornish Constitutional Convention. Cornish Lib Dems are some excited about this.

Clegg says

This Government is pursuing a radical agenda of devolution, not just to the devolved administrations within the United Kingdom, but also to the regions and communities within England as well.

One can only assume that he’s having his little joke at the expense of the hapless Cornish delegation. At the risk of restating the bleeding obvious let’s just remind ourselves of a few facts.

What Clegg actually gave us was not a radical or even a moderate dose of devolution. It was a Devonwall constituency. At the time he said

special exceptions for Cornwall or elsewhere could not be made … because where will that end.

Yet then the Isle of Wight was promptly made a special exception while Clegg led his Lib Dem troops into the lobbies to vote down the case for a Cornish exception.

In an answer to North Cornwall’s Dan Rogerson he sneeringly said

I hear what my hon. Friend says about the boundary between Cornwall and England, although I am sure that many of his constituents would be delighted to know that they are also citizens of England and the United Kingdom. The rule of thumb will be that the Boundary Commission should seek to redraw boundaries according to the simple principle that constituencies should be of a more equal size than they are at the moment … it will be of greater weight and importance than any other considerations.

And he has memorably described the Lib Dems as

a party … which has Cornwall sort of coursing through its veins.

Sort of?! Just so.

Oh, and the Lib Dems still organise themselves on the basis of a Devon and Cornwall region. Instead of gimmicks, sound-bites and press releases when are these masters of doublespeak going to give us some deeds?

Toilets or tourists? The neo-liberal’s dilemma

2011-11-15T09:30:00.004Z

In southern Europe humiliated politicians are prized from office. In Cornwall politicians squabble over who pays for public toilets. Cornwall Council first proposed cutting half of them. They then retreated in the face of public concerns. But, behind the scenes, it seems this is a done deal. As usual, confusion reigns.

At first glance it looks as if the two issues – panic in the eurozone and closing toilets in Cornwall – are unconnected. But they are. They’re both facets of the same phenomenon – the attack on the living standards and civilised conditions of the many to protect the wealth of the few.

Whether millionaire Tories or Lib Dems in the UK or well-heeled ‘socialists’ in Greece or over-sexed media magnates in Italy, the message for the rest of us is identical. Work harder and longer. For less pay. And we’ll make sure you do by slicing your pensions to ludicrous levels. And while we’re at it we’ll slash the infrastructure of the welfare state. It’s full speed to barbarism and the toilets – not much chance of an honest profit there – have to go.

Whatever you do don’t mention the fact that the so-called debt crisis could be solved almost overnight by taxing the rich. For they’re our wealth creators – the geese who lay the golden eggs. Or not. And in any case we – the political class – are all in it together with them. So let’s divert your attention with large helpings of nationalism and Olympics, and squabbles over toilets.

In Cornwall our own parochial political class are ever happy to wander around aimlessly in the trees rather than look up at the wood. And in most cases they remain oblivious to the fact that they’re in a wood in the first place.

But they are. So where are the ringing denunciations of the threadbare ‘austerity programme’, the attack on the poor designed to stiffen up labour discipline? Or if that’s too much to expect where are the innovative solutions?

For example, a tourist tax. Now is surely the time to revisit this excellent proposal. Back in June it was left to Cornwall Council’s corporate director for planning Tom Flanagan to raise the possibility of a £1 a night tourist tax. This eminently sensible idea was soundly pilloried in the local press.

Hardly a surprise that the tourist lobby hysterically condemned it. But so did Tory and Lib Dem councillors. Yet in Brittany tourist taxes - levied by communes (parishes) – are commonplace and vary from €0.50 to €2 a night per person. According to publicly funded tourism lobbyists VisitCornwall tourists spent 23 million nights in Cornwall in 2008. So a modest 50p a night tourist tax should generate at least £10 million.

This is enough to pay for the shortfall in Cornwall Council’s toilets budget six or seven times over. Or pay five years of the bus subsidy that they’re cutting. Or, to put it into terms they’re more likely to understand, it’s equal to three years of money thrown down the toilet at Newquay airport.

It only seems fair that tourists should pay towards facilities that they use. It would have the added advantage in the medium term of reducing our dependence on tourism and in the long term the pressure on in-migration. It looks like a no-brainer. So which councillor will be brave enough to start to campaign for it?

The West Briton: ranters’ heaven

2011-11-13T08:47:00.002Z

The Truro-based paper the West Briton appears to have been taken a policy decision to give space to the opinionated. And the more opinionated the better. So a question arises. Is this a deliberate policy designed to put back the arguments for devolution and Cornish confidence a few centuries? (OK, in writing about ranters I’m well aware that stones and glass houses lie in wait around the corner.)

In rising order of rant we first have Tommy Bray. Tommy lives in a time warp called Four Lanes, a place where people still attend chapel every Sunday and eat their pasties daily, where cheerful cries of ‘right, pard!’ greet you from all sides and the highpoint of life seems to be the annual tea treat. Tommy fearlessly flies the flag for a particular brand of socially conservative Cornishness. For Tommy, everything that’s wrong with Cornwall tends to get dumped at the doors of ‘emmets’, those English people who have come to live among us.

Nonetheless, love him or loathe him, Tommy, dear of him, is a Cornish icon. Just a pity that his Cornwall hasn’t actually been spotted since around 1960. Which makes him an easy target for others.

Fellow WB ranters such as Richard Butterworth, for example. Richard is Tommy’s alter ego, hailing from Edgware in outer London but now living the quasi-rural life between Redruth and St Day. Richard’s worldview is as near as you can get to the exact opposite of Tommy Bray’s. Relentlessly employing a patronising and pompous aunt sally style of argument Richard is on a mission to root out the ‘antediluvian mindset’ that blames second homes and foreigners for everything.

Far from incomers being the root of the Cornish crisis, for Richard, 57 year old freelance copywriter and advertising man, they are our saviours. Of course, Richard doesn’t realise that we’ve been hearing versions of this particular myth since around 1890. We hear it so often most of us simply shrug as the incomer smugly informs us that they ‘chose to live in Cornwall cos they love it’ whereas we poor saps just happen to be here by accident of birth. If copywriters with over-extended egos decamped to Scotland or Wales I wonder if they’d be given space in the local press for this stale nonsense?

Yet here we are weekly reminded of our debts to the English. Butterworth’s snide implication is that it’s not just the Tommy Brays of this world who need rooting out but all those who demand parity of treatment for Cornwall and accept their national vocation. It must be infuriating for him when some Cornish folk don’t act like meek little Uncle Toms and show proper gratitude for his kindness in coming to live among us. Incidentally, the West Briton likes Richard Butterworth so much they printed the same letter from him for two weeks running in their letters column!

Then we have uncrowned king of the ranters in Graham Hart, described as ‘Cornish campaigner’. In his most recent reflections Graham ‘campaigns’ for the proposed sports stadium at Threemilestone. Though his debating style turns to be not to debate at all. Leaving that tedious business to the pointy heads, he prefers honest insult and invective to inconvenient facts and figures.

Opponents of his cherished stadium are characterised as merely concerned by costs and traffic, their argument ‘based on piffle wiffle and wiffle waffle’. Yet Graham’s own ‘piffle wiffle’ remains strangely and unaccountably silent about the 1,500 house suburb and over 3,000 new residents that come as a package with the stadium. He seems not to have noticed this bloody great suburb. Or the up-country developers who are set to gain from it. Turning a blind eye, Hart allows not a single word about that monstrosity to sully his column. And this even though the two planning applications – for stadium and suburb – are from the same people and clearly linked.

Very sadly, Cornish ‘nationalists’ are now queuing up to support massive population expansion. But what’s the point of a Cornish stadium when Cornwall is no longer recognizable? Are all Cornish nationalists so gullible and short-sighted, eager to sell their heritage cheaply in return for a sports stadium?

