Back in 2021 we estimated the contribution of tourism to the Cornish economy as being around 13.5% in 2019, a figure far lower than the 20-33% being freely bandied around by the tourism lobby and uncritically reported in local and more general media.
It now turns out that we may have been too conservative in our estimate and exaggerated the role of tourism somewhat. Lightcast Data, which claims to deliver ‘clarity’ to ‘regional leaders’, calculates that tourism accounted for just 11.8% of the total Cornish economy in 2021. This is revealed in a report on ‘sustainable’ tourism produced by … Cornwall Council.
If they want to get their facts right in future perhaps corporate journalists might report the research on this site rather than rush to re-print the latest preposterous and groundless claims from a tourism lobby that has effectively captured Cornish politicians and media outlets.
In 2021 I submitted a Freedom of Information request to Cornwall Council asking what the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions would amount to at their Langarth project. Cornwall’s planners admitted that they didn’t know and referred me to their consultants – Arcadis Design and Consultancy of Exeter. This was mildly surprising as, more than two years earlier, to great publicity, the Council had declared a climate emergency and set the ambitious target of reaching net zero by 2030. Yet here we were with the planners apparently not having a clue about the climate implications of their flagship project.
Arcadis referred me in turn to the environmental statement they had produced in support of Cornwall Council’s planning application for Langarth. A masterpiece of its kind, Arcadis’ environmental statement came in at over 800 heavily technical pages. It’s very unlikely that any councillor actually read it and questionable whether they could understand it if they did. Which was possibly the rationale for what must qualify as a classic example of a pointless (although presumably very lucrative) task by Arcadis.
Nonetheless, Arcadis had done the sums (or at least some sums) on the greenhouse gas that would be emitted during the construction and operation of the Langarth suburb. They discovered that the planned 3,550 houses, set to engulf 245 hectares (605 acres) and 55 fields to the west of Truro would have ‘no significant’ effects on climate change. Anyone who bothered to read this would also have been mightily relieved to find that the effects on the ecology and biodiversity of the area would be ‘not significant’. Meanwhile the long-term consequences of dumping a suburb on the landscape and its visual impact was also ‘not significant’. A few farms were to be displaced while the countryside due to be chewed up is relatively high grade agricultural land. Yet, even more incredibly, the consultants could also conclude that the impact of the building on those farming enterprises would be ‘not significant’, as they would have plenty of ‘time … to relocate or diversify’ (Arcadis, Langarth Garden Village Environmental Statement, non-technical summary, Nov. 2020, p.12). Cornwall Council’s plans for its new suburb ‘garden village’ were duly given the go-ahead from …. Cornwall Council.
In order to reassure any sensitive folk concerned that the Langarth suburb would slightly contradict the Council’s net zero target, Arcadis came up with some ingenious but disingenuous logic. Because its construction would only contribute from 0.003% to 0.012% of the carbon budget for the United Kingdom, it was no problem at all. A moment’s reflection reveals the consequences of this idiotic argument. If we adopt such ludicrous criteria, only the most massive development will ever be deemed to have a ‘significant’ effect. Patently designed to guarantee the continuation of business as usual, this nonsense ignores the aggregate effects of a number of similar projects. In passing, we can note the same fatuous argument is used by developers when claiming that their own building project will lead to gains in biodiversity. This is even as study after study reveals alarming declines in insect numbers along with a steady growth in the number of species consigned to the endangered list. Individual impacts may well be relatively small; collectively, they are disastrously huge.
Nevertheless, the Arcadis environmental statement on Langarth does provide some interesting data on the greenhouse gas emissions expected over the course of the construction and operation of the 3,550 houses and other infrastructure at Langarth. This includes the embedded carbon in materials used in construction, transport to and from the site, extra traffic and the energy use of the houses. Here it is ….
800,000 tons of GHGs or 800 kilotons (Kt)
Now, that figure is fairly meaningless in the absence of context. In 2020, the most recent year with available data, the total GHG emissions in Cornwall were 3,407 Kt. (This was up to 10 per cent lower than expected because of covid and a sharp, though temporary, fall in emissions from transport.) We can therefore expect the Langarth project to add the equivalent of just over two and a half months of current GHG emissions, or almost an entire year of emissions from all the cars on Cornwall’s roads. While hardly insignificant in absolute terms, this is indeed a relatively small proportion of Cornwall’s total GHG emissions – although remember that the Council’s aim is net zero by 2030, by which time it will be a very large proportion.
