Episode 14 The Big Questions

Good morning and welcome to The Big Questions. We're live from Jack

Hunt School in Peterborough and I'm Nicky Campbell. Yesterday,

revellers took over London's Trafalgar Square to celebrate the

death of Baroness Thatcher. Our first Big Question: Is it ever

right to celebrate someone's death? Professor Chris Knight, who dressed

as an undertaker at yesterday's demonstration, says it is

everyone's right to show how they felt about the former Prime

Minister and her policies. Later this month, there is to be another

protest - this time against plans to move Britain's fleet of unmanned

aerial vehicles, or drones, to RAF Waddington from their current base

in Nevada. Our next Big Question: Are drones an unethical step in

warfare? Tonight, millions may tune in to the latest reality television

show about gypsies. But, in the real world, people have been

distinctly less enthusiastic about living next door to gypsy and

traveller sites. Our last Big Question: Is opposition to gypsies

racist? Welcome everybody to The Lady Thatcher never minded being a

divisive politician in life. She saw it as an inevitable consequence

of radical policies. And, in the many hours and pages of media

coverage since her death, those who disagreed with her have rightly had

their say. But some have taken dissent to a very different level,

with street parties and a social media campaign to propel the song,

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead to the top of the charts. Is it ever right

to celebrate someone's death? Professor Chris Knight commit you

can take your hat off, if you like. What were you celebrating? Why

search jury? We were celebrating the death of a blood-sucking

vampire. Those creatures are very difficult to kill. As far as

millions of people - hard-working people - who had been thrown on to

benefits, communities had been destroyed, this was an occasion to

be celebrated. This event being planned for Wednesday, it is not a

family funeral - this is the British ruling class, the great and

the good, commemorating their victory over the miners and all of

us and celebrating Thatcher's introduction of casino capitalism.

Welfare for bankers. From which we are still suffering. You say she

lacked compassion and humanity. I have heard all these arguments.

is filled with hate. Aren't you filled with hate right now? She was

filled with hatred. We are rejoicing that she has gone. The

world as a better place without these people. -- is a better place.

Have I would suggest you have become the thing you hate, by

directing all that anger at her. That is very sad. I think the class

divisions in society are regrettable. Margaret Thatcher was

a politician. She was also an 87- year-old lady - a wife and mother.

Human beings deserve dignity and respect. Sometimes in life, there

are deaths worth celebrating. If this were 1945 and I heard Hitler

had died, I would crack open a bottle of champagne. Margaret

Thatcher privatised BT. He must be able to see There is a moral

distinction. She was lucky she was able to live to 87. 700 young men

involved in the war that she provoked... She did not provoke it.

