Gypos and travellers...

I instigated a Facebook conversation last night. A conversation about the gypsies, travellers, or whatever you want to call them, the ones who have just been evicted from their Dale Farm homes, the homes that they build on a scrap yard illegally, without planning permission.

The last ones left today.

I won’t give you the background to the gypsy camp, if you don’t already know all about it you can easily find out. And I won’t go into how gypsies have been persecuted for thousands of years, again you can soon find out about this if you are interested enough.

Anyway I foolishly put a statement on Facebook about how I think the authorities are just that, authoritarian, and how the planning rules (which even the government agrees should be relaxed) are at times used by mindless Jobsworths to keep their jobs and pacify the majority. Of course they are only following orders, rules is rules, it's more than their job's worth, etcetera, etcetera.

Yes, I like to have my fun with the boys as much as the next middle-aged, middle-class, middle-minded, middle-of-the-road, middler, hence my post - and the reaction I expected I got. I do however believe that hiding behind our rules in order to persecute minorities is wrong - at least we could do it openly like the Nazis did.

I also get cross when people go on about playing the Hitler card. It seems to be quite fashionable amongst some people to try and dismiss any comparison with his actions to anything that goes on in their 'real world'. Unfortunately though, the genocides continue all over the planet from time to time. All it takes is a charismatic leader, a few people with a grudge, and a population on its uppers without much direction and away you go – gas chambers, mass graves, poison, and firing squads.

Of course we as a nation aren’t there, and fortunately we don't have a charismatic leader. Even so persecution goes on in pockets throughout our fair lands and I'm sure that you can bring a few examples to mind, but as Orwell and then the Manic Street Preacher’s echoed: ‘If you tolerate this then your children will be next’. And they will be, one way or another as victim or victimiser.

I have no answer to any of this of course. I just feel it is wrong to turn families out of warm homes and tell them to move on without giving them very much to move on to. Call me a bleeding heart liberal if you will, but what is the gypsies of Dale Farm this week could be the obese, or the disabled, or the single parent, next week or at least at some time in the future.

Oh yes it could. Believe me.

I've deleted that conversation on Facebook. Best in the blog I think.