To think that if your average British citizen cant just buy a field and live on it in a caravan...

[Saggyoldclothcatpuss]

without being slung off in weeks for not having planning permission, then there's no reason that travellers should be allowed to either?
Controversial, I know, but this really bugs me!

Well said Dromratlee!

They get refused planning permission in most cases just because they are travellers
Or maybe the fact that they have set up house on land which is not earmarked for habitation, ie agricultural or greenbelt is the reason. Nobody would get permission for this.
There should be substantially more designated traveller sites and thats were the really appalling NIMBYism comes in.
Have you ever seen one of these sites? There have been 2 in my town, They were trashed! Absolutely wrecked! There are plans to make a site near my home village. Travellers moved in a while ago unoficially. The landowner found some of them on her land cutting down her trees! When she told them to hop it, they threatened to slit her throat!
There is nothing id like more than to buy myself some land, move onto it in a mobile home and live quietly among my animals. Id be happy never to put any permanent structure on it, and would never sell for development. But it will never happen. I would lay money on the fact that if I tried this, Id be off in weeks. Definitely not years! And why? because there are double standards, and the police are terrified of confronting travellers.

Why should there be more sites for them? I dont remember being given free land. Take back their bloody free laptops as well. Blairs out so stop pandering, not exactly dying out are they.

They continue to have huge families so will always want more and more and more land.They need to start building double decker caravans. Maybe they could try travelling once in a while.

Dromratlee - I watched the programme the other night and was cheering on your side (if that makes sense)
Not all 'travellers' are the same - just as not all 'settled' people all the same. As you say there are plenty of dodgy people who live in houses, just as there are plenty of honorable, hardworking people who consider themselves to be 'travellers'

I buried my head in shame when my parents (was staying at their home) who I watched the programme with were shouting 'pikeys' at the screen (I had already said my piece and risked being in serious trouble if I said anymore!!!)

Its late, I must go to bed but I wanted to show a bit of support for a group of people that I think get a rough deal :(

I agree, not everyone is the same, I knew some lovely travellers as a child, and im sure many just want to get on with their lives quietly. But, there are many many who just give them a bad name.

Is there different treatment of traditional travellers and new age ones? I thought the services offered to them were the same. So actually anyone could become a new age traveller and be entitled to the same treatment if they wanted to.

Dromratlee a brilliant post.

I've said it before and I will say it as many times as I have to: STOP generalising, demonising an entire race of people. Racism is gutless, ignorant and pathetic.

The travellers and gypsies I have met have been for the very most part utterly dignified, so clean, so passionate about the children in their extended families, and the women I have met are so keen for their children to be educated. Please do not tar an entire race with the same brush, or you will rightfully be accsued of being racist, and shame on you. Every race on this planet has lazy feckless bastards, abusers and tax dodgers. I have only ever met the proudest and most protective parents on sites; the vast majority of tax dodgers in this country are white British and 'sick'.

Whatever your views don't start with the racist shite of 'they do this' and 'they don't do that'. Please.

It seems horribly unfair that there are many many 'settled' people who behave appallingly yet no one seems to think that reflects badly on the population as a whole.
Traveller people thoughout the world get a rough deal. As do all groups of people the majority consider to be different or in some other way unacceptable.

Khanty - a semi nomadic tribal people in Siberia - different culture etc but as with the other people groups Survival International works to help many of the same issues.

With Daily Mail and the like reporting behaviours are you surprised we believe an ethnice group can have such a high number of wrong'uns???
Taking into consideration the fact the amount of laws that were created to hinder travellers, is it any wonder travellers feel criminalised?

Seriously I have met the proudest, most protective of their children people on sites and I will stand against racism towards them

Can't work out why this bugs you so much

Not a race.

There are many comments about media coverage, I think most people develop negative opinions on their experiences. So when a brand new park and ride opens and 2 days later it has to be closed as they have set up shop and are flinging poly bags of shite around the place bad opinions will be formed.

