The only reason I moan about the county so much is because I love it here but think it should be so much better. These emails were all sent in the last week or so…

• Truro City Council
I’m not from Cornwall and don’t live in Truro but I’ve worked in the city for several years and am constantly underwhelmed by it. Here are my suggestions to improve the city immeasurably:

• Transfer all the markets which currently take place in the ‘piazza’ (= wind, rain) to indoor markets (= shelter) which can take place in the many derelict shops in the city – the largest now being Wilco.

• The piazza is a horrible, concrete wind trap. Turn it into a park. Not a car park. You know, with trees and things (very disappointed the planters were taken away).

• Also – bring the harbour back. Whoever thought to concrete it over was crazy.

• Complete lack of atmosphere in the city. If this was Europe you’d have restaurants and bars along the riverside, a buzzing nightlife. But it’s Cornwall, and they built car parks and supermarkets along the riverside instead. Well done.

• Events! For example, just about every town and village in Cornwall has a literary festival… except the capital.

• I’m all for homeless people and youth but the homeless people are drunk and shout all day and the youth are drunk and shout all night. I overheard two guys from Pengegon talking on the bus, saying they were too scared to go to Truro at night. I’m not joking. Behind its boring facade it’s actually quite an anti-social city. I think I saw a policeman once. Maybe it was a security guard.

• Cornwall museum: I quite like it, it’s okay, but make admission free and have a great shop and cafe and see your admissions will soar and profits rise! (What Saatchi always said was the key to a successful gallery, though he seems to have gone back on his word now). Hall for Cornwall [theatre and arts centre]: dull.

• The city needs a proper art gallery. And restaurants. The more I think about it, the more stunned I am it’s a capital city.

Previously on Barnflakes
Six views of Truro Cathedral

• First Bus
My bus was an hour late this morning. The T1/T2 buses are generally terrible, the worst I have used in my life, with services often not turning up at all. Late every single day if they do turn up. Atrocious.

Previously on Barnflakes
St. Barnabus, patron saint of the buses
Cars vs buses
Bus pass

• A Nature Recovery Strategy for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly
I would never have guessed Cornwall has a nature recovery strategy; all I see on a daily basis is horrendous traffic, road building or widening, hideous new housing developments, trees being chopped down and burnt, fields destroyed, no public recycling bins, general bins now super-sized and full of plastic bottles, more and more moronic tourists. It almost amuses me how you people think of nature surviving away from all this, tucked away in its own little corner designated ‘nature’ whilst the council does its best to carpet bomb the county with concrete*.

*My favourite new phrase. Poster coming soon!

Previously on Barnflakes
Every day we wake up and choose ugliness over beauty

• Query to Oxfam about London Weighting
I’ve just read with interest the section on ‘London weighting’, a bizarre notion post-Covid where the cost of living affects every part of the country and London being a lot cheaper in most respects than most rural areas.

Here in Cornwall, rents are on a par with London, public transport, not being subsidised, is far more expensive (and less frequent!) and there is no NHS dentist, to name just a few examples.

In fact, when I lived in London (working in a different career, with no London weighting) I saved far more money; there is far more variety and choice in almost every aspect of life; competition means you can get many things cheaper. I never eat out in Cornwall, for example, the restaurants over-priced yet extremely average. In London I ate out once a week. It’s not as if we’re living the highlife in a mostly deprived area here in Cornwall.

Previously on Barnflakes
Page 11 fella
Top 10 Cornish towns for charity shops

• Pool Vision Update
It’s been almost two years now since the consultation closed for the ‘Pool Vision’.

What is the update? What has happened to the funding which was designated?

My partner and I went to the consultation and gave our opinions on a variety of matters in Pool.

Since then we’ve seen:

• Pool being swallowed up by Camborne and Redruth with ghastly new housing estates to become one big built-up monstrosity, at the expense of space, trees, fields and wildlife, and further clogging up roads and amenities (these estates are built with no thought for infrastructure).

• A boy being killed on Agar Road, as the hideous road has got progressively more congested.

• Two Amazon Prime car parks on our doorstep – yes, that Amazon who pay no corporation tax, have decimated high streets and whose vans clog up Cornwall’s roads.

• A new builders merchants and a new warehouse (currently being built).

• Heartlands still feels like half of it is a wasteland / building site. Actually, the only thing I appreciate Cornwall Council doing is… nothing. Any abandoned wasteland can actually be more beneficial for rare flora and fauna if untouched by humans for some time (unlike, say, gardens).

In short, nothing positive has happened in Pool in the last two years. In fact, things have got progressively worse.

There was talk of re-naming Pool, of a train station, of a green future.

I imagined turning Trevenson Road / Agar Road into a tree-lined avenue with trams going back and forth and cycle lanes linking up different towns.

I imagined tennis and basketball courts, a skateboard park, places for youth to play and people to get exercise (Cornwall in general suffers from a lack of free public sport areas). Mostly, youth in Pool spend their leisure time hanging out in car parks.

The only places I actually enjoy in Pool are the few parts of nature remaining – Carn Brea, the garden in Heartlands and – until it was decimated – walking around the college grounds in the evening watching the rabbits – also decimated (thankfully the mature trees are staying).

Pool is an ugly place, consisting of cars, car parks, industrial estates and crap junk food places. Nature is very cheap to implement and brings about all kinds of benefits!

Things seem to be happening in Redruth and Camborne, but not Pool. What has happened to the funding? I hope it hasn’t been wasted on so-called consultants or already-established businesses such as the Innovation Centre.

As well as in nature, the funding should be invested in the deprived people living in the area. In fact, literally give them the money, in the form of vouchers where locals have to spend on local shops and businesses in the local area.

Previously on Barnflakes
25 cool things to do in Pool, Cornwall

• Surprise, surprise, no one replied to any of my emails.

Previously on Barnflakes
Letters of complaint
Cornwall loves and hates
Success and failures of the Eden Project
Abandoned Halloween Pumpkins
The China Clay pits around St Austell
Reviving Reduth (and environs)