She was a warmonger. How did you feel when the IRA tried to kill

her? War is war. She was waging war against the Irish. If you wage war,

you have to expect that war will be waved back. I went to this court in

the early 70s to the mid-70s and I can tell you things were pretty

grim. -- I went to school. There were strikes and cancer patients

could not be treated. Mrs Thatcher did not make people redundant. It

was the undemocratic unions that had to be taken control of. We have

week about her legacy and we will continue to hear them. Let's get to

the issue of the morality of celebrating someone's death. Not

just celebrating someone's death in the way that Dr Alan Billings of

marking someone's death but revelling in it. You are the Deputy

Leader of Sheffield Council. You hold no candle to Mrs Thatcher for

her politics but, as a Christian, how you react to revellers? As a

Christian and former politician, what they were doing was

distasteful and disrespectful. That was the whole point of it. That is

how they are going to make themselves known. My objection is

that it is naive - it is gesture politics. All through the Thatcher

period at Sheffield Council, we were faced with opposition from hat

and the Government and from people on the extreme left. This was a

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 577 seconds

time of militants in the Labour through, everybody took their. You

could have paid their guts, whatever, but as a mark of respect,

everybody stopped on the street and took their. There is something in

the Bible, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. We should

leave her legacy to history. I know what I think of her, but that is

irrelevant. The time we are now, people should at least doff their

cap, even if they hated her, out of respect, because when you go, I like

to think we would. Our cap for anybody else. But we did not respect

her when she was alive. People celebrated when Saddam Hussein

died, people celebrated when other... Venezuelans in Florida

celebrated when Hugo Chavez died. You know, what do you think about

the celebrations about this? Do not think it is a bit distasteful? Tell

a we should not be hypocritical. think it is just a spectacle on the

news. You said about respect for Thatcher. The thing is, she is

dead, and she did not respect us when we were dying. I do not want to

dwell on the past, but I just want to say this. Personally, I could not

walk the streets of London and Birmingham when Thatcher was around.

We had the law of suspicion, which the police used to stop black

people, I remember being stopped four Times in one night, I said to

the police officer, how can we do this? He said, this is what we have

been told to do by Hatcher. When the Hillsborough people died, she knew

the police were lying, and she cooperated in the cover-up. We do

not know that, that is an allegation. The biggest legacy, as

stated by his supporters, is privatisation, it is privatisation.

Now, it is not a state funeral, but it is as near as you can get. If you

really want to honour her, why don't you privatise the funeral? Can use

understand this anger and hatred and gloating about her death? I can

understand that people do not respect Margaret Thatcher, but you

still respect a human being. If you dance on somebody's grave, you are

diminishing the importance of the sanctity of human life. I think that

is very regrettable. People may have had lots of disagreements with

Margaret Thatcher, and I hear the anger very much, but she loved power

a long time ago now, nearly a quarter of a century ago, and a lot

of other things have happened. shows you how much anger there was.

It is bad to have this anger still with people. Above all, the sanctity

of human life means we should respect everybody who dies. What

about initiate? What about Jimmy Savile? I was deputy leader of

Sheffield City Council throughout this period, including the miners'

strike, I was an inner-city priest, for a working class, mining

community, and I saw the division and visceral hatred that was created

at that time, and I regretted it, I did -- it's did terrible things, the

legacy of that is still there. In my congregation, the policeman, the

striking miner, the nonstriking miner, the pit deputy, and the anger

that was generated at that time continues to this day. Families are

still divided, the legacy will be there for a very long time. I

disagree with those who say we are just blaming Mrs Thatcher for the

ills of coal. I recognise that international is meant that many

heavy industries were going to be devastated, that was happening. --

international is. It was not the fact that there had to be

restructuring of the unions. It does not justify dancing on grades, but I

can understand the anger. I think if you have such a funeral, which is

over the top by anybody's calculation, I would have thought,

that really does rub it in the noses of people who are suffering. Nadine

Dorries, she was a champion of freedom according to President

Obama. Let me finish my sentence and pose my question, if I may,

formulate my thoughts! She fought for the freedom of people in Eastern

Europe to protest, that is all they are doing, following what she wanted

for people across the world. That is absolutely right, and what they

should probably do is respect the fact that she fought for your

ability to protest. Tell that to the people in Chile! She was a close

friend of General Pinochet. He was a torture and murder. Actually, what

we should be talking about... taste in friends, like General

initiate and Jimmy Savile! Bernard Ingham, the man referred to as has

Ben Doctor, he said she was indifferent to criticism. -- Ben

Doctor. Yes, what she would say is that they were only having their

say, exercising freedom of speech. Freedom of speech was not given to

us by Margaret Thatcher. Working-class people have fought

over the centuries to get those rights. She gave my family... We

were not given the welfare state. We fought, in our unions, over the

years, to get those rights. We got the vote by campaigning for the

right to vote. We celebrated those workers in the opening of the

Olympic Games. Those workers build our country. We fought for the

welfare state. Tim Stanley, from a religious point of view. We were

called the enemy within, I am not the enemy within. What is very

troubling is the lack of empathy. I understand the pain. People who, for

example, whose children were not buried in the winter of discontent,

they were glad to see union power broken. But a lack of empathy for

the family of a woman who has died. No-one can deny that she was a

divisive figure. I feel enormous pain for the people who are left

behind. Why is there not a correlating sympathy for her?