The weeping woods of Cornwall: are trees going the way of the dodo?

2011-11-11T09:21:00.003Z

Globalisation is supposed to be good for us. It would, we were told by an army of media pundits, academics and politicians, lead to ever-increasing living standards, the ending of world poverty, growth for ever and ever and general joyfulness all around. But they never told us about its downside.

Like the way it would feed the greed of the super-rich and lead to immoral levels of inequality. Or the way it would ‘out-source’ production and drive workers’ conditions down to the lowest common level. Or the way it would inject endemic instability into the financial system as $billions slosh phrenetically around the world seeking temporary homes, scattering economies to the winds like so many unwanted trinkets in the process.

Or the way it would kill our trees.

In the mid-1990s a tree fungus called phytophthora ramorum, native to parts of Asia, began to decimate native oaks in the western USA. By the early 2000s this had arrived in the UK, carried it is thought by the global trade in ornamental plants.

As befits its leading role in the cultivation of rhododendron and camellia Cornwall was one of the first places p.ramorum popped up. Moreover, since then it has mutated into a new more aggressive blight and, at first confined to rhododendron, began to spread to beech trees. This new variety was even given the name phytophthora kernoviae to reflect its discovery in Cornwall. How proud we can be.

The trouble was that p.kernoviae had leapt by 2009 from beech trees to Japanese larch and now the European larch, mainstays of commercial plantations. Larches apparently provide the perfect hosts for the disease which is now spreading rapidly. In 2009 still found only in Cornwall and south west England, it’s now been reported from as far afield as Scotland.

Sudden larch death outbreaks October 2011

There is no cure. So a mass culling of trees has been quietly taking place (if a chainsaw can ever be that quiet) in Cornish woods for the last year or two in a vain attempt to stop the spread. For example, around 20% of Idless Woods near Truro have been felled. Earlier this year 20 hectares of larch went at Herodsfoot near Liskeard while a massive 100 ha in the Glynn Valley have now bitten the dust.

At best we could be facing a generation where our woods are scarred by bald patches. (And that’s not to mention the likely effect of the runaway global warming that we’re doing nothing to halt). At worst these may be warnings that the natural world is seriously sick of humans, premonitions of a treeless landscape. Still, take heart. It’ll make more room for all those extra houses we’re planning to build.

Wainhomes suburb: victory at St Austell but war continues

2011-11-09T17:05:00.002Z

The fat man has sung. Ruthlessly mixing metaphors, last week down from the Mount waddled the Dept of Communities and Local Government’s verdict on Wainhomes’ plans to make a lot of money by extending St Austell northwards. Their scheme for 1,300 houses, a school, care home, shops, workshops and a transport hub was chucked out by the Government.

So what conclusions can we draw from this? First and most important is that protestors against unsustainable housing growth in Cornwall can and do sometimes win. Congratulations to SOUL therefore. But let’s not get too excited. In this case they had the support of Cornwall Council which had already rejected this suburb, and it had also been refused by the Government’s own planning inspector.

The reasons Pickles gave for refusal are interesting. Partly it’s on technical grounds of housing supply. But also the Government say that

locally based growth strategies

mean that higher projections of housing demand can be safely rejected. The logic of this is surely to develop a ‘locally based’ sustainable population strategy and call the Government’s ‘localism’ bluff.

Other reasons for refusal included the plan being premature as it was in advance of an agreed planning framework. This happens via the Core Strategy. The draft of this, based on continuing current unsustainable growth policies into the foreseeable future, goes out for consultation soon. It’s imperative therefore that those who do not want our towns and countryside to be sacrificed in the interests of up-country housebuilders, land speculators and migrants from the south east call for the lowest feasible rate of housebuilding. This will help balance the well-funded and orchestrated campaign of the big housebuilders and their excessive influence inside Cornwall Council’s planning department.

Wainhomes’ suburb was also rejected because of its effect on the countryside setting of St Austell and loss of good quality agricultural land. Yet these reasons – plus ‘prematurity’ – surely also apply to the current application to build 1,500 houses (and a sports stadium, restaurant, shops, hotel, workshops, care home, park and ride extension, primary school and community space) at Threemilestone. And that’s not to mention the 1,000 houses waiting in the wings to be plonked on land next door.

Ah, but Cornwall Council support these particular suburbs and have been working closely with the developers for months if not years in contrast to the suburbs at St Austell which they oppose (Another plan for 500 houses at Treverbyn Road was thrown out last October). They’re hardly against soulless suburbs in principle. After all, in August Persimmon Homes was granted permission to build 450 houses at Liskeard. This decision was greased by the usual lure of section 106 contributions, which in any sane society might be redefined as bribes, dangled in front of local sceptics.

And in the St Austell area there’s also the ongoing cosy relationship the Council has with Eco-Bos which makes it wary of other suitors. But wait. Earlier this year we saw the unveiling of the St Austell, China Clay and St Blazey Regeneration Action Plan. According to the Council this was a

key opportunity and potential iconic development which together with the existing Eden Project could provide a focal point for the emerging ‘Green Cornwall’ agenda

According to Housing gauleiter Mark Kaczmarek this was not any old regeneration. It was

transformational regeneration

According to the local press it

means 14,000 more houses could be built around St Austell, the Clay Country and St Blazey.

This is more than double the current building rate in the area which is 3,000 houses a decade. However, it’s unclear where the figure of 14,000 comes from. Even by the standards of strategic planning documents the St Austell Plan takes vagueness to new heights. Spurning the dangers of brain-death, time spent searching this document did not in fact reveal any actual housing targets.

Consistency isn’t exactly its strong point though. On the one hand the plan states that the driver in the ‘transformational regeneration’ of mid-Cornwall

is not housing

Then, just a few lines further on this is contradicted when we’re told that new housing is needed

to drive delivery of jobs and infrastructure

But we’re left none the wiser about how much new housing. From 1991 to 2010 the number of houses (and therefore urban land) in Cornwall grew by a staggering 28%. At this rate the amount of land built on in Cornwall will have doubled by 2050 and nearly quadrupled by 2100.

In mid-Cornwall current building rates are already disastrously in excess of this already horrific rate. In 1991-2010 in just two decades

in St Austell it was 50%

in St Enoder it was 57%

in Treverbyn it was 62%

in Roche it was 73%

And yet the plan concludes (Mudhook, Jude Robinson and other gullible Labour Party simpletons please take note) that

despite this growth … delivery of new affordable housing has not kept pace with the level of housing need

The implied conclusion – that we need to build even more unaffordable homes – is enough to bring on a cold sweat and sleepless nights among those campaigners in the St Austell area celebrating their victory.

Olympic relay route in Cornwall: memo shock

2011-11-07T17:02:00.004Z

The route of the great Olympic torch relay has been announced to tremendous excitement and perspiration among a populace eagerly awaiting its promised circuses. Meanwhile a memo purportedly sent by Seb Coe to the head of the Olympic Torch Relay sub-committee has mysteriously been received here at Zetetics Towers.

It reads

Memorandum

From: Seb

To: Head of Torch Relay sub-committee

Subject: Route in Cornwall

Hi,

Here it is with my comments attached.

1. We start here at the arse end of England. Though suggest you don’t call it that in case some unwashed local takes offence. Political correctness gone mad if you ask me. Better idea if you call it ‘iconic’ instead. Or even better, get the guys at VisitCornwall to do that.

2. Propose we stick closely to the coast between Penzance and Helston. Nice area with some nice people who’ve moved down there. Such an improvement when the dull character of the yokels, most of whom prefer to fester in the 19^th century, is leavened in such a manner. But it’s a tough job so they’ll appreciate a lift from the Torch.

3. For God’s sake avoid Camborne-Redruth like the plague. Or CPR as we’re trying to call it these days. That’ll teach the oiks for not voting for me. Keep the Torch at a very safe distance from that area. Too many natives. And pyromaniacs!

