Liberal commentator Matthew Parris says travellers must be told their way of life is over and they have no place in modern Britain after a group takes over a car park near his Peak District home
A leading liberal commentator has shocked the chattering classes by calling for a blanket ban on gipsies, claiming Travellers have no place in modern Britain.
Newspaper columnist Matthew Parris, an ex-Tory MP who has carved out a career as a critic of his former Conservative colleagues, delivered his broadside after a group set up camp in the Derbyshire town Matlock, near his cottage in the Peak District.
'There is simply no place for the true nomad in modern Britain,' he writes in his latest Times column
We know this car park well, having used it for years, especially during lockdown when takeaway coffee was available nearby. We'd leave the car there and have coffee and cake in a nearby park. When referring to Matthew Parris' home in Derbyshire it's a bit of a stretch to describe the car park as 'near his cottage in Derbyshire', but maybe it's close enough for a story.
Travellers have been there for months, certainly since last year, but until very recently it hasn't made any real difference to us. It's a good sized car park and in our experience has never been anywhere near full during that period. If the Mail photo is recent, then that situation has suddenly changed and a much larger area has been appropriated by travellers.
Maybe the stakes are being raised so we'll just go elsewhere until the situation is resolved. I wouldn't call them 'true nomads' though. Doesn't quite fit what we've seen of them over the months.
4 comments:
If travellers really travelled, they wouldn't be so bad.
Apart from the thieving, violence, preying on elderly vulnerable people, pet theft, rogue building, drug dealing, and trashing their campsites, that is.
Sam V - you left off "allegedly". I can see them now, rushing in their four wheel drives and Transit pickups to hammer on the door of their lawyer's caravan.
Unless you have seen them operate close by as we did when we lived near Dales Farm in the late seventies eighties very few people know what they are talking about.
The story of Dales Farm has been told enough times but the truth is despite millions spent by local council, Basildon, it was never really resolved, the story is to long to tell here but in essence they took the proverbial, got away with it and then built on it, with never any real consequences, Dale Farm exists today in such a form you would never know they were evicted.
And still in the area they buy land and move in on it trying to create the same illegal sites, God knows what the cost has been over the years for so little action, the phrase 'do as they likies' is well justified.
All - it all seems to be strangely profitable too.
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