to think that evicting hundreds of travellers from their site is unfair and immoral

[rocketty]

It's an illegal site. They didn't have planning permission. It's greenbelt...

but it used to be a car scrapyard (not rolling fields and thatched cottages then), they own the land and it's right next to a legal settlement.

They've obviously broken the law by settling here, but on balance, wouldn't it be more ethical to let them be? The children are settled at school and getting an education. Lots of people are prejudiced against gypsies and travellers but they've got to live somewhere.

I've seen the news articles about it. It makes me feel sad.

Then I find another way to do it, math, or modify my behaviour. Or save up the money to go live outside teh society that doesn't accept me on my own terms. I don't expect society to modify itself just because I am I. I like to drive a car fast. Society has deemed that illegal for various reason so I can speed and get a fine and ban or buy land with permission to set up a track where I can go the speed I like or visit one and drive as fast as I like.

My BIL lost his job. His industry dried up. Maybe he should just sue them all to try to force them to provide him with a livelihood. That'll garner lots of sympathy.

Probably better to retrain and get another job/start a business, as he's done.

This eviction is going to be grotesque
there must be a better solution.

Again I ask you to imagine if you were born into a traveller family and had had roots roughly in one location or a while. The eviction would be an incredibly traumatic and life shaping event.
There must be a better solution.
Also planning has always been about who you know and how well you grease the planners wheels.

Why didn't I think of this before... I shall be a Traveller. Save myself a bomb on taxes and not too worry about any fines for taking my DC out of school so I can grab an affordable holiday. I can just say "excuse me I'm a Traveller so I shall travel at any time that suits me. What's that nonsense about interrupting their education? I am a Traveller, that's what I do,who needs education for that.

I hear you, minks. I'd like to live near my family, too. I have a HA tenancy with all these silly rules about how many people can occupy the flat. They're idiots who don't understand my culture of extended family. Perhaps I should move my folks and ILs in here and they can just sod off. I'll sue them to try to force them to kick all those homeless people living round us with no other place to go out so I can have my right to do as I please.

I'd also like a dog. Oh, but that sorry tenancy says I can only have two domesticated pets and I already have two cats. Screw 'em. I'm going to say because I'm me, I should just have what I like.

Other people who had to get rid of their pet are just eejits.

Oh, in fact, our HA sent us a letter the other day about dog fouling. They had the nerve to write that their contractors who keep the grounds can legally refuse to cut grass in areas with too much dog shite and that if people continue to let their dogs foul, they can revoke the right of tenants to keep a dog.

How dare they! I'm me! I should be allowed to do what I like just because.

Didn't think Travellers where meant to stay anywhere long enough to start rooting Perry.

I should be king of all I survey, even if everything I survey outside these windows belongs to someone else.

That's what my culture's like, so those someone else's should just go get knotted because I'm calling Vanessa Redgrave.

I thought the key word was 'travel', minks, indeed.

I sure math would have sympathy with your cultural heritage, lachesis.

I've been having a think about this.

I'm fed up paying mortgages and rent, so I'm thinking of breaking into math's house when she's out and living there as a squatter. I will type a rental agreement in a fictitious name and claim that I am a lawful tenant.

I will go to an old people's home and get some frail old lady to live there with me, so I can say it would be cruel to evict her. If I can hire a couple of young kids I will put them up as well.

I'll see if I can find a sympathetic bishop to support me.

Sounds like a good plan.

BTW I am a Welsh Episcopalian. In my family we have our own ways of life and anyone who criticises my actions is doing it on racist or religious grounds.

yy of course they are still travellers if they are forced to settle to deal with illness or schooling for little ones

Plenty of people from other cultures manage to come here and have jobs and homes and lives within the bounds of this culture's and society's laws.

Plenty of peoples' way of life has been made extinct and they've still managed to function within the bounds of their society's laws.

Why should it be any different for travellers?

That's the heart of the matter, really.

But if at the basis of your culture you are a travelling people...at the very heart of you...clannish and travelling
how can you be expected to change that without losing your entire culture?

Exactly Lachesis you've got the point I'm trying to make. And no my post was not tongue in cheek,I'm deadly serious. I am,and dare I say many others,fed up to the back teeth by excuses used for criminal behaviour,abuse of status and overuse of the word discrimination to the cost of hard working,law abiding people who have to pick up the bill for all this nonsense all the time just because the poor little devils where made to wear too tight shoes in their childhood or happen to like living in a caravan with all the family round the campfire.

Perry wrote: Also planning has always been about who you know and how well you grease the planners wheels.

That alone just lost the argument with me. That comments sounds ill-informed, offensive, naive and bitter.

Piglet,I could come and join you for a while (but only for a while as I must travel). I was born abroad and that might give you some extra points too. Lachesis you may well be King but I don't recognise your authority and shall travel through your Kingdom and stay on a beautiful spot for as long as I desire.

eeerr I'm not bitter, what an odd thing to say! How rude!