Furthermore, we can use the data Arcadis supplied for Langarth to estimate the effects of the overall plans for additional housing in Cornwall. Cornwall Council appears reluctant to assess, let alone publicise, the carbon costs of its housing plans, despite promising to put the climate emergency at the centre of policy-making, which should support ‘carbon-reduction’ (Climate Emergency Development Plan, 2021, p.9). Let’s give them a helping hand.
We now know that the Langarth suburb will add 800 Kt to Cornwall’s GHG output. That’s just over 0.22 Kt for each house being built. However, Langarth is merely one small part of Cornwall Council’s overall housing plan for Cornwall. The Local Plan calls for 52,500 houses to be built over 20 years. Cornwall Council’s Five Year Housing Land Supply Statement of 2021 tells us that completions for the first 11 years of the Plan were exceeding this and running at the rate of 53,300 houses every 20 years. Moreover, the Council is on record as desiring an ‘ambitious accelerated delivery of at least 3,000 homes a year’, or the equivalent of 60,000 every 20 years. (New Frontiers, Housing and Planning, 2018, p.9). Indeed, the so-called devolution deal (in actual fact a growth deal) is promising to ‘unlock the barriers’ to ‘wider housing growth’ (UK Govt and Cornwall Council, 2022, p.73).
If we take the 0.22 Kt of GHG emitted for each house built at Langarth and multiply it by the 53,300 to 60,000 houses per 20 years that County Hall is so keen on we can obtain a rough estimate for the overall GHG costs of those housebuilding plans.
Houses
GHG emissions (Kt)
53,300
12,011
60,000
13,521
As the bar chart above shows, the total GHG emissions for Cornwall in 2020 were 3,400 Kt, with transport accounting for up to 900 Kt of this. The housebuilding programme will therefore equate to three and a half to four years’ worth of the current total emissions for Cornwall. Or 12 to 13 years of emissions of all the cars currently driving around Cornwall’s roads. If we take the average of the two estimates of GHG from housebuilding and divide it by 20 we obtain the annual carbon cost of Cornwall Council’s housing growth plan. The bar chart below adds this.
If anything, this is a conservative estimate as other ‘developments’ are unlikely to be as environmentally friendly as the Council’s iconic Langarth scheme. Moreover, it does not include the additional emissions from the consumption and travel of the extra population attracted to Cornwall by its high rate of speculative housebuilding – in fact the highest rate in the UK in relation to its resident population. Let’s remind ourselves, over the last decade 29.5 per cent of the houses built in Cornwall have been supposedly ‘affordable’. The vast majority however are sold on the open market and are speculative developments marketed aggressively to upcountry buyers. Twenty years-worth of these speculative housing projects alone equates to two and a half to three years of current carbon emissions every two decades, or eight to nine years of Cornwall’s current road transport emissions.
Cornwall Council clearly has a problem even though its leaders seem blissfully unaware of it. It has rightly although belatedly realised that humanity’s decision to transfer billions of tons of carbon and other GHGs from the lithosphere to the atmosphere was not its brightest idea. But, like the UK Government, it seems to believe that recognising this is sufficient. If it were genuinely serious about reaching net zero by 2030, Cornwall Council would be loudly calling for a moratorium on speculative housebuilding, action to regulate and restrain estate agents, punitive taxation or other restrictions on second home buyers and the devolution of planning powers to limit housing to meet genuine local need. But it’s clearly not serious.
On the one hand it remains committed, at least on paper, to net zero by 2030, which a glance at the calendar reveals is just seven years away. But it lacks any effective pathways to achieve it. Meanwhile, its housing targets are helping to burn a large hole in its net zero policy as, on the other hand, it also wants business as usual to continue. More than that it wants to ramp it up, ‘accelerate’ growth, unblock those mysterious ‘barriers’ and speed up Cornwall’s transformation into a home county by the sea. It’s almost as if one hand wasn’t at all aware of what the other was doing. Do councillors not realise that their policy aims are utterly incompatible, about as sensible as using petrol to douse a fire?
