I grew up with them, went to school with them, played cards with them, drank with them, even had the odd fight with them. They are never ever to be trusted and they do not want to live by the rules. They make a mess everywhere they go. You can defend them all you like, and you can kid yourself they are a minority group with a rich history who are abused. Those who have regular dealings know better.
Oh dear StevieK Those figures you quote regarding planning permission hides a major major difference . Travellers seek planning permission either on someone elses land which they are illegally tresspassing or on green fields they originally bought to graze their manky horses. Other taxpayers, ratepayers and homeowners seek planning permission for extensions etc to their own ''legally owned homes. Not a level playing field to compare figures .
Another 'minority' pleading for special treatment - I actually heard one of them on Radio 4 last week saying that they should have special dispensation not to obey these particular laws (that the rest of us apparently have to) because they are from an 'ethnic minority' and as such, the local council has to treat them differently to those who actually pay taxes and have to obey planning laws. Whoever allowed this culture of special pleading for one set of citizens over another should be locked up in the nuthouse.
As usual, the Guardian is in uproar about this. Once again, the comfortable Hampstead bleeding heart luvvy set is able to lecture those that actually have to live with these situations about what the correct, BBC approved PC way to think is (and that the hell that they have had to live in is all in their imaginations) and how we owe them all a living because some of our ancestors were nasty to foreigners when we had an empire.
Let's see what happens when I build an extension on my house without planning permission, or after permission si refused. I'll be straight on the phone to Redgrave and the Grauniad, see how much attention I can get!
I had the misfortune to go to school with pikeys,they aint travellers or any thing else they are scum that make a mess cause trouble and generally pollute the area they are in.They steal everything scrounge every benefit under the sun and dont pay a penny in tax,they can do what they like ,you look at them the wrong way and the police are at your door.The run ins I had at primary school with them in my opinion was held against me when secondary education came in to the equation I hate them. StevieK are confusing them with people living in terraced houses near your mansion?
Clive - I am no expert on this subject, but all high-profile cases I know round here are where the travellers own the site and apply for retrospective planning permission on it. I am quite prepared to believe that the 90%-20% figure does have some creativity in it, but given the problems with neighbours that I have on any of the building work that I have dne in my life, I find it hard to believe that in general people are happy with the extension of private houses, but don't want building on green field sites. I cannot believe that the figures are skewed that much.
Surely the evidence from Dale Farm is that local people were perfectly happy to put up with an illegal scrapyard on the site, but kicked up a fuss when travellers wanted to live there?
Ask yourself - in a situation where almost every planning application put in by travellers is automatically blazed across the front page of the local paper (this is certainly the case round here), almost always in negative terms - is this really a level playing field? Where are all the local press stories about people wanting to extend their bungalows or build a new room in the attic??? No, when travellers apply it is a big media and political deal and that inevitably skews it.
Masicat - I have dealings with the travellers who live down my street and those who I work with most days and (like the rest of society) some I trust totally and some I count the number of rings on my fingers. But how you can say of a whole group a many thousands of people that "they" aren't to be trusted is beyond me.
I became an 'expert' on this when a sp called 'traveller' bought a field at the end of my road where he had previously kept his 'horses' . Within a short space of time , he had tarmaced most of the field, laid an enormous cess pit and laid out pipe work to a number of concrete bases . he moved in a number of caravans and then the trouble started. Five years later , after 3 public enquiries, and numerous police/council actions and also at a cost to most of the residents of about £1000 each for legal costs , he was finally made to return the field to its original condition. During that 5 years no houses were sold in the surrounding roads and the house prices fell by 30% and even then none were sold .
We did enjoy the Horse trapping races up and down the road most weekends and the Tipper lorries and trucks coming up and down our private road which the residents pay to maintain, We also enjoyed the heaps of rubbish and metal strewn all over the fields and the verbal and physical abuse heaped on residents from time to time. Most of them drove mitsubishis 4x4 which were not taxed and probably not insured.
The local school also enjoyed the new intake of theiving abusive 'young travellers '.
Five years of hell mate , excuse me if i don't feel too much sympathy
I said I would not say any more and now I am going back on that.
Clive - I have every bit of sympathy and I would never say that every traveller is a fabulous human being, I am sure there is good and bad just like there is in every part of society.
But, equally there are horror stories on both sides: six months ago the travellers who lived down the road from us wanted to move their elderly and very ill grandma down to their site from somewhere up north, frankly, so that she could be looked after and die with her family.
