No don't laugh but threats by an extremist group against celebrity chefs Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver are being investigated by police. Stein has extensive business interests in the north Cornwall port of Padstow, including a restaurant, hotel and fish and chip shop.
Oliver has set up one of his charitable Fifteen restaurants at Watergate Bay, also on the north Cornwall coast, training disadvantaged young people from the county.
The Cornish National Liberation Army (CNLA) said in an email received by the Plymouth-based Western Morning News newspaper that local people had approached their activists "for assistance" against Stein - described as "this English newcomer". The email said it was "common knowledge" that Stein and his businesses were "held in contempt" by Cornish nationals who live in the Padstow area and it added that "his vehicle and those of his clients and customers are also bona fide targets for our activists".
The CNLA described Oliver as "another incomer who has caused the inflation of house and other living costs at Cornish expense". His clients and customers are also targets of the CNLA, said the email. I would have thought that Jamie's only crime was against the English language, once he has finished his crusade to improve the quality of school kitchens he'll move onto improving the quality of the language used by some students.
The interesting thing about this is that last weekend one of the Sunday papers I read (Times or Independent) had a feature on Padstow and one woman of the five residents interviewed actually said, "It's a well known fact among the locals that he (Stein) is seen as a nuisance."
Devon and Cornwall Police said they take "very seriously any threats to commit criminal offences against individual, business, public service or the Crown and we will vigorously investigate any pre-meditated or publicised planned criminal activity".
The spokesman said: "We have made immediate contact with proprietors of various businesses and are actively working together, with a view to ensure that appropriate crime prevention measures are maintained.
I actually find Cornish people rather slow, dim witted and parochial. It is after all Cornish people who have been selling their properties to 'blow ins' only to complain that there's no where for the kids to live. Well here's an idea, don't be so fucking greedy in the first place, then house prices might actually stay reasonable. They could also campaign and write to their local councillors and M.P's to insist that a percentage of housing must be exclusively for first time buyers - nobody can afford £200,000 for their first home.
3 comments:
Woo! That's savage. Surely selling our property at the best (highest) possible price is a fundamental of our capitalist society.
Why would the Cornish think collectively that they should artificially depress house prices for the on-going good of the indiginous population?
The problem with a lot of Cornish people is that they have an 'islander' mentality or a little town mentality - they think that somehow they are excluded from what goes on elsewhere.
On the one hand they want to sell their properties to the highest bidders (from London and abroad) whilst on the other they complain about the lack of housing for their kids.
A long term view would be that they need to keep young people in the area, in the economy and therefore in housing.
Property prices vary from town to town - there's actually a £40,000 difference between where I live and where I work for a three bedroom semi. People hold onto property for all sorts of reasons, I think that the Cornish peoples popular front are wrong in attacking outsiders for a situation of their own making.
I think your last sentence (of the above comment) says it all. The people who buy the houses are the very last people to blame.
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