...as Kryten once said somewhere deep inside the bowels of my Red Dwarf DVD collection.

I have a lot of respect for Peter Tatchell, as left-wingers go he is about the only one to live life according to his principles on a very restricted income in a council house, but he has an interesting new hobby horse - independence for Cornwall. Matthew Taylor, MP for Truro and St Austell, responds here with the usual bland political reply, but (unless any Mebyon Kernow activists are reading this blog, in which case it is an incredibly stimulating and highly resonant debate, one of the most pressing of our time) it must be the most fascinating debate on the least relevant subject I've ever seen, even on the Guardian website.

Unfortunately I never seem to be able to register a Guardian account so successfully that I can log in and post when I navigate away from the relevant pages, but again it raises the question - how many people does it really take to make an independent state? In the days of a recognised independent Kosovo and Montenegro, could Cornwall survive as an independent country?

My standard response to this is as follows - a handful of ardent nationalists take the region, principality or even kingdom out of the Union. Suddenly they lose the NHS, a secure welfare system, access to economic policy in the centrifugal centre of the global region, and assume the importance, relevance and social stability of, erm, Kosovo. For the sake of feeling important the economic benefits of living in the UK are diminished. Although I would not necessarily not be in favour of Cornwall County Council being upgraded say, to an elected regional assembly (if such things ever come to pass, and for other reasons I hope not), even Plaid Cymru admit that full Welsh independence is quite some way off. Not to mention a sudden downturn in the popularity of independence under conditions of deep economic winter and Alex Salmond humiliated by needing a £1bn handout from precisely the people he purports to spurn in the long run.

Peter can dream that every single tiny nationality with its dead language and assimilated population has its own nation-state, but the reality is that even the EU no longer gives money for nothing for tiny nations. In principle, yes. In practice - no.