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.

Andrewofgg Thu 01-Sep-11 06:49:25

Tyr Villages and towns don't have livelihoods - people have livelihoods

Andrew, the livelihood of villages and towns are their people; I have no idea what your point is, outside of mere semantics.
Tracts of green belt land are regularly re-designated so that building can take place for commercial purposes and that is the double standard I referred to.
A large commercial interest has the clout to take a planning refusal all the way to judicial review if need be; individuals rarely so.

My point Tyr is that when customers take business from one shop to another that offers somebody else a livelihood. The notion that customers are property and can be stolen is at the root of much Luddite and NIMBY thinking. No business has the right to any person's custom; no customer owes any duty of loyalty to a business.

They don't have to be evicted, they could have moved out. They knew when they bought the land it had no planning permission - they bought it because it was cheap, and it was cheap because it was greenfield and couldn't get planning. It was a deliberate ploy.

When Prescott gave a two year stay people actually moved onto the land and built hard standing - knowing that they would have to leave