Cornwall Council planning for more fossil fuelled growth
Yesterday Rishi Sunak delivered an obvious snub to Boris Johnson’s aim of forging a global deal on the climate crisis at the forthcoming COP26 meeting. He did this by halving the tax on domestic flights while only increasing the duty on long-haul flights of over 5,550 miles by a paltry 4.3%, probably less than next year’s rate of inflation. Whether deliberate or not, this further undermined any tatters of moral credibility left clinging precariously to the UK Government.
However, this news was no doubt met with wild celebrations in certain quarters of Cornwall Council. By an amazing coincidence the Council yesterday responded to a Freedom of Information request I had made asking for an update on the number of flights taken by officers on council business. The original piece from 2019 can be found here, while the updated figures are as follows.
Year
Domestic flights
Overseas flights
2017-18
655
6
2018-19
1056
22
2019-20
633
23
2020-21
23
1
The key thing to remember is that Cornwall Council declared a ‘climate emergency’ in January 2019. Nonetheless, every single working day in the financial year from March 2019 to March 2020 saw an average of 2.4 council officers still hopping onto a plane to somewhere else in the UK. Meanwhile, the number of overseas flights actually increased in that year. Even in 2020-21, when it was difficult to fly anywhere, council officers managed some domestic flights.
This raises three questions.
First, why did councillors allow their frequent flyers to make their declaration of a climate emergency look foolish? Why didn’t they act to stop all internal flights where a rail journey was an alternative? As very few of those domestic flights were presumably to Belfast, that would be the vast majority. What is it about the word ‘emergency’ that Cornwall’s councillors and officers don’t grasp?
Second, how can the Council call on residents to reduce our carbon footprint when it allows its officers to act with such mind-boggling hypocrisy?
Third, why does it take an FOI request to obtain this information?
There appears to be some confusion in the press about the role of tourism in the Cornish economy. Estimates of its financial contribution fluctuate alarmingly and are often contradictory. For instance …
“Tourism is worth between £1.7bn and £2bn a year to Cornwall, around 20% of the county’s annual GDP, Mr Conchie [CEO of Cornwall Chamber of Commerce] said, while an estimated 53,000 people are employed by the industry.” (Sky News, August 2018)
“Tourism is 25%-28% of gross value added of Cornwall, and the visitor economy could be as much as £2.4 billion over the year.” (Kim Conchie, Penarth Times, March 2020)
“Tourism is worth nearly £2 billion to the local economy – 23% of GDP” (Daily Mirror, March 2021)
“a lot of people don’t appreciate just how important tourism is. It is 33% of our GDP“. (Cornwall Live, August 2021)
“Tourism … is about a third of our GDP” (Kim Conchie, Daily Express, September 2021)
Occasionally, the confusion seems to be caused by an elementary failure to understand the difference between spending on the one hand and Gross Value Added (GVA) or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on the other. As the absolute figure for GVA/GDP is lower than the spending figure, calculating the proportion of GVA by dividing GVA by spending will inflate its importance.
So what is the actual picture, taking care to compare like with like?
In order to calculate the proportion of GVA in Cornwall that is contributed by tourism we need to know the total GVA and the GVA contributed by the tourist sector. Unfortunately, while the regional data for the total GVA is available on an annual basis (Office for National Statistics [ONS], Regional gross value added (balanced) by industry: all International Territorial Level (ITL) regions, Table 2b, 2018 prices), the ONS does not provide a separate tourism sector. However, it has estimated the proportions of its existing sectors that can be attributed to tourist activities (ONS, UK Tourism Satellite Account: 2017. Tables). For example, it estimates that 76% of the ‘accommodation services for visitors’ can be accounted for by tourism, 37% of ‘cultural activities’ and so on. While these ratios are clearly open to question, we can use them as a basis for calculating the overall importance of tourism.
If we do this for Cornwall’s GVA we find that the direct contribution of tourism in 2013 was 8.1%, rising to 9.0% in 2019.
However, the impact of tourism does not end there. In addition to the direct impact of any economic sector there are indirect and induced effects. Indirect effects include the purchase of goods and services from other sectors, for instance when a hotel buys bed linen from a local company. Induced effects include the spending of those earning their living in that sector. This might include things like buying their groceries from the local supermarket.
