Dale Farm: Travellers Become A Pet Cause For Right-On Left Wingers Looking For Validation
DALE Farm: Anorak’s looks at the story in the news media:
The matter has reached the Royal Courts of Justice.
The comedian who threw a foam pie at Rupert Murdoch has called on anarchists to descend on Dale Farm traveller site to stop bailiffs evicting its residents. Jonnie Marbles urged protesters to visit the site in Basildon ahead of a High Court verdict due today.
Because what the travellers need more than anything is a law-breaker to fight their corner.
The 26-year-old spent two weeks in Wandsworth prison after thrusting a foam pie in Mr Murdoch’s face as the tycoon gave evidence at a Commons hearing on phone hacking in July. He is one of about 100 activists camping at Dale Farm. Blogging on his website, Anarch*ish*, he said they were having an “awesome” time sitting around the campfire, chatting and getting “a little tipsy”.
Pity the travellers patronised as a fashionable cause by such fools.
Meanwhile it has emerged that families at the site are still being paid housing benefits by the council trying to evict them. Rent and council tax rebates are being paid to around 25 of the “households” on Dale Farm, Basildon Council has confirmed.
Daily Mail: “Our Big Fat Gypsy Court Battle: Dale Farm travellers out in force for eviction notice ruling (and they’re backed by reality star Paddy Doherty)”
And you cannot evict Paddy Doherty – that’s why he stayed in the Big Brother house for longest, isn’t it?
The travellers won a last-gasp injunction on Monday which prevented Basildon Council from clearing the UK’s largest illegal site. The authority was told by Mr Justice Edwards-Stuart that it had to specify what it wanted to do on each of the 51 unauthorised plots – which it has now done. Travellers had also launched two legal actions – relating to questions about whether the council was acting in accordance with the terms of enforcement notices issued – and, secondly, calling for a review of the validity of the notices.
If the council is successful at today’s hearing, clearing of the site could begin as early as tomorrow.
The UN:
Members of the International Expert Group Meeting on Forced Evictions, meeting at the UN Human Settlements Programme in headquarters in Nairobi, has written to the traveller community of Dale Farm expressing sympathy, it emerged last night. The letter was signed by more than 30 representatives from different countries.
It said: ‘Repressive policies targeting Gypsies and Travellers disguised as planning regulations are discriminatory, whilst inclusive national strategies that are in line with human rights standards generate real progress in addressing issues of exclusion and marginalisation.’
All Gypsies are the same?
BBC:
“A lot of Romany Gypsies are very angry at Irish Travellers in terms of the way our two identities are confused,” says Jake Bowers, a Romany Gypsy journalist who writes for the Travellers Times. We’re two separate ethnic groups. Whilst there is some conflict because people inhabit the same social and physical space, there is some kind of harmony; some inter-marry and live alongside each other.”
EADT: JANE BASHAM, “chief executive of the Ipswich and Suffolk Council for Racial Equality, puts the events at Dale Farm into historical perspective”.
…The UK only stopped executing Gypsies, just for being Gypsies, in the late 17th century.
She adds:
The fact that successive arguments by politicians and authorities in respect of Dale Farm are centred on planning law breaches really misses a fundamental point – the failure by successive local councils and governments to meet the accommodation needs of this community and the relentless way in which governments have continued to legislate against it over the years. The Caravan Sites Act 1960 was introduced to control private caravan sites but its impact was that Gypsies and Travellers found it difficult to buy land to live and winter on. This meant more were pushed onto the roadside. As a result of research into the impact of this act on the community, the 1968 Caravan Sites Act was passed. This placed a duty on local councils to provide accommodation. This was when larger sites were developed, with little or no consultation with the community. ‘Like Indians on a reservation, we are’ a Gypsy man on a site said to me.
Local councils provided a minimum number of pitches. The rules and conditions imposed on those living on pitches are often incompatible with the culture of this community. Rather they are developed to pacify and meet the needs and expectations of the settled community.
The 1994 Criminal Justice & Public Order Act removed the duty on local councils to provide sites and enhanced theirs and the powers of police to evict. The government at this time said Gypsies and Travellers should buy their own land and set up sites. This is what they did at Dale Farm.
