OFF: Re: Summer festivals... Glastonbury style

[Jon Jarrett]

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005, Paul Mather wrote:

> I have to confess to being a bit bemused by the coverage I read because
> it seemed that the Tories were very upset at the Travellers' use of the
> legal system to secure places for them to live.  There was a mention
> that if the Human Rights Act can't be aligned with Tory ideology,
> they'll simply scrap it.  (Better to eliminate the rights of the many
> than to allow a few statistical outliers to finesse the system.)  One
> Tory MP was quoted as calling Travellers "scum."

        That certainly sounds like _Guardian_ reporting, not that I'm
denying they're saying such things. I think they think it's a vote-winner,
whether or not they actually hold the view. The trouble the Tories
currently have IMO is swinging between trying to pick votes up from New
Labour or avoid losing them to the UK INdependence Party, which is making
them very schizophrenic.

> The entire tone their manifest plans as a whole smacked, at best, of
> "not in my back yard," and, at worst, of ethnic cleansing.  It seems to
> me that the Tories (and apparently several tabloids) feel it is an
> affront that Travellers are allowed to exist and if they are able to do
> so legally then, quite obviously, the solution is to change the law to
> stop that, effectively making their chosen way of life untenable.

        Well, now, I wonder what recent administration they could have
learnt that tactic from :-(

> But, maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick by reading the
> Grauniad, and the Tories are actually pursuing a noble cause in the
> furtherance of their One Nation politics.  Obviously, I should read the
> Sun and become educated on the Deadly Menace that threatens to Destroy
> the Very Fabric of our Sacred British Way of Life!  :-)

        I doubt it would help, really. The _Sun_ will leap for the winners
as soon as they're sure and then claim they sung the election.

> Yesterday it was asylum seekers.  Today it is the Travellers.  Tomorrow
> it will be Cambridge Space Rock Music Collectives. :)  Where will it
> end?

        Ah, they'll get me for being an academic or a liberal long before
they pick up on my music preferences... Yours,
                                                Jon


--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)