Eric Pickles is planning a new assault on travellers in a chilling sign of what may be to come for those forced into homelessness by the shambolic welfare reforms.
In his widely ignored speech at the Tory Party Conference, Pickles talked of last year’s Dale Farm eviction and warned that:
“I can announce today new powers for councils to literally stop those caravans in their tracks.
New instant Stop Notices will allow councils to issue unlimited fines for those who ignore planning rules and defy the law.”
Rarely has their been a better example of this Government’s mixture of casual brutality and gross stupidity than suggesting that people who are both transient, and often poor, should be given huge fines.
But it is perhaps the astonishing double standard which reveals the true intention. Pickles along with the rest of the government have been pushing for relaxation of planning laws, a move being resisted by many local authorities. Presumably this plan to “issue unlimited fines for those who ignore planning rules” will not apply to middle class home owners.
This racist move, should it ever actually come about, will be a new low for even this coalition. If you are rich build away. If you are poor, Roma, or an Irish traveller, then expect to be chased around the country for huge fines because you parked your caravan in a field your mate owned. Different laws for different ethnic groups, how chillingly familiar.
Pickles’ announcement came after he drew applause for the squatting ban, and boasted how the government had slashed the rights of peaceful protesters by legislating against ‘shanty towns’ like the Occupy Camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral.
All of these measures point to one thing. Those who live in vehicles, whether by choice or necessity, will be fined and harassed. Squatters will be jailed. Protest camps or ‘shanty towns’ will be violently shut down. Slowly but surely homelessness is being criminalised. On one hand the Government forces thousands into homelessness by cutting, or scrapping Housing Benefit. With the other it introduces new laws to ensure that those made homeless have nowhere to go.
The end result will not be pretty and is coming to a leafy home counties village near you. As Traveller Solidarity report:
“One year on, Dale Farm has been transformed into a virtual bombsite, filled with stagnant water, raw sewage and toxic waste. 83 homeless families are living on the roadside with no electricity, running water or sanitation.
As one mother put it, ‘Why would we be living here if we had somewhere else to go?’”
The residents of Dale Farm owned the land and had settled there after being tricked into believing planning permission would be granted for the site. It wasn’t and last year a violent eviction forced them from their homes and onto the roadside. The Dale Farm travellers warned they had nowhere to go, but no-one listened.
Every measure of homelessness is rising from families in B&Bs to those on the streets. If Housing Benefit is cut for those under 25 an explosion of youth homelessness is inevitable. Wages are stagnating and benefits being cut whilst rents soar. Next years benefit cap will make almost the whole of Greater London unaffordable for parents who are unable to work.
Homeless hostels are struggling for funds and the number of emergency bed spaces is falling. Women’s Refuges and other emergency housing projects may have been saved by yet another Universal Credit bodge but are still likely to be plunged into chaos by badly planned changes to housing benefits. The right to a council house is being removed in some Tory boroughs for those who are homeless, unemployed or low waged (but not quite low waged enough).
During the last Tory government sleeping bags lined the shopping streets of London, cardboard cities sprung up and homeless young people took to the road to become those who were known to everyone except themselves as ‘New Age Travellers’. Pickles was a snivelling sycophant of Margaret Thatcher whilst all this took place.
He aims to prevent it happening again, but not by building council homes or providing housing benefits which actually pay the rent. The only provision which is being made for the upcoming homelessness epidemic is new laws to criminalise those who find themselves without a roof.
A year on from the Dale Farm eviction and a mass action is taking place to fight for sites for travelling people on the 19th October. Meet at Victoria Station London at 1pm, more details on facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/events/140070222801717/
the void 
Nothing surprises me from this government, it’s just the peoples job to vote them the hell out, i would like to see them go before their term in office is reached and because they exist in a coalition it would require the destabalization of this fragile unity, i think the Tories weak spot is indeed the lib-dems coupled by their cruel and unacceptable policies, can we wait until the next election?.. i don’t think so, what would be left of our human rights and any resemblance of a democratic country by then?.. in short it will be a economically Elitist Rich peoples playground where the poor and mentally and physically disabled are all but treated like how the Nazi’s persecuted the jewish race… that started with party policies.Did this country go through two word wars for this?..NO WE DID NOT!. 😦
Fuck this fat Nazi piece of shit!
We have a local ‘travellers site’ mainly for Irish and Romany people. It is on a crappy industrial estate and you have to walk into town past an Estate full of people likely to attack you. (especially if you are different) There are no facilities etc anywhere near it. Apparently nobody thought of the risk from people from the estate (a lot of BNP live there) going on a mission on foot to attack Travellers or burn/trash their homes. What is the saying, ‘out of sight and out of mind’.
Anyway last year there was a job ad at the job centre for people to be the liaison officer for the site. I applied. When I was applying a lot of the people who actually applied, were fascist, racist, skinhead types. (I only hope none of them got the job…) They were saying to eachother they hoped they got it so they could bully and harrass the ‘scum’, as they put it, who live in caravans. They told eachother “I’m doing it because I hate gippo’s…” Probably unless they were TOTALLY thick, they said the opposite in their application.
