Our new Wankers of the Week are local authorities up and down the country (no surprise there, then), and Mid-Devon District Council in particular.
There have been several newspaper reports recently about the illegal activities of "travellers", for instance ...
It's a Bank Holiday ritual - travellers swooping to build illegal camps while councils are shut. So when officials get back to work, do they lift a finger to help decent families whose lives have been ruined? What do you think?
When Verina and David Hyland moved their family into a converted barn, the plan was to get back to nature and enjoy their horses amid the beautiful Wiltshire countryside. But six years ago that idyllic lifestyle was shattered - after a group of travellers set up camp virtually in their back garden. Since then, their lives have been made a misery. Dead dogs have been hurled into their property; their teenage daughter, Holly, has been subjected to obscene abuse; and threats and violence have become an almost daily occurrence.
'Some of the men who we'll pass on the road will make shooting gestures with their fingers when they see me or my daughter,' said Verina, 57. 'One of them told me that I'd put him through six years of hell, and now it was my turn. In the pub, a traveller told someone we know "The Hyland family will all be found dead in their living room." It's really chilling to hear that.'
Complaints to the police have fallen on deaf ears, and as for the local council and the other authorities responsible for enforcing planning law, their response beggars belief. After five years of inquiries and appeals, the 16-pitch, three-acre site in Minety was granted legal status, with permission for the travellers to stay indefinitely. The reason? Planning inspector Karen Ridge ruled that the site offered them access to health and education and provided a 'settled base' for their children.
So much for the travellers' professed desire for a nomadic lifestyle. And so much for the Hylands - whose £500,000 property is now virtually worthless. As another neighbour, Mike McTernan, says, it is hard not to feel bitter. 'It really is one law for us and another for them,' he said. 'I blame the council because they didn't do much to find them alternative sites, and in the end, I don't think they had the stomach for a fight.'
Those words will come as no surprise to law-abiding homeowners up and down the country who find themselves confronted with the ever-growing problem of illegal traveller encampments. In what is fast becoming a staple of the British Bank Holiday, last weekend it was the turn of Newent in the Forest of Dean to suffer a travellers' invasion. Within hours, a beautiful field was transformed into a vast campsite on top of hardcore rubble, complete with sewerage, toilets and electricity.
Working throughout the night in what villagers described as 'a military operation', they cleared the land, installed septic tanks and fenced off the area for 12 mobile home pitches. Travellers move in on Bank Holidays because local council enforcement officers are likely to be less than diligent.
Over Easter last year, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell experienced the phenomenon when the same thing happened near her country home in Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire. Then on Good Friday of this year, travellers who had bought a three-acre field in Blackmore, Essex, moved in a gang of 60 men and laid 1,000 tons of hardcore.
But following yet another case last weekend, this time in Cricklade, near Swindon, the travellers might be unnecessarily sacrificing their holiday weekends - since they have little to fear from local government officers during normal working hours. Residents in Cricklade had had their suspicions about a two-acre field on the edge of the 9th-century Saxon town, and were quick to summon a planning enforcement officer, armed with a 'Stop Notice', when they spotted the convoy of trucks on the Friday before the Spring Bank Holiday. So did the travellers and their labourers down tools and comply with the legal order?
Of course not. Despite the notice being pinned to a fence post under the supervision of local police, work continued all weekend - the machinery supplied by the same Gloucester plant hire firm as in the Forest of Dean incident. So what is the point of such a notice if it is simply ignored? A spokesman for Wiltshire County Council explained: 'If a Stop Notice is breached, then we can mount a criminal prosecution.'
After their notices to prevent further work were so flagrantly breached, was a prosecution launched? 'I'll have to get back to you on that,' he said, later adding: 'We're in discussion with our lawyers about what our next step should be.'
In other words, a week after the travellers breached the stop notices, nothing had been done. Next time, they don't need to wait for a public holiday.
There are other common factors that run through these cases. First, the travellers legally purchased their land (often using a third party so their plans remain secret). Second, they submitted a hastily drafted planning application minutes before the council offices closed for the Bank Holiday weekend (it would be at least three days before council officials were back at their desks to deal with the application). However incomplete that form, that single sheet of paper gets them 'in the system' and will be the travellers' passport to at least several years of residence in their new homes.
