Leader: Law should be the same for everyone

Finding their own site waterlogged, a group of travellers simply moved onto other land as if they owned it, churning up the ground in the process.

It has been more than an incidental irritation. The ground on which the travellers drew up was community football pitches at Park Hall, near Oswestry.

According to Neil Jones, chairman of Oswestry Boys and Girls Football Club, at least five football pitches have been ruined. A fundraising five-a-side football competition could be hit as a result.

The travellers had no right to go on the land, but they did because they could. That is why some pieces of open land have mounds of earth or low overhead bars at the entrances to stop caravans or other trespassers moving on.

The travellers' behaviour has been inconsiderate at best. It should have been obvious to them that the ground was soft and liable to damage.

Apparently they did not care.

Nor does it seem to have been a factor in their considerations that they should not be there in the first place.

They had moved on when they found the site of their Christian travellers' event at Halston Hall, near Whittington, was waterlogged.

If being a Christian traveller involves respect and compassion for others, they have failed on both counts.

They are not welcome there. But once travellers have set up camp, landowners know it can be a heck of a job to shift them.

Because they are travellers, there is a softly-softly approach to moving them on.

But is it not about time that the law was changed so that it is applied equally, no matter which section of society somebody causing upset and inconvenience belongs to?