ask a question. Last word!Her daughter thinks people like me are

golly walks, her son is an arms trader. That is not worthy of you,

that is rubbish. She used that word. That is so not worthy of you, you

are better than that. Is it not true?! Is it not true?! Do you know

what? Carol Thatcher grew up in the same era as you or I did. Yes, she

did say it... Thank you!She did not say it. Ladies and gentlemen, where

there is then scored, we did not bring harmony! -- where there is

discord. But thank you all very much for coming and taking part in

Adelaide, thank you much indeed. -- taking part in that debate. If you

would like to take part, follow the link to where you can join in

online, or follow the discussion on Twitter. Our drones and an ethical

step in warfare? And is opposition to Gypsies racist? Tell us what you

think about those topics. As well as your ideas for any future debates or

general comments you would like to make about the programme.

For the past five years, drones have been used by the British and

American air forces in Iraq and Afghanistan on surveillance missions

and to deliver missiles and bombs, and the CIA has targeted sites in

Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, one of which are in a state of war with the

USA. Directed by pilots in Nevada or preprogrammed to fly alone, it is

estimated they have killed up to 3500 people, including hundreds of

civilians. Are they an ethical step in warfare? Andrew Brookes, it is

said that... A former RAF commander, of course, it is said that they are

more precise and therefore more ethical by those who argue in their

favour. Why are so many innocent people die? The bombs that it drops,

we used to fire them from a manned aeroplane. You can argue, are they

is literally fired by a person like me. It can so they'll fall 16 hours,

so it is better able to detect what is going on in the ground than me

going past at 600 mph. But if you are going to argue, should anyone be

using weapons like this to kill anyone in Mali or Yemen, that is a

different thing, a moral issue that the United States has to address.

Because it feels it is at war, it has every right under international

law to prevent another 9/11. Article 51. So the question is, does it make

it easier to wage war, so does it encourage war? We have seen this

with Tony Blair, you get the impression that in the old days,

going to war was the ultimate because you put your own men and

women at risk. Now it is a first step, because you are not putting

people at risk. Does this unmanned business make war easier? Since

about 2000, there is a case for saying that, but it is not the fault

of the drone. The fact that you are not putting people at danger should

not be the point. It is the fact that politicians are using that.

have lectured on this, can you make a moral case? Yes, I think you can.

