Bill Carmichael: UN spells doom for travellers

But now the United Nations has entered the fray on their behalf, even the chirpiest Irish law breaker must be in total despair.

Because if the UN is on your side you are certainly doomed. Nothing spells failure as clearly as the enthusiastic backing from the bureaucrats of the UN.

Earlier this week something called the UN Advisory Group of Forced Eviction backed the illegal encampment in Essex and accused Basildon Council, which has fought a 10-year battle to uphold planning rules, of infringing the law.

And how is the council infringing the law? Apparently, by trying to enforce it.

You may have thought that equality before the law would be an important principle of fairness to an organisation like the UN – indeed a fundamental plank of a modern democracy.

But the travellers – and their backers among the UN, Labour MPs, anarchist groups, luvvies such as Redgrave, and various Anglican and Roman Catholic Bishops – are not the slightest bit interested in fairness or equality. Instead, what they demand is preferential treatment for certain groups who choose in their own selfish interest not to obey laws that don’t suit them. The travellers, they argue, should not be beholden to laws that apply to the rest of the community. Further, to expect them to behave like everybody else is apparently – yes you guessed it – “racist”.

Any ordinary citizen who illegally built on the green belt would have been shifted many years ago. But a decade later the travellers cling on. Finally, after exhausting the legal process – thanks to copious amounts of legal aid – they face eviction on Monday.

If the UN had an iota of credibility, its intervention may have carried some weight. But the truth is it doesn’t. It has proved itself to be a corrupt and racist organisation that doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.

It is throwing its weight around in this case of imagined persecution, but when genuine persecution was happening – and thousands of people were murdered – in Darfur, Kosovo and Bosnia, it did absolutely nothing. And let us never forget that, a little over a year ago, it voted the blood-soaked tyrant, Muammar Gaddafi, on to its “Human Rights Council”.

And while we are at it, let us also recall that the UN also saw fit to open a conference, supposedly aimed at combating racism, with an unhinged anti-Semitic rant by Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In short the UN’s record on sucking up to dictators and failing to help persecuted minorities is nothing short of shameful.

Basildon Council has the law and moral right on its side – and it shouldn’t take the blindest bit of notice what the UN says.

Dog’s breakfast

According to an important announcement by the Department of Health this week, Scooby Doo is the healthiest children’s cartoon, beating off the likes of Peppa Pig and Bob the Builder. How do we know this? Well, the department apparently paid “consultants” to sit through 200 hours of children’s cartoons to record the physical activity of the characters as part of a £75,000 public health initiative.

And they decided that despite our hero’s fondness for Scooby Snax, he was the perfect role model for a healthy lifestyle because he spent so much time running away from monsters.

It is good to see the Government spending our hard-earned tax pounds so wisely, isn’t it?