Pasty Munching ingrates and the shock as Cornwall features in a newspaper in something other than a lifestyle piece!

Thought I'd write something about Jeremy Clarkson's column/ diatribe on Scottish independence today....

The feeling's mutual, Jeremy Clarkson: pic.twitter.com/JuQiA4GLOi
— RealCornishPubs (@RealCornishPubs) September 14, 2014

Quite!

It is a shock that Cornwall is not featured in the context of our great restaurants, food, landscape or coast or the opportunities for second homes. For a change Cornwall is talked about not as an abstract entity but a recognition that there are people in Cornwall and that there are politics here. Perhaps now pundits like Clarkson have noticed, the media might peer out past the M25 once in a while.

I don't take offence from Jeremy Clarkson, he can say what he likes, like so many comedians and pundits these days upsetting people is it's own genre. I have some sympathy with it I have a dark sense of humour and can chuckle at myself and not take it too seriously. Besides which I'm as much a 'pasty munching ingrate' as Jeremy Clarkson is a 'journalist'!

There is an interesting word he uses though ingrate, I've seen it a few times in reference to Cornwall as the debate on the future of the UK and the indyref heats up. So why exactly are we ingrates? what exactly does Cornwall have to be ungrateful for? Is it perhaps the second homes destroying our communities? Or our poor economic situation? Or is it the lack of opportunities that drive young people away in search of work? I accept there are things we might be grateful for, I'm not saying there is absolutely no benefit of the current situation. But why should we be grateful? Why exactly should we show gratitude and thankfulness?

I was brought up with manners and if I want something I say please and if I'm given something I say thank you. But this is a United Kingdom We're All In It Together, Better Together. The rhetoric constantly points to partnership of equal relations. But if this truly was the case why is there still an opinion that we are being gifted things? Gratitude in a partnership should be a two way street. Gratefulness implies not taking things for granted the UK would be a better place if it was realised that the Celts are not recipients of  English largesse...