I agree with the point that has been made. There is a myth from Plato,

the man who put the ring on became invisible, so he thought he could do

anything he liked. There is a danger, with the drone, as Peter was

saying, that it might lead people into saying that they can take steps

to far. I think that, given the nature of modern warfare, it is

quite different, we are not talking about conventional battlefield,

people clearly defined with uniforms, a bounded area where they

are doing their fighting. Much of modern warfare where is in an urban

context, people who do not wear a uniform. They slip in and out of the

population. The point about the drone is that it enables you to

target those people in a much more, to use the awful language, in a much

more smart way, so you can take out a particular building or vehicle, so

it reduces casualties. But that is also on your own site, because you

do not take a large number of troops into battle. It enables you to get

over difficult terrain. In terms of the proportionality of the force

that is used, it can mean both that you have savings on your own side

and you reduce the casualties, particularly civilian casualties, on

the other side. There are strong ethical arguments that can be made

for drones. We have got an expert on drones on the other side of the

Populations can hear them. They call them a buzzing Wasps. They are

varieties of this. The ones we took about at 25,000 ft, nobody hears or

seize them. It has been documented by various organisations. It has

been documented in Afghanistan that multiple communities and reporting

constant buzzing from the drones. They can be heard by the

communities. You are not telling them who is being targeted and when

the drone is going to fire. For days on end, they have a drone

hovering above than and it fires on people below with no warning, no

justification and no follow up as to who you have killed. We had

intelligence leaks from the US last week saying that classified CIA

documents are labouring people militants and foreign fighters

because they do not know who they are killing. -- labelling. For me

here this is based on intelligence, doesn't that ring alarm bells with

you, based on previous failures? is entirely different. If you are

looking at whether it is an ethical type of warfare, worries about new

weapons are centuries old. When the crossbow came in, people were

worried about firing in this way. It is a technical platform. If you

are looking at the strategy itself, that is the question - the strategy,

legality and morality of this. I would argue that absolutely it is

legal and morally acceptable and it makes sense. We haven't had another

attack in the West since 7/7. It happened because of excellent work,

they were not thanked... The Taliban is trying to kill us and

they are trying to kill our children. That is a very been

appropriate thing to say. The security services get no thanks for

the work they have done. The people in the CIA get no thanks for the

work they have done. When you take out, in this new type of warfare,

which we have to imagine as a network, there are some keynotes.

It is true there have been all sorts of challenges and it is good

we are having a debate about it. When the keynotes are taken out, it

makes a huge difference and it works. It is legal and it is the

way to go. Noel Sharkey, it works, it is effective and lessens the

death toll. I guess I would share the view there is nothing immoral

in a piece of equipment, it is how it is used. The next stage we are

moving to with more automated drones... It let me not go with

that one. If it is more precise than conventional bombing, is it

not more ethical? The problem is it leads to an expansion of the battle

space. There is an illusion of accuracy. A lot of the time, it is

using infrared signature is, so you can see temperature inside the

building and you strike that building on the basis of

intelligence as we know from the Vietnam War. If you strike a

building, you do not know who is inside. Even when I spoke to the

CIA and played devil's advocate, I said, it is more accurate than be

fitted to bomb us. He said, you do not understand, we cannot fly the

bombers into countries we are not at war with. The United States has

permission to strike anywhere it likes. That is absolutely incorrect.

You are conflicting a whole number of issues in an emotive display

which is incorrect. You're being very Calder and cynical about the

deaths. Let's hear the argument. -- very cold. Being colt about the

death of children does not help. It is not free to strike anywhere it

wants. It is by the invitation of the Government, for example, in

Yemen. The legality is absolutely sound. Secondly, the intelligence

is excellent. It is true that occasion a mistakes are made.

Somebody else can say, President Obama, we invite you to come and

kill our citizens. We do not say that. President Obama and the CIA...

Let me hear from some people in the audience. What are you going to

say? I think the question is may be misguided. People have said it is

just a piece of equipment. It is just a different way for us to

carry out war. The ethical question is, is it ethical to go to war?

have done that one before. I suppose you would argue that

sometimes it is absolutely necessary. The prime job of any

leader is to safeguard its people. The number one job is to protect

your people. Barack Obama, George W Bush, after 9/11, the primary job

is to breed a recurrence of that. They are doing it. Barack Obama,

for everything he is doing, he is sending 10 times as many drones as

George W Bush. When Eddie Mair says, you are a nasty piece of work, I

realise the BBC is taking that seriously. President Obama is

getting away with it because of who he is. He must also run certain

tests of legal and moral culpability. There have been 3500

drone strikes. Children have been killed. They take had areas when a

strike. Innocent lives are lost as a result. The effect is that it may

give the illusion of being more protected but it creates a new

generation of terrorists. People living in a peaceful village who

find family members murdered in the part of award they are not part of.

-- a war. There is a civil, libertarian angle to this. The

writer states has killed two of its own citizens. -- the United States.

It is true that war is hell. It is always help. It is our moral

responsibility to make it a bit less hellish. I think it is

absolutely immoral to go into war in the first place. More civilians

have been killed. They have been bombed by these drones. In the

George Bush era, 60 drone strikes were conducted. After that in the

Obama era, the champion of change, he bombed 400 drone strikes in

Pakistan. He is killing civilians and it is creating anger, as you

are right to saying. The thing is, it is done with the support of the

Pakistani state. By allowing these drones to happen, it is creating

anger in people. Elections are going on right now. If it was 60

years ago, could to have taken at the Nazi leadership? If you go to

Berlin now, the lift that her headquarters is still intact. It is

a bank headquarters. What as a president should you do? You can

either do-nothing and sit and wait for the next 9/11, send the police

then but it is not that sort of terrain. If you do not want to use

trains, what answer should you give? -- drones. That is the very

inaccurate thing to say. Article 51 is what they are trying to use.