Several people who do not live anywhere near here, but who seem to make it their mission in life to 'keep an eye on the travellers' complained to the police, council, and the local paper who did a massive front page story that waves of new travellers were coming to the site and that they should be banned (never once mentioning that it was a dying octogenarian and her full time carer).
We had the police round here and protestors and council lawyers trying to evict them, all as she lay dying. And, when she ultimately did die, her funeral cortege was greeted by a protest of people saying they should all 'go home' etc.
Is this really how we want out country to be?
There is good and bad behaviour on both sides. So gladly prosecute where people are being anti-social, but let's not kid ourselves that a planning application from a traveller has just the same pressures (political, media, and social attitudes) and is treated just the same as any other. They are patently not. So many of these problems would simply go away if councils still had a responsibility to provide suitable places for travellers to buy plots to live on. Everyone has a right to a place to live.
Anyway, that really is it - I doubt that anyone is any doubt about my opinion and I am sure I am boring everyone!
I said I would not say any more and now I am going back on that.
Clive - I have every bit of sympathy and I would never say that every traveller is a fabulous human being, I am sure there is good and bad just like there is in every part of society.
But, equally there are horror stories on both sides: six months ago the travellers who lived down the road from us wanted to move their elderly and very ill grandma down to their site from somewhere up north, frankly, so that she could be looked after and die with her family.
Several people who do not live anywhere near here, but who seem to make it their mission in life to 'keep an eye on the travellers' complained to the police, council, and the local paper who did a massive front page story that waves of new travellers were coming to the site and that they should be banned (never once mentioning that it was a dying octogenarian and her full time carer).
We had the police round here and protestors and council lawyers trying to evict them, all as she lay dying. And, when she ultimately did die, her funeral cortege was greeted by a protest of people saying they should all 'go home' etc.
Is this really how we want out country to be?
There is good and bad behaviour on both sides. So gladly prosecute where people are being anti-social, but let's not kid ourselves that a planning application from a traveller has just the same pressures (political, media, and social attitudes) and is treated just the same as any other. They are patently not. So many of these problems would simply go away if councils still had a responsibility to provide suitable places for travellers to buy plots to live on. Everyone has a right to a place to live.
Anyway, that really is it - I doubt that anyone is any doubt about my opinion and I am sure I am boring everyone!
Most of these" travellers" are just people from the Republic of Ireland who have taken a ferry to England and parked a caravan in a field.
Their intention is then to get "work" and use any free services that they can without contributing to the exchequer.
People make it sound like that are some kind of special case - but they are not even British, and we already have enough social problems here.
And your point is well made.................... "is this really how we want our country to be ?", because many people in history have given their lives to ensure that we live in a free country with decent standards and we would not want any kind of dictatorship or facism to creep into our society.
Consider this.........
Most of these people immigrate to Britain without any record,
Set up home (usually in a rural area) without regard for planning issues,
Work and drive without any formal regulation or taxation,
Use the NHS without making any financial contribution,
Take up school places as a babysitting service until such time as they remove their children before the legal age,
Make the lives of local residents a nightmare with flytipping etc,
The decision to turn their planning permission down becomes a political imperative - so the system is skewed against them. Hence why what was a scrap yard for years - and nobody was evicted - is suddenly classified as "precious greenbelt"' which has to be protected when travellers move in. Hypocrisy - they deserve a place to live like anyone.
Stevie, that's cobblers. Half the site was a scrapyard, and they got planning permission for a certain number of pitches on that side. It's the other side that they bought and developed (at a higher density) without planning permission that's designated greenbelt and is the subject of the court case.
Exactly. It is actually reall really hard to get land designated as green belt and I beleive no new green belt has been granted since the 706 (but willing to be corrected).
So its not like the council did it to spite them. As I have said the impact of this desicion is far far bigger than theis one place.
To all those who support them, will you also be there protesting when the rest of our green belt disappeared into a concret jungle? And this really is not an idol threat.
" 20% of requests for planning permission are denied in total, for travellers that figure is 90% -"
Lies damn lies and statistics. What proportion of planning permmission for new builds are from the travelling community? Most applications are for small changes to current properties and therefore unlikely to cause problems. The travelling community never apply for these, they apply to build new properties. And I know this as I was on a council planing committee in Essex for a nummber of years.
I've stayed out of this discussion as I come into contact with gypsy and travellers and the victims of their crimes on a weekly basis (almost daily at this time of the year) so need to maintain a sense of professionalism about the issue.
