Dale farm apply to English Heritage for listing

[biffvernon]

So do I understand, Rob, that you would repeal the planning laws and allow anyone to live wherever they liked, in whatever structure they liked?

That is a strawman argument.

Straw Man. . Invent an argument which the other person did not use, and then launch a horrified attack on it. The tactic of inventing an argument in order to demolish it.
This is distraction at its most immediate, obvious and intentional. Summarise the other side’s case. Make sure your version of it is as ridiculous as possible. Demolish the summary. Claim victory. A variant is simply to save yourself the trouble of understanding what the other side is talking about. Alternatively, launch into a free-wheeling parody – a song [Gr. ōidế] of mockery [Gr. pará]. Your victim is forced onto the defensive, and possibly into fury. You’re winning.

From David Fleming's Lean Logic.

 

[Lime]

The pertinent point is that had the planning law and consequent decision been allowed to be ignored it would have opened the floodgates all over the country.

 

[skier-hughes]

or just a logical end result, as all the people round dale farm decide that they'll build new houses in their back gardens, that won't be causing anyone any harm would it? I could fit a good 40 starter homes on my land, in fact, if I knocked down my house, filled in the moat, I could get around 70 on it, what harm would that do to anyone? I own the land, it's green belt, I have no planning permission, but what the heck, look at all those people who could now have a house......... and I'd be rich as hell

 

[Lime]

I'm coming straight over with the caravan tomorrow skier-hughes.

 

[Lime]

Some travellers have lived in Dale farm for 20 years.
I've lived here for 20 years too with a trailer tent at the bottom of my garden.
Does that make me a traveller too?

 

[LadyArowana]

I still don't understand how they can be travellers if they never go anywhere!

 

[Flyfisher]

So do I understand, Rob, that you would repeal the planning laws and allow anyone to live wherever they liked, in whatever structure they liked?

That is a strawman argument.

No it isn't, it's a reasonable question that explores the possible consequences of allowing people to break the law.

There are various ways to deal with this whole unfortunate matter and it seems reasonable to explore the possible consequences of each of them. I'm sure the council has also done this and concluded, as robgil also seems to have done, that allowing a precedent to be set would not be a good thing.

It seems to me that the 'strawman argument' charge is a concoction created and invoked by people who don't wish to take a position, have nothing to add to a debate, yet still wish to be disparaging. What is the point?

 

[Flyfisher]

I still don't understand how they can be travellers if they never go anywhere!

21st century couch-potato travellers? :wink:

 

[skier-hughes]

I'm coming straight over with the caravan tomorrow skier-hughes.

Too late, my caravan site is now closed for redevelopment

 

[biffvernon]

I've just heard that a shop in my town that has been trading illegally for two years in contravention of a planning decision has now been allowed to continue, following a reversal of the Council's decision. No riot police, no tasers, no bailifs, to fires or thrown rocks. Just people breaking the law and getting away with it until the situation changes and they are no longer breaking the law.

 

[skier-hughes]

Then get down there and demonstrate....... anyway, why would they have riot police, tasers etc, if they decided to grant them permission, surely they'd only go if they said permission denied, they barricaded themselves in for 10 years and had hundreds of activists come down to defend them?

 

[Lime]

I've just heard that a shop in my town that has been trading illegally for two years in contravention of a planning decision has now been allowed to continue, following a reversal of the Council's decision. No riot police, no tasers, no bailifs, to fires or thrown rocks. Just people breaking the law and getting away with it until the situation changes and they are no longer breaking the law.

Was this "illegal" shop in a house or a country field?

I suspect it was in a shop premises.

 

[Penners]

I've just heard that a shop in my town that has been trading illegally for two years in contravention of a planning decision has now been allowed to continue, following a reversal of the Council's decision. No riot police, no tasers, no bailifs, to fires or thrown rocks. Just people breaking the law and getting away with it until the situation changes and they are no longer breaking the law.

I refer you to my previous point:

citing other infringements of the planning laws doesn't make the Dale Farm infringement right.