Research shows that more than 90% of planning applications submitted by Gypsies and Travellers are turned down, against 20% of those submitted by non-Travellers. Every planning application submitted by the Travellers on Dale Farm has been turned down. What is not widely reported about the ‘green belt’ land at Dale Farm is that, prior to it being bought legally by Travellers, it operated as a scrap yard
The Yellow Advertiser claims these as facts, but is cites no sources:
THE FACTS: Gypsies and Travellers in Essex • There are around 2,700 Gypsies and Travellers living in Essex in 1,150 caravans. • There are 526 authorised pitches. • There are 252 unauthorised pitches in Essex. • There are 15,000 Traveller caravans in England with 12,474 (79 per cent) parked on legal sites, owned either by councils or by private individuals. • 2,100 (14 per cent) caravans are parked on Travellers’ own land in England, without planning permission. • 1,118 caravans (seven per cent) of caravans in England are parked on unauthorised encampments, not owned by the Travellers.
Salem News: “When Human Rights Become Subordinate to ‘The Law’, F*ck ‘The Law’ – The Dale Farm Matters”
The prostitutes of propaganda (POPs), otherwise known as the mainstream media, would have you believe that the Irish Traveler residents of Dale Farm are nothing more than miscreants who expect special favours when it comes to the law. For those who know nothing of Dale Farm, here is a very abbreviated history.
Dale Farm’s residents are Irish Travelers, many identify them as Gypsies, whatever one might wish to call them they are a people who do not fit neatly into the brainwashed consumer culture, to the contrary they are a sort of people that are impossible to tame. This trait and their Irish roots attracts me to them. I love free spirits, I am myself a free spirit, so I relate to anyone who would rather die with self-respect and honour rather than capitulate to the tyrants and their minions and live a domesticated, capitalistic, consumer life.
Apparently, the travellers that seek good schooling, health care and permanent residency on the land they bought to live on are hippies making a lifestyle choice. This view of the travellers as a pet cause for the Left continues:
Yahoo: Joe Wade:
Are the remaining static homes going to be bulldozed, casting Basildon Council as the Israel of Essex.
No. And the Israelis have their own side to that story. In place of a balanced view, Wade carries on:
Much like the Israelis’ love to follow up a good bulldozing (or ancient olive grove tear-up) with a bit of a housing estate construction for some radical settlers, Basildon Council will likely take advantage of next year’s changes to planning laws and replace the gypsy settlement with some hastily constructed starter homes.
It’s all fanciful stuff. You might cast the Israelis as the gypsies, the wandering Jews finally arriving ancient lands after centuries of persecution to be bombed out of existence by the right-wing heavies? You might – but to do so would be unfashionable.
Patrick Casey looks at some details:
The headline in The Sun proclaimed: “Gypsies’ £60k benefits for illegal Dale Farm camp”.
The story was also coverd by the Mail, the Express, and the Telegraph. Yet the maximum amount these 25 families were getting varies from paper to paper.
The Sun puts it at £58,125, while the Mail and Express claim that it stands at £53,625, while the Telegraph does not seek to total the figures at all.
So which figure, if either, is accurate? When Full Fact got in touch with Basildon Council to find out, a spokesperson told us:
“There are 25 families who claim housing and council tax benefit. Some of them may be in receipt of both types of benefit, some of them may be in receipt of either [housing benefit or council tax benefit].
However while the council confirmed that the maximum these families could receive in housing benefit was £25 per week, they did add: “but that doesn’t mean that all 25 families are claiming the maximum amount.”
For council tax benefit we were told that the properties on the site would be classed in Band A, meaning that the maximum payment these families would be eligible for would be £1,025 per year.
However this, the council reiterated, was not necessarily the case for all of the families: “Not everyone is claiming the maximum, Some people will be claiming less than that.”
So it is clear that the figure quoted in the headlines is the maximum assuming that all 25 families claim both benefits to the maximum amount.
But this does not explain the difference between the numbers. While the Band A council tax benefit figure we were quoted was £1,025 was also used by The Sun, the paper also reports that it could be as low as £832. Meanwhile the Telegraph, Express and Mail state that the maximum claimable amount is £845 per year.
Though as yet we have been unable to explain the divergence between the lower figure and that provided to us by the council, neither will be the definitive sum.
In all cases the amount quoted is a maximum for both benefits, and the council suggested there is a reasonable chance not all 25 families would be claiming the maximum.
Newspapers picking the maximum amount when offered a range of figures is hardly novel or surprising. But how far off the true figure they are is impossible to say from the information currently available to us.
The last word:
Posted: 23rd, September 2011 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comments (5) | TrackBack | Permalink
