Sick of some Cornish people bleating on as though they are the worlds only tourist destination

[Endlesssummer2022]

Just read the article below and found a few gems such as these:

’ have you ever wondered where the local people live? Or have you noticed that many of your holiday neighbours are recognisable in the narrow lanes of the pretty fishing villages because they are the same people you live near in London?’

and…

‘Despite what you may have read, we Cornish do welcome visitors and are happy to share our love of our land with you. But it might help if you do a bit of research – Cornwall is fiercely independent and has a proud and unique history and heritage…* *And try not to be rude to local people. If you’ve been asked to not drink from a glass bottle on the beach, there is a reason for that. Don’t forget to tip waiting staff. ‘

What patronising bollocks. So Londoner’s (as those are apparently the only people who visit Cornwall) are so untraveled and boorish we need to be told not to be rude to people, pay tips, not to smash glass bottles in sand, that we’ve bought all of their houses, that it’s ‘their’ land and we’re the ones who are rude?

I’d already decided I wouldn’t go back there after how some of them carried on during Covid but this article has pissed me off. Why would anyone go there when they can go to equally lovely places in the UK/World and not be treated with contempt?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/may/29/welcome-to-cornwall-please-dont-ruin-it-for-us-local-people

And also the benefits that they bring.

@DisquietintheRanks What are the benefits for people in Ardwick from having the university on their doorstep?

https://www.ilivehere.co.uk/english-indices-of-deprivation-statistics-comparison-for-ardwick-in-manchester-e05011351.html

@mumda presuming than the people of Ardwick aren't physically constrained to remain on their estate then the flow of money into local businesses and services which they can also patronise and the creation of jobs nearby.

My city has c80,000 students. They and the universities contribute a hell of a lot to the local economy.

Planning permission required for change of use from primary domicile to either 2nd home or holiday let, retrospectively applied over the next five years. Limits on the number of non-primary domicile properties included in local plans. Council tax paid at the maximum possible level for 2nd homes but increase this to 5x. Both council tax and commercial rates paid on holiday let's.

How's that for a start? I'd also make this national not regional, do include London, York, etc.

This thread is awful. Full of horrible comments and so many generalisations. Cornwall has a population of 550k people, all real people who live here. These people are not a ‘they’ who hold one collective opinion on anything. Some of us aren’t Cornish but have lived here a long time. Most of us are never rude to tourists. Most of us don’t have airbnbs.

So who is is this ‘they’ various posters keep referring to?! 🤷🏻‍♀️

I don’t know anyone who actually uses the term emmet either. 😆

Let's round up all the tourists and the students and tell em all to fuck off. Only stay if you have 5 generations of cornish in your family, and the cornish 2nd homers can sell their 2nd properties cheaply to locals

'So who is is this ‘they’ various posters keep referring to?!'

Tbf tourists have been referred to as 'they' too.

I think it's fair to say there'll be well behaved locals and tourists, ditto badly behaved in both camps.

Completely agree with this!

So was Wales from the mid-14th Century until it started gaining its own laws and institutions in the late-19th Century.

@LadyGrinningSoul85

I got sick of tourists, when we lived in London! We moved out over 25 years ago, because we were fed up of spending our weekends in traffic jams, with iirc an average traffic speed of 11 mph! (While we worked in the West End, we lived in a far flung not desirable suburb)

Perhaps Cornwall politicians need to get in touch with the mayor if Amsterdam. They're fed up of a certain type of British tourist there!

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65107405

As a Londoner with family in Cornwall and a partner who is from there, I've sympathy with some of the issues Cornish people are facing but instead of turning on tourists they really do need to take a greater interest in who they vote for.

A Tory govt is unlikely to change legislation around air BnB, second home ownership, buy to let etc and unlikely to give tenants longer term leases, greater rights etc.

Tourists are simply benefiting from property being prioritised for holiday lets - they're not the cause.

Stop blaming tourists/migrants etc. Start looking at the govt that has let down the 90% at the expense of benefitting the 10%.

You couldn't pay me to go to Cornwall on holiday to be honest. I'm sure it's very nice but there are plenty of nice places in the UK that aren't ridiculously overpriced, full of idiot tourists and take hours to travel to due to traffic. No thanks, here is one less tourist for them.

I am a little bit torn on this one. Some people do seem to behave much worse on holiday than anywhere else- maybe it’s the attitude that they have booked time off work and therefore can’t be arsed to put a crisp packet in a bin…
But equally I do think that the Cornish in particular can be very superior at best and at worst actively hostile to tourists, so I tend to go elsewhere in the UK in the summer.

One benefit of having a local university is that people from that region can go there, Cornwall has slightly under the national average for higher level qualifications, and I'd be willing to bet that if you looked at that for those brought up there and those 'incomers' who are wealthy, it is the wealthy incomers that are making that rate higher than it would otherwise be. Lots of universities (including Plymouth, but also London ones like the University of East London) are those used by local populations, especially in working-class/poorer areas, because those students and their families worry more about student loans and are less likely to go to 'destination' universities (ones where people live away from home). I would definitely support a University of Cornwall being established, plus students who are living away from home bring money into the area.