This result – a total impact of 13.5% in 2019 – is not that far away from the conclusions reached by the occasional ONS research on the impact of tourism at a regional level. Their estimate for 2013 (ONS, 2016, The regional value of tourism in the UK: 2013) gives a direct tourism component of 9.9%, rising to 15.3% once the direct and induced effects are factored in. Clearly there is some variation here but, given these various estimates, we can safely conclude that the total financial contribution of tourism to the Cornish economy is somewhere between 12% and 16%. This is a lot lower than the figures bandied about by those with a vested interest in tourism.
Note for journalists – next time you hear someone pluck a figure out of the air ask them for the details of their source and refer them to the research here.
Moreover, this assessment of the contribution of tourism to Cornish GVA does not take into consideration either the social costs (of second homes, congestion, pressure on services), environmental impact (a study of Cumbria – A Carbon Baseline for Cumbria, 2020, p.22 – concluded that tourist activities account for almost half its total greenhouse gas production. It would no doubt be similar for Cornwall) or the longer-term disastrous cultural effects on the Cornish people.
Cornwall is sometimes portrayed as a land of mystery. One mystery that is now fast disappearing from memory is the strange case of the third Covid wave that suddenly appeared towards the beginning of June. The story of this needs to be put on record before it slips, conveniently for some, into the realms of the unexplained.
A third wave breaks
Cornwall had been relatively fortunate in the first wave of the Covid virus. Despite dire warnings of the effects of hordes of tourists, the summer of 2020 passed off safely. However, the luck didn’t hold and in the second wave Cornish communities, like others, saw a substantial rise in case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths as a result of a too-eager relaxation of restrictions and Christmas shopping. And then things calmed down after January 2021 and by the spring numbers were low again, although not quite as low as in the previous summer.
Then, in the week ending June 5th, unnoticed by most people, the number of Covid cases began to creep up from the levels of May. Cases were reported from the Falmouth district among others. Around the same time the Newquay area began to see cases and by the 8th June the virus had re-appeared in St Ives and in Falmouth itself rather than in the surrounding district.
The three hotspots were clearly visible by June 12th
Case numbers then rose exponentially. In the week following June 6th there was a record eight-fold increase and Cornwall’s third wave was well and truly under way. But this wave was very different from the first and second. In those, cases of Covid had risen steadily and relatively uniformly across Cornwall, although some towns obviously suffered higher numbers than did others. In this third wave, the cases were at first very highly concentrated in and around just three towns. Falmouth, Newquay and St Ives and their surrounding districts accounted for over two thirds of the recorded cases in the first week of the third wave despite containing only a seventh of Cornwall’s population. This concentration later declined as the delta variant spread out from these three towns. A month later, only echoes of the initial concentration on St Ives, Falmouth and Newquay could still be seen on the map. While these districts still account for a quarter of Cornish cases, that proportion is steadily dwindling.
And even more visible by June 16th
The geography of the third wave
Observers could not help noticing the uncanny correlation between the re-appearance of the virus, driven by the more transmissible delta variant, and those areas of Cornwall that had seen the bulk of the activity preparing for the G7 summit of June 11th-13th. The G7 participants themselves were clearly not the cause as numbers were already rising when the summit began. However, up to 6,000 police and assorted security personnel plus at least another 3,000 support staff (some estimates are as high as 14,000) had been active for up to two months previously. They were clearly not immune from the virus; cases were reported from a cruise ship housing police while a hotel at St Ives hosting media and security also experienced an outbreak.
These support staff had been drafted in from all over England, including from places in the north where the delta variant had already become well-established. Some of them had been around for a considerable time, although exactly how many or for how long was withheld for ‘security’ reasons. Nonetheless, the West Briton of June 24th reported a police officer who had been in the Carbis Bay area off and on for eight weeks although presumably not all those involved would have been around for that long. On May 12th, a whole month before the summit, a police task force was reported as visiting and warning an activist in St Ives, while footpaths were being closed and movement monitored in the Carbis Bay area at least two weeks before the summit itself.
