A life in ruins
Britain backs the Sun's campaign
By GEORGE PASCOE-WATSON
Deputy Political Editor
Ref:  http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2005111823,00.html

JOHN Prescott’s ruling on gipsy camps is a trespassers’ charter under which police are BANNED from closing illegal sites, The Sun can reveal.
As letters poured in telling of misery it emerged that police officers are even instructed to make the “welfare” of travellers their first priority.

TOWN Hall chiefs yesterday welcomed The Sun’s campaign to end the free-for-all for illegal camps.

Jeremy Kite, deputy leader of Dartford Borough Council, Kent, said: “We wish to be one of the first local authorities to sign up for your campaign on an end to the madness of unauthorised gipsy encampments.”



The Sun Says:

Angry voices

THE staggering response from our readers yesterday shows exactly how they feel about illegal gipsy camps.

They are angry. Very angry.

It boils over in the letters, emails and phone calls as people whose communities have been blighted tell us they feel intimidated, scared and, worst of all, powerless.

As we said yesterday, this uprising of popular opinion has nothing to do with race discrimination or prejudice.

An anguished email from a woman in Essex, with an illegal camp on her doorstep, says it all:

“If they want to live in my village, let them buy a house, like we had to, and pay stamp duty. Then let them pay £200 a month council tax.

“If they want their children educated, why should it be free? I pay for my child through my taxes.

“I have lived in this village for six years and have now seen my property value plummet.

“We are being badly let down by John Prescott. It seems to be one law for us and another for the gipsies.”

Of course, there are decent Romany people, as we highlight on this page today.

Equality in the eyes of the law is a bedrock of our society. But the Human Rights Act makes a mockery of that principle.

Home Office documents show the Government was warned four years ago that the HRA would make gipsies untouchable and would make police powers to move them on ineffective.

But still it made the HRA law in a move that has affected for the worse almost every walk of life.

People like the woman from Essex will conclude that the Government holds THEIR rights in contempt.


Second rate


WHY do we treat our Servicemen and women so shabbily?

At work, some soldiers go out on patrol without live ammunition.

Now a report reveals how they are expected to live in shabby, rundown housing.

It’s hard to believe this is 2005 and not 1945.


Spot on, lad

FROM the mouths of babes...
A boy of six who saw his Mum robbed by a junkie writes to Tony Blair to protest that the wrongdoer was set free by a court.

“This is not the way to stop crime,” says Christopher Aller.

Sounds like a good election slogan.



Council must find land for Gypsies
Wednesday March 9, 2005
The Guardian
 http://society.guardian.co.uk/localgovt/story/0,7890,1433321,00.html

Up to 300 sites for Gypsies to buy and develop must be identified by local authorities after the government moved yesterday to defuse tension between villagers and Travellers.

In the first use of new powers, John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, ordered Brentwood borough council in Essex to find suitable sites after it failed to plan for homeless Travellers living in the area.

The directive, together with giving councils enhanced "temporary stop" powers to halt illegal camps, is aimed at easing conflicts between settled and Traveller communities over unauthorised sites springing up on greenbelt land or near villages and towns.

Mr Prescott's directive was welcomed by Traveller groups but condemned by the Conservatives, who accused the deputy prime minister of "riding roughshod" over local planning laws with "arbitrary diktats" that would create camps in every town.

A nationwide shortage of 4,500 pitches has arisen since the Tory government lifted councils' statutory duty to provide sites. The shortage has led to camps set up without planning permission in villages such as Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, and North Curry in Somerset.

Under the 2004 Housing Act, local authorities are not obliged to provide council-run sites but must calculate their Gypsy populations and identify land they can buy and develop for homes.

In return, the government has given councils enhanced powers to stop the growth of unauthorised camps, while police can use new antisocial behaviour laws to evict Travellers once alternative sites have been found. The government is promising funds for new sites and will also enable housing associations to build and manage camps.

Eric Pickles, the shadow local government minister, said: "Mr Prescott's response to travellers side-stepping planning laws is to let his regional quangos impose more Traveller camps on every town. Local councils will be forced to follow arbitrary diktats for new Traveller camps - imposed by unwanted and unelected regional bureaucrats."

Andrew Ryder, of the Gypsy and Traveller Law Reform Coalition, said: "Councils are only being asked to identify land that Travellers would have a chance of buying. They are not being asked to give the land to Travellers."