That is from the Geneva Convention. It says you can attack another

country if it is an imminent threat to your state. Some foot soldier,

who has just joined Al-Qaeda because his parents were killed or

some other people were killed, is he really an imminent threat the

United States? Is it worth killing civilians? There is a lot of talk

about children and civilians dying. This happened throughout the war.

But anyone who lived in the Blitz, fire rockets and menacing London,

it does not make it right. If we are going to use technology, used

it to its best advantage, that it as the least effect and kills the

least people. It is targeted. Mistakes do happen. This is not a

new occurrence. I do not personally believe that we or the Americans

are at war, we are defending our states. We saw this boy the first

time - the manifestation of this - with the Gulf War for the first

time. Is this not a step further on in that rather frightening

progression towards be complete association with those waging war,

with the effects that war is having? All changes in technology,

including the technology of warfare will show up these sorts of

questions. The development of the nuclear bomb is not at all targeted

and precise. It wipes out millions. In terms of an argument against the

weapons, that is the one that all these kinds of arguments mostly

applied to. The drone is much more targeted. Something else about the

drone. It does not have a human emotions. As long as your

intelligence is correct and people are making the right decisions

about what to attack, it will not flip in the middle of the battle

like the massacres in Vietnam where soldiers massacred an entire

village. We are trying to stand back and have the kind of debate

like I have with those in the military. War is horrible. We're

trying to find ways in which we can protect our own soldiers, our own

troops as far as we can and hit the enemy and not innocent people -

non-combatants and civilians. This is a form of technology which

enables you to operate much more smartly in that sense. Thank you

for that. If you have something to say about that debate, log on to

the website and follow the link to the online discussion. Or send us

your views about our last Big Question, is opposition to gypsies

racist? And, if you would like to be in the audience at a future show,

you can e-mail. We are not on next week because of the London Marathon

but we're back from Birmingham on April 28th to make two programmes -

one a pre-recorded special. Then we are in Edinburgh on May 12th and in

Here in Cambridgeshire, travellers and gypsies have been hitting the

headlines. This week, 11 travellers set up camp on a rugby pitch, in

protest at the lack of official camp sites around Peterborough. And

just north of Cambridge, local residents are up in arms about the

council's decision to authorise 55 pitches, some on a formerly illegal

site in the green belt. Is opposition to gypsies racist? Len

Gridley of Dale Farm committee were fighting against gypsy encampments.

They have their way of life and so two years. What is your problem

with their way of life? They moved into the bottom of my garden,

devalued by property by 300,000 and I said I would fight them the legal

way through all the court in the land to remove them. I have not

broken the law, they have come and built on green belt. The first

eight travellers moved there and the rest of them came along and

made it to 52. They knew they were breaking the law. We need to uphold

the law in this country. They were not breaking the law at the time,

were they? They were going through the planning system. They used the

planning system. It is totally separate for the Gypsy and

travelling community. We were using that system to gain access to

accommodation because of the lack of accommodation. The problem is

the councils. Central government gives policy. There is plenty of

policy out there to build and provide sides. In the caravans Act,

we were forcibly settled into places we did not want to be. We

had apartheid. We were forcibly settled where we did not want to be.

In 1994, the Conservative Party said, let's not provide for these

gypsies. Let them provide for themselves. In 1994, they said to

councils, what we would like you to do is identify land suitable for

gypsy and traveller occupation. That never happened. From 1994, as

gypsies have been identified our own land quite rightly or wrongly.

