A gypsy life for me
From Tom Benyon Sir: The Times reports that Michael Howard has chosen to criticise your leading article, which makes adverse comment about Liverpudlians. May I respectfully suggest that, as Howard has chosen to comment on that issue — and if he is reported correctly his comments are misplaced — he might also care to comment on the more important matter highlighted by Roger Scruton in the same issue ('The state can't set you free', 16 October): the serious encroachment of the Human Rights Act on our lives, to the considerable damage of our society.
As Scru ton observes, this Act, apparently part and parcel of our membership of the EC, introduces vagueness all through our judicial system; if something is a right then it must be provided, but if it cannot be provided then the right becomes the focus of dispute. Scru ton correctly points us to Cambridge, where the human rights of gypsies to live somewhere have trumped the conventional rights of the planning laws, thereby wholly ruining the property values of law-abiding folk who live adjacent to them.
When I sell my house I intend to change my name to Gypsy Rose Benyon. I shall then buy a plot of land without planning permission from a broke farmer in a prime area. Then I will erect a mobile home or two and flout the planning laws. The rest is easy. Perhaps a few of you out there will join me. Torn Benyon
Adstock, Buckinghamshire
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