Ditto, lead, copper thefts coinciding with their arrival every year and the cowardly double standards treating them better than your average tax payer

not a race.

they're just not.

and i did try to make a distinction between a cultural group who are following a way of life they were born into and those who are not in the slightest.

but this is a lifestyle choice not a racial group.

and land grabbers?

i haven't grabbed land, i rent it at a fee.

and clearly no one of us (and we're your they) gets to choose who moves in next door to us! most of us have seen huge demographical changes to our neighbourhoods and had to deal with it - we don't just say oh we don't get on with that race and we're not living near them because that would be racist and we'd be making ourselves homeless and not entitled to any help being rehomed - certainly they wouldn't build another 'estate'/'site' for us if we chose to leave one because we were racists. rightly so.

want the moon on a stick much?

somethingwitty can you clarify - in what way are travellers treated better than your 'average tax payer'?

go on, specifics please, backed up by something other than 'my aunt's cousin's dog's hairdresser knew...'?

because i find your insistence that they get preferential treatment to be bollocks somewhat surprising, seeing as they have the lowest life expectancy and highest infant mortality rates of any group in the uk.

All I'm going to say is that I find it grossly unfair that I received a £50 parking fine last week for staying 20 minutes after my ticket expired when at the back of the car park there were about ten caravans, transits and other vehicles that obviously had no tickets at all and the attendant didn't go near them. How can that possibly be right and fair?

What really pissed me off on that documentary (apart from the obvious bias against the residents) was the chap who having begun life by running off to Ireland to dodge National Service now claims to be an "official person" when he is in fact a meddler campaigning to prevent local authorities and landowners exercising their lawful rights.

I suggest that

1. No application for retrospective planning permission should be granted if it would have been refused if the application had been made first.

1. Any application for retrospective planning permission should require a bond, backed by an insurance company, to restore the land to its original condition within three months if permission is refused.

1. That bond should be sufficient for the grant of a warrant of possession if those concerned fail to leave, regardless of their circumstancs.

That would end such abuses of the system as Dale Farm.

QueenOfFeckingEverything

creation of designated Gypsy Traveller Liaison
Officer role

free latops

creation of scotish travellers education programme and online curriculum

ring fencing of funding

blind eye to smashing up cars/buses
edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/Gypsies-invade-park-and-ride.6428671.jp

blind eye to criminal damage and trespassing
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-13160468

Free parking
www.midlothianadvertiser.co.uk/news/local-headlines/travellers_camp_at_loanhead_park_and_ride_1_184719

What a shame, for years I've had an elaborate daydream about living in a field (maybe by the sea) in a static van, just me, my dogs and a big pile of books.

DH and DC's do NOT feature.

And now I find it's illegal. Poo.

No need for free laptops. I am quite sure they have the money to buy a cheap laptop.

I don't dispute the facts of what you are saying OP, and nor do I think travellers should be given rights over and above what the average person gets.

But there is part of me that supports them in taking on planning laws in this country. The planning laws which vastly favour big developers who can give backhanders to local councillors, who can demand bribes request "planning gain" the individual self builder could not pay, who encourage vast swathes of our countryside to be taken over by identikit badly built soulless American style housing estates, etc.

The planning system in this country sucks, and contibutes to high house prices, because we all have to pay our part of the developer's premium, whether directly to the developer, or in prices set to match new builds driving up prices in the local area.

Yesterday I found 2 traveller girls in the baby change of Mcdonalds cutting the security tags out of clothes. One was doing a shit while the other sat on the floor. The door was unlocked.

When I went back in after to change my baby, the shit was overflowing the toilet and the girl had left shit marks on the seat.

Nasty.

Hmmm, I wonder if my mum is a traveller at heart - she's always moving because she hates staying in one place. I told her she should declare her roots, sell her flat & invest in a trailer and an SUV. She's not parking it on my drive though! Or she could just move to Ibiza & be a hippy jewellery seller.