OH DANNY BOY – KEEP YOUR SCOTTISH NOSE OUT OF ENGLISH AFFAIRS!
Danny Alexander, or as Harriet Harman (aka Hatty Harperson) unkindly called him “a Ginger Rodent”, the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP and Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the Coalition Government, stuck his nose into English affairs last week with his typical
Liberal Democrat attempt to try and cause division within the nation, as much as they are trying to do in Scotland with the Orkneys. They now think it would be a good wheeze to try and break off Cornwall from England.
Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times (27.4.14) is highly amusing about this and said:-
“Mmm, delicious Cornish fudge – made in Brussels
At last, one of Britain’s most colourful but endangered and rapidly dwindling communities has been afforded special, protected “minority” status. The nation’s last remaining colony of possibly Liberal Democrats voters, known to the public as “Cornwall”, is to be recognised by the European Union. This joyful news was announced by the, er, Liberal Democrats chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander.
Cornwall is henceforth a special entity – a bit like Transnistria, say. No longer simply a weekend destination for braying Hooray Henrys and middle-class families with mewling brats and Labradors called Oscar. No longer simply a “county” like all the other counties. It has been “recognised” under the European Framework Convention for the Protection of Pixies and People Who Have Been Too Generously Apportioned Fingers and Toes.
A small minority of the Cornish have long proclaimed that they are not part of that awful oppressive and imperialistic thing from which they get all their money – England. Some of the more radical separatists have protested by placing razor blades and broken glass beneath the sands of the country’s better known beaches, so as to impress upon the incomers their profound loathing at being afforded a decent living. Their claims to a special status have some force, mind – there is a distinct language in Cornwall, a Celtic hand-me-down that is spoken and understood by precisely 557 of the half a million people who cling to its photogenic and precipitous cliffs, or paddle about its bogs in search of peat.
That’s even fewer than the number of people in London who speak English, but never mind. Northumberland for example, doesn’t have its own language, even if the people up there are no less intelligible than the Cornish and use the mysterious dialect word “netty” for lavatory basin and refer to those people with whom they have sort of primitive affection as “marra”. So this recognition thing has been a long time coming and it remains to be seen what will happen next.
Will the people of Cornwall press for full-scale independence, like the Catalans and Venetians and Galicians? Should we envisage passport checks as we approach the Tamar and import duties on their sickly, tooth-rotting fudge? Or will they instead simply sulk in an adolescent manner, mindful of which side their bread is buttered?
Of course, this recognition business is a nominal thing meaning little more than an expenditure of taxpayers’ money and in effect amounting to precisely nothing. Some public sector employees and third-sector activists will undoubtedly coin it, to a limited degree. But it is largely – if you will excuse my terminology – piss and wind, as is so much that Brussels churns out in its increasingly desperate attempts to undermine the notion of the nation state.
It is in the EU’s interests to perpetually encourage regional factional dissent against the national governments that, it believes, are archaic and redundant concepts. The more the disparate parts of – particularly – Italy and Spain can be encouraged to renounce the hegemony of Rome and Madrid, the stronger the EU feels itself to be. And so there are EU departments determined to pay homage to Catalonia, or the Basque, or the Bretons, or the Cornish. Anything that loosens the ties towards the capital cities and thus, by default, strengthens the ties to Brussels.
Early reports suggest the Cornish are distinctly unimpressed. Of course the activists and the quangoes have exulted, especially those whose job it is to pretend that the Cornish language is of crucial importance to Cornwall and the world, despite considerable evidence to the contrary. But on the phone – it shows your average Cornishman was less than euphoric. “Will it help me find a job – no!” And “What is the point? Probably to line the pockets of those who we will never know sat in posh offices.” Yep, that would be about right.”
The initial report shows in fact Rod Liddle hadn’t quite got his facts straight as actually Danny Alexander has given £½m of our money to the Cornish language “partnership” as is shown from the government press release the last paragraph of which says:-
“The Cornish language is the only language in England recognised under the Council of Europe’s Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In March 2014, the government announced funding of £120,000 to the Cornish Language Partnership for the development and promotion of the Cornish language. Since 2010 the government has provided over £500,000 to the partnership. This payment which will sit alongside funds from Cornwall Council and other funds raised locally by the partnership.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cornish-granted-minority-status-within-the-uk
Regular readers of this blog will remember that this is happening in the context of the results of the 2011 Census which showed that by only sensible understanding Cornish nationalism is a dead issue. Here is how my comments were reported in Cornwall:-
CORNISH nationalism is “dead” – according to an English nationalist leader.
Robin Tilbrook, chairman of the English Democrat party, which is campaigning for England to become independent of the UK and EU, based his claim on the latest census figures.
He said it showed people did not take the opportunity to declare themselves as Cornish.
Mr Tilbrook told the West Briton from his home in Essex: “The census figures show that not many people are precious about declaring themselves as Cornish. There’s at least five times more people for English nationalism than Cornish.
“People feel a part of being Cornish but they do not identify Cornwall as a national identity.”
Can anybody think of an adaptation to the Danny Boy song to adequately and wittingly reflect the English preference for the “Ginger Rodent” to stop sticking his nose into English affairs?
Here is the text of Danny Boy:-
Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen and down the mountainside
The summer’s gone and all the roses fallin’
It’s you, it’s you, must go and I must bide
But come ye back, when summer’s in the meadow
Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow
I’ll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh, Danny boy, oh, Danny boy, I love you so
But if you come and all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You’ll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an ave there for me
And I will know, though soft ye tread above me
And then my grave will richer, sweeter be
And you’ll bend down and tell me that you love me
And I will rest in peace until you come to me.
Here is a link to a good performance of it (click here>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jgma–0WYU ).
