Dura lex sed lex

So the Dale Farm do-what-you-likey-pikeys are about to recieve a little visit from Mr and Mrs Bulldozer and their son Master Wreckingball.

Good. Although they seemed quite happy to resort to the law to keep their illegally built eyesore the have been handed their arses on a plate and found out that the law works both ways and it really doesn't matter if you don't think that the law applies to you or you should be allowed to do whatever the fuck you like with land you own, the law says it does apply to you and you can't. Dura lex sed lex; the law is hard but it is the law.

Look I'm no great fan of the state and many planning laws are just bloody stupid - for example when building my stable block I had to prepare and submit a flood evacuation plan, for a horse, on land that last flooded when it was a swamp back in the eighteenth century. However I would posit that the planning rules serve a purpose to stop selfish bastards doing what the hell they like with no thought for the misery it causes other people If I'd wanted to build an open air nightclub with a gigawatt sound system then it would only be right and proper that my neighbours would have the right to make representation to a planning body of the harm such an action would cause to their lives and freedoms and for that body to weigh the evidence and maybe decide that my freedom to party does not outweigh my neighbours freedom to get a decent night's kip and so no you can't have your nightclub.

And I differ from my more extreme libertarians on this notion that if you own something then it is yours to do with as you wish. For example as many of my readers know I own horses and there are various things I can't do with them, for example use certain kinds of harness or shock collars for training or, coming back to our friends in the "travelling community", take it into a river in Appleby and drown the poor beast. This is because we, as a society through our elected representatives, have decided that to do so is not acceptable and because we know some callous git would do these things we make laws and erect a system of justice to ensure people are held to those laws.

And whilst the law is hard it is moveable. Remember bottysex used to be illegal and now it isn't? The law can be changed by people agitating and petitioning the lawmakers for a change. The residents of Dale Farm and their fellows are perfectly at liberty to make their case to change the law and, if by some miracle and in a parallel universe where your average traveller is a nice, polite, honest person who actually gives a shit about other people, they get opinion on their side then the law will eventually change.

It's not a perfect system by any means as there are always those, usually with money and power, who will subvert the law, or set themselves up above the law, but given the nature of human beings it's probably the best we can do. You can always break the law, or ignore it, but you have to be aware that there will be consequences.

And in this case the consequences are large, yellow and have "JCB" written on the side.