4. After Falmouth – lots of yachts – go through Truro – lots of shops – and head for Newquay – lots of Duchy of Cornwall land. (Terrible fuss all this about Charles’ affairs incidentally. Was talking to the poor chap the other day. Why we can’t stop people sticking their noses into affairs that are none of their concern I really can’t fathom.) While at Newquay make sure you bless the airport in return for the morons on the local council stumping up £150,000 for this bollocks. Wouldn’t credit it, would you?!

5. Pity we can’t take in Padstow. Built by that Rik Stein I’m told. Lovely fellow. And great with fish.

6. Zip quickly through St Austell – soulless dump – to the Eden project. It’s a big tourist trap pretending to be sustainable. Just like us really. We’re going for a hot air (how appropriate!) balloon trip. Might be able to spot that Liberal Democrat incinerator project from there.

7. Expecting massive turnout at Bodmin. This lot have a record of falling for every daft idea going – Athelstan, overspill, masterplans – you name it; they’re game for it. Lovely people.

8. Safer not to go anywhere near north Cornwall at the moment. I hear the local straw-suckers are a bit peeved at having to join with people in Devon when they vote in their next Tory MP. Beats me why they’re getting so shirty at this – after all, Dave assured me ‘it’s not the bleeding Amazon, ffs’ the other day.

9. Liskeard! What is there to say. Dreary place. With even drearier people. Suburb of Plymouth I believe.

10 And breath huge sigh of relief – we’re back to civilisation. Have a G& T on me!

Cornwall Council: Stalinist local state or front for SERCO?

2011-11-06T14:01:00.003Z

As politics in the eastern Mediterranean descend into Greek tragedy those on the Atlantic west come to resemble farce. Cornwall Councillors spent two days last week on a so-called Budget scrutiny. Except that it wasn’t.

Instead it appears to been an excuse for the ~~Politburo~~ senior officer cabal and their ~~Central Committee~~ Cabinet to preen themselves on how successfully they’re cutting stuff. Councillors seem agreed that there was little in the way of democracy. Like last year, no hard details were forthcoming about what precisely they intend to cut next year.

Most laughs were triggered by Councillor Rowe, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, falling off his chair. This was indeed the only credible way he could express his views. For Lib Dem opposition to the Tory/Independent is a cruel joke, fatally compromised and lacking a shred of credibility. Someone needs to inform this gang of clowns and hypocrites that they are part of the governing coalition ordering the cuts in the first place.

Meanwhile other mild ‘critics’ of the austerity regime enthusiastically imposed by what is effectively a one-party state at Truro can’t see the wood for the trees, mired in petty parochialism. We are told that

finance is tough in the whole country, and more importantly the world

Really? What world would that be then? Surely it couldn’t be the world in which in the UK the 1,000 richest individuals were last year worth a staggering £334bn. The cuts, in contrast, amount to £81bn over four years. The idea peddled regularly that ‘we’ve got no money’ is fatuous nonsense designed to distract us from the growing inequalities in society.

There is a simple alternative to cuts that hit the least well-off the hardest. Those who made the most during the fat years should be asked to pay the most in the lean. So tax the rich rather than cut services to the rest of us. Yet this debate just never happened.

What ties Greece and Cornwall together is that the people are being asked to pay the price for the economic crisis by a political class incapable of responding to the corporate offensive. Quite the opposite; in Britain they feed its greed. Osborne loudly lectures us that we’re all in it together while quietly handing out sweeteners for the mega-rich.

And in their own small way Cornwall Council do their bit by closing toilets, sacking librarians, attacking vulnerable adults, cutting bus services – while continuing to subsidise Newquay airport to the tune of £3.5 million + a year. Their well-documented eagerness to hand over loadsamoney to SERCO is merely the tip of the iceberg, with the planning and housing departments regularly consulting with developers and landlords about how to enhance their profits.

CoSERG and the Council: everything much clearer

2011-11-04T15:23:00.006Z

What do we now know about these strange happenings?

a) That CoSERG, more secretive than the Freemasons, can't add up.

b) That council officers, although aware of the fatal flaws in the CoSERG submission, nonetheless went ahead and recommended it to the Electoral Review Panel.

c) That no officer or member had felt driven to contact CoSERG, who in any case hadn't been informed that their paper was being offered to councillors as council policy.

d) That it's two months into the review process for the new constituencies and the Council has yet to come up with its formal response.

e) That the Liberal Democrats are doughty defenders of Cornwall and staunch opponents of Devonwall. Wherever would we be without them?

I think that's got it straight.

The strange case of CoSERG and Cornwall councillors

2011-11-03T17:28:00.004Z

The local press today reports an unholy alliance. In the biggest volte face since the Hitler-Stalin pact we’re told that Cornwall Council is backing proposals to the Boundary Commission from the Cornish Social and Economic Research Group (CoSERG).

This bunch has been around for several years now, sniping without much visible effect at the myths driving the ruling establishment in Cornwall. It produced the book Cornwall at the Crossroads back in 1989. Which was then promptly ignored by the politicians as Cornwall slid well beyond the crossroads and into its current unsustainable dead end.

So what’s going on? It’s difficult to find the CoSERG submission to the Boundary Commission as it oddly doesn’t appear on their website. But lo and behold. Here it is, courtesy of their new found friends at Cornwall Council.

It appears that CoSERG is proposing a trans-border constituency that is almost three quarters Cornish instead of the Boundary Commission’s initial proposal for a Devonwall constituency where the Cornish voter remains in a safe minority. They claim that even within the ridiculously narrow limits imposed by the appallingly anti-Cornish Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act Cornwall can be given more respect than the Boundary Commission has managed.

The only problem is that this still leaves us with a Devonwall constituency. How do we interpret this? One conclusion is that the ageing hippies in CoSERG have sold out. Arguing for a more Cornish sixth constituency is akin to moving the deckchairs on the Titanic while simultaneously undermining the campaign against the Devonwall disaster.

But wait. Not for the first time it seems the press has got it wrong. Lanson’s leading blogger Alex Folkes reported yesterday that the Council’s Electoral Review Panel (chaired by none other than Lanson’s most prolific Lib Dem blogger) had rejected the CoSERG proposal. Now there’s a remarkable thing; councillors actually reject their officers’ recommendations. Folkes was unable to mention CoSERG by name and rather coyly described events as

the Panel also chose not to endorse a new boundary proposal that was put forward by a lobby group

Was the panel afraid that cosying up to CoSERG on their boundary suggestions might inexorably lead to accepting their rather sensible proposals on housing, anathema to any councillor, wedded as they are to a mad growth agenda? Or is Cornwall Council belatedly determined to lead the campaign to ‘keep Cornwall whole’?

‘Belatedly’ as, in rejecting CoSERG’s proposal, the Panel called on its officers to

look at producing [the Council’s] own formal submission

They’d better get their skates on as the Boundary Commission circus comes to Truro in a week’s time. Which begs the question of why it’s taken so long for them to have this meeting, when the constituency review kicked off back in September.

For this Panel isn’t exactly stuffed full of Devonwall refuseniks. Indeed, only MK’s Dick Cole has previous on this issue. It’s difficult to believe that the others are now born-again anti-Devonwallers. For the record they’re Tory Councillors Eathorne-Gibbins, Currie, Fitter and Toms; Lib Dem Councillors Folkes, Nolan and Rowe; Independent Councillors Coombe, Keeling and Wallis plus Dick Cole.

Alex Folkes himself said little during the Keep Cornwall Whole campaign last year, apart from

I remain convinced that the best way to defeat plans for a Devonwall constituency is for all six Cornish MPs… as well as those from other parties and from none to band together for the good of Cornwall and ask the Government to rethink.