As case after case has shown around the country, from Crays Hill in Essex to Cottenham in Cambridgeshire, once the bureaucratic leviathan which is the planning system starts to move, it takes a long time to get anywhere.
The travellers might, of course, find themselves evicted after the seemingly endless roundabout of planning application, decision, appeal, amendment, decision and more appeals has exhausted itself, as has happened on some of the pitches at Crays Hill and Cottenham. But as the Hylands discovered to their financial and emotional cost, there's no guarantee of that. If the residents of Newent and Cricklade want to see what the future may hold, they should look to Minety.
Verina Hyland, her 55-year-old electrical contractor husband David and their two children moved there 15 years ago. The 25-acre property, surrounded by pasture, was perfect for their four horses.
In August 2003, the family took an extended holiday in South Africa, visiting family and friends. 'When we got home, we were rather shocked by the camp which had sprung up on our doorstep,' recalled Verina. 'The whole place had gone up in a matter of days on a Green Belt site - and it looked atrocious.'
Soon, the aesthetics of the camp - built on a site the travellers had bought for £80,000 - were the least of their concerns. 'It wasn't long before we were getting burglar alarms and CCTV fitted,' said Mrs Hyland. The first inkling of their new neighbours' demeanour came soon after, when Mrs Hyland's daughter Holly, then 19, was verbally abused by a group of men across the hedge while riding on her own paddock.
'She came back in tears,' said her mother. 'They'd called out obscene comments about what they'd like to do to her - I couldn't believe it.' The Hylands didn't call the police, hoping that it would prove to be a one-off. They were not so lucky. Over the next six years, they would suffer countless death threats and acts of vandalism.
'I can't describe what it's been like without getting upset,' said Mrs Hyland. 'We've had dead dogs thrown over the hedge on two occasions. One of them was a bull terrier type of breed which my husband said looked as if it had been mauled to death by another dog, so we wondered whether there had been organised dog fighting. Then, one winter morning, I went to the stable block and found someone had turned the water taps full on so the horses were all standing in freezing water half-way up their legs. One of them nearly died from hypothermia. Another time, someone removed the screws from the bottom half of the stable door so that it fell off the hinges and could have landed on one of the horses. Luckily, none was injured. One of our pubs has been pretty much taken over by the travellers. There have been quite a few punch-ups. My husband was slapped twice around the head there on Sunday night by one of them. But when I call the police, I get a lecture from the community support officer who tells me the travellers have told her a different story and that I shouldn't antagonise them.'
She feels that the family's home, which should be worth around £500,000, is virtually unsaleable. 'You have to declare any problems you have with your neighbours, so who would want to buy this place?' she said. Fly-tipping has increased in the area, and at least one prosecution has been brought against a traveller. Nigel Ponting lives in a cottage which backs directly onto the site. His back garden and the rear of his house are completely overlooked by the travellers, and when they arrived, he watched as a row of portable toilets were placed against his fence. Mr Ponting showed the planning inspector the view from his house, which had once looked onto open countryside.
But he's reluctant to speak publicly, no doubt fearful of another stone through his window. A few months after the travellers' arrival, North Wiltshire District Council threw out their retrospective planning application amid concerns over environmental impact and proximity to local homes. But they appealed, and after a four day public inquiry in February 2005, planning inspector Andrew Kirby overturned the decision - even though he accepted that one of the traveller patriarchs, John Lamb, had lied to him and tried to conceal the fact that he already owned a legal plot in Westbury-on-Severn, 40 miles away. Mr Kirby ruled that it made little difference because even if he were to evict Mr Lamb, his extended family already occupied the Minety plot.
Later that year, the then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott stepped in and granted the families temporary permission to stay for 18 months. In his ruling, Mr Prescott said he 'attaches significant weight to the personal needs' of the travellers. Last year, planning inspector Karen Ridge granted them permission to stay indefinitely, because the site offered access to health and education and provided a 'settled base' for their children, despite travellers' professed desire for a nomadic lifestyle.
She said: 'Gipsies and travellers are believed to experience the worst health and education status of any disadvantaged group in England, and research confirms the link between the lack of good quality sites and poor health and education. A number of children from the site attend the local primary school and will undoubtedly have made friends within the community. They are no doubt benefiting from receiving continuity of education.' She added: 'Some of the appellants have medical conditions, and a settled base will provide them with more certainty of health-care.'
