07/11/2011 Inside Out South

Hello and welcome to Inside Out, back with three more stories from

where you live. Hello. The misery caused by Berkshire squatters.

home left like this and they're not even criminals. They've changed the

locks and they're in my mother's house. The Dorset animal charity

picking up the pieces of a cruel past in Serbia. Championing the

plight of dancing bears, raising awareness about the desperate

sadness and how they're treated and abused. And digging for history on

the South's highest cliff. Bronze Age discoveries in a golden

location. It's like when snow falls and you're the first one to walk

over that nice, fresh fallen snow. It's a similar sort of feeling.

Jon Cuthill and this is Inside Out First tonight, what would you do if

squatters moved into your property? Call the cops? It might surprise

you to learn that squatting isn't a criminal offence. But that could

soon be about to change. Sadly, too late for one Berkshire woman who's

had problems getting squatters out of her property. Here's Jane

This house in Berkshire belongs to join Joy McCabe, her brother and

her sister. It was left to them when their mother died. My mum was

there for 50 years. We grew up there. All our memories are there.

And now, we can't even go into it. While the family was deciding what

to do with their mum's old home, four unwanted squatters moved in.

We can't get into our own property now. They've changed the locks.

The police were called but the family was told it was a civil

matter and they couldn't through the squatters out. How surprised

are you that this isn't a criminal offence? I didn't believe it wasn't

a criminal offence. How can you move into a property that was my

mum's house, which I will always think of as my mum's house? Was she

a house proud person? She was indeed. She loved that house. She

yes. Time to pay a visit to the four Lithuanian squatters. They

claim they pay rent, not to Joy, but to someone on the internet.

They even claim they've got a contract and that they're the

victims of a scam. Are you going to move out? When are you going to

move out? As soon as our contract finishes, we will go. Can you show

me the contract? No. No. Is there I'm barely sleeping because I keep

thinking, what if we can't get them out? So now we've got to go to

court and hopefully we're going to get an order to get them out and

then we'll have to get bailiffs to In Brighton, the squatting capital

of the South, there's always someone on the lookout for an

unused building. This Regency property near the Royal Pavilion

was snapped up by squatters just We just noticed this place was not

being used. We looked inside. It looked as if it hadn't been used

for quite a long time. So we acquired entry into the building.

How did you get in? There was an The local MP sees this lot as

criminals and wants the law changed so they can be put behind bars.

It's a lifestyle choice for some people and we call them serial

squatters and they do cause damage and there's no retribution for the

damage they cause. As soon you leave one property, you can move

into another without any cost to you whatsoever. If we actually made

it a criminal act, where people have to pay for the damages or get

locked up in jail, then they will stop and eventually people will get

the message that it is illegal. wants us slung out because he's

like, more on the side of rich landlords than poorer people in

general. Because we've a time of economic crisis, property values

are remaining the same, even though people's ability to play those

prices is going down. -- paydays prices. This privately owned house

had stood empty for five years. It's now home to a varied community,

some jobless, some homeless and some students. So this is my room -

arts studio. It's really good having a lot of space where we can

work. Standard accommodation wouldn't really have enough room. I

wouldn't be able to afford enough room. Would people sympathise with

that? Wouldn't they say, "Tough?" Maybe. There's always a nice

community and you're not going to be on the streets. It's just a

welcoming place to come to. It's not a scary homeless centre where

sometimes people can just be a not more intimidating, I find.

squatters believe if a property is neglected and empty, the

responsible thing is to take it over. If you owned a property in

later life and someone squatted in it, how would you feel? I would

never own a property that I was not living in or was not directly using.

There's no way that's going to Meanwhile, Joy and her brother

Roger are at court for a hearing that will hopefully lead to the

squatters being thrown out of their We've had to come to court today to

get a possession order to get our property back. We've turned up here

nine o'clock today, they haven't turned up here and we've had to sit

in front of a judge which we've never had to do before to get our

property back. I just can't believe it. It's awful. Isn't it staggering

the police couldn't just say, out? Absolutely. They should have. I was

told by people that they are breaking the law by breaking in,

but the police didn't bother to investigate that. They said it was

a civil matter and it was down to us to sort it out, not them. I want

to get to the stage where if you were having this interview now, if

we go back to our property now and there's someone in our property

squatting, I want that person criminalised and put in jail. It is

not acceptable people come back from holidays, or families in

bereavement have squatters in their homes. That we've got to stop.

