Another Hometree destroyed - Dale Farm eviction

[txim_asawl]

Originally Posted by Pa'li Makto

I never knew that you could be evicted for doing such a thing. You learn something new everyday.

Oh, indeed, such things can happen... and getting a planning permit for land where people settle (even if there's already a house standing there) is not as easy as one might think... especially where travelling people are concerned, who put trailers onto such grounds. These are, by definition, not buildings, therefore not meant to live in them permanently and any attempt to get them put into a planning permit is futile.

You can buy or lease land - the latter with long-term contracts, lasting up to twenty years, for instance, but you're still subject to the municipal mercy of not throwing you off that land. As for travellers squatting unused land: OK, granted, it is against the law, but in a lot of cases, these people treat the land well, not leaving their trash there and trying to and succeeding in living in an environmentally friendly way (such as building alternative ways of human waste management... a composter toilet, for instance, where you'll get good and healthy fertilizer from the merry folk's poop). Most often, these people are mainly a thorn in the side of investors who wish to put some cash cow building onto such a place...


composter toilet tower...


an adventurously self-built shed (a bit unsafe, so we took it down ourselves later on)


one of the trailers standing on a squatted grassland site - in this case: my trailer.

In case of the site I personally know about (since I lived there for more than two years, before we were forced to move), a large and shiny car sales place was erected on a large piece of empty grassland, that had been vacant for more than twenty years...

So, while there are travelling people living on the fringe of society, a lot of those I have come to know personally and still visit at times are far more decent people than some of those so-called law-abiding members of the society we live in all together, as has been claimed. And about the bias when commenting on such things happening: yes, of course these comments are biased - by individual experience when dealing with such things, by experience with official boards and municipical administration, by experience when encountering general prejudice... I, having been among a group of "such people" living on the fringe of society am biased, too, and I share a lot of the feelings Aurora has shared with us.

My heart and good wishes go out the people of Dale Farm as well as all others who just try to live the way they wish without bothering others.

Wiggling bare tos,

~+Txim Asawl*~