And what news from the country redoubt of Minister Tessa Jowell? In December a planning inspector gave the new arrivals permission to stay for four years while the local authority tried to find suitable pitches. That temporary stay could stretch into eternity. Another Bank Holiday building blitz has paid off.
Some newspaper readers have posted helpful suggestions. FU wrote "Don't bother with the Council, ring the Environmental Protection Agency and report illegal flytipping. They are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have the power to stop the tipping, seize the vehicles and require the landowner to reinstate the land unless they have a tipping licence - which, of course, they won't have. The law covers tipping hardcore, top and sub-soil as well as waste materials. Don't let them palm you off, they're as cowardly as the rest of the public sector, they like targets that don't fight back.
As an indication of their powers, a Company in the Midlands was last week fined over £70,000 just for breaching some paper rules, not actually polluting anything, so they have the powers, they just need a kick in the right direction. Their number's in the book, make them do the job they're paid for."
Then there was this story ...
Having lived next to a community of travellers for 30 years, Bryan Lee thought he had valuable insight into plans to give them a permanent home. But when he objected to transforming a field into a new settlement, his input was ignored - and he was even branded a racist.
Mr Lee, 65, was warned he could face legal action from the police and equality watchdogs if he dared to continue with his 'racist representations'.
Yesterday, the retired dairy farmer spoke of his outrage at being labelled a bigot by officials at Mid Devon District Council. Their response came after he wrote in March to disagree with plans to turn a field half a mile from his home in Silverton, Devon, into two pitches for travellers. The father of two outlined the problems he had faced with another travellers' site and said the application was 'inappropriate for the area'.
He wrote: 'The number of families at any one time on the permanent site was an ongoing problem for the local authority, as was the nature of business carried out on the site. This included vehicle wrecking and various small-scale livestock ventures. Horses were turned into my fields regularly. The police were regular visitors, usually to trace stolen property but also to break up fights with traveller families from other sites.'
When staff eventually responded, Mid Devon District Council said it would take 'no account' of his letter and warned he may be investigated under race laws.
Officials wrote: 'It is policy on planning and building proposals to take no account of representations of a racist nature. If the council receives any more racist representations from you, this matter will be referred to the Commission for Racial Equality or the police.'
(Note: there is no Commission for Racial Equality. After a short and troubled history due to its partisan policies, it was merged with the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Mr.Lee, of course, does not belong to any real or imagined minority so has no human rights - GOS).
Yesterday Mr Lee, who lived next to a camp in Broadclyst, Devon, before moving to Silverton, said 'This extreme reaction would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic and damaging to my character. It is absolutely outrageous. I am not a racist.' He insisted his letter over the proposal was 'a factual report of my own first-hand experience'.
He continued: 'I spent 30 years living next to a travellers' site and it was hell. I had lots of my farming equipment stolen. If my property wasn't bolted down, it would disappear overnight. The place was a complete tip with rubbish everywhere. I also witnessed some very aggressive and unpleasant behaviour. I wasn't suggesting all travellers acted in this way - of course they don't. I was simply pointing out what happened in my personal experience. I was within my rights to oppose the application, especially after what I've been through, without being accused of racism by some jumped-up official.'
He added that the council withdrew the plan after being flooded with 50 complaints from residents.
A spokesman for Mid Devon District Council said: 'I appreciate that planning applications for gipsy and traveller sites can be quite sensitive.' She added that the authority had a 'clear policy' meaning that officials would not take into account comments 'where they could reasonably be considered to be racist'.
This is the full text of Mr.Lee's letter to the council:
Re: Change of use to accommodate traveller family and mobile horticultural business
Please note my observations regarding the above planning application which I consider to be inappropriate for the are and unnecessary for the proposed business of horticulure.
1) Vehicular access to the proposed site is poor to the extent that the refuse/recycling collection lorries do not visit the site. All waste has to be transported to the road side bordering Waterleat House. It is probable in my opinion that there will be a considerable build up of uncollected rubbish on the site leading to an infestation of vermin.
2) I am not sure of the definition of a "mobile horticultural business" which I consider to be an ambiguous description of the proposed business. Given that there is no indication in the application that any livestock will be part of the business I consider that there is no need for any staff or for that matter the owner to live on site.
