Passing Comment: Dale Farm

Okay, I'm tired and still have a fair few things to do before bed and getting up to go to work again tomorrow, so I haven't the energy to go into a full-blown serious post about news stories, about which I have quite a bit to say but most of it is boring guff. Which struck me with a brilliant idea. I'll hit it at a glance like a branch and see what conkers, startled birds and dead spiders fall out, in a section entitled Passing Comment- because, obviously, it's a hilarious pun lightning-bolted into my brain by inspiration. You know, because I'll be making a comment, but it will be fleeting...? Never mind.

Topic of the day? Dale Farm.

I've followed this loosely in the news. I knew it was happening. Nothing seemed hugely odd about it. I flicked through this slideshow just now. Flick through it now, before reading on. Done that?

Now some things have struck me as odd. I want to know some things.

1) You are protesting that this is your home. You live in these caravans. Why are you burning them?

2) On the subject of burning, did you ask your son before throwing his toy car on the fire? He might want it back. Also, it's plastic. I don't think it will fuel your barricade for long.

3) Why are you waving a crucifix at the police? It isn't anything to do with religion, you're on illegal ground. End of. Also, why burn the plastic car and your own home before the big wooden crucifix or wooden effigy of Mary? Just sayin'.

4) Why are we calling the lunatics who cover their faces and erect barricades around a site that has nothing to do with them 'activists'? They are not championing a cause other than illegal squatting. And know that, else they wouldn't cover their faces. Someone get them some jobs, then the idea of "nothing better to do" than fight police over land disputes for the sake of fighting/ sleeping on scaffold balconies in close to freezing temperatures won't be so appealing.

5) A genuine question- are the legal tenants, who are also travellers, with or against their illegally plotted companions? I really can't tell if it's a full on 'communal cause' or if it's just the cause of those being evicted. If it is the whole lot of them united, does it strike anyone else as stupid?

Answers on postcards (hopefully, novelty seaside postcards with large-bottomed women speaking entirely in quotations and puns).

Hopefully there will be something else pretty noticeable in the news that I can treat to a flit-by with words for bullets soon. If not, this Passing Comment tag will die on its feet. Ta-ra!