h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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There's a short article in "Agence Bretagne Presse" discussing British devolution. The piece is followed by readers' comments: The first poster, Yves Le Gonidec, reminds people about Celtic Devon and speaks of the failing of the Cornish to understand the cultural potential of a Devonwall nation.

Curiously, this is not actually what is currently being proposed by anyone, but it does make intersting reading.

As you might imagine, a couple of Cornish nationalists have responded quite strongly against the post.

It's mainly in French but with some English language postings, chiefly from the Cornish contributers.

http://www.agencebretagnepresse.com/fetch.php?id=23467

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The article I refer to in my above post is actually about national identity within the United Kingdom, not, as I stated, devolution.

PenRecca

It does make interesting reading.

My French is less than perfect, and I tried the "translate" option (under Google).

This gave a reasonable, but less that grammatically perfect alternative, but most of the intent was decipherable.

Interestingly Fulup's contributions appears to have been translated, and was probably the most unintelligible of the lot - even worse than the original. Essentially I think Fulup missed the original main point completely and simply railed at the unfortunate mention of Devonwall

NB It is good to have H2G2 back.

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Ozzie exile

Yes I agree, it is a bit challenging linguistically.

The Breton postings of Yves Le Gonidec are interesting in that they recognise Devon has Brythonic roots, which, of course, it does. Why a few Cornish posters disagree with this is puzzling.

What is actually being proposed at the moment is a parliamentary constituency which straddles the county border, nothing more, certainly not a Devonwall nation. There are a number of these cross-border constituencies up and down the country, I’ve not read of any problems with them. In fact, Cornwall and Plymouth once formed such a constituency in the Euro-parliament.

As for the guardian map of national identity, well, it’s hardly scientific. It seems one could post as many post-codes as one liked. I posted twice, once for myself and once on behalf of another, there was no check - I could have posted many more.

The Guardian article which started the Breton discussion is interesting.

One point that the article passes over is that 52% of English respondents preferred to call themselves British rather than English.

This perhaps warrants further investigation. Why is "English" not more popular ? Association with the right wing yobbos's perhaps ??

The situation in Cornwall is also interesting with a clear and overwhelming majority favouring "Other" as opposed to British or English. Clearly a preference for the Flag of St Piran.

This led me to look at the Devonian responses

The results (as best as I could count) were

British 46%
English 30%
Other 20%
Scottish/Welsh 4%

The "British" fraction is down slightly on the English average, but this is due to the relatively high "Other" fraction, with "English" being favoured by only three in ten.

Who these "others" are is not given, and certainly a number will be 'expatriate' Cornish or those hailing from other parts of the World.

However the "other" does not appear to group around the east bank of the Tamar, and so the Cornish element may not be large.

It would be interesting if the "others" could be further analised, as it is still a significant fraction in Devon, but sadly.....

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I hadn't noticed that as many as 20% of Devon replies were 'other', that's one in five. Well.... I could speculate about that, but it would be guesswork.

Looking at the total amount of replies in Devon and then Cornwall, the latter does appear rather high considering the lower population. Maybe there are fewer Guardian readers in Devon.

I had noticed the relatively high response from our Cornish bretheren. Far more than from Devon, and with a smaller population.

Strange - I thought they all read "The Cornishman"

PennRecca,

The Bretons clearly examined all the evidence, which conclusively shows that Devon has Brythonic roots, unlike the (few) Cornish who selectively look at the evidence (rejecting any which doesn’t suit their agenda). There is enough evidence for a whole article to be written on the subject.

Surveys, such as the Guardian national identity one, are seriously flawed if they permit people to submit replies many times. This allows minority pressure groups (such as the Cornish few) to distort the results to make it look as though the Cornish (in general) see themselves as ‘other’ (i.e. not English or British).

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If anyone has not found the Guardian map through the opening post, it is still on line and can be viewed here http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/interactive/2011/oct/06/british-identity-scotland

If you don't wish to submit a post-code, then just click on submit, it'll take you in. Navigation can be a bit tricky.

PenRecca,

I don't believe that the Guardian survey is accepting any new responses, although it doesn't give that impression to the prospective surveyor.

I believe the survey is closed, and those results are then shown to the viewer.

Whilst the survey is not a scientific or statistically verified sample, and whilst you could question the surprisingly high response rate in Cornwall, the facts are that there were very few English or British flag selections made from the Cornish responses,, so much so that I don't believe I could question the identification with another flag (and I can only assume this is the Cornish flag)