- Dave Dawson threatened to remove travellers by force himself after declaring: 'I won't tolerate it.'
- Police say travellers left of their own accord in two hours 50 minutes after Mr Dawson's intervention
By Luke Salkeld
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Not having it: Dave Dawson, left, responded to travellers moving on to his land by leaping into his digger and threatening to move them by force
When he found travellers’ caravans had arrived on his land, Dave Dawson had two options.
He could either alert the authorities and wait for the slow turning of the wheels of justice and officialdom.
Or he could rely on the somewhat quicker wheels of his digger – and remove the caravans by force.
Taking the second course of action, Mr Dawson put in a call to the police to inform them of his intentions, which risked leading to his arrest.
Officers arrived to oversee what appeared to be a few heated exchanges before – remarkably – the travellers left of their own accord.
His swift action stands in stark contrast to the decade-long battle to shift travellers from the notorious Dale Farm site in Essex, which only came to an end in October last year.
Mr Dawson, whose farm is near Shoreham in West Sussex, discovered the intruders early yesterday morning. ‘I would have used any force possible to get them off my land,’ he said. ‘I got down here about 6am and told them to move off. There were four vans there at the time and more parked up outside.
‘I came down with the digger and tractor and told them if they didn’t move I was going to move them.
‘I just won’t tolerate it. It is my land. I bought it and I have worked hard for it. I called the police and told them I was going to get the digger and move them.
‘I didn’t care if they got squashed, flattened or left on their own, but one way or another I was going to get them off my land.’
'It's my land': Undeterred by the sudden arrival of the travellers, Mr Dawson called police and told them he was prepared to remove the intruders by force
'I would have used any force possible': Officers were forced to stand between Mr Dawson's digger and the travellers' caravans to prevent him from carrying out his threats
He said that at one point in the clash the officers had to stand between the two sides.
‘The police told me that once they are on the land they have rights. But what about my rights?’ Mr Dawson added.
‘If I had left it to the authorities they could have been on my land for weeks. I wasn’t going to wait for a court order to get rid of them.
‘As it was, the police threatened to arrest me. It has already cost me a day’s work and about 500 to repair the damage. They cut through a metal gate and put their own lock on it.’
A spokesman for Sussex Police said: ‘Six caravans turned up on land at 6.45am. The landowner also turned up and threatened to evict the travellers.
Furious: Officers oversaw what appeared to be several heated exchanges between Mr Dawson and his uninvited guests
A traveller talks to officers: Mr Dawson feared that if he left the eviction to the authorities, the caravans could have been left on his land for weeks
‘Police attended and remained on scene to prevent a breach of peace. The travellers left the site of their own accord at 9.35am.’ Removing travellers who have occupied land without permission is usually a much more costly and time-consuming exercise.
At Dale Farm, the decade-long legal battle cost taxpayers an estimated 18million.
A total of 43 people were arrested and several injured after protesters fought running battles with riot police over the eviction of about 80 families from what was the UK’s largest illegal traveller settlement.
As soon as Basildon council had declared a final victory, there was a massive leap in the number of caravans pitched on the legal Oak Lane site next door – and an adjoining road – prompting more expensive legal action.
In 2009, a convoy pitched up at another controversial travellers’ site just hours after a group had been evicted following a six-year legal battle costing 400,000.
The new arrivals rolled on to a field adjoining the notorious Smithy Fen site at Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, where travellers had set up an illegal camp.
Bye bye: The travellers eventually moved off Mr Dawson's land at 9.45am - three hours after they had arrived
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk
London 2012 Olympics: Games promise to be poetry in motion as event's success is measured by the metre - Daily Telegraph
One hopes that such virtues can be ascribed to the Greek ode that Johnson has commissioned especially for the Olympics from Armand D’Angour, fellow in Classics at Jesus College, Oxford.
The ode itself is, as per Johnson’s instructions, to have the lightest of touches: six stanzas in Greek that all offer puns’ on athletes names.
For those who question whether this is an exercise in the Mayor’s personal amusement – Johnson, an Oxford classicist himself, once said of becoming Prime Minister: “Were I to be pulled like Cincinnatus from my plough, then it would be an absolute privilege to serve” – there will, mercifully, be a translation into English.
From the moment D’Angour’s creation is read out at the Royal Opera House on July 23, at a gala welcome for the International Olympic Committee, there will be no escaping the literary dimension of these Games.
The ritual imitates a tradition of the ancient Olympic Games, where poets including Pindar would compose odes in honour of victorious competitors.
Such was the symbolism of the Olympics’ restoration to Athens in 2004 that D’Angour offered this suitably Pindaric contribution:
Blessed precinct of the land of Athena
Immortal City of Theseus and the sons of Erechtheus
We will sing of you, whence Athenians of old
And heroes once set forth to the Games
Of shining Olympia.
You might be inspired, upon absorbing these soaring words, to study the intricacies of Pindar’s dithyrambs in greater depth. You might, equally, be tempted to disregard them as the intellectually aloof scribblings of a remote academic.
But on the second count, you would be misguided. For poetry, and the celebration of artistic merit, has remained enshrined in the Olympic movement to an extent that few in its modern incarnation appreciate.
From 1912 to 1952, Olympic medals were bestowed for works of art reflecting sport across architecture, literature, music, painting and sculpture.
The story-makers in London this summer would do well to contemplate the deep cultural immersion of their forebears and the fact that, in the capital in 1948, it was possible for Finland’s Aale Tynni to win literary gold for her lyric poem Laurel of Hellas.
The notion that the rich sweep of poetry could inform a present-day Olympics is not so anachronistic.
Indeed, it was the innovation of Pierre de Coubertin, deemed to be the father of the modern Games, to incorporate art competitions into the Olympic programme.
Ever the virtuous pedagogue, De Coubertin was the son of an artist whose works featured in the Parisian Salon, and his obsession with giving the Games a broader edifying purpose grew all-consuming.
In 1904, he decreed: “In the high times of Olympia, the fine arts of were combined harmoniously with the Games to create their glory. This is to become reality again.”
It did seem a trifle skewed, though, that he should have claimed the gold for literature himself in 1912 for his poem Ode to Sport. Silver and bronze were not awarded.
But the legacy bequeathed by his poetic preoccupations is a positive one. Quite apart from D’Angour’s experiments in the metre of Pindar, the anticipation of these Olympics is stirring a national revival of perhaps the purest of art forms.
In the seaside Norfolk town of Wells-next-the-Sea, a group of residents have prepared for the torch relay next month by composing an ode of their own, entitled Going for Gold.
From Wordsworth’s affection for cricket to John Betjeman’s A Subaltern’s Love Song, a hymn to the rhythms of tennis, poetry and sport have been inextricably intertwined.
The impending Olympic narrative promises the strengthen the connection like never before.
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
good for him, common sense prevails.
- Chris Adams, Solihull, 13/6/2012 22:25
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