Take a train to Wickford, Essex, and then drive for a half an hour beyond the edge of the town, and you come to Dale Farm, the biggest traveller site in the country. There are almost 100 families now living on the site, half of them in small, semi-permanent chalets, the rest in caravans. A [...]
There are so many things to write about at the moment that I’ve been slightly struck dumb. There’s a strange ‘it’s all a bit 1936′ feeling in the air: expulsion of the Roma; increasing privatisation; the dismantling of the NHS; trade union tub-thumping; the pope. It’s like these demons of another age have been hiding [...]
It never fails to annoy me when it’s claimed that some group or other is the ‘last’ group that it’s acceptable to be prejudiced about. Sure, there’s no denying we live in relatively enlightened times, but there are any number of marginalised sections of society that you can get away with offending without any fear [...]