Many travellers are not skint… they can’t afford to be. Going past a second hand dealer the other week on the bus, I saw the cheapest caravans were £6000-£7000 for a tiny one. They had one old one for £4000. If you buy a plot at the official sites near it, you are meant to be the home owner of a house with no mortgage, and must only live in the caravan part of the year.
For people elsewhere who move around, there are things like the rent of the ground under the vehicles, charges for water and electricity and toilets,
and all sorts of other charges/taxes.
In the rural areas there are still people living in static caravans in a field in the middle of nowhere, but linked to working on a farm or something similar. They don’t automatically get access to a shower or toilet. (Yes I’m referring to British people, who usually get the caravan to themselves – foreign/EU workers might be sleeping 5 to a caravan or 10 to a lockup garage..)
The rent for ‘residential’ (though you are not allowed to live there all year round) ‘semi-permanent’ caravans and plots at another caravan park, is more than the rent for some houses. I got told ‘live in a caravan’ several times, there’s no way I could afford it. I can’t buy or rent it, nondriver, no transport, no plot/land, no permission, not able to move gas bottles etc. And too disabled. And so bad at using gas cookers I’d be a risk while doing so. Ages ago I was told of a caravan that had no toilet or anything else, tiny, for £10 a week. It was in a field far from anywhere. Also my stuff wouldn’t fit in a caravan, I couldn’t afford to heat it, I get very cold in winter and am in bad health. And most sites are not on public transport. And if I was suddenly told to go, what would I do? Even if I owned a caravan/trailer how could I move it and where to?
I am disgusted. I feel sick to my stomach. These rules, plus the housing benefit cut of the under 25s means more kids on the streets for perverts to pimp. Oh that is ok, more ‘fodder’ for creeps like Saville – if vulnerable youngsters have no where to go because they cannot live with parents or extened family, no friends have a spare couch etc, then these poor souls will be at the mercy of predatorial bastards who walk the night in search of a youngster, male or female for personal gratification or to abuse in all other ways. But then, I wonder, how may in positions of power will find not only they have a ready ‘pool’ of labour, but a ready ‘pool’ of kids to be used at their whim?
I could spit blood.
Good point Love well said. It will put more vulnerable youngsters at the mercy of sick perverts. Jimmy Saville was a predator and the Tories are predators. The mentality and M.O. of sex attackers like Jimmy Saville who prey on vulnerable children and the Tories, is the same.
They both prey on the most vulnerable because they are the least able to fight back, they use deception and tricks to con their victims, they pretend to be their victim’s friend to lure them in to exploit them, they dehumanise their victims to justify attacking them, they blame their victims, they lie about their victims, they assassinate their victim’s characters, they play mind games with their victims to make them feel like they are to blame for their abuse, they take what they want from their victims without any concern about the rights and feelings of their victims, they use the victims without any concern about the pain, humiliation, suffering and agony they are causing them and the irreparable damage they are doing to them. They both enjoy the pain, suffering and humiliation of their victims and enjoy having power over them.
So it’s not surprising that the Tories have no problem with enacting policies that enable predators to prey on the most vulnerable, since they also believe in preying on the most vulnerable. The Tories couldn’t care less about the innocent victims of their policies. Their kids are healthy, safe and happy and that’s all that matters to them. The pleb’s kids don’t matter.
“they use deception and tricks to con their victims, they pretend to be their victim’s friend to lure them in to exploit them, they dehumanise their victims to justify attacking them, they blame their victims, they lie about their victims, they assassinate their victim’s characters, they play mind games with their victims to make them feel like they are to blame for their abuse, they take what they want from their victims without any concern about the rights and feelings of their victims, they use the victims without any concern about the pain, humiliation, suffering and agony they are causing them and the irreparable damage they are doing to them. They both enjoy the pain, suffering and humiliation of their victims and enjoy having power over them.” – you talking about the “work programme”
What it basically boils down to is get a job or go to prison, as if you are unemployed, you will more than likely lose your benefits next year due to the new UC sanctions regime, and then end up homeless on the streets. As it will be illegal to be homeless, you will be arrested and jailed, to face Grayling’s severe in prison work schemes. So – it will be either you will work full time on workfare, or you will go to prison and be made to work full time there instead. Refusal to work in prison will probably lead to solitary with mouldy, bad food and plenty of maltreatment by Nazi screws.
Welcome to Fascist, Nazi Britain, under Adolf Duncan Smith, and David Mussolini Cameron.
Riots ARE needed, and soon!
The victims will have a noose around their neck and falling through the trap and they STILL won’t believe “it is happening to them”; it is like those World War films where the victims (with nothing to lose) line up beside the trenches patiently waiting for a bullet through their skull, STILL not believing “it is happening to them”.