They didn’t and the Government hasn’t.

In fact looking to the pathetic Lib Dem MPs for leadership was probably the biggest mistake made by the toothless Keep Cornwall Whole campaign. All we could then do was stand by and watch as the MPs proceeded to sell us down the river (Tamar) by all voting for the Devonwall Bill. Even Andrew George, who also voted against in an agonised and cunning scheme to have his boundary cake and eat it too.

So is Cornwall Council now intending to lead the tattered and dispirited remnants of the Keep Cornwall Whole campaign into battle against the Boundary Commission, flags waving and kilts skirling in the breeze? Or are they indulging in a holier than thou purism and letting the Boundary Commission off the hook, which I think is the point CoSERG is making. Some explanation of why they rejected the recommendation to support CoSERG might help lighten the murk a little.

Greeks rediscover democracy: ruling class quivers

2011-11-01T15:21:00.007Z

Oh no. It's a disaster. The Greeks are to vote on whether they should pay even more in austerity for the bankers’ crisis.

Cue outrage among the political classes.

Cue panic on the markets.

This would never be allowed here. All we get is a paltry Cleggwashed referendum on the alternative vote. The result? The cause of fairer voting was put back decades. Well done Lib Dems, cocked it up yet again I see. Do we get a vote on the EU? Not on your life. All three corporate parties - the Tory front bench, Labour and the Lib Dems – are united in their opposition to allowing the people a say on that particular issue.

What about Scottish independence though? Dripping with hypocrisy, when it comes to Scotland the same serial democracy-deniers loudly call for Alex Salmond to hold his vote on Scottish independence as soon as possible, despite refusing to call one themselves.

But this could catch on. If the Greeks and the Scots can tread a path towards recognising the sovereignty of the people then isn’t it time we demanded our own referendum in Cornwall?

What about this one for starters? Current building trends supported by politicians and profiteers alike will result in a population of over a million in Cornwall by the end of the century. That’s twice as many people as currently live here.

Do you want to see the population of Cornwall double and the amount of urban land more than double in the lifetime of your children?

Yes or No

But I forget, Greek premier Papandreou said

Citizens are the source of our strength … it is not for others to decide but the Greek people to decide

Can we imagine this being said here?

Citizens are the source of our strength … it is not for others to decide but the Cornish people to decide

Anyway we’re not citizens. We’re subjects of the monarch. Citizens have rights. Subjects don’t.

Or should that be subjects of a feudal Duke of Cornwall whose powers remain shrouded in secrecy? Perhaps those who obsess about the Duchy are right after all.

Whatever happened to the Green Cornwall policy?

2011-10-30T09:03:00.002Z

The Tories and their Lib Dem chums are doing their best to make Cornwall Council’s preposterous pretensions to a Green Cornwall policy an even more ludicrous charade than it is.

Last year Cornwall Council was predicting Cornwall would be leading a solar power revolution whille planning a solar energy farm next to Newquay airport. (Although the latter may have been driven more by their increasingly desperate need to find something to keep that deeply ungreen project alive.)

Now we hear that the Government is to slash its subsidy for solar power by a half. This is believed to be the same bunch that promised to be

the greenest government ever.

Cornwall and tourism: the myth exploded

2011-10-24T17:41:00.002+01:00

Tourism thrives on myth and mystery. How to find credible data on the role of tourism is a mystery. Instead, we have a myth of its importance, cunningly propagated by tourist bodies themselves. What happens is that lobbyists such as Visit Britain pay some consultant to come up with a back of the fag packet prediction based on wishful thinking and guess work. This is then churned out to a gullible public by an uncritical local media.

But rather than the usual hype designed to assure us how tourism is so vital to our very existence we now have a more reliable calculation by the Office of National Statistics. They’ve measured the importance of tourism expenditure in regional economies. So how important is tourism to Cornwall? By the amount of attention it receives it must be at least 50% surely. After all, everyone tells us that there’s nothing else going on in Cornwall but tourism and without the tourist pound we’d all starve.

Surprise, surprise. The ONS discover that tourism contributes a mere 11% of spending in Cornwall. So the next time some know-it-all tells you that we are dependent on tourism in Cornwall, remind them that the catering trade amounts to just over a tenth of the Cornish economy.

Not that this stopped the Western Morning News and Foxhunters Friend headlining this news as

The old ones are the best ones, I suppose.

Cornwall Council avoids difficult decisions.

2011-10-22T14:29:00.004+01:00

Last year, the Leader of Cornwall Council, Tory Alec Robertson, was relishing government cuts of 30% in four years. With utter sangfroid and mind-boggling complacency, he said

we face some difficult decisions

A year on and we can see this was a regrettable slip. What Robertson actually meant was

we will have to avoid making difficult decisions

The Tories and Independents on the Council seem to have learnt nothing from their hapless predecessors. For example, did they, as a matter of urgency, renegotiate the catastrophic waste contract with SITA – the result, it must be remembered, of Lib Dem incompetence and Labour’s enthusiasm for PFI ~~schemes~~ scams?

Well as a matter of fact, no. Instead they made a massive U-turn with Robertson compounding that by secretly lobbying Coalition Minister Pickles against his own Council’s policy. As a result they’re facing a bill of up to £6 million every six months. According to their own calculations this is the equivalent of

providing 400,000 hours of care for vulnerable people living at home, funding all the Council’s community leisure facilities, keeping the streets of Cornwall clean for twelve months or repairing potholes and treating roads during the coming winter months. It would also be the equivalent of increasing council tax by 5%.

But of course, they’re blaming the people of St Dennis for this rather than their own dithering.

In any case, other facile equations can be made. For instance every year the Council makes the

difficult decision

to go on spending at least £3.5 million on keeping Newquay airport open – despite plummeting passenger numbers.

That's the equivalent of

providing 250,000 hours of care for vulnerable people living at home, funding the majority of the Council’s community leisure facilities, keeping the streets of Cornwall clean for seven months or repairing potholes and treating roads during the coming winter months. It would also be the equivalent of increasing council tax by 3.5%.

Or it would keep the half of Cornwall’s public toilets that the Council have decided to close open for another three years. The decision to close those toilets was presumably

a difficult decision

Go to our neighbours in France and you’ll find that every tiny village seems to have its public toilet. How can they afford it and we can’t? And how come we refuse to learn from their example?

Our council is stuffed with unimaginative philistines whose only morality involves a £ sign. They can apparently make the difficult decision to close toilets, or slash the bus services, or trash the budgets of libraries, museums and other guardians of our cultural heritage. But they’re incapable of making the not so difficult decision to stop funding Newquay airport, which in effect subsidises the better off and second home owners. They say the reason is that

we would have to pay back millions of pounds worth of funding to Europe

So because of this millions more pounds are merrily thrown into the black hole of Newquay airport even though it’s all wasted.

This really is the logic of the madhouse. It was surely not beyond the wit of the Council to take the difficult decision to approach the EU a year ago when it was obvious they and we might just as well be building bonfires of pound notes (and euros). They could have admitted then that continued EU funding for the airport was a complete waste of taxpayers money and tried to negotiate a moratorium on the return of existing grant payments.

They could have argued that they’d suddenly seen the light and adopted a Green Cornwall policy. Instead of using public money to gratuitously increase carbon emissions they could have taken the high moral ground and offered to help the EU’s increasingly slim chances of hitting its carbon emission targets by scrapping this particular subsidy for the wealthy.

But no. Closing Newquay airport, like Plan B for Cornwall’s waste, are clearly

difficult decisions

the Council prefers to ignore.