Do you think some of the opposition is racist? No. There are certain

factions who use the planning system in a racial way. There is a racial

undertone, very much so. Middle England, everyone else, it was

like, it is an anti-Gypsy campaign, not on my doorstep. I have heard it

all my life. I will pull in somewhere, the police come up, the

council, what are you doing? Why are people like that? I haven't got a

clue! It has fed down from the top. It is not racism, but there is

opposition. I will give you an example in Bedfordshire, where you

have got Bedford and Luton on either end. My council are being forced to

provide pitches for Gypsies and Travellers. Forced? It is required

by law, isn't it? If nobody has any opposition, I fully support that, I

think it is a better lifestyle, we know what your health outcomes are.

You need access to healthcare, hospitals, public transport,

employment, all the things you nude when you want to settle. Now, in

Bedfordshire, those things are found in Bedford and Luton, not the rural

villages in between the small towns. But the problem is that the Gypsy

and Traveller community do not want to settle in Bedford or Luton. They

want to settle in the very expensive small towns and villages. It is only

exclusive to the rich, is it? The countryside... It is exclusive to

the rich, is it? Actually, the people who live in those towns and

villages have worked hard all their lives. Don't you think we have

worked hard? Why are you expecting me... Why are you making yourself

better than me? Jozsef, thank you, I want to hear from the audience. Are

you part of the community? We bought a piece of land in Peter Brett. The

council objected against it. Why? There is no work, no shops, know

this and that, nothing to do with planning. A young lady bought a

paddock, next door is a lady of us been living there for 11 years. All

the time, even with the council we get racism. Not all the council, but

most of the council. I have got a council chap saying to this young

lady, you have got to move, you are a Gypsy. She said, what about this

lady? She is not a Gypsy, she can stay. Come on! One 2nd... Clive is

editor at large of country life magazine. A lot of people feel there

is an issue of fairness, because people who have applied through the

planning system for an extension or turning their garage into a study or

something like that, they have been turned down. They feel it is

extremely unfair that another community buys a piece of land, it

may be it the green belt, without any hope of getting conventional

planning permission. There is a ruse by which they turn up on a bank

holiday, they bring in diggers, and by the time it is finished, they can

then claim... I can understand... No, but... We want to be treated

fairly, the same as everybody else. Is there fair treatment? Gypsies are

treated fairly, because we are very proud of that, and we have to

balance all these competing interests. Let him finish.I have

talked to some Gypsies, and I respected their point of view. The

leader of the group at Meriden, he is a great guy, but he was saying

that he feels very strongly that he cannot get through the planning

system, he could not do anything because he was a Gypsy. I do not

believe that is true. And enormous amount of effort goes into the

planning system to make sure it is shared. The protest outside Noah

Burton's place did not help the situation, did it? I talked to him,

he knew it was wrong. They was doing wrong, but no matter what kind of

money you have got, where you live, when you buy a property, you only by

the boundary it sits in, no more, no less. That doesn't entitle anyone

else to the rest of England. OK... Allow me to come back. Site

instance, our road, Oak Road, residents want to build on the open

fields they owned, they can't, the council say that it is not

suitable, it is a narrow lane and everything. But the travellers think

they can buy green fields cheaply, develop it without planning

permission. I travel, Mick, I have travelled this country. Hold on,

hold on... The shouting does not work, please be quiet. I have

travelled all over the place, I was in Scotland a few years ago, just

outside Glasgow. I pulled up at the side of the Road to have a walk,

walked over a bank and found a Gypsy site, totally not used anymore. They

had all their sheds, the hardstanding for 12 pitches. So I

thought, why have they show that site? I ask that a nearby garage,

and they said, we are not going to spend any more on that site, they

keep wrecking it, and we told them we would not repair it, we would

shut it. If they cannot look after the sites, why should we find them

any more legal sites? Damian is from the travellers times, you don't have

a microphone, so all we are hearing is a cutaway in the background. Are

any people in the Gypsy communities doing themselves no favours?

