VerySweatyBetty.com

For once, I’m avoiding Hyperhidrosis. I’ve sweated like a glass-blowers you-know-what all day and I really don’t want to talk about it tonight. I’m really fired up about something in particular and I’m going to vent, if that’s ok with you! Normally I’d tell Anne all about it and we’d agree on everything and then get sidetracked!!

England. That’s where my problem lies. Something strange is happening and it’s far from good. It began just over a year ago with one man. Someone called Raoul Moat. Raoul had been in and out of prison for many years. Towards the end of his final jail sentence, a telephone conversation with his girlfriend culminated in her ending their relationship. Very soon after, he was released from prison. He sourced a gun, shot one man dead (thinking his girlfriend was now dating him), shot his girlfriend (she survived) and shot a policeman in the face at close range, blinding him forever. Moat then went on the run. He hid in a storm drain outlet by a river in a small village in the North-East of England. The country was divided: most people wanted him caught – the rest, well, to them, he was a hero. There were even tribute pages springing up on Facebook. This person had killed a man, ruined another man’s life (for doing nothing other than his job) and almost killed someone he was supposed to have loved.

Since then, we’ve had the infamous rioting. Burning down people’s homes and livelihoods, looting anything and everything that wasn’t nailed down. Again, Facebook & Twitter played their part – people were arranging more riots, congratulating each other etc. In my home town, a 150 year old furniture shop – so well known that the road it was on was named after it – was burned to the ground. The fire was immense. The shop was in the same family since it opened all that time ago. People were being interviewed on the streets by news reporters. One woman, particularly memorably, said she was looting because it was a way of ‘getting her taxes back’.

Today, a huge news story was on Sky News all day. Going back ten years, a community of travellers bought some green belt land and built temporary structure type houses. None of it was legally done. There was no Planning Permission, no Building Regulations, no authority, nothing. After ten years and £18,000,000 in legal bills and costs, the council, bailiffs and police arrived to evict the residents and restore the land. The residents knew some time ago this was happening, the council had offered every single one of them a safe, brick built home in the community. The housing offers were refused and all last minute talks broke down. The eviction was finally going ahead. However, there was one little problem… around a hundred non – traveller protesters. There were students, middle aged women, people from all walks of life. One woman chained herself around the neck to a gate – opening the gate could have killed her. Another woman was perched high on three scaffold poles (called a tripod), impossible to take down from the ground because she’d certainly have broken a few bones if anyone had tried. A male student laid across the entrance with his hand cemented into a concrete block. Someone’s once loved (and as I understand, stolen) car was minus all windows, covered in graffiti and dents, and was pushed across the entrance – it had been filled with concrete. All day was nothing but a stand-off. The residents were mob handed and the authorities retreated because of the extreme intimidation they were experiencing. As the gypsies had erected some scaffolding over the weekend to stop tall lorries gaining access, and as the council didn’t have the correct paperwork to remove the scaffolding, once more the matter had to be referred to court for a reprieve – we should know on Friday what the outcome is. After the reprieve was announced, the authorities all left. The protesters and residents were still there, as were the news crews. Suddenly, the remaining crews were being pelted with rocks.

Why is it that people who are old enough and supposedly intelligent enough to know better, are suddenly championing people who break the law, ruin people’s lives, kill people, take away livelihoods, get what they want with sheer intimidation, thinking that all they need to do is shout loudest and spout ‘human rights’, ‘entitled’, ‘victimisation’, etc. (Personally I think people who do pay or have paid in the past, taxes to the state are entitled to be looked after if they are unable to look after themselves, homed if they are homeless etc. I think using the ‘entitled’ word is on shaky ground, myself, especially when a 30 year old man can afford to pay often well in excess of £100,000 for his 16 year old daughter’s wedding, as well as owning land, properties, maybe even claiming benefits from the state (apparently many people have multiple claims going – source, the DWP) but never paying a penny back into the communal pot.) What have we done to our country? I honestly don’t think they are even aware of the cost to them, the taxpayer. It’s literally going to be tens of millions. These are the same people who likely complain about and protest against high taxes and probably even the riots and looting, I’ll bet my last pound on it. All the insinuations are easy, aren’t they – ‘you’re just racist’ etc, it saves people from having to actually think of both sides. Ten years is plenty enough time to find somewhere to live – there’s 118 (so I read) council owned traveller sites in the same county and everyone was offered perfectly decent accommodation. I also understand that quite a few of the families also own properties. They just didn’t want to move from where they were. Who could blame them, English green belt is bound to be a beautiful place to live.

My problem with this is over the last few years, our economy has been dire. Taxes have increased, people have been up in arms about it. Now, all of a sudden, a whole new breed of ‘moral warriors’ championing people who shouldn’t be where they are, who’ve broken the law (for the past ten years) and cost the taxpayer millions of pounds in legal fees. The local authority had to withdraw £500,000 from provisions for the disabled because their money had all been swallowed up by this land feud. Someone on twitter said to me that the council should give them a new site as it would be ‘culturally appropriate’. Another person said that they were refused planning permission because of ‘who they were’. Another one said they ‘never thought they’d see ethnic cleansing in England, 2011′, another mentioned ‘racist’ and so the list went on. I said to one such warrior that if he felt so strongly about people being made homeless, why didn’t he give them directions to his home so they could park one or two of their caravans in his garden. Suddenly, he changed his tune, he was moving out at the weekend, was staying with friends etc. I’m sure I don’t have to remind anyone that as gypsies aren’t a race, nobody can be racist to them. There are only three races on this planet. Ethnic cleansing, well, how crazy. Nobody is suggesting killing anyone, just moving them to somewhere legal. As for ‘culturally appropriate’, the way I see it is the state offers someone a home if they don’t have one. Making sure it’s culturally appropriate when they’re being given it is just taking the mickey and well outwith the remit of any local authority – and so it should be. Otherwise, where does it end? Nowhere, and that’s the problem.

I’m at a loss to know why people are encouraging and enabling what is very poor behaviour by people who have been squatting for a whole decade, who kill, who ruin lives. Living in Britain is a huge privilege. We could be anywhere else in the world and none of this would happen – or if it did, it would be dealt with without millions of pounds being thrown at it. Why don’t people understand right from wrong anymore? The one good thing to come out of any of this was during the rioting, the non-rioters of the country stood up to be counted. Everything else though, well, I just wish people would think about matters before making matters so much worse for everyone concerned. Stop complaining that people take us for granted, but then helping them do just that.

England has gone barking mad.