Moldovan squatters and a week that showed how good citizens suffer while parasites flourish

Published 19th Jan 2012

For society to work, we need to believe that it is reasonably fair — not absolutely fair, because nothing is, but broadly decent in apportioning rewards and penalties.

Nothing does more to breed anger and disaffection among law-abiding British people than a belief that good citizens are exploited, while the bad ones flourish.

Whenever a householder is arrested by police for rough handling of a burglar, gypsy encampments defy eviction orders or an illegal immigrant is granted asylum; when school pupils receive absurdly inflated exam grades or an ambulance-chasing lawyer screws an insurance company for a client’s phoney whiplash injury, our trust is severely damaged.

Most of us instinctively want to believe in our politicians, judges, teachers, police, doctors. We would like to suppose that they know what they are doing, and act broadly in our interests.

But there are times when such faith is hard to sustain, and this week is one of them.

We might start with the least serious, though nonetheless deplorable, case which has hit the media.


Eviction

Janice Mason owns a house in Walthamstow, East London, which had been her childhood home and she was about to sell. She suddenly discovers that it is occupied by a family of Moldovan squatters — four adults and four children — who have changed the locks.

The police say they are powerless to intervene, because squatting is a civil, not a criminal matter.

Mrs Mason therefore faces a huge bill for securing these people’s eviction.

Yet any of us can see the injustice of her being obliged to pay a penny to get back her own property.

In a properly ordered society, the Moldovans would be summarily removed by the police as soon as it is plain they have no legal title.

Beyond that, since the squatters have breached the code of behaviour we should expect to be observed by all newcomers here, they should be marched smartly aboard a plane back to Moldova. However, nothing of the kind will happen, of course.

Mrs Mason will pay one set of lawyers to get her unwelcome interlopers removed, if she is lucky. Another set, who parade themselves as crusaders, will leap to the Moldovans’ defence, their fees paid by us.

Before long the squatters will probably be ensconced in a detached house in Kensington, living on benefits and sending their children to Eton.


The next case up is that of a 27-year-old Romanian woman named Firuta Vasile, to whom Bristol City Council denied housing benefits — she has already claimed £25,500 on other pretexts, and has four children aged from two to 11.

This week a judge overturned the council’s decision, saying that Ms Vasile must be given housing benefit, since she has established a status as a self-employed person, claiming to earn £100 a week selling the Big Issue.

Her lawyer, another of the multiplying plague culture of defenders of the oppressed, trumpeted outside court: ‘This is a victory for people struggling to work to support their families’.

What nonsense!

British taxpayers ask: why do we pay out thousands of pounds of our hard-earned money to support a woman who should properly be claiming benefits from Bucharest City Council, not Bristol?

Why did not the judge display the common sense of a gnat?

Then there is a matter of Victor Akulic.

He is a 44-year-old Lithuanian who might reasonably be described as a career rapist, since he has served several terms of imprisonment for sexual offences back at home, before committing a further appalling sex attack here in 2010. A judge sentenced him to a minimum eight years of imprisonment, reduced in the Appeal Court this week to seven years.

Lady Justice Hallett inquired how it was possible for a man with Akulic’s record to stroll into Britain unchallenged. The answer is that since he has EU identity documents, he is free to travel from country to country, choosing where to commit his next atrocity from a lavish menu of choice.

The Appeal Court was told that Mr Akulic has applied to serve his sentence back home in Lithuania, closer to home comforts, so he may not be a burden on the British taxpayer for too long.

This seems a trifle optimistic. It is more plausible that the Lithuanians will leave us stuck with him.

The last of this week’s cases is the gravest.

Terrorism

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has upheld the appeal against deportation of Abu Qatada, a radical cleric who has been described as one of the most dangerous sponsors of terrorism in Europe.

The British government went to great lengths to secure from the Jordanian government — which wants to try Abu Qatada — formal assurances that he would not face torture.

The ECHR accepted these assurances, but nonetheless upheld the man’s appeal on the grounds that evidence obtained by torture might be used against him at his trial.

This wicked man, an unashamed jihadist, has already cost Britain £1 million in benefits, legal and jail costs. His wife and children are living in London at public expense.

Home Secretary Theresa May asserts that the Home Office will not let the matter rest there, but what can she do?

Even if more hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent on further appeals, the ECHR has shown itself an impregnable bastion of folly, indifferent to the most conspicuous national security interests.

The ECHR predates and has nothing to do with the EU.

The poor quality of its judges, some of them from Europe’s least reputable societies, is common knowledge among governments.

Britain has been lobbying to improve the quality of Strasbourg justice, and David Cameron proposes to make a speech on this theme soon at the Council of Europe.

But it is hard to believe anything will improve within the present structure.

British justice, and the interests of British society, have suffered so much at the hands of the ECHR that there seems a powerful case — though massive legal and political obstacles — for severing our bonds to it.

The Court is largely discredited, and does us much more harm than good.

Why should we indefinitely suffer its nonsenses, often damaging to our security, merely in the name of European solidarity?

Meanwhile, here at home, we are weary of hearing of abuses of both our national hospitality and laws.

A friend of mine served for several years as an interpreter at an immigration appeals tribunal. She eventually resigned in disgust, because she could no longer bear being party to systemic malpractice.

The case that triggered her departure was one in which a European woman carelessly told her: ‘I have two children but my lawyer says I must claim five, so I will get more money.’

As an interpreter, my friend was barred from revealing her knowledge of this remark to the tribunal, as it would have been a breach of client confidentiality. We, as citizens, are asked to swallow such betrayals almost daily.


Honest

A substantial part of the legal profession — those same grave-robbers who make cold calls urging us to let them represent them in litigation for phoney crash injuries — is up to its ears in the dirty work.

Ministers shrug: ‘What can we do?’

The system, and the law, is so heavily tilted in favour of a plaintiff, however undeserving and especially foreign, that the poor old British people have scant chance against them.

This week’s disgraceful case histories are, alas, little worse than those being recorded every week.

We have a right to be bitter, and to proclaim our anger against our rulers, until they act to strengthen the rights of the honest majority against those who shamelessly exploit us.

Source: ' Daily Mail '

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