mudhook

On Friday MPs shamefully voted for a bill that exempts them from the Freedom of Information Act. I do not believe this is only about reasonably protecting correspondence from constituents – there are other ways of doing that than this bill - but it is also about ultimately shutting off further information about their finances and those of the houses of parliament. Anything an MP writes to a minister will also be secret. The vote comes after a two-year losing resistance against releasing more detailed information about MP expenses. It is a damaging vote against transparency in administration.

One Cornwall MP voted (it was Friday when most MPs reasonably return to their constituencies for the weekend). To her vast credit Julia Goldsworthy, the Liberal Democrat MP for Falmouth and Camborne, voted against the exemption. She should be acclaimed.

Mark Fisher, a Labour MP, said the bill would bring the House of Commons into derision, contempt, and discredit.

Since writing the original and revised posts (below the line) yet another form of the Cornish language has appeared, Reunified Cornish or Kernewek Dasunys. This is an attempt to accommodate the different ways of spelling Cornish in the other forms of the reconstructed language. This is the sixth version of Cornish on offer – or the second compromise version if you prefer.

The six versions are often abbreviated by their admirers and detractors: KD, KK, KN, KS, KU, KUA – in strict alphabetical order as I wouldn’t want it thought I had any preference. These are abbreviations of the Cornish names; one also finds the English abbreviations RLC, UC, and UCR for KN, KU, and KUA. Not exactly the stuff of pub chatter or the supermarket checkout queue.

Four versions and two compromises. It is becoming difficult not to laugh/cry/scream.The whole thing is beginning to remind me of The life of Brian and the fissile and futile Judean movement.

Just a reminder. There are about 520 000 full-time residents of Cornwall. About three hundred of them speak Cornish of any sort fluently.

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Until about the end of the eighteenth century Cornish was spoken in Cornwall. The date of its demise is disputed because it is
unknown but the death of Dolly Pentreath in 1777 is popularly given as the date. This Cornish was a Brythonic Celtic language, related to Breton and Welsh. It slowly died out in Cornwall over many years, at first in the east of the county and eventually as the everyday language in the west.

There are now several versions of reconstructed Cornish broadly based on the limited written remnants of the language at different periods. There is much reconstruction, well, invention actually, of vocabulary, for modern life, as in all languages, for concepts and things for which no word is found in the few documents in Cornish that have survived. At the beginning of the twentieth century came the first reconstructed version, Unified Cornish, based on the language of medieval religious writings. In the last quarter of a century three other versions have been developed. Common (Kemmyn) Cornish differs from Unified mainly in having a regularised phonetic spelling; Late or Modern Cornish is based on Cornish in its last years as a spoken and written language; and Unified Revised is a revision of Unified.

In early 2007 another version, Kernowak, appeared. This appears to be a compromise between Unified, Unified Revised, and Late and an amalgam of them. I am unclear whether this means there are now five or two (Kernowak and Kemmyn) versions.

Possibly between them the versions of Cornish are spoken fluently by about three hundred people and less confidently by several hundreds (Kenneth MacKINNON, 2000, An independent academic study of Cornish). A survey is to be undertaken in 2007 for a new estimate of numbers. Any self-assessment of language skill and use, however, is open to questioning.

In 2002 the British government recognised Cornish under part 2 of the Council of Europe’s charter for minority languages and is consequently giving £240 000 over three years, as match funding for European Union money, for Cornish. However, in practice to access most of this taxpayers’ money for what is coyly called development and promotion, the spreading of the use of the language, especially in schools, there has to be agreement on one single written version of Cornish, along with a standard grammar and standard rules for vocabulary construction.

The process for trying to agree one standard written version is underway. Frankly, I doubt all the users will agree and even if a standard form is decreed there will be noncompliance by some. The infighting among some of the advocates of the different versions is noticeably sharp.

The arguments for the promotion of Cornish seem not primarily about the theory that linguistic diversity involves differences in cognitive experience and diverse ways of seeing the world; but rather grounded in political motivations deriving from ideas about a distinct Cornish ethnic identity and devolved government.

Dave Sayers has looked at the moves to a uniform written Cornish in an exploration of language diversity as a dynamic continuum and as found within as well as between languages. He suggests that the Council of Europe misconceives linguistic diversity as the promotion of a uniform version of a minority language, disregarding internal diversity within a minority language.

Cornish is increasingly used to suggest an enticing exoticism and a nod to history, as in street names and on tourist artefacts, making its use in some circumstances a marketing tool.

There have been classes teaching Cornish throughout Cornwall for many years but, despite the opportunities these offer for learning the language, the numbers estimated to speak Cornish fluently are very small. It looks as though most of those who see themselves as Cornish do not see speaking and writing and reading the language as necessary definers of their Cornishness. Despite the passion of the present language activists, I doubt whether this position will change much. For the vast majority of people in Cornwall all of this interest in Cornish is of little or no practical interest and I do not see bilingualism ever taking off to any extent. Speaking, writing, and reading Cornish are likely to remain a pursuit of the few.

[Original post written 6 February 2007; revised 21 April 2007]

As Tony Blair announces his retirement as prime minister I want to ask, What has the Blair government done for Cornwall?

I think it has done a great deal. Many of the things on the Vorsprung Cornwall post are down to government help but here’s a separate and first list:

- The minimum wage, opposed by the Conservatives at the time with unrealised dire warnings of economic mayhem. Cornwall has a vast army of low paid jobs and the national minimum wage has been especially beneficial here. Thank god it’s a national minimum wage too not a local one as the Liberal Democrats first talked of.

- The British economy continues to do well; we have low inflation and low unemployment in Cornwall. There have been ten years of stable economic growth and companies and people in Cornwall have benefited from this.

- Tax credits, despite the hiccups, are also benefiting families in Cornwall.

- Sure Start is helping young children and their parents.

- There have been real improvements in the NHS in Cornwall as well as difficulties. Yes, I know the NHS millions haven’t all gone where we’d like and the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust has serious debts but waiting times for treatment are well down.

- Social justice, with civil partnerships and a legal end to unfair discriminations based on age, belief, and sexual orientation, as well as on race and gender.

- Free bus use by those over sixty. This has enabled many of the elderly in Cornwall to get out and about more easily, including visiting family and friends, without eating into their pensions.

- Millions of pounds more have come to Cornwall schools and the improvements are tangible.

- The linking state pensions to earnings again, abandoned by the Conservatives, is on the horizon and will further increase the living standards of pensioners.

Alas, the government has failed to get enough housing built but the incoming government looks like it will make housing a priority; the minimum wage is still too low; and the RCHT debts are a worry.

Overall, the Blair government has done much to help make life better for the people of Cornwall and this government has been a success for people in Cornwall.

In the elections on 3 May 2007 for district councils in Cornwall, all the seats in five of the six Cornwall councils were up for election and eleven were in Penwith. That’s a total of 225 seats.

Mebyon Kernow put up twenty four district council candidates. This party is not a major player.

Seven Mebyon Kernow district councillors were elected. MK lost one district seat and gained two, a nett gain of one. It got around 5 percent of the total vote in the district elections in Cornwall.

In the parish/town council elections at the same time twenty one MK councillors were elected (a few were unopposed), a nett gain of one.

MK Cornish political nationalism is still vastly unpersuasive to most voters in Cornwall. This party is not speaking for most people in Cornwall.

See the post Does MK speak for the people of Cornwall?