Hopefully next year we'll have a law that stops that. But the

Brighton squatters feel that rather than being attacked by the

government, they should be embraced as they are providing for

themselves without handouts. If you look at David Cameron's Big Society

idea, he wants people to take initiative, to take control of

their lives. Everybody's got to learn sometime. This is a very

important, like the reason why some people find squatting a very good

thing to do, is because they're not dependent on the state. They're not

going to claim housing benefit. We're saving the state money. They

don't have to go through the state to live. I think that's very

important aspect of the squatting. Meanwhile, back in Berkshire,

Nine weeks after the squatters took over her mother's home, bailiffs

allow her to return. But the unwelcome houseguests have fled.

Hello. Oh There are dirty towels, there's food left half eaten, and

there's food left half cooked. There's blood, it looks like on the

floor. There's wet washing, dirty washing, empty bottles, I can't

believe it. It cost Joy about �2000 in court fees to reclaim what's

hers. They're criminals and they've just lived here thinking, we can

live here for nothing, we can do what we like, create as much mess

as we want. Foul the place. They might as well be on the street if

they're living like that in a house. Joy hopes that in the future, the

government's plans to tighten the law on squatting will help prevent

similar invasions. But the squatters in Brighton are

determined to carry on, come what There are plans afoot to

criminalise squatting. What would that mean to you? It would make it

more difficult to carry on squatting. But I don't think it

would change anything. You'd be a criminal now. Yes. It's whether you

There isn't squatters' rights. Really, there's no law that says

squatters have got rights. There's just no law to get them out

Next, big pause, Bears. You probably think there's no

connection between Dorset and Serbia's dancing bears. Think again,

my friends because a tiny charity based in a tiny village is

providing vital veterinary care to abused animals. I'm going to be

honest, some of this film is pretty tough viewing but I think it's

important we show you what's been Meet Borjana, a former dancing bear

who now lives in a refuge in Serbia. This was her life before. For 10

years, an old car was her home, where she was chained up. She, like

this one, was a dancing bear forced to perform to make her owners money.

Keeping bears this way is illegal in Serbia and it's hoped this cruel

practice has now ended. Most animals have been confiscated from

their owners and sent to a dedicated sanctuary but the big

problem is how to provide for the The pretty village of Cranborne in

Dorset is the rather unlikely location for the tiny HQ of the

Worldwide Veterinary Service. In the front, the charity sells

second-hand books to pay the rent on the building and in the back,

they pack medicines and equipment that are sent abroad, along with

veterinary teams to provide free care. The charity's founder is a

Everyone that volunteers on the teams does so on their free time.

We don't really have, we've got tiny staff costs, we're very

efficient and we go absolutely anywhere that needs help. We go all

over the world and that's the brilliant thing about the charity.

Because we are very small, we're very flexible. Nearly everything we

get goes straight out. Serbia is a fantastic little charity there and

championing the plight of dancing bears, raising awareness about the

kind of conditions and desperate sadness and how they are treated

and abused is a really worthwhile thing to do. Just driving forward

that campaign and supporting the people on the front line of that is

This is where the latest WVS team is heading - a village in central

Serbia. And here is the only sanctuary for the country's brown

bears - the back garden of a Our bears actually do not have,

here in Serbia, some experts who would treat them. We did not know

who to ask for the help. We remembered the World Wide

Veterinary Service, we called them and they responded to our calls.

team of three WVS volunteers has arrived with an ambitious schedule.

They want to check the condition of all five bears, and operate on

those that need it. What is happening? But the team is only

here for five days, so they need to get to work straight away. First is

Borjana. There we go. Heather has worked with bears in China and this

is her second visit to the century. Last time she operated on another

bear, Cassandra. It is really nice to be back and they all look in

really good condition. We removed around 20 teeth, or teeth fragments

from Cassandra the last time. She had been badly beaten around the

face and her right eye is blind due to traumatic damage and her teeth

were the worst I have ever seen on a bear. They were horrendous.