Mervyn King’s cruel inflation joke

2011-10-20T15:15:00.000+01:00

When inflation hit 5.2% this month Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, said it was at its peak and blithely promised us that it would

fall sharply early next year

Is this the same Mervyn King who last November predicted that inflation would

peak at 3.5% in the first part of 2011 before falling back below 2% in 2012

And it can’t possibly be the person masquerading as Mervyn King who confidently assured everyone in January 2010 that the relatively high inflation rate (then 2.9%) was

temporary and within a year would be back to 2%

These ‘predictions’ seem to be little more than wild guesses. And not very good ones. My cat could do better.

King

Cat

Mervyn King earns between £375,000 and £400,000 a year and is set to take home a pension of around £200,000 a year when he leaves the Bank of England in 2013.

My cat earns nothing.

Who watches the watchers? Cornwall Council flouts law

2011-10-16T12:51:00.003+01:00

Radio Yokel blogger Graham Smith asks an excellent question. Why did Cornwall Council, acting like a cowboy developer, jump the gun at St Dennis and start building an access road to the planned incinerator several weeks before an appeal to the High Court gave its ruling?

This was after already spending £1 million helping its corporate friends in SITA to appeal. And then the Court overturned the government’s decision to give planning permission to the incinerator. So will the Council restore this land to its former state? Is it going to plant some trees to replace those that were cut down, despite having tree preservation orders I hear, in the rush to build?

Furthermore, as it is illegal to carry out works in the absence of formal approval will Cornwall Council be prosecuted? But as Graham Smith points out, they’re the prosecuting authority!

There’s a bigger issue here. The imposition against local wishes of a unitary authority results in Cornwall Council – an active ‘partner’ with various upcountry developers, landlords and supermarkets in its ‘growth’ projects across Cornwall – making planning applications. To itself!

Surely this can’t be right. At worst it’s deeply corrupt. For example, in the old days of two-tier local government at least decisions on such projects as the ‘eastern district centre’ at Truro would have been taken by the District Council with some semblance of neutrality and objectivity.

Let's face it. Cornwall Council is out of control. It rampages across the land, unrepentantly and stubbornly throwing good money after bad, refusing to recognise in this case its disastrous PFI contract needed serious redrafting or tearing up. It’s made a complete hash of the incinerator fiasco. But there’s a bigger issue here. It’s now developer, judge and jury all rolled into one. And somehow we find ourselves lumbered with what is effectively a one-party ‘hyper-growth state’.

Cornish terrify Guardian

2011-10-14T18:24:00.003+01:00

The English Guardian has been undergoing one of its periodic bouts of agonising over the future of the cherished Union. With Scotland gearing up for an independence referendum and more powers slowly percolating across Offa’s Dyke to Wales it looks like the writing is finally on the wall for the British Jacobin state.

The choice for the English is obvious. Either embrace a properly federal UK and grant the maximum autonomy and equality to the non-English nations of these islands. Or ungraciously and stubbornly resist devolution into the last ditch and beyond.

Adopt the latter and they’ll wake up to find themselves living in a bitter, spiteful and vitriolic Little England led by the likes of Nigel Farage and with a majority population of rabid racists and xenophobic Europhobes living on the fading glories of their past. A population addicted to its daily fix of bile from the Daily Mail.

Unfortunately at the moment it looks as if they’re blindly stumbling into choosing the latter. Nothing better indicates this than the fear and confusion of the English metropolitan classes when they are confronted with the fact that there is a fifth nation in the British Isles – the Cornish.

The Guardian came up with a survey of national identities in Britain. Go to the Guardian and express your national identity. Except that if you’re Cornish you’re not allowed to. The other nations of Britain have the right. We don’t.

Instead, we are consigned by the erudite liberals of the Guardian to the category of ‘others’. How inclusive of them! As a result its map of identities has a large swathe of ‘others’ inhabiting the far south west tip of Britain. This embarrassing blot on their pretty map was memorably described by the Guardian on Wednesday as ‘Cornwall: a strong turnout for the ‘others’’.

More than a strong turnout surely. In fact 78% of respondents in Cornwall described themselves as ‘other’ and only 20% as British or English. Across the UK 58% described themselves as British or English and just 8% opted for ‘other’. In Orkney and Shetland the Guardian wrote ‘Could those ‘others’ view themselves more as Nordic than Scots’? In fact, in Orkney & Shetland only 10% described themselves as ‘others’. In Cornwall it was 78%.

The only other mention the Cornish got in the hard copy Guardian was in a discussion of ‘English devolution’. Where we were described as ‘truculent’. According to my Thesaurus truculent means ill-disposed, evil-minded, spiteful, surly, treacherous, untamed, barbarous, malevolent among other glowing attributes.

What sins could we possibly have committed in the past to be singled out for this treatment? Or is it just the sin of being the smallest nation in terms of numbers and easy meat for the English playground bully as it lashes out in furiously and ignorantly?

As English self-loathing and confusion mounts and as the Scots and Welsh escape their wrath we’ll have to expect a lot more of this nonsense. Such is the penalty of being England’s first and last colony.

Postscript: The Guardian did deign to mention the Cornish in its online guise - see here.

Cornwall Councillors performance: the 2009-11 league tables

2011-10-11T11:53:00.003+01:00

Metrics are the new black of the managerial-political class. We’re offered league tables on such things as school performance, hospital operations, university research and the poor unfortunates who work in those institutions are forced to waste a lot of their time playing the metrics game. So it’s only fair that backbench councillors’ performances (Cabinet members are excluded) also come under the spotlight.

And here they are for Cornwall Council for the last two years. I won’t repeat the methodology – for that see here and here. But I will repeat that this comes with a hefty health warning. A councillor could attend every meeting possible but then spout asinine rubbish while there. On the other hand a councillor might rarely bless the council chamber with their presence but be busy behind the scenes.

For example they could be checking how many meetings council officers have been having with developers. Or they might be totting up the waste of taxpayers’ money spent on subsidising the great white elephant of Newquay airport while the axe is taken to Cornwall’s social care, libraries and heritage. Or they may be exhausted after tirelessly exposing the contradictions behind the council’s Green Cornwall policy and challenging the high population growth being forced on it by a small cabal of senior officers and the Cabinet.

Or not.

So who were the twelve most assiduous meeting attenders in 2010-11? The highest scorers were

Pam Lyne (Ind, St Keverne) 27.7
Fred Greenslade (Ind, St Dennis) 27.6
Andrew Long (MK, Callington) 27.5
Andrew Wallis (Ind, Porthleven) 24.0
Alex Folkes (LD, Lanson Central) 23.7
Doris Ansari (LD, Truro Tregolls) 21.7
John Keeling (Ind, Breage) 20.9
Mick Martin (Con, Lanivet) 20.5
Fiona Ferguson (Con, Truro Trehaverne) 20.3
Mike Eathorne-Gibbins (Con, Ladock) 20.1
Dick Cole (MK, St Enoder) 20.0
John Coombe (Ind, Hayle South) 19.9

Those scoring least were

Jenny Stewart (Con, St Austell Gover) 4.5
John Oxenham (LD, St Austell Bay) 5.1
Bryan Preston (LD, Saltash Burraton) 5.6
Michael Callan (Ind, Perranporth) 5.8
Robin Teverson (LD, St Mewan) 6.4
Irene Bailey (Ind, Ludgvan) 6.6
Mike Pearn (Con, Torpoint West) 6.7
Olive Eggleston (Con, St Germans) 6.9
Sasha Gillard-Loft (LD, Lanson South) 7.5
Liz Penhaligon (Con, Lelant & Carbis Bay) 7.5
Colin Riches (LD, Saltash St Stephens) 7.6
Sue Nicholas (Con, Marazion) 7.7
Neil Plummer (MK, Stithians) 7.7
George Trubody (Con, Rame) 7.7

And how does this compare with the previous year? The 2009-10 league tables were as follows.