I speak from the experience of living in Northern Ireland that constantly has dodgy dealings with planners
recent Iris Robinson dealings just the tip of a huge iceberg here

'how can you be expected to change that without losing your entire culture?'

Well, Perry, you can travel. You can learn to do so legally, you can modify your life, to do so legally.

I did a bit of research into such, back before we got this tenancy, and were facing homelessness with 3 young children.

It's not as easy as parking up illegally, in fact it's downright hard, but it can be done. It involves a lot of travelling and temporary/seasonal work and saving or moving around for times of little work.

It involves behaving oneself to the point where you can live or move from one legal site to the next.

I actually know someone who lives in a static caravan on a legal site that is not licensed for year-round residence. Residents must abide somewhere else for 10 weeks of the year. And yes, they have two children.

What they did is find, online, others in similar situations. During the 6 weeks of summer and two fortnight holidays at October and December, they swap with those others, and take on seasonal work accordingly.

They pay pitch fees accordinly.

It can be done, but it involves paying fees and taking seasonal work and obeying the rules of whatever camp they are parked in.

sorry, there's another fortnight holiday at Easter they sometimes use to swap as it's easier to get work in Spring. or save.

they are not rich. they are hospitality workers.

the children attend my childrens' school.

the pitch/site fees amount to about £3000/annum, tbh, and is their biggest expense. they live accordingly, to prepare and have money for such.

they've even swapped with british expats in france and spain

How is wanting to live with three generations of your family dangerous as speeding in a car would be?

When Travellers apply for planning permission to set up the sort of community that wallows multigenerational life they are opposed by local residents on visual impact and other flimsy grounds.

PigletJohn, Travellers don't pay mortgages or rent. They pay cash. They don't want to rent from a bank or from a LA. They are willing to pay for whatever accommodation they live in. They don't want other people's houses or land. They want to buy their own and live in houses they build and own. It's the American Dream. So you can't have my flat just on the basis that you're fed up with paying your mortgage. If you want to do the Traveller thing you must pay cash only. And my residence is protected 24 hours a day by my cat anyway.

'Plenty of people from other cultures manage to come here and have jobs and homes and lives within the bounds of this culture's and society's laws.'
-- This has been a long road for the Irish (if you will recall the 'No dogs, No Irish' bit from upthread, and that was not from the far distant past either) and not because the Irish didn't want jobs or appreciate the finer points of indoor sanitation.

Adverse possession here fyi, PigletJohn. You have every right to try to take my residence out from under me. It will take you 30 years if I live on Crown lands (pretty sure I do not) and either 10 or 12 years otherwise.

'How is wanting to live with three generations of your family dangerous as speeding in a car would be?'

It isn't, math, unless you break the law and expect others to pay for it. Plenty of people do it here, without breaking the law and expecting others to pay for it.

Oh, back to 'No blacks, no dogs, no Irish' again. Yes, that's a reason why people, whoever they are, should be allowed to do whatever the hell they please, because in the past, governments/societies/nations, were racist and legislated that. Mea culpa, no matter if people living now had nothing to do with the past, they should atone by setting aside rules they themselves have to live by. Yep, that's going to work and engender sympathy. My people had their land stolen from them, were raped, robbed and pillaged into near oblivion by white settlers. Therefore, I should be able to live there now and do whatever I please.

'PigletJohn, Travellers don't pay mortgages or rent. They pay cash. They don't want to rent from a bank or from a LA. They are willing to pay for whatever accommodation they live in. They don't want other people's houses or land. They want to buy their own and live in houses they build and own. It's the American Dream.'

Then why set up illegal sites on which they don't pay for their accommodation? This isn't America. They want that 'dream', they're as free as anyone else to get a degree/profession to get a visa to go there, marry an American to get a spouse visa, get a job to buy a plot of land on which they can legally build a home and live in.

You want it, you go out there and get it by earning, you don't expect people to hand it to you on a plate just because you don't like how they live.

I'm not doing it because I'm a traveller.

We've already established that you don't require people to obey the law if you have sympathy with their desires and/or cultural heritage.

You have no right to be any less sympathetic to my desires and heritage than to anyone else's.

And if we are on Britain's racist past, it's 'No blacks, no dogs, no Irish', how come we don't have a Dale Farm full of descendants of people from the West Indies, Jamaica, Pakistan and India who were so heavily recruited in the 1950s and 60s? How come they are not parking up in caravans illegally saying, 'Hey, this is my right because 40-50 years ago, your government were racist bastards?'

How come instead we have Farah and Idowu, British children of African immgrants, running on our team, winning gold and silver?

I am not relying on adverse possession. I shall state that I have a tenancy, and have paid a year's rent in advance, and shall produce the documents (I typed myself) as evidence.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026723/Gypsies-immigration-officers-home-Proms.html#ixzz1VNFbCCtD