Removing those fragments, you can see her lips are all shredded. That

is where she has been tethered for dancing, and the tethering chains

have ripped through her top lips. Borjana is the oldest of the five

bears is under anaesthetic and Heather can examine her teeth.

the dancing bears, they often had their teeth smashed out to make

them safer for their owners to handle. You can see here that her

canine tooth on the lower side, there is pretty much nothing left

of it. You can tell this was smashed out when she was a young

bear. When she was taken as a cub from the wild. The enamel is really

thin. If the tooth is broken when she is older, the top tooth looks

like it was broken when she was older, the enamel is much thicker.

You can imagine how painful this is because those nerves are constantly

exposed, constantly raw and infection will trek up to the root

of the teeth. You can see on the inside of her lip, these channels

here, these would not normally exist. Bears do not have a

connection between a top lip and their nose, but this is where she

has had a hook for a chain put through her nose and her lip and

For the bears in the sanctuary, this brutal treatment is now a

They will spend the rest of their lives being looked after by Pavel

and his wife. The charity struggles to pay for their care with just a

little government help. They know the conditions are not ideal, but

there is nowhere else. This is Ushkin. And she is a nice specimen

of a typical brown bear. Unfortunately, she has a very bad

temper towards people because her owner was a really, really mean. We

knew that because we met him, he tortured her, beat her, so she

remembers that very well. She does not trust people at all. Borjana's

teeth are in a bad way. She has had nine removed, all of them were

broken. It is disgusting. They will be sore for a few days, but once

the pain relief we have given them will kick in there should not be a

problem. Their gums should heal up fairly quickly and they will be

able to carry on eating without it being painful. Can you just pull

The next there is our only male bear Elvis. He is actually a zoo

bear. Elvis lost one of his legs when his father, who was also in

the zoo, bit him as a cub. He ended up here after a disastrous decision

by the zoo to release him into the wild. He approached up to a

children's camp asking for food, but that was not safe and several

times a director of the National Park decided to shoot the bear.

Some people asked by e-mail if we could save him. As Borjana comes

out of the anaesthetic after her operation, Elvis is obviously

concerned. He is usually not so willing to come immediately from

this cage to his cage. Usually we have to bribe him with bread or

something that he likes so that he can come inside. Obviously, he is

worried for Borjana. He wants to touch her. The next day it is

Elvis' turn to be operated on. He is under anaesthetic for several

hours as Heather removes some damaged teeth and castrates him so

Sadly, Elvis does not recover from his operation, and that night he

The post-mortem examination would later reveal his liver and kidneys

were diseased and the anaesthesia had put them under extra stress.

Something the team could not have known when they were operating. It

is a terrible blow for everyone, and for now it is decided not to do

any more operations. But the team will be back, hopefully when the

bears have a new home where they can behave more naturally. Pavel's

dream is to find a larger and better sanctuary so the former

dancing bears of Serbia can live Poor old Elvis, but I am glad to

say the other four bears are doing well. If you have got a story for

me, then drop me an e-mail. Finally, what is this? News just in. We are

getting reports of a hole on top of one of the South's most spectacular

viewpoints. Archaeologists are On a sunny afternoon in Dorset

there is no finer place to be them on the highest point of the south

coast, Golden Cap. What you might not expect to find is a massive

hole, full of archaeologists. reason we're digging here on the

cliff-edge is because we are on the cliff-edge, the erosion along this

coast is happening so often and so much that we are going to lose it

all into the sea. We are trying to rescue the information about these

Bronze Age burial mounds before they end up down in the sea and

washed away forever and we will not know anything about them at all.

is thought the three mounds could disappear within 50 years and the

archaeologists have just three weeks to excavate them before they

cover them up again and leave them to their fate. We looked at these

mounds and thought, it won't take long because they are shallow humps

in the ground. Now we have gone down, you can see there's tons of

material here. Heaps of stones, quite a presence standing within

them at the moment. You feel you are a part of it. The mounds are

the same age as Stonehenge. 4,000 years old. We spent three weeks

clearing the stonework that they put on top here when they buried

someone, they piled all the stone on top. We spent three weeks

digging through it and this is what we found and we are really pleased

and excited. It is a very special find. When the arrow head came out,

the feeling of it, just holding that object that someone spent all

that time and effort making out of stone, if it is quite emotional.

4,000 years ago. Maybe it is because we have spent nearly three

weeks constantly digging out parts of stone and are tired and

emotional, but I think the objects that people use connect to people

of the past. Just being inside the mound, because we have cleared half

of it away and we can stand in the middle of it, on Bronze Age land

surface, when you think about that, I don't know, you get a feeling

from it. Maybe it is just archaeologists that feel that.

