Couldn’t organise arrests in a brewery
MOre than 200 years of beer production has come to an end in Blackburn, after so-called ‘travellers’ caused £100,000 of damage to the historic Thwaites brewery.
They moved on to the site over the May bank holiday weekend, ransacked offices, ripped out wiring, smashed windows and left a trail of destruction before being given a police escort out of town.
Seventeen hundred pints had to be poured down the drain and Thwaites has been forced to transfer brewing to another location.
Lancashire’s chief constable says investigations are taking place, but no arrests have been made.
Why doesn’t that surprise me? ever since ‘ travellers’ managed to get themselves classified as a ‘vulnerable minority’ they have effectively been beyond the law.
Most police forces are terrified of dealing with them, for fear of being of racism.
They have achieved a kind of protected species status, which we must all ‘celebrate’.
in Woking, Surrey, reader Alan Petrie, spotted an unusual flag flying outside his local nick — blue and green with a red cartwheel.
He wandered in and asked the copper on the desk what it was. The officer o said he hadn’t got a clue and went off to make a phone call.
When he returned h he said that, apparently, it was to mark ‘GrT Day’. What’s GrT Day when it’s at home?
Gypsy, romany and Traveller Day, came the reply. Of course it is. The copper was as baffled as Alan.
Perhaps they could now raise the GrT flag outside Blackburn police station, or on the site of the old Thwaites brewery, to celebrate the travelling community’s latest contribution to the rich diversity of our nation.