Those were “Gary Glitter”s “final words” as he stood on the trapdoor at the end of that disgusting “docudrama” about his “execution”: “this can’t be happening to me.”
You can never say WE, because never in history have the public got together collectively and stood up against anything, it’s not human nature, it’s doesn’t happen, it hasn’t happened, it wont happen, it’s not human nature. Those who are doing better than others are the last ones to try it because they think: “I’m OK, Jack.”, that’s how it works too. The ones at the bottom always get hit the first and even they are chaotic even amongst themselves. So you will never get the collective stand up together and do the right thing on anything.
What happened in 1990 then when there were the poll tax riots? did they work? point made.
I have been warning people I know, that $”!t is going to come down the pipe at great speed and hit the fan. All they say to me is “we will see what happens, when it happens” or words to that effect. By then it will be too late. People will be skint and have no food in the cupboard never mind on the table. Sad.
So if shanty towns and other makeshift dwellings are going to be violently shut down, squatting banned, homelessness criminalised and they have absolutely no intention of building any new affordable social housing, where are all the homeless people the Tories are creating supposed to live?
In Prison. They did it in the USA and they will do it here. Either get a job that pays, or go to prison and do forced prison work. Workfare on the outside will eventuall make you destitute and homeless because it doesnt pay, and then you will have to beg and steal to survive, as foodbanks only give you 3 food parcels and after that its tough. The only things they will be building more of are prisons, under the management of Chris Grayling, so you can imagine what they will be like to live in.
Its not a bad dream, this is becoming reality, and very quickly.
I think you’re right. Their plan to deal with all the homelessness and destitution they are causing, is to exploit the devastation they have deliberately caused, by throwing the homeless and destitute in prison to work for free.
The Tories plan to turn the prisons into workhouses and debtors prisons combined. You’re so right, these places under the sociopathic Grayling are going to be completely savage and brutal. If you have to borrow money to make ends meet because benefits are so inadequate and the cost of living keeps going up and you get into debt and can’t pay it back, they will throw you in jail for non-payment of your debt, to do prison workfare to enrich their big business party donors
Makes perfect sense, since Tories consider unemployment (which they create deliberately), poverty, sickness, disability, homelessness and destitution to be crimes. For the Tories, prison is the ideal place to put the undesirables (the most disadvantaged and vulnerable), because the poor who they despise can be humiliated and brutalised by prison bullies and guards out of sight behind closed doors which will give them sadistic pleasure and satisfy their desire to punish the poor and because they can make people work for nothing around the clock to make the rich even richer.
Dont forget from next April, the unemployed will be expected to pay council tax, as IDS is abolishing 100% council tax benefit for the unemployed. When you cant pay the council tax, what happens pretty dam quickly? yes, they send you to prison.
If we dont stand up to this and do it soon, we will all be in prison, being flogged by slave drivers to do forced labour, under Graylings new concentration camp conditions. This is what is coming. Is this what YOU want? Prison? 20th October – make them very sorry they chose to pick a fight with the British people.
Deja Vu..1933
whilst it is a passionate issue, there is no evidence that ‘travellers’ are either transient nor poor. Planning permission should be equal for all sections of the community as should payment of taxes, with resulting public services such as refuse collection and Health & Safety.
If this madness does not stop and the tories don’t change their insane policies we are going to see riots on our streets that made the last one’s appear like a sunday school gathering, the only difference will be they will undoubtedly not be tearing down their own hood they will be stepping up a class or two and striking at the very hearts of these elitist rich strongholds and the ivory towers will tumble.
It all comes down to Greed and Power, see the buildings rise, see society fall.. look at our capital in many areas people don’t live so good, those who are relatively happy might be grateful for what they do have if they are not alone and cold, yet the commanding buildings that rise into the sky smell of money, a world so far removed from the average man and woman they cease to be no more than tourist attractions…city landmarks.
Some of the attitudes towards the Gypsy community have been completely counter-productive and simplistic, a solution has to be found but it will always be a case of “Not in our back yard”, rather like wind farms and other stuff, as long as it’s somebody elses problem it’s fine, so the “I’m alright jack”…it will never go away like some people wish unless a sensible and less emotion driven solution is found and compromise will ultimately form part of that to a lesser or greater degree. We place sites at the back of every Tory mp’s home.. especially their first but also their second and third homes too. :-).. i jest on that part but can you imagine how they would love it?.
Reblogged this on paul8ar and commented:
Next years benefit cap will make almost the whole of Greater London unaffordable for parents who are unable to work.
@JOHNNY VOID….ok i know that you and Tom Pride disagree on some matters but i hope that some of you will support him today..as it seems that his site is being censored by the er ‘chinese’ aka 3 mobile..
Pickles and this government of self interested tw@ts don’t give any thought to the outcomes for real people with the daily mail reader appeasement polices and propsals. At least he had to back down recently with his stupid poposed changes to planning regs which would have caused misery for many. Until the government can make an economy where there are jobs for all it cant penalise people for not having one.