Questions began to be asked. Given the clear geography of the outbreak, appearing almost simultaneously at three districts several miles apart, but restricted to districts that had borne the brunt of the disruption caused by the G7 summit, it was hardly rocket science to conclude that the G7 must have contributed in some way to Cornwall’s third wave. The chair of the Police Federation had warned back at the end of March that the preparations for the G7 summit had the potential to become a ‘super-spreader’. Some journalists concluded that that was indeed what had happened.
G7? What G7?
But no, not according to Cornwall Council, the NHS or the Government. The response of the authorities was blunt, despite the transparent geographical correlation of Covid and G7. Not only was the G7 summit not the cause; the official line was that not one resident had been infected as a result of it. The week from the June 14th saw blanket denials from public health officials, councillors and the Government and a categorical assertion that the G7 had played no part at all in the sudden and unusual outbreak in Cornwall. However, it was interesting that the Council and its friends rather disingenuously failed to distinguish between the summit weekend itself and the weeks of preparation beforehand.
The distinct correlation of G7 and the initial outbreaks was left unaddressed, but it was significant that no-one in authority reached the logical conclusion – the undeniable correlation between Covid and G7 venues must therefore have just been a remarkable coincidence. The news website Cornwall Reports reported a Cornwall Council press conference on 22nd June where public health officials claimed they relied on a different government database that was ‘more reliable’ than the official UK Government dashboard. The spokespeople failed to elaborate on this mysterious second database or how two government datasets could possibly show completely different geographies.
Moreover, suspicions were heightened by the vehement response of the authorities to those asking questions about the covid correlation. Rather than respond to those questions directly and engage with the geography of the outbreak the Council sought to distract from the actual data by attempting to demonise those asking whether there might have been some link to the G7 summit. Those concerned about the third wave and its impact on local businesses were roundly accused of being ‘conspiracy theorists’. Councillor Virr claimed that questions about the causes of the spike were a ‘distraction’ from the task of getting on top of it. The BBC’s Radio 4 disgracefully dismissed claims of a possible G7 link as ‘mischievous’, without bothering to investigate the evidence or ask the Council’s public health spokeswoman Ruth Goldstein any probing questions, or hardly any questions at all.
Probably the daftest accusation came from Conservative MP for Truro and Falmouth Cherilyn Mackrory, who said those suggesting a possible connection with the G7 were ‘scaremongering’. It’s difficult to see what people were supposed to be scared of, as the G7 summit was by this time history, unless Ms Mackrory has not yet told us about another similar jamboree they’re planning to foist upon us.
The factors suggested by the authorities to account for the third wave were much more likely to create scaremongering as they scapegoated groups that were around in large numbers. G7s happen only occasionally; residents, holidaymakers and students, the three groups blamed by the Council for the outbreak, are with us rather more permanently. For critics such as ex-MP Andrew George the ‘ferocity of the denials’ showed a ‘lack of an open mind’. In fact, the hysterical attacks on those concerned as ‘scaremongering conspiracy theorists’ who were merely being ‘mischievous’ was a smokescreen to divert attention from the Council’s refusal to address the questions that were being raised or release data to prove its case. The manner of the peremptory rejection of any link to G7 strongly suggests the Council was not exactly 100% confident of its own case.
Identifying the scapegoats
What did that official explanation amount to? First, let’s clarify exactly what it is that needs to be explained. It’s not the general rise of Covid infections, which was already on the way up across large parts of England as preventative measures were gradually relaxed and pubs, restaurants and other venues opened up again. This, coinciding with the lax border controls which had allowed the more transmissible delta variant to get a hold, had already guaranteed a general rise in infections. All that could easily be predicted. What needed explaining was the very rapid and simultaneous rise in three Cornish coastal towns. What did these places have in common that other places did not? If it wasn’t G7 preparations, then what was it? That is the question that Cornwall Council and its public health officials have for some reason refused to address directly.
Over the two weeks after the third wave broke, the Council’s alternative explanation gradually emerged. At first the goalposts tended to shift wildly as different factors were thrown into the mix. However, after a few days, this was dressed up as a multi-factor explanation, involving a unique combination of factors. We’ll return to that later but for now let’s look at each of the Council’s possible causes in ascending order of credibility.
