Cornwall must lose its fear of building rather than whinge about over tourism, according to a self-confessed 'emmet'. Tanya Gold wrote an opinion piece for the about the issues faced by Cornwall and suggested a possible solution. Comparing to other European hotspots prized by tourists, such as Venice or Barcelona, where local residents have had enough of mass tourism, Mrs Gold said she hated all tourists at first after she moved to Newlyn with her family and regarded Mousehole down the road as "a ghastly portent filled with nautical-themed décor".
Following a trip to the Isles of Scilly, where she did what tourists do when visiting the beautiful archipelago, she realised that tourism is not the problem - the lack of housing for local people is. And best of all, she's got the solution - just build more! About her Scillonian escapade, she wrote: "I visited the Isles of Scilly, which are curiously bourgeois for their savage landscape, and bought a piece of ornamental driftwood for £10 while the custodian scowled at me for stamping on her paradise. I thought: you only live here due to the benevolence of the British taxpayer.
If it wasn’t for us, you’d be living in 1290. You can take the crowds for 10 weeks. "Now I smile at tourists, because I don’t want to live elsewhere, and they are stuck with elsewhere, and my friend owns an ice-cream van.
It’s still true that Cornwall is dying. Nautical-themed décor is not the problem. Pastiche grates because it is mocking – it summons the ghost of what you killed – but it’s a symptom.
" Touching on the great pockets of poverty and deprivation in places like St Ives where there is one of the biggest rates of children living in poverty in the UK, Mrs Gold believes it is the 'emmets' like herself who are partly responsible for blocking the new housing developments which are needed in Cornwall. She wrote: "There are local children who live in mould-slaked housing, which often belongs to local Cornish (avarice isn’t limited to the Home Counties) and there might be three generations to a house. And yet, when new housing is planned, it is locals – monied emmets this time – who block it, because they cherish views, and have time to write letters.
They don’t want a theoretical three-second delay on their journey to an ornamental driftwood shop, because of the traffic theoretical housing might incite. They moan: there are no doctors, teachers, or firemen." She added: "We must lose our fear of building.
It’s a sign of a gilded civilisation for a reason." She believes second homes are mere snobbery and a "hardy cult of individualism" is to blame. Mrs Gold added: "I don’t think people who buy cottages in Mousehole, or flats in Venice or Barcelona, which they use two months a year and the rest, should be held up as examples of human ingenuity.
I like to think that if they knew the damage it wrought, they might think again. But the cult of individualism is hardy. "That is why, of course, we have the cult of the holiday cottage, which has hollowed out the fleshpots more than anything.
The holiday cottage is a nautical-themed extension of women’s common work – cooking and laundry is a moveable thing – and I don’t know why people do not stay in hotels. I love hotels of any kind, and I visit the creepy family hotel of my childhood in my dreams.".