But it's clear to me, over the many years I and my colleagues have been dealing with that section of our community, that there is a different set of rules at play so to speak. They view their own community (for whatever reason you wish to believe) as something completely seperate from the settled community and therefore see little or no need to follow the laws and conventions of a society ultimately they do not wish to be a part of other than to make a living.
It's hardly surprising then that issues like this arise, which sadly just help to further cement the opinions on both sides of the fence. Frankly it should have never got to this stage.
It would be nice to thnk that, somewhat ironically, having gone through all the legal processes available to them they would leave peacefully but I suspect that there is now a huge degree of saving face involved too so I suspect the worst early next week.
Just to clarify a couple of factual points, it was a court case that concluded that Irish Travellers were an ethnic minority, not a government decision and........the Trade (note please no 's' in there) Descriptions Act is sadly no longer with us.
The Trade Descriptions Act is still with us. Large parts of it were repealed in 07/08 though. Obviously it applies to goods and services though aimed at protecting the consumer.
Valiantphil, they aren't immigrants from Ireland. A few of them may be but most have been in the UK for generations (since the Irish famine or the Englsih civil war, it's a matter of debate).
I dunno. I think they are real problem. They don't seem the care what anyone thinks about them or what the law is and rely on a victim complex. Certainly wouldn't want any of them to live near me. Still, very uncomfortable with the venomous language people use about them,
I do not know the rights and wrongs of this and won't comment. What is going to be "scary" is when the authorities come to evict 400 "residents" and activists who are coming to join them. There is going to be one hell of a lot of public disorder.
Valiantphil, they aren't immigrants from Ireland. A few of them may be but most have been in the UK for generations (since the Irish famine or the Englsih civil war, it's a matter of debate).
No debate needed, just look at the reg plates on most of the vehicles at Dale Farm !
Valiantphil, they aren't immigrants from Ireland. A few of them may be but most have been in the UK for generations (since the Irish famine or the Englsih civil war, it's a matter of debate).
No debate needed, just look at the reg plates on most of the vehicles at Dale Farm !
They just buy their cars over there so they don't have to pay road tax. When the car has been here long enough so it has to be registered and taxed here, they just pop back over the water and buy a new one. It does amaze me that, according to the taxman, they haven't earned any money yet can afford a brand new landcruiser every year and the fuel needed to pull their luxury caravans around, must be the luck of the Irish....................
The Trade Descriptions Act is still with us. Large parts of it were repealed in 07/08 though. Obviously it applies to goods and services though aimed at protecting the consumer.
Oh right, is that the case? You'd have thought it being my job to enforce it for 20 plus years and now it's successor I'd have know that!
I'm being facicious, technically, you are right in that it still exists however it's been stripped down to a few administrative sections that are not really about protecting consumers in relation to goods & services any more. That's now covered by the snappily titled Consumer Proctection from Unfair Trading Regulations and to all intents and purposes the TDA, that's what us ITK have always called it ;-) has gone.
Academic really because I'm afraid the travelling community are not really interested in complying with either laws...
I have little sympathy for the so called travellers but it must be asked as to why it has taken 10 years to start this action. It is the same problem as trying to 'deport' illegal immigrants after they have been in the country for a few years. Both groups may have been working the benefits and legal systems and/or have taken jobs and are paying their way, and may well have had children born in England and married English women. Yes, it may be legally OK to deport and dehouse these groups and move them on but why oh why does it all take so long. The whole immigration/foreigner/planning systems are (to coin a phrase) unfit for purpose, Pandora's box is open, the genie is out of the bottle and cannot be replaced. Time to call an amnesty and start over again and warn any future immigration/squatting/benefit defrauding abusers that they will face 10 years in prison with no right of appeal if they are caught, that way everyone will know exactly where they stand. If Brussels/Euroland object, tell them to mind their own Euros and get the f*** back to Strasbourg, Maastricht, Brussels wherever and think of a few more laws that certain countries ignore and get around while the silly Brits play the game and get stuffed. I thank you.
It hasn't taken ten years to start the action. It has taken ten years of protracted legal hurdels to get to this point. That is why the recent call for negotiations was thrown out. The council have been trying to get the people to sit down and come to a compromise for a long time and they refused any contact whatsoever.
If you are stubborn enough you can delay a lot of legal cases almost indefinitelt (except for serious crimes of course).
In any case oyu are mixing up the problems. It is not an issue regarding immigration / settlement laws, it is purley planning regulations. They have every right to be in the UK and work, or not, that is not in dispute. However they can not build on green belt, whether they own the land or not.
It actually has much more interst to farmers than it does to illegal immegrants.