The first was the general relaxation of regulations that allowed hospitality venues to re-open. As stated above this was clearly a factor in the general rise in case numbers but does not begin to explain the very focused spike on Falmouth, Newquay and St Ives. It’s an enabling factor but not a causal one. Are we seriously supposed to believe that residents and visitors to these three places and these three places alone were the only ones to abandon caution and restraint?
Second, and most bizarre, was a suggestion that ‘people from Cornwall going upcountry to see family and friends’ had caused the spike. In May the highest rates of the delta variant were found in south Asian communities in the north of England. The last available data does not indicate the presence of a large, or even a small, south Asian community in Falmouth, St Ives or Newquay. In the absence of such a link are we really expected to believe that residents of St Ives, Falmouth and Newquay had particularly infectious ‘family and friends’ upcountry when compared with Penzance, Truro or St Austell, places that saw no equivalent spike? Moreover, blaming its own voters might seem a rather foolhardy strategy for an elected body to adopt.
Third, the Council and its health experts blamed ‘visitors coming to Cornwall’. St Ives, Falmouth and Newquay are, it is true, major destinations for tourists, who took advantage of the half-term holidays in late May, after the G7 preparations had been underway for some weeks it should be noted. But Penzance and Mount’s Bay generally, Perranporth, St Austell Bay, Padstow and the Camel estuary, Fowey, Looe, Bude are also popular tourist destinations, let alone places like Torbay up the line. Yet none of those places saw any equivalent spike occur in early June. In most there was very little rise at all after the half-term holidays. So did those places have no visitors? Were they empty over half-term week while only Falmouth, St Ives and Newquay were rammed full of visitors? On comparative grounds this explanation is also patently nonsense.
Cornwall’s public health spokesperson Ruth Goldstein has made much of the initial outbreak centred on the universities’ campus at Tremough. It is true that elsewhere towns with large proportions of students have experienced the highest rise of Covid case-rates, places such as a Durham and Leeds or Bristol and Brighton.
Yet if we examine those places in detail in the first half of June, we do not find the pattern seen in mid and west Cornwall. Here, we have three concentrations of cases several miles distant from each other, separated by areas where the case rates were far lower. This pattern, of islands of Covid cases, was particular to west Cornwall and cannot be found in the other districts where high rates were associated with a large student presence. In those other places, the high rates were focused mainly on the student areas and then spread out beyond them.
The Council will no doubt fall back on their assertion that it was the unique pattern of students plus holidaymakers that produced a unique spike. But how unique is this combination? What about Brighton or Exeter or Bournemouth, or Bristol come to that, where Weston-Super-Mare is not that far away? Why did we see no similar pattern in any of those places in the first two weeks of June?
There remain questions about the role of students that the Council seems unwilling to address.
First, how did the students at Falmouth spread the virus so quickly, within a day or two, to St Ives and Newquay?
Second, why did they did not have the same effect in nearer towns such as Truro, Redruth or Helston?
A comparative method of analysis suggests that the almost simultaneous and dramatic outbreak, limited at first almost entirely to three towns several miles distant from each other cannot be easily explained by residents’ behaviour, or holidaymakers, while the role of students is not fully explained.
The simpler explanation
A simpler, less puzzling alternative remains. The other factor these particular three places had in common was the presence, for up to eight weeks, of a large number of persons associated with the G7 preparations. The correlation of G7 and the Covid spike is unmistakeable and remains the most obvious explanation in the absence of a credible alternative offered by the Council or its apologists that can explain the pattern of Cornwall’s third wave.
On June 27th the double-jabbed TV journalist Andrew Marr disclosed that he had been suffering from ‘a nasty bout of Covid’, caught while he was in Cornwall reporting on the G7. The presence of Marr and thousands of others must have had some sort of link with the Covid surge. Presumably, the Council and its experts would argue that he was a holidaymaker who was given Covid by a student working in the hospitality sector and furthermore passed it on to no-one else. The Council’s desperate denials also began to look increasingly threadbare when Professor Tim Spector, of King’s College, London, one of the UK’s leading Covid scientists, concluded that ‘the G7 “cannot be ignored” as a factor driving Cornwall’s huge spike in infection’.
