Here is a little stage in Essex where conscience and convenience trade lines. Picture the scene, a council clerk mutters that the use class is wrong, a minister whispers that the rooms are full, and a judge says, almost aside, that the law will stretch this once. Outside the inn the crowd plays its own rough theatre, part village meeting, part reality show, some shouting of safety, some of charity, each convinced they are cast as the hero. "Move them on," cries one voice, "stay them there," answers another, while the people inside the hotel carry no speaking part at all. The ruling does not end the play, it merely holds the curtain for another act in which Parliament, Whitehall and the town will have to choose what kind of country they wish to be. Tragedy here would be not a broken planning rule, but a community that learns to speak only in boos and cheers.