My Feelings

My feeling is that Cornwall cannot go on relying on the dubious benefit of tourism as a major source of employment and finance. It has its place but as it stands, it is ultimately unsustainable. Holiday homes converted or built, lead to depopulation in small towns and villages because local people can't afford the house prices. They can only watch as whole terraces become empty and dark at the end of each holiday season. How would that be dealt with in towns in Surrey or Hampshire ? Why is it allowed to continue and in some degree encouraged here ?

The (ongoing) experience of the Coronavirus lockdown is that life can go on without visitors, in a far more pleasant way for Cornish residents. There is local culture which operates independently of tourism. Towns like St Just (in Penwith) have some advantage in not being 'seaside' towns, whose infrastructure is essentially shaped by tourism.

There is of course, a concern that Cornwall needs an income. People need jobs. But a short seasonal influx of visitors spending their money here is an unreliable source, all too reliable in generating tourist infrastructure, gift shops, cafés, public toilets, parking areas, beach facilities and so on. It is a balance. And I am not advocating that tourists should be turned back at the Tamar. But I am suggesting that the balance has tipped too far in the tourism direction.

Increasing – 'creating' – jobs is not always good thing. It depends on th nature of the job. Apart from housing, every planning application is supported by a claim that it would create jobs, and of course even building houses creates work for local builders.

But job creation should be judged on the quality and sustainability of the jobs. The frightening discovery that the Government expected to source PPE by buying from other countries, who at the time needed their own supplies, reveals a historic lack of manufacturing – making things – in Britain. Eventually the Government sourced PPE from numbers of businesses, small and flexible enough to supply their requirements. There is a lesson that. Small business are valuable – and should be encouraged.

It seems to me that Cornwall should develop policies to encourage small, creative, manufacturing businesses, as a more sustainable means of providing employment. The argument that geographically Cornwall lacks good communication links to deliver goods to the rest of Britain or abroad, clearly precludes the manufacture of heavy, bulk goods. But with smaller, valuable, specialist products, transport and delivery represents a small percentage of costs.

Inventive and creative industries – signs, screen printing, sculptural metalwork, ceramics, printing, electronics, software ; specialist machining, welding, injection moulding, 3D printing, prototyping all fall into that category.

There are already numbers creative people in Cornwall, and a climate to provide workspaces and support such developments would encourage others to come to such a desirable region.

Or is it just dream ? and all we can look forward to is turning Cornwall into a kind of Disneyland ?