It would have been useful if the Council and its public health officials had engaged more sensibly with the comparable case data rather than resort to blanket denials, wild accusations of ‘conspiracy’ and ‘scaremongering’ and mysterious and secret data sources. Ruth Goldstein claimed that public health officers ‘understand what is happening and understand all of our cases’. Yet, in the same report in the West Briton of June 24th she admitted that the surge ‘took people by surprise’. So which is it? Did they know it was going to happen or were they surprised when it did?
extract from councillor’s email reply
In a reply to an email to my Cornwall Councillor last month, a reply in which my questions were predictably all ignored, my councillor mentioned some modelling that had been done in advance of the G7 summit. According to her, ‘this spike was predicted as far back as March when Public Health did some modelling of what the outcome of restrictions being lifted and half term would be’. Even Cornwall’s Conservative Councillors ought to be a little more critical of that claim. (At least one broke ranks and admitted that the spike “could be linked perhaps to the G7 preparation circus that has been here for several weeks”.) If Council officials knew in advance from this stunningly accurate modelling that there was going to be a specific spike in the towns of Falmouth, St Ives and Newquay then why did they not warn the residents of those places to exercise caution? If, as is more likely, the modelling merely predicted a general spike in June then why was this kept secret from the population in general?
This is presumably the same modelling process that the Council told Cornwall Reports in September 2020 would not be made public as it would ‘lead to panic’. I am awaiting a response to a Freedom of Information request asking for more details of what modelling was done with specific reference to the G7 preparations. But is it right in principle that taxpayers’ money is being used by the Council and the Government to produce secret reports that taxpayers are then not permitted to read?
Moreover, the Council is left with other collateral questions. If holidaymakers were really a major cause of the June spike, as it claims, what is the Council doing to deter the expected flood of tourists over the coming couple of months and protect its residents? Or is it only concerned to protect the reputation of those who organised and initiated the G7 summit?
Now that the Government has decided to give us back our freedom to catch this virus and to give it to others, the case data in Cornwall are being rapidly overtaken again by rising numbers in England and Wales. Our political and health establishment will be breathing a sigh of relief as this distracts attention from questions about the geography and timing of Cornwall’s June Covid spike, their response to that spike and their competence in dealing with it. Questions that they have steadfastly and arrogantly refused to address.
The poem below was sent to me by one of my readers.
Camberley
Darling! We MUST move to the south Cornish coast!
My smart phone’s just pinged up one cool must-do post
To say people like us are all moving there
And with superfast broadband and super fresh air
There’s nothing to stop us! We both work from home
So – no more London office! We’re free now to roam!
The house prices there are SO much less than here
Let’s go for it, pronto! Let’s not wait a year
Or the really nice houses will no doubt be sold
And I DO want to move before we get too old!
Camborne
Radio Cornwall – bringing bad news today.
Even more emmets a-coming our way.
Doubt if we’ll see them in Camborne or Pool,
More like on the coast. That’s the general rule.
Feel sorry for Helford and all they nice places
Just look at their car parks! There won’t be no spaces
For ornery Cornish like you and like me
To stop, have a walk and a lovely cream tea.
The buggers have all got these great SUVs
Which take up the road – they all do as they please.
Camberley
Look darling! These websites are a godsend right now
This one’s got a house – a mere six-hundred thou!
We CAN sell this place – and that mews flat we own,
Buy a cheap cottage in Cornwall – a home!!
AND the true cost of living down there in the sticks
Will be much less! No darling, we don’t have to mix
With the locals. There must be a golf club or inn
Which caters for people like us. Let’s begin
To start looking in earnest. Let’s live by the sea
And buy a nice yacht we could call...Camberley!
Camborne
My boy wants to build yachts – down Falmouth or Penryn
But – hell – see the state that his chances are in
Of finding a place he can heat, eat and live
Without spending a fortune – which we a’nt got to give.
All Falmouth be rented to students and such.
The Council do say they is building a clutch
Of ‘houses for locals’. You coulda fooled me.
More like housing for emmets and so NOT for we.
Having been told that neither the G7 nor the UK Government could be bothered to undertake a carbon audit before announcing their forthcoming summit in Cornwall I sent another email to George Eustice’s office manager on the 25th of March.
If I ever get a reply I’ll put it here. (Update – two months later and with the summit about to begin there’s been no response.)
What can we conclude from all this?
