Be informed

Weatherley celebrating criminalisation

My Conservative MP, Mike Weatherley (pictured), is quite a self-publicist. He ‘sends’ me his monthly newsletter in his quest to inform and influence. Increasingly this newletter is used to express his uninformed prejudices which I am increasingly offended by. I am sure that I am not the only one he offends in his constituency. I want to use my blog to make clear to him and others that he rarely represents my interests and I do not want to be associated with his intolerence.

For example from his recent newsletter:

Victoria Gardens campsite

 Having recently been successful with my campaign to criminalise squatting, I have also taken the campers on Victoria Gardens in Brighton to task. Long-term camping in public spaces as a form of protest is unacceptable. The point of the protest was made long ago and it’s now just about a group of lazy campers hanging around for a fun time in front of our Royal Pavilion. This is not something that the public should have to pay for or put up with. Hard working taxpayers have had enough of these freeloaders. After publicly condemning the camp, I popped down to put my concerns to them in person. They claim to represent “the 99%”, so I informed them of the views of the REAL 99% – and told them to tidy up and go home.

Readers of this blog will know that I have posted on the subject of squatting before. Mr Weatherley is quite clearly a fan of the housing Minister, Grant Shapps, who ineptly equates squatting and murder. Mr Weatherley, some of us owe our homes and wellbeing to squatters. The country as a whole owes much to the squatting ‘movement’ such that it is. Moreover, there are not too many bulwarks against the property owning class that Mr Weatherley’s elitist party celebrates. Squatting is one of them in its demonstration of the inequity associated with housing that is a malaise in our society. And I suspect that Mr Weatherley, like the housing minister, Grant Shapps, thinks that he is protecting people who find their houses squatted after they have been away on holiday or business. I do not condone this, but this is rare. Most squatting is targeted at criminally empty properties that can and should be brought into habitation, preferably under some collective ownership and/or management. I would have thought that was a better use of his time, criminalising empty property. Mr Weatherley seeks to criminalise expressions of liberty and freedom in the name of protecting it.

There is more to say about Mr Weatherley.