It hasn't taken ten years to start the action. It has taken ten years of protracted legal hurdels to get to this point. That is why the recent call for negotiations was thrown out. The council have been trying to get the people to sit down and come to a compromise for a long time and they refused any contact whatsoever.
If you are stubborn enough you can delay a lot of legal cases almost indefinitelt (except for serious crimes of course).
In any case oyu are mixing up the problems. It is not an issue regarding immigration / settlement laws, it is purley planning regulations. They have every right to be in the UK and work, or not, that is not in dispute. However they can not build on green belt, whether they own the land or not.
It actually has much more interst to farmers than it does to illegal immegrants.
I appreciate what you say. I was drawing parallels with the legal bottlenecks and appeals open to various n'er do wellers and advocating a close of play and a new game with MUCH stricter rules and enforcements.
Comments
I grew up with them, went to school with them, played cards with them, drank with them, even had the odd fight with them. They are never ever to be trusted and they do not want to live by the rules. They make a mess everywhere they go. You can defend them all you like, and you can kid yourself they are a minority group with a rich history who are abused. Those who have regular dealings know better.
Those figures you quote regarding planning permission hides a major major difference . Travellers seek planning permission either on someone elses land which they are illegally tresspassing or on green fields they originally bought to graze their manky horses. Other taxpayers, ratepayers and homeowners seek planning permission for extensions etc to their own ''legally owned homes.
Not a level playing field to compare figures .
Surely the evidence from Dale Farm is that local people were perfectly happy to put up with an illegal scrapyard on the site, but kicked up a fuss when travellers wanted to live there?
Ask yourself - in a situation where almost every planning application put in by travellers is automatically blazed across the front page of the local paper (this is certainly the case round here), almost always in negative terms - is this really a level playing field? Where are all the local press stories about people wanting to extend their bungalows or build a new room in the attic??? No, when travellers apply it is a big media and political deal and that inevitably skews it.
Masicat - I have dealings with the travellers who live down my street and those who I work with most days and (like the rest of society) some I trust totally and some I count the number of rings on my fingers. But how you can say of a whole group a many thousands of people that "they" aren't to be trusted is beyond me.
Anyhow, I have said my piece.
Five years later , after 3 public enquiries, and numerous police/council actions and also at a cost to most of the residents of about £1000 each for legal costs , he was finally made to return the field to its original condition. During that 5 years no houses were sold in the surrounding roads and the house prices fell by 30% and even then none were sold .
We did enjoy the Horse trapping races up and down the road most weekends and the Tipper lorries and trucks coming up and down our private road which the residents pay to maintain, We also enjoyed the heaps of rubbish and metal strewn all over the fields and the verbal and physical abuse heaped on residents from time to time.
Most of them drove mitsubishis 4x4 which were not taxed and probably not insured.
The local school also enjoyed the new intake of theiving abusive 'young travellers '.
Five years of hell mate , excuse me if i don't feel too much sympathy
Clive - I have every bit of sympathy and I would never say that every traveller is a fabulous human being, I am sure there is good and bad just like there is in every part of society.
But, equally there are horror stories on both sides: six months ago the travellers who lived down the road from us wanted to move their elderly and very ill grandma down to their site from somewhere up north, frankly, so that she could be looked after and die with her family.
Several people who do not live anywhere near here, but who seem to make it their mission in life to 'keep an eye on the travellers' complained to the police, council, and the local paper who did a massive front page story that waves of new travellers were coming to the site and that they should be banned (never once mentioning that it was a dying octogenarian and her full time carer).
We had the police round here and protestors and council lawyers trying to evict them, all as she lay dying. And, when she ultimately did die, her funeral cortege was greeted by a protest of people saying they should all 'go home' etc.
Is this really how we want out country to be?
There is good and bad behaviour on both sides. So gladly prosecute where people are being anti-social, but let's not kid ourselves that a planning application from a traveller has just the same pressures (political, media, and social attitudes) and is treated just the same as any other. They are patently not. So many of these problems would simply go away if councils still had a responsibility to provide suitable places for travellers to buy plots to live on. Everyone has a right to a place to live.
Anyway, that really is it - I doubt that anyone is any doubt about my opinion and I am sure I am boring everyone!
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=81509
Exactly. It is actually reall really hard to get land designated as green belt and I beleive no new green belt has been granted since the 706 (but willing to be corrected).
So its not like the council did it to spite them. As I have said the impact of this desicion is far far bigger than theis one place.