question that was being asked, is opposition to Gypsies racist, which

aside from being simple to answer is almost comical. Is it?Whether it is

Roman Gypsies or Irish travellers, recognised ethnic groups, it is

racist. If you are opposed to them, you are a racist, that is not my

fault all these people's fault. do you mean? It is a simple

intellectual question. If you think it is OK to judge some people based

on the actions of others because they share their ethnicity, you are

wrong, and that is not my fault. live in South Lincolnshire, and when

I first moved here, there was an incident in my village, and I called

the police. One of the first things they said was, where they Gypsies? I

thought to myself, if somebody call the police and they said, worth a

black, I would be up in arms about it. And I do think a lot of the

opposition to Gypsies is racist, even the tyranny is, they are not

Egyptians! They originate in India, and so even the term is corrupted.

The term is not a problem? term, our leading counsel, our

ethnicity is Romani. But the wider society cause us Gypsies. I am

comfortable because it reminds us of the suffering... We look at nomads

in Africa and Asia and think, isn't that romantic? Aren't that great? We

have nomads in our own country and we will not accommodate them. We

have to accommodate them, they are our native tribes, they live amongst

us, and we should support them. All this stuff about planning

permission, listen, they did what we were doing thousands of years ago.

Benjamin makes a strong point, traditions going back 500 years, you

know, ethnic minorities, and we are, in this civilised, multiracial

society... We should give them every help we can do, to settle, can I

speak? Can I say that actually you do not help yourselves all the

time? We have heard many examples, let me give you another in my

constituency. Travellers have taken over a piece of land, they put in

their application to settle. Local people did some research, and guess

what? The people who applied to have the pictures on the land are

actually house owners in Leicestershire. So you do not do

yourselves any favours all the time. That is where we have been forced,

into accommodation we don't want. These beagle owned the houses in

Leicester. -- these people. Do you want to allow them to settle or

carry on travelling? I think people who own houses but say they are

travellers to get a piece of land, by doing that, you should yourselves

in the foot. We are going to hear from this gentleman. I think so,

too. I live in a bungalow because my wife has got rheumatoid arthritis,

right? Travelling is no longer a possibility for us. I spent many

years living on a site in Peterboro. Actually, for 29 years. The reason I

lived on a site is because I would not get a place somewhere else

because we could not get planning patient because I am from the

travelling community. The problem is, right, is that I do not want to

be in a bungalow. I want to be on the road, I want to be in my

caravan, because that is a home to me. Let me put that to Nadine, if I

may, that is the way of life, being on the road. Be on the road, that is

fantastic, you should be accommodated, but it is how you go

about seeking your accommodation, that is the problem. What racism

is, essentially, is over generalising to a group of people

from particular examples. If I was to say... I don't care what

everybody has been doing, I am telling you what racism is in an

objective way. If I was to say that white Anglo-Saxons have committed

murder, they are not doing themselves any good, should Gypsies

say, they are useless? You are taking one little example, over

generalising to a whole group of people, and that is called racism.

No, I am not... That is a very good point. We cannot say, because one

thing is happened, we can speak about the behaviour of an entire

people. We want a society in which people have the freedom to be

different and to roam if they wish to. However, we are also a society

of laws, and we have to find a balance between different kinds of

freedoms. When we ask, if there is racism, yes, there is a lot, no

denying it. But if someone does something which breaks the law that

affects you personally, it is not necessarily racist to oppose them

doing that. We have to be careful about our language and respect the

rights of people to be different, but also the entirely natural demand

of homeowners that their lives should not be undermined or ruined

by someone else's behaviour. see, the problem... I think what you

will find is the majority of people that object to Gypsy sites know

nothing about the circulars in planning law, right, that are

actually affecting us personally. Because we are segregated, right? In

1994, we were totally segregated under the circular of 1994, it was

repealed and then put back in in 2006. Eric Pickles is flouting his

mouth off about what he's going to do, criminalise it. Everything that

he has tried to put in place is nothing but to criminalise,

criminalise, criminalise. Are the law is racist? The laws are not

themselves racist. You get a bunch of people together saying that we

are breaking the laws. We have broken no laws when we applied for