 

[robgil]

So why couldn't the council not grant permission but still leave them be?
And to be fair guys there is a huge difference between building a house on green belt and parking a caravan on it. I would imagine this will also open a huge rift between the locals and the remaining travellers, not a very clever thing to do in my view.

Plus side, the law has been upheld.

Negative side, rift between locals and travellers, lots of people homeless, people getting hurt during riots, travellers turning up some where else possibly illegally, the huge cost of this eviction, the council looking like Nazi's to a lot of the country.

Was it worth it? Is the law really worth all this hassle? Would it not be better if we made laws that were flexible?

I honestly think some laws cannot be black and white, some laws do not fit some peoples circumstances. or way of life, and some laws are just plain stupid and backward.

 

[Penners]

Would it not be better if we made laws that were flexible? I honestly think some laws cannot be black and white, some laws do not fit some peoples circumstances. or way of life.

So how do you propose to make a flexible law? Should it perhaps apply to people born on Wednesdays and Thursdays, but not on other days? Or perhaps to people who live in counties whose names begin with B, G and Y? Maybe to people who take shoe-size 9 or smaller?

Or should somebody be responsible for deciding who the law applies to, and who it doesn't? Who should that person be - the Queen, you, me, Jeremy Clarkson, the Poet Laureate...?

 

[robgil]

Come on now Penners , your just being silly.
In these circumstances the law can , and has been bent to suit.
They could have been let alone because a caravan can be seen as a none permanent structure.

I think putting entire family's on the street was a very harsh sentence for very little crime ,I am pretty sure we could all agree on that. As for the bricks and mortar alternative offered by the council , that just goes to show the ignorance towards travellers that the pen pushers seem happy to express.

If the council came to your front door and told you your home of ten years was illegal and you had to move out, then provided you with a nice caravan on a travellers site to live in would you be happy to move there?

Another stupid law is the permission only granted for holiday homes, you can only convert that old tired shed to a holiday let. This law is very common and in my view a very very stupid , pointless law that helps no body, local people cannot find hopuses in the place where they grew up and the council will only allow holiday lets.

How about it will only be allowed to be a holiday let unless a local, none house owning person/family wish to buy it to live in? Does that not make more sense?
Stupid laws should be bendy, serious laws such as you must not kill someone should be strict, vote robgil for king. :lol:

 

[Flyfisher]

The real problem is that nobody really wants to live in a democracy because it almost guarantees they won't agree with everything the duly elected government decides to do. It seems to me that most people really want to live in a dictatorship . . . with themselves as the dictator.

 

[robgil]

The real problem is that nobody really wants to live in a democracy because it almost guarantees they won't agree with everything the duly elected government decides to do. It seems to me that most people really want to live in a dictatorship . . . with themselves as the dictator.

It could be said that we already live under a dictatorship but are fooled with the notion of democracy.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

It could be said that we already live under a dictatorship but are fooled with the notion of democracy.

Um... I've kept quiet til now, but with the greatest respect robgil, that is a ridiculous thing to say. As the people of Libya would no doubt tell you tonight.

People broke the law. They knew it. They had the law upheld against them. They had recourse to every legal representation, avenue and appeal imaginable. They exhausted every one of them. They were found wanting in the eyes of the law at the end of all these appeals. They didn't comply with the law. The law was enforced (in the face of violent and dangerous protest).

In short, they fought the law and the law won.

Seems fair enough to me. Shame they cost the taxpaer £10m in the course of doing so.

 

[biffvernon]

So how do you propose to make a flexible law?

But the law is flexible. In the case of the shop in my town the original decision to not grant retrospective planning permission was reversed. This shop was on an industrial trading estate away from the town centre in an area where the policy is not to have small retail units as it is regarded a detriment to the town centre.

In the Dale Farm case, people often cite that it was in the 'green belt' when in fact it was on a brown-field site, a former car scrapyard. The neighbours are a legal travellers' site.

The problem has been that the decision has not been made on sound planning lines but has instead been influenced by who the applicants are. Let us, for the sake of argument, assume that all travellers are criminals, eat hedgehogs and would steel your children. But let us also remember that that is not material grounds for a planning decision.