To all those who support them, will you also be there protesting when the rest of our green belt disappeared into a concret jungle? And this really is not an idol threat.
" 20% of requests for planning permission are denied in total, for travellers that figure is 90% -"
Lies damn lies and statistics. What proportion of planning permmission for new builds are from the travelling community? Most applications are for small changes to current properties and therefore unlikely to cause problems. The travelling community never apply for these, they apply to build new properties. And I know this as I was on a council planing committee in Essex for a nummber of years.
I've stayed out of this discussion as I come into contact with gypsy and travellers and the victims of their crimes on a weekly basis (almost daily at this time of the year) so need to maintain a sense of professionalism about the issue.
But it's clear to me, over the many years I and my colleagues have been dealing with that section of our community, that there is a different set of rules at play so to speak. They view their own community (for whatever reason you wish to believe) as something completely seperate from the settled community and therefore see little or no need to follow the laws and conventions of a society ultimately they do not wish to be a part of other than to make a living.
It's hardly surprising then that issues like this arise, which sadly just help to further cement the opinions on both sides of the fence. Frankly it should have never got to this stage.
It would be nice to thnk that, somewhat ironically, having gone through all the legal processes available to them they would leave peacefully but I suspect that there is now a huge degree of saving face involved too so I suspect the worst early next week.
Just to clarify a couple of factual points, it was a court case that concluded that Irish Travellers were an ethnic minority, not a government decision and........the Trade (note please no 's' in there) Descriptions Act is sadly no longer with us.
The Trade Descriptions Act is still with us. Large parts of it were repealed in 07/08 though. Obviously it applies to goods and services though aimed at protecting the consumer.
Valiantphil, they aren't immigrants from Ireland. A few of them may be but most have been in the UK for generations (since the Irish famine or the Englsih civil war, it's a matter of debate).
I dunno. I think they are real problem. They don't seem the care what anyone thinks about them or what the law is and rely on a victim complex. Certainly wouldn't want any of them to live near me. Still, very uncomfortable with the venomous language people use about them,
Oh right, is that the case? You'd have thought it being my job to enforce it for 20 plus years and now it's successor I'd have know that!
I'm being facicious, technically, you are right in that it still exists however it's been stripped down to a few administrative sections that are not really about protecting consumers in relation to goods & services any more. That's now covered by the snappily titled Consumer Proctection from Unfair Trading Regulations and to all intents and purposes the TDA, that's what us ITK have always called it ;-) has gone.
Academic really because I'm afraid the travelling community are not really interested in complying with either laws...
Yet they are more than happy to utilise the legal system to try and prevent their eviction.
There are people who deserve help, then there's this lot. Valiantphil has it spot on.
Totally with you on that, Addickted.
I think its the silent majority being led by the vocal "do gooders" again,
It worries me that they can't see the theiving bastards for what they are, and i speak from personal experiance.(and cost)
Don't get tough with them ,but just exercise the same laws on them as us
I have little sympathy for the so called travellers but it must be asked as to why it has taken 10 years to start this action. It is the same problem as trying to 'deport' illegal immigrants after they have been in the country for a few years. Both groups may have been working the benefits and legal systems and/or have taken jobs and are paying their way, and may well have had children born in England and married English women. Yes, it may be legally OK to deport and dehouse these groups and move them on but why oh why does it all take so long. The whole immigration/foreigner/planning systems are (to coin a phrase) unfit for purpose, Pandora's box is open, the genie is out of the bottle and cannot be replaced. Time to call an amnesty and start over again and warn any future immigration/squatting/benefit defrauding abusers that they will face 10 years in prison with no right of appeal if they are caught, that way everyone will know exactly where they stand. If Brussels/Euroland object, tell them to mind their own Euros and get the f*** back to Strasbourg, Maastricht, Brussels wherever and think of a few more laws that certain countries ignore and get around while the silly Brits play the game and get stuffed. I thank you.
It hasn't taken ten years to start the action. It has taken ten years of protracted legal hurdels to get to this point. That is why the recent call for negotiations was thrown out. The council have been trying to get the people to sit down and come to a compromise for a long time and they refused any contact whatsoever.
If you are stubborn enough you can delay a lot of legal cases almost indefinitelt (except for serious crimes of course).
In any case oyu are mixing up the problems. It is not an issue regarding immigration / settlement laws, it is purley planning regulations. They have every right to be in the UK and work, or not, that is not in dispute. However they can not build on green belt, whether they own the land or not.
It actually has much more interst to farmers than it does to illegal immegrants.
Try one of the 'Would ya's'