Three cheers for Lib Dem Peter Black
Pierhead Welsh Politics
Three cheers for Lib Dem Peter Black for ridiculing the Commission for Racial Equality for proposing to prosecute a local resident for petitioning Swansea council objecting to a possible travellers' site near his home. The CRE, using Marxist double-talk, justified prosecution because the petition was preventing people "understanding how proper solutions to gypsy accommodation needs are to the benefit of all."
Mr Black, South West, said such action against legitimate democratic action "will set a dangerous and unwelcome precedent." "This is a fundamental freedom of speech issue."
The commission argues diat any use of the word "travellers" means "gypsies", and is therefore racial. But travellers are not necessarily gypsies. Apparently it is all right to complain about setting up a "dirty" caravan site. Which begs a question as to whether "dirt" is synonymous with gypsies in the eyes of the commission.
Establishing new sites for gypsies is a problem which has exercised the Assembly - not much has happened beyond proposals to adopt the solution designed for England - where it has not worked. Difficulties certainly exist, but the wrong way to sort them out is by use of the current legal sledge-hammer. That way democracy is down-graded - which could lead to the adoption of illegal methods, which presumably the CRE's successor would hardly favour.
Three cheers for Lib Dem Peter Black for ridiculing the Commission for Racial Equality for proposing to prosecute a local resident for petitioning Swansea council objecting to a possible travellers' site near his home. The CRE, using Marxist double-talk, justified prosecution because the petition was preventing people "understanding how proper solutions to gypsy accommodation needs are to the benefit of all."
Mr Black, South West, said such action against legitimate democratic action "will set a dangerous and unwelcome precedent." "This is a fundamental freedom of speech issue."
The commission argues diat any use of the word "travellers" means "gypsies", and is therefore racial. But travellers are not necessarily gypsies. Apparently it is all right to complain about setting up a "dirty" caravan site. Which begs a question as to whether "dirt" is synonymous with gypsies in the eyes of the commission.
Establishing new sites for gypsies is a problem which has exercised the Assembly - not much has happened beyond proposals to adopt the solution designed for England - where it has not worked. Difficulties certainly exist, but the wrong way to sort them out is by use of the current legal sledge-hammer. That way democracy is down-graded - which could lead to the adoption of illegal methods, which presumably the CRE's successor would hardly favour.
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