First, the G7 is hardly serious about ‘tackling climate change’ when it irresponsibly goes ahead with its carbon costly summit meetings without a clue or a care about the carbon implications or the relative costs of face-to-face and virtual meetings.
Newquay airport will get £7.8m for mysterious ‘upgrades’, no details of which have been provided. Cornwall Council’s sheep masquerading as councillors obediently voted this through
Second, the UK Government has clearly put no actual mitigation measures in place. In fact, events since January – the environmental vandalism at Carbis Bay done under the cover of the summit and another £8 million emptied into the bottomless pit of Newquay airport subsidies – are not exactly climate friendly. Moreover, extra media attention in a context of heavy tourist sector lobbying will merely add to the pressures of unsustainable population growth and second home sterilisation of our communities.
Finally, the Government can be proud that the UK continues to have another ‘world-leader’ – a political bureaucracy top of the tree for delay, obfuscation and vacuous press releases.
This time a reply was received on the very same day. Of course, it didn’t answer my supplementary questions and it wasn’t from George himself, but it confirmed that DEFRA had no clue as to the carbon implications of the summit. (It also revealed an interesting method of dealing with embarrassing queries. Having discovered the answer is less than impressive just ignore the respondent and hope they’ll go away or forget all about it.)
Yet the G7 has not done this and apparently has no plans to do it. Another case of do as we say, not as we do? A bit like the greenwash that spews forth from Cornwall Council as it pours £millions into building houses and roads, promoting population growth and stubbornly pursuing its antiquated and unsustainable ‘growth at all costs’ agenda. And all the time shedding copious crocodile tears about the ‘climate emergency’ and loss of biodiversity.
We can take away some broader lessons from all this, which I’ll enumerate in tomorrow’s final (promise) blog on this subject.
Such a touching concern for the planet would surely imply that the G7 and/or the UK Government had performed a thorough carbon audit to assess the impact of their conference on climate change and have put in place measures to mitigate any costs.
I waited with growing anticipation therefore for an answer from my MP, George Eustice. And waited. And waited.
George Eustice MP
Here’s my question again – Could you please inform me what the carbon footprint (in terms of Co2e) will be for the G7 summit to be held in St Ives and district this coming June.
After almost two months waiting for a reply to my simple query, I became impatient. So, on March 2nd I contacted the G7 directly and sent the same question to the G7 Research Group at the University of Toronto.
This time, a reply was received within hours, not months.
Amazingly, despite ‘tackling climate change’ it seems the G7 has no idea what the carbon cost of its own summits are. Moreover, it has never even thought to work it out.
On the 16th of January the UK Government announced that it was using its presidency of the G7 Group to bring the annual summit to Cornwall. The Group of Seven comprises four west European states plus Japan, Canada and the United States but is actually eight as it also includes separate representation from the EU.
Every year the leaders of these countries plus others – this year leaders from India, Australia and South Korea are invited – gather to ‘solve’ the world’s problems. Although, as they’ve been doing this every year since 1975 their success rate has been unremarkable to say the least. ‘Every year’ that is until 2020 when the summit due to be held in the States was cancelled and replaced by a global videoconference because of the pandemic.
Undeterred by being right in the middle of the second (and deadliest) wave of the Covid pandemic the UK Government blithely decided in January that a physical conference would go ahead. Probably safer however to hold it as far away as possible from London or anywhere important. This would hopefully also make it difficult for those uninvited guests who turn up to question the right of this political minority to claim to run the planet.
What better place than Cornwall?
It’s extremely unlikely that the participants will arrive by train or use the local bus services. Their preferred modes of travel alone, relying on jet planes, imply that G7 summits have a large carbon footprint. To that we have to add the activities of the hundreds of advisers, media and other hangers-on, the associated security presence and the hordes of SUVs that will accompany this circus.
But exactly how large will this carbon footprint be? To find out how much carbon will be included in the three days of hot air generated by this event, I wrote to my MP on January 17th to ask a very simple question: what will its carbon footprint be? Given the UK Government’s self-styled world-leading role in combatting climate change no doubt it had performed a carbon audit before deciding to give the go-ahead to the conference. Moreover, my MP would have the information at his fingertips. He should know, as he’s Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Cornwall - a developers' paradise? 