For seven months the determined band of neighbours have manned a human barricade to stop gipsies ruining their picturesque village by building on their illegal site.Yup, it's Meriden, which has been keeping its solitary vigil while the MSM got distracted by other affairs and moved on.
Has it paid off?
Now the council is finally set to take decisive action...Yay! Finally! See, iDave was right, the 'Big Society' can really work! People CAN take matters into their own hands and prevail!
Yeah. Wake up. Which blog are you reading, again?
...but incredibly it is the villagers rather than the travellers who could be evicted.Well, who'd have thought this would happen, eh? Oh, apart from everyone who has ever dealt with a council...
‘Enforcement action’ has been recommended against a small caravan with a makeshift awning where the residents have been sheltering from plummeting temperatures.
The group’s leader, Dave McGrath, said: ‘What do the council expect us all to do? Sit out by the roadside in the snow all winter?Poor Mr McGrath. Let me tell you a story.
‘All we are doing is keeping a vigil on a site to prevent further illegal development, yet the council seem more interested in persecuting us than tackling the illegal gipsy camp across the road.’
I once had occasion to get involved in a training issue for a large government department that has to remain nameless (a technical 'expert' was needed to resolve some issues). The spec was....well, interesting. They wanted nothing but text. Almost no interactivity whatsoever. And this was supposed to be a training package!
I asked the civil servant representative why, when a fully-disability-friendly package could easily be built that would meet 99% of their staff's needs?
Their reply? Basically, they were worried about that 1% that would still have a problem. And she put it to me like this: 'That 1% can make a lot of fuss - perhaps even take us to a tribunal - over accessibility issues. But the other 99% can't do that because we've provided them with boring, pointless training...'
And that's why the council would rather persecute you, Mr McGrath, than the protected species.
They have rights, you see. You don't...
I did the same job twice for one council AP. They lost the first policy bulldung in a computer crash. I offered bildung, but they said the old bull would do fine.
ReplyDeleteThese chaps could do with a dose of 'Hogday Rides Again'. Sadly, I understand our friend has been replaced by a robust diversity policy. These never extend to caravan utilizers unlicensed by ethnic minority.
Are we surprised?
ReplyDeleteMy mother said I never should,
ReplyDeleteplay with the gypsies in the wood...
Look, the 'travellers' will always win in the end, even though they don't travel as much as we might like to warmer climes and, er, stay there.
The elected members not council officers would have final say over this. If they don't know (yet),
ReplyDeletesomeone should tell them....
"The elected members not council officers would have final say over this. If they don't know (yet),
ReplyDeletesomeone should tell them...."
I'd think they couldn't NOT know...
@Bluenight "The elected members not council officers would have final say over this. If they don't know (yet),
ReplyDeletesomeone should tell them...."
Not sure that is true, most elected members will tell you that their job is to enact what the paid officers tell them they must or cannot do, a bit like Westminsters relationship with Brussels.
The difference is, that the residents are property owners and taxpayers. They have homes and fixed addresses and can therefore be prosecuted, fined and threatened with imprisonment. Also, they're unlikely to resort to violence, So it's much safer and easier for Councillors and Officials to persecute the law-abiding, who actually have something to lose rather than the travellers, who don't.
ReplyDelete