3) Before retiring to the above address I farmed at Broadclyst for 40 years, 30 of which were complicated by coping with so-called traveller families in the area. Although the families were eventually moved to a semi-permanent site from the road side, security was a constant problem. The number of families at any one time on the permanent site was an ongoing problem for the local authority as was the nature of the businesses carried out on the site including vehicle wrecking and various small-scale livestock ventures. Horses were turned into my fields on a regular basis. The police were regular visitors to the site, usually to try to trace stolen property but also to break up fights with other traveller families from other sites.
In my opinion, based on experience, the above application will lead to a flouting of planning regulations which will become an expensive and ongoing battle for Mid-Devon District Council to cope with. Please note that I have lived for many years with the frustration, abuse and security problems associated with the description of the above planning application. In my opinion this application should be refused.
Yours faithfully ..."
A model letter, you would have thought, written by someone determined to put his point but mindful of the need to do so in a calm, methodical, fair manner based solely on the facts of the application and his experience of similar applications.
But Mid-Devon DC, lacking either brains or balls, see it in a different light. It calls into question the honesty and probity of the people making the application, and these people are a bit different from your average citizen, so it must be "racist". The real fact of the matter is that these pen-pushers are scared: they know that travellers have little respect for them and their diktats, and rather than enter a conflict they are unlikely to win, they'd sooner back down. If they can make it someone else's fault by labelling innocent citizens as racist, so much the better.
Whether travellers really are a different race is open to question. EU law doesn't recognise them as a racial group though UK law does. Usually EU law trumps UK law, so why doesn't it in this case? A spokesman for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said it "could not comment on whether travellers were a racial group".
So according to EU law, and possibly the EHRC, and definitely the majority of people in this country, travellers aren't a race, they're just a bunch of people who live in caravans. If they're a "race", then so are people who live in semi-detached houses, or on council estates. How long will it be before we are told we mustn't criticise the louts off the local estate who terrorise local shop-keepers and race stolen cars round the streets before setting fire to them, because to do so would be racist?
And now that race has become a major factor in the world of planning applications, tremendous possibilities open up. Your Muslim neighbour wants to erect a mosque in his back garden? Don't object - that would be racist. Your own application for a three-storey extension over the garage with a jacuzzi and a heli-pad on the roof has been turned down? Claim that you've being racially discriminated against because you come from Lancashire and your neighbours are Welsh. If you've been on holiday in the Algarve and look a bit brown, even better.
And what's this thing about Bank Holiday weekends, for God's sake? Sorry, shouldn't have said "God" - that could be racist, or religionist or something.
Since it's evident that there's a problem on those weekends, why the hell (sorry again) aren't there any council officials on the job? Policemen have to work those weekends, nurses, airline pilots, engine drivers, all sorts of people whose services may be needed don't get those weekends off. Our local Environmental Health Officer is available at weekends (I know this, because she turned up very promptly to deal with a noisy party down the road) so what's so special about planning officers?
Look, I've got a proposal. This racist business needs sorting out, because the cerebrally-challenged little oiks behind their desks at the local council can't cope. If there has to be legislation about racism - and I seriously doubt the necessity myself - then it has to be sensible and framed in such a way that it can be understood by someone whose single GCSE in shouting (sorry, I meant Media Studies) has earned him or her a job in the town hall.
And there's no use complaining about it. We've all been complaining about so many things for so long since this present government came to power that we must just seem like a constant murmur in the background. Certainly not distracting enough to tear the bastards away from their real job of milking the public purse for every penny they can get.
So what we need to do is to use this ridiculous law for all it's worth. We should all play the race card at every opportunity. In every conflict you have with the local council, in every complaint you make to a shop, in every row you have with the man who's parked his BMW across your drive, play the race card. If you have brown skin or ginger hair that makes it easier, of course, but if you're just an ordinary Englishman don't let that stop you. Invent yourself a new religion, or wear a silly hat, anything'll do.
You don't have to be right - in fact it's probably better if you're not. The whole point is, to make a ridiculous law so ridiculous that even politicians and council officials can see it.
God, what am I saying? I seem to have just ascribed a modicum of perspicacity to politicians and council officials. That can't be right ...
Speaking of perspicacity in politics, I heard the other day that the average Alsatian has an IQ of 70. That's what we need, more dogs in parliament. We've made do with Jackboot Smith and Hazel Bleaughs long enough.
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