Highest scores

Fred Greenslade (Ind, St Dennis) 29.7
Andrew Wallis (Ind, Porthleven) 27.5
Pam Lyne (Ind, St Keverne) 26.7
Doris Ansari (LD, Truro Tregolls) 22.9
John Keeling (Ind, Breage) 22.5
Mike Eathorne-Gibbins (Con, Ladock) 22.3
Dick Cole (MK, St Enoder) 22.0
Bob Egerton (Ind, Probus) 20.9
Alex Folkes (LD, Lanson Central) 20.3
Derris Watson (LD, St Cleer) 19.6
Judith Haycock (Ind, Helston Central) 18.8
John Wood (Ind, Roche) 18.6

Lowest scorers in 2009-10 were

Neil Plummer (MK, Stithians) 6.9
Sue Nicholas (Con, Marazion) 7.0
Mike Pearn (Con, Torpoint West) 7.1
Neil Hatton (Con, Constantine) 7.4
Liz Penhaligon (Con, Lelant & Carbis Bay) 7.5
Jay Schofield (LD, Liskeard Central) 7.5
Nathan Bale (LD, Bude North) 7.6
John Lugg (Ind, St Teath) 7.6
Paula Dolphin (LD, Flexbury) 7.8
Joyce Duffin (LD, Mt Hawke & Portreath) 7.9
Olive Eggleston (Con, St Germans) 8.1
Geoff Brown (LD, Newquay Central) 8.3
Keith Goodenough (Con, Camelford) 8.3

Remember that this merely measures councillors’ attendance at meetings. It’s a quantitative measure. For an excellent and carefully considered qualitative account of a recent meeting see here.

Coming soon: Cornwall Councillor League tables 2009-11

2011-10-09T11:50:00.006+01:00

Something broken down at the County [sic] Hall bunker again? Or just routine maintenance? Attempting to access their byzantine website this morning the computer winks at me with uncanny prescience

waiting for democracy.cornwall.gov.uk

And waiting. Still waiting.

According to the Labour Government in 2006, elected councillors were our ‘democratic champions’, articulating and representing their electors’ wishes. No matter that each of these has to ‘champion’ more than 4,300 people. Or that the number of councillors in Cornwall has fallen by an astonishing 86% since 1972 (from 854 then to just 123 now).

We live in a colony with shrinking democratic rights. I know I should just get used to it like everyone else. Just concentrate instead on enjoying all those lovely new supermarkets springing up like verdant oases of consumerism in our quaint and under-used land. I should join the armies of zombies blessing the surrounding lanes and hedges by adding a colourful veneer of discarded packaging strewn carelessly from their speeding charabancs.

But I digress (again).

Back in April 2010 I devised a quantitative measure of councillor activity. Now that two full years of meetings at the dysfunctional Cornwall Council are laid out for all to see it’s time to repeat that exercise and check on the performance of our ‘democratic champions’.

For the record, here’s the methodology.

But unfortunately, I can’t yet provide the results as I’m still waiting for some data from the Council’s website, which may even emerge improved and reorganised. Thousands can only pray that’s the case. But the league tables are on their way. Very soon.

Cornwall Council IT staff grapple with County Hall website

BBC Radio Cornwall amazingly survives cuts

2011-10-07T10:00:00.007+01:00

The BBC are planning to cut £670 a year from their planned budget by 2016 (around 15%). Which means even more sport disappears into Sky TV. Although the conservative propaganda disguised as moral agonising provided by Radio 4 is escaping unscathed. And thank Christ that live coverage of the proms will continue. Good to know that the ghost of Lord Reith still stalks the corridors, even if those corridors are being displaced northwards to Salford (sanctuary of parliamentary expenses criminals).

But haven’t they missed a trick here? Why not use this as a perfect opportunity to get rid of BBC local radio entirely? First in the line could surely be Cornwall’s own Radio Yokel, home of all the drive-time drivel you don’t want to hear. Instead, local radio is only being cut by a measly 4.2%. The strident voice of the colonialist will continue to ring out across our land, bringing fear and loathing to communities up and down the country.

Radio Cornwall boss announces cuts at Truro

Peninsula Community Health – what point?

2011-10-05T09:58:00.002+01:00

On the 1^st October responsibility for Cornwall’s 13 ‘community’ hospitals plus one on Scilly, its minor injury units and its ‘community’ nursing was surreptitiously and with little fanfare handed over from the NHS to Peninsula Community Health (PCH). PCH is a Community Interest Company (CIC).

CICs were dreamed up in 2005 under – yes, you guessed it, the Glorious People’s Labour Party – as vehicles for social enterprises interested in bidding to deliver health and social care. They are run just like private companies – with boards of directors (including paid executive directors) and owned by shareholders.

The difference is that they’re not for profit but also not hidebound by various rules and regulations as are charities. Although described as ‘not for profit’ in fact legally CICs can pay interest on shares of up to 5% above the Bank of England base rate as long as it’s no more than 35% of their ‘profits’. Which is a little odd for companies that are supposed to make no profit.

The executives directing PCH all seem to have a background in nursing or local government. There are also currently three non-executive directors – these include Nick Buckland OBE, an organic farmer and active board member in the Plymouth area and Paul Masters, assistant Chief Executive of Cornwall Council.

The third is Dr John Lander, former banker and presumably not a medical doctor who also chairs Coastline Housing. This will involve an interesting balancing act as Coastline supports a massive housebuilding programme in Cornwall. So on the one hand a high number of new ‘communities’ and on the other cutting back on hospital provision. A neat trick if you can pull it off.

Read their website and it all looks hunky dory. The PCH is not for profit and committed to adult community health services. But wasn’t the NHS also not for profit and presumably committed to adult community health services? Which raises the question – why bother? Why not just deliver this within the NHS?

One reason is the Government’s ‘reform’ agenda which even at times of austerity it can find £2bn to push forward. This separates the delivery of health services from commissioning healthcare. Which in turn is driven by the Tory/Labour/Lib Dem consensus agenda of gradually increasing the market coordination of healthcare in the UK.

And there are other less publicised implications of CICs.

First, they are conveniently unaccountable. Unlike the NHS they are not subject to Freedom of Information requests and their board meetings take place in secret. So when the government wants a hospital chopped it becomes so much more difficult to fight it. Already, the draft business plan for the switch to the PCH was deemed too ‘commercially confidential’ by Cornwall’s Primary Care Trust for us plebs to read.

Second, CICs like any private company could go bust. If a shop or a manufacturing firm goes bust it’s bad news for its employees but it’s usually possible for the rest of us to find an alternative. What happens if a healthcare company collapses?

Third, CICs are widely suspected of being a bridge to fully privatising services. In Surrey one of the first CICs – Central Surry Healthcare – was set up in 2006. When its contract ended it had to compete with private sector firms, and promptly lost £90m worth of business to Assura Medical, owned by the Virgin Group.

It’s unclear what length of contract PCH has with the NHS in Cornwall but suspicions that CICs are merely the path to back-door privatisation have triggered vigorous protests in England. In Essex, Shropshire, the West Midlands, Bedfordshire and now Gloucestershire local communities have campaigned against this transfer of health services. And won.

Here in Cornwall, partly because of our weak trade unions and partly because of our mini-Stalinist state, generally uncritical media and supine population, the transfer just happens with not a peep of protest.

Labour. Left, right or just dumb?

2011-10-02T11:58:00.005+01:00

Much fatuous fulminating in the tabloid press this past week about ‘Red Ed’ and his band of blood-thirsty revolutionaries in the Labour(ing to make an impression) Party. But who possibly believes the myth of ‘Red Ed’ apart from the self-deniers of the financial sector and their paid hacks in the Tory press? Of course there’s always those Labour tribalists who cling desperately to tattered shreds of their faith. But any belief that Labour could once again be a party of the masses is touching but wishful thinking.