Cornwall can't depend on the type of incomes that other places have- it's far from London or other major cities. It has a spread out population with poor transport, so industry doesn't want to go there and neither do service industries, to a large extent, even though wages are low, because people can't get to work (even if they could afford to live there which they often can't). The main source of income is small businesses that serve the needs of the population that live there (which isn't huge and is very diffusely spread).

I agree that managing tourism better should be a priority for Cornwall.

Also completely agree with you!

Along with the beach getting rammed in the summer, Bournemouth is also a uni town.

We had to move away from my daughter's school, uprooting her and taking her away from friends she had for years, because our landlord decided to sell up and the part of Bournemouth we lived in at the time is full of family homes that are no longer family homes but converted into student properties.
I looked for months and months and couldn't find one family home for us to go to, so we were forced out of the area and had to move to a more deprived area of Bournemouth, because apparently only students can live in a nice part of Bournemouth.

I'm still stuck in this shitehole are now, because the problem still stands.

I agree student accommodation needs to be managed, which it can be by designating no further MHO's in a given area, restricting landlord MHO licenses and so on. That is not a reason not to have a university in an entire region of half a million people.

So what's the solution? Close all the universities in the country?

Surely it should be obvious that universities do bring problems for local residents as well as a boost for the local economy - such as inflated rents, poor student landlord practices (such as poor upkeep and maintenance), anti-social behaviour, theft and petty crime (targeted against students but locals may also be affected) & shutting down of services outside term time to name a few.

If it was also so great having a university next door why have town gown relations been a difficult issue for university towns for centuries?

@Eleganz yes they bring problems but it's equally obvious that they bring benefits and opportunities. Just like every other large industry.

Local towns only doing local things for local people with no incomers is fine if you fancy living in a small village in 1332

I used to feel the same way about people up here in the Highlands complaining about the nc500 that they were grumpy and unreasonable complaining. I have hugely changed my mind (I live on the route)
People are uncomprehensibly stupid s d selfish at times. We have 20+ people in fancy sports cars line up on a bridge and send a drone up to take pictures of them bugger the locals going about their school runs and commutes, campervans emptying toilet waste in laybyes, small communities can't get staff in pubs and shops because nobody can afford to live there in what few houses there are because 2nd homes have pushed up prices and bought housing.
I don't mind the slower traffic or even the people that struggle to drive on the single track roads. That isn't even a tiny bit of the awful behaviour displayed when people flood here every year.

What is the solution to that though? Current students would still exist as people whether or not they were at university and would still need accommodation.

Restricting HMOs could have unintended consequences considering it isn't just students living in them. Many young professionals live in HMOs nowadays including doctors, and nurses, other NHS staff, young teachers etc.

I'm not in Cornwall but here's a few ideas:

Full-property rentals to be required to be fully licenced, with a limit on the number of licences issued. Landlords responsible for the behaviour of those staying. Issuing of licences to favour properties converted from outbuildings or restorations of derelict structures, rather than properties that were in active residential use prior to conversion into holiday lets.

Council tax for second homes to work to the rules implemented in several Welsh counties - double rate for second homes, with rentals required to be actually let for half of the year in order to fall under business rates instead of council tax - this is to stop people falsely claiming their second home is a business to take advantage of Small Business Rate Relief.

Residents' parking schemes.

During the pandemic the government extended the amount of time that you can open a temporary campsite under permitted development rights. Reinstate this extension so that farmers can switch a field over to camping for a couple of months per year. Camping is sustainable tourism.

Do something about water supplies. Cornwall has officially been in drought for nine and a half months.

Tourist tax like in Switzerland. Over there it costs around the equivalent of £3 per head per night. For that you get a public transport pass for the town/city you're staying in.

Integrated public transport. Again following the Swiss example. Buses and trains that connect with one another, so that people are much more easily persuaded to use it instead of clogging up the A30.

Bring back guard's vans on trains. GWR used to add an extra carriage onto Newquay trains that would be filled with surfboards. Stopped doing that when they replaced HSTs with new units so the only way of taking surfboards to the SW now is either to use the Night Riviera sleeper train, or to pay a courier to take it down in a van. Small wonder people drive instead. Luggage space in general is at a premium onboard modern trains as the DfT seeks to add extra seats at the cost of everything else. VTEC got permission to remove a row of seats in each carriage (that weren't even next to a window anyway) and replaced them with an extra luggage rack. GWR should be allowed to do the same. While we're at it, XC's Voyager fleet is inadequate all round. Need to replace them with new trains with sufficient luggage space and seven coaches instead of four.

The greedy Cornish people should stop selling their homes to wealthy developers and Londoners and anyone else really. Sell to their neighbours and keep it all local. Ban air bnbs and get the tourist board fo stop promoting the area.

Within a couple of generations it will all be pure Cornwall folk. Job done.