There is something special. And nobody has stood there since they

built it 4,000 years ago. It is like when snow falls and you're the

first one to walk over that fresh fallen snow. It is a similar sort

of feeling. It takes you back into the past directly. Standing in the

same place. Not surprisingly, few man-made objects have survived the

passing of thousands of years. Especially as here the soil is

acidic which destroys even the bones. There is some organic

material for the scientists to take away. What we have got here is a

big lump of rubble which is the burial mound. Underneath we have a

thin layer of dark brown soil which is the land surface, before the

barrier was built. From that we can extract pollen from small samples

that I'm taking now and that will give us an indication of the

vegetation that was around at the time. It gives a snapshot of the

environment of the early Bronze Age. It is valuable stuff. The team now

realises that the Bronze Age people were not the only ones who saw this

high vantage point as a good place to build some structures. They have

cut a steep trench into the mound and put a sand floor down. In here

we have got chunks of brick and bits of mortar to do with a

structure which is being built. find that later on, only 200 years

ago, that someone else came up to this site, saw these bumps and

thought, this is a good place to put some buildings. To create a

signal station where they would put flagpoles of different coloured

flags and balls to signal that the French were coming. It is from the

Napoleonic times. There were signal stations all along the coast which

would signal to one another with all these different combinations of

flags and banners. This place often gets very foggy. They were also

told to have a big fire, a big beacon beside their hut. It is the

same sort of thing you get during the Second World War. There was a

real danger of being invaded. A bit like the home guard, I suppose,

they got a few retired people out and set up this chain along the

coast. Records have been found which shed light on the lives of

these Napoleonic watchmen and their modest dwellings. Inside there were

two rooms, two tables and three chairs. The officers and two able

seaman beside them. Pretty chilly time, I would imagine. 1798 through

to 1814, they watched the coast. I doubt it was always the same people,

but certainly that is what the records tell us about looking

through the spy glass out to sea. Artifacts have been found from

those times, bits of pottery and animal bones and coins. Bronze Age

finds have been scarce. Bonze Age we are dealing with pre-history.

There is nothing written down at all. Sometimes you do not really

get just what a great gulf there is. You can go back 2,000 years and you

have one name, and that is a name written down by a Greek geographer

about this area. It is a name given to the people in this area. That is

the age of history. The beginning of all history, there were no names

before that. There were no names of any of these important people the

mounds were raised to. We do not know how they governed the people,

it is hard work as a detective story. If there is very little to

go on. But what is known is that the burial mounds were built high

so everyone could see them and the settlements where people lived

would have been lowered down in more sheltered spots. Exactly where,

we do not know. People we found at Dog House Hill which is just behind

us on the cliff, they might be the people who buried their dead up

here. Or it might be out there which has gone. In the Bronze Age,

the cliff-edge was about one-two miles further out than it is now.

So the people who these burials were put here for have gone a long

time ago. The barrows on a Golden Cap will soon disappear like the

people who built them. This is the last chance for the archaeologists.

But despite the intricate detective work, it is the last day of the dig

and they still have not found what they're looking for. What would

have been really lovely, and what you dream of, is to dig away and

find this nice pick underneath and a body laid out, a crouched body in

the bottom with a lovely whole pot at the side and a gorgeous flint

knife. That would have been perfect. Not finding all the things you

dream about finding... It is doing it, digging through the ground,

digging through the layers, peeling it all back and finding all of

these tiny bits and pieces that had been left behind. It does not

matter you have not found what you might dream about. That is the

whole process that we go through, doing an excavation, getting the

stuff ready, getting your tools together, getting the people

together, making sure you have got biscuits for tea breaks. It is the

whole thing that makes it what it is. It makes me want to keep doing

it. On that one you can even see the tree rings. What we can do is

look at what we're finding and make up the stories from those things

that survive in the ground. These days they can get within 50 to 100

years either side. I suppose, if you think back into time, they were

just like you and me. They needed food, they needed shelter, they

lived, they loved, and if they had not been successful in all of that,

Well, that is just about it for now. Keep your e-mails coming in and let

me know what is happening where you live. Meet the millionaire landlord

with over 300 properties to let. Not everybody in Oxford likes me

very much. I don't care what people think. And that tenants who are