How confused do you need to be to continue to be a true believer after reading Red Ed’s speech to the Labour Conference? Wasn’t it enough that he shamefully joined the Tories and Lib Dems in pandering to tabloid hysteria by attacking those on disability benefit? How deaf or blind are they? Didn’t they notice Miliband and his spin doctors rushing around various TV and radio studies in the 24 hours after the speech?

And with what purpose? To frantically sooth the jangling nerves of the subjects of their Ruritania in case they thought they were ‘left-wing’. Perish the thought. These days the Labour Party hierarchy seems to regard being ‘left-wing’ as akin to being a bubonic plague carrier. Only worse. Quite the opposite in fact. They were concerned to win over ‘conservative voters’, oozing sympathy for the ‘squeezed middle’.

Logically, to depend on conservative votes it would be best to adopt conservative policies. So there we have it. Plain as a pikestaff. Blairism lives on in the hulk of a former workers’ party now merely serving as a hollowed-out shell for corporate politics and careerists.

Read Miliband’s speech. He’s only ‘red’ in the fevered imagination of the press barons. And as for being anti-business. In fact, the word ‘business’ appeared in his speech 20 times and ‘pro-business’ seven. ‘Tax the rich’ didn’t appear at all. Neither did any nonsense such as ‘redistribution’.

There was one mention, in 5,869 words of airy emptiness, of climate change.

I believe our environment and climate change is a crucial issue for our future

Although how this squares with

We need the most competitive tax and regulatory environment we can for British business

was left unexplained.

If the politics were kindergarten-simple, then so was the speech. No-one seems to have commented about its structure. A series of sound-bites where short sentences predominated, it was a fine example of the dumbing-down of British politics. More than a quarter of the sentences were of five words or less. He even managed five one word sentences (Ambition, Outsiders, Labour, Why? and Betrayed) and 12 two-word sentences. The mean sentence length was 10.4 words, suitable for the reading age of a six or seven year old.

Which tells us something about those who found anything remotely radical in last week’s depressing events in Liverpool.

In a sad and very sorry pickle: Andrew George’s predicament

2011-09-29T10:59:00.002+01:00

As the BBC’s ear-grating Robert Peston would say – here’s the thing.

1. In August Andrew George, Liberal Democrat MP for St Ives, correctly described the Government’s proposed changes to the planning framework for England, Wales and Cornwall as creating a

developer’s paradise

Yet in September, the two-faced Nick Clegg assured the public that the Lib Dems were

fully behind proposals to simplify planning regulations, and that the default to any proposed development would be ‘yes’ … We have got to get moving

If only.

2. On the 7^th September Andrew, along with three other brave Lib Dem souls, voted against the privatisation of the NHS. But 41 Lib Dems voted in favour, including St Austell and Newquay’s Steve Gilbert. (Dan Rogerson abstained or was absent.)

3. Last year when the austerity budget was unveiled Andrew spent much time in the House of Commons agonising over whether it was ‘fair’ or not.

Wealthy people … have managed to pay less marginal tax than their cleaners. Those people should start paying their way

It now turns out that the austerity policy could only be described as ‘fair’ if fairness is defined as colossal amounts of tax avoidance for the super-rich and a 10% cut in the living standards of the rest of us.

4. Andrew has prominently opposed the Government’s gerrymandering of constituencies that resulted in the casual obliteration of the Cornish border for parliamentary purposes. He promised to join with other Cornish MPs to

stop any new constituency combining with Devon.

But he then watched as 41 Lib Dems voted to abolish the territorial integrity of Cornwall. And not one, not even Andrew (who effectively abstained), could bring themselves to vote against the final Bill.

A question therefore arises. Why the hell is Andrew George still taking the Liberal Democrat whip? Is there really any point in remaining shackled to the rotting carcass of a once progressive party?

Devonwall constituency: is Sarah Newton naïve or disingenuous?

2011-09-27T11:06:00.004+01:00

Back in February this year all six Cornish MPs voted for the final Reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. This is now law and its inevitable result is a cross-Tamar constituency joining north Cornwall with north west Devon.

This is a consequence of two things. First, the Government’s new iron rule that no constituency must deviate by more than 5% from the average. Second, its stubborn refusal to listen to Cornish claims for recognition of its unique status. The Isle of Wight was deemed sufficiently important to be given special treatment but, as we know,

for heavens’s sake, the Tamar is not the Amazon (D.Cameron, eminent geographer).

Sarah Newton, MP for Truro and Falmouth, now says

The proposed changes … while not unexpected, are disappointing as one constituency will cross into Devon, I urge everyone interested in keeping Cornwall whole to come to the Boundary Commission meeting in Truro [in November].

But wasn't Sarah aware that when she voted for this Bill she was also voting for a cross-border constituency? And surely she knows that all those who go to Truro will be wasting their petrol money as the Boundary Commission isn’t allowed to ‘keep Cornwall whole’ even if it wanted to. Or is she just distracting our attention?

Her Tory colleagues seem to have given up the fight. Sheryll Murray, MP for South East Cornwall, promised us last year she would

fight on and on [and said Cornwall] has a unique and social identity

Now she says

We all wanted the Cornish boundary to be fully respected, but that is not now possible within the legislation [which she seems to forget she voted for!] … I am pleased that common sense has prevailed and the crossing has taken place in the north and not in the south where the Tamar, as the county’s historic boundary, is at its widest and most prominent.

So the border miraculously shrinks in size as it meanders northwards eventually dissolving into near invisibility.

Meanwhile, George Eustice, Tory/Ukip MP for Camborne-Redruth, had previously said

Cornwall is a special case. It is not just a normal county – it is a duchy

Of course, that didn’t stop him voting for the Bill and the Devonwall constituency. In a typically confusing utterance, he now says

Everyone feels that the option being considered is easier than crossing the Tamar bridge – it might not be the Amazon, but it is a very important symbol of the border.

‘Symbol of the border’?? I thought it was the border.

Big Border

Tiny Border

Cornwall’s Lib Dem MPs have been equally as pathetic. Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) before he voted for the Devonwall constituency could only bring himself to describe it as ‘unwelcome’. He now promises to

lobby Minsters to halt the proposed Devonwall seat

Which is exactly what the Lib Dem MPs did before . And got precisely nowhere. Before watching their own colleagues vote down Cornwall.

His Lib Dem/Tory mate Steve Gilbert in mid-Cornwall told last October’s rally at Saltash that he would

vote against the Government to keep Cornwall intact

He didn’t. And it isn’t.

But do not despair. These fearless lions, defenders of Cornish integrity, have one more chance to vote against the Boundary Commission’s recommendations when they reappear before the Commons in 2013. Before resigning en masse in protest.

The Stadium Process 12: A unique way to sell a suburb?

2011-09-25T08:39:00.004+01:00

So what can we conclude from the unusual level of detail, albeit much redacted, that the Council were forced to provide on the background to its plans to build a sports stadium at Langarth, near Truro?

There’s been a tendency until very recently in the media to treat the stadium in isolation. But only an idiot can’t see that it's always been closely linked to the plans for 2,500-2,700 more houses in the surrounding fields and is, in terms of land area, only a very small proportion of the total project. What the minutes reveal is that this connection was there from the beginning.

The resolution at the Cabinet meeting of 16^th March explicitly linked the stadium with ‘other developments’. In fact, the Council had been involved in close discussions with the developers for at least a year before Inox put in two planning applications, one for a stadium and the other for 1,500 houses. The two applications are closely related. Somehow, the housing helps pay for the stadium. According to Inox the private sector run stadium will involve a

funding solution with [mysteriously anonymous] third parties

that’s been kept secret. And we now hear that one of these anonymous parties may well be the Cornwall Council after all. Too cash-strapped to keep libraries and public toilets open or buses running but plenty of cash for global warming via Newquay airport or 'iconic' projects it seems.

The link has now been made even by the local press. This is not just about a stadium, whether ‘community’ or something else, although the Council has desperately portrayed it as such for months. But that was just PR manipulation. It’s always been more about easing the way towards a massive new ‘community’ of around 6,000 people on the western edge of Truro.

From this?

To this??

The MD of Inox, Rob Saltmarsh, based in Exeter, has claimed that

Our proposals at Langarth would meet critical local housing need, delivering both open market and affordable housing … He said that the housing scheme would alleviate a chronic shortage in the city.

Perhaps. Although oddly a procession of similar large housing schemes over the past half a century has signally failed to solve this problem. Unfortunately, what he fails to mention is that CoSERG, based in Cornwall, calculates local housing need in the whole of the Truro district (including the Roseland) to be just 600 houses. So Saltmarsh’s comments refer to less than a quarter of the houses being planned for this area. The inescapable fact they don’t care to tell the people is that 'open market' housing amounts to three quarters of the houses. These are aimed at incomers and will be marketed, directly or indirectly, to upcountry buyers.

The question remains. How far is the stadium merely a convenient cover for the unsustainable suburb, diverting attention from the latter and co-opting potential opposition? Or has the stadium been serendipitously enabled by the ongoing plans for a suburb? Whichever, this is not only about a stadium, national or not, for Cornwall (or Truro). It’s about yet another suburb to accommodate unsustainable population growth but one that might also have a stadium next to it.

The Stadium Process 11: From a stadium to a suburb with stadium

2011-09-23T09:38:00.005+01:00

continue negotiations with the developer linking with other developments [my emphasis] (Cornwall Council Cabinet minutes 16 March 2011)

It’s significant that the Cabinet resolution to support a stadium at Langarth was seconded by housing supremo Mark good ol’ boy Kaczmarek. From the beginning of the discussions about the stadium project it’s been inextricably linked to the plans to build between 2,500 and 2,700 houses and create another huge suburb in order to boost the unsustainable hyper-growth of Truro.

On 24 March this year at a meeting of the Stakeholders Group it was stated that it was important to

ensure that ‘community’ benefits are kept at the forefront

Let's not pursue for the moment the erason why it was felt so important. It couldn't possibly be that at that time Cornwall Council thought Section 106 money would be available for a 'community' stadium, could it? But the concentration on the 'forefront' seems to ignore what was going on in the background. There, the Council has been consistently cosying up to developers throughout and treating the ‘community’ as an inconvenient problem on a par with the otters but a bit more manageable. At the very first meeting on January 5 2010 a stadium was explicitly

linked to development schemes in Threemilestone, Treliske … [and elsewhere in Truro]

On 21 July 2010 it was reported that Cornwall council were approaching developers to press for a

single coordinated approach

and offering help to table a new masterplan for the area.

There were workshops involving developers and council officers in the summer of 2010 and later ‘pre-consultation exercises’ (Dec 12 2010). Meanwhile an ‘interim plan’ for Threemilestone was ‘evolving’. Behind closed doors.

This was despite no actual formal planning framework having been determined for Truro (and it still hasn’t been). RT from Planning was

keen for developers to work together

He described this as a

positive outcome

And yet by this stage there were mounting concerns from the local parish council and elected members about the scale of urbanisation - involving 335 acres (the equivalent of 139 rugby pitches). But these were certainly not viewed as a 'positive outcome'. Instead of listening to local residents Cornwall council was talking to developers from Exeter, Taunton and Jersey.

Now, it would clearly be naïve not to expect some discussion between planners and developers in advance of major building projects. But this can all too easily shade into collusion. Planners are captured by the developers’ interests and begin to work enthusiastically on behalf of developers rather than the people who ultimately pay their salaries. How far down that road has Cornwall Council gone? These revealing minutes indicate that the answer is quite a long way.

On 24 March this year council officers became very excited about the noises from central government promising an even weaker planning framework, but for the time being they reluctantly had to adhere to the planning process. However, in order to make it easier to build thousands of houses on this greenfield site a draft development brief was hastily wheeled out by Kazcmarek at the end of July. This was the basis of a ‘consultation’ in August when everyone was on holiday or hiding from holidaymakers.

‘Planning’ in Cornwall has become merely a method of smoothing the path for continuing massive inmigration and the destruction of thousands of acres of Cornish countryside in the interests of land speculators and property developers.

Postscript

Or maybe just the suburb now that we hear Truro City FC may be going bust. So no reason to put the stadium in Truro after all then. For further revealing details on the complex Heaney/Truro City saga see here.

The Stadium Process 10: From public to private funding

2011-09-21T09:15:00.003+01:00

The Cornish ‘national’ stadium process reveals how the cards are stacked towards private developments and how private funding becomes the only option these days.

At the beginning of the discussions about a stadium various possible sources of funding were canvassed. Basically, these broke down into

local government (Cornwall Council)
central and European government (e.g. Convergence grants)
quangos such as Sports England
developers.

Although as early as 15 Oct 2010 the Stakeholders Group were being informed that the private sector offered

the quickest delivery

Recently it’s been claimed that the developers

Inox had made it clear from the onset that it would not fund construction of the stadium and stressed that not a penny of Section 106 planning obligation contributions – sometimes called "planning gain" – from the neighbouring Langarth scheme would be spent on the stadium project.

This is extremely curious, as discussions about Section 106 funding made regular, indeed monotonous, appearances in the minutes from November 2010 to March 2011. Of course, we’ve not been allowed to read the actual details. Here’s an example …

Indeed, on 7 Dec 2010 there was a mention of a Section 106 brief

to cover all the sites

suggesting that possible funding for the stadium was linked not just to one developer but to all three at Threemilestone. And the fact that legally it looked as if Section 106 could be used to fund a 'community' stadium may help to explain all the emphasis on that word.

Plans for a stadium predate the last general election and the scale of the cuts imposed on local authorities by central government. As a result, in December 2010 Cornwall Council voted to remove the stadium from its capital spending programme, although on 24 Mar 2011 it was stated that Cornwall Council had £5 million ‘headroom’ in its capital programme to supplement Section 106 contributions (which of course were never on the table) from, again,

a number of developers

A steady drift towards private sector funding was clear by the spring of 2011. For some undisclosed reason Section 106 funding was now ‘unlikely’ (4 May 2011) and other funding alternatives/options were being investigated although these cannot be revealed of course. It looks as if these ‘further options’ were going to involve

unlocking infrastructure [and] funding for employment

The way this is supposed to happen is murky to say the least as the most recent conclusions on funding read thus

However, the minutes of the Cabinet decision to support the Langarth stadium on 16 March are clear enough. They state

there had been interest expressed by the private sector to deliver the stadium at no cost to the council

It was agreed to

continue negotiations with the developer linking with other developments [note the plural] in the surrounding area

A recent press report adds to the already considerable confusion about the funding of the stadium. Sandra Rothwell, Head of Economic Development and key figure in driving this project, was quoted by the BBC as saying the council was

having discussions with the private sector who are interested.

We can only presume this means other shadowy companies who are angling to make money from selling the community leisure services and sports events from the stadium. But strangely Ms Rothwell went on to leave the door open for the possibility of council funding despite the 'decision' of last December.

Ms Rothwell said elected members would make the final decision over whether council money should be used. "There are a number of financial packages and options that we'll be putting before members," she added.

The Stadium for Cornwall group, keen supporters of a suburb of 2,500+ houses and the public face of Cornwall Council's propaganda unit, displayed their sound grasp of the issues.

Rod Lyon, the general secretary for the Stadium for Cornwall working group, said: "I would like to see it privately funded but I would also like to see some council funding. I think if there's a certain amount of council funding it proves it's our stadium," he added.

And so we’re back at square one, with a private sector funded stadium based on a publicly funded feasibility study and resulting from close, indeed intimate, although somewhat secretive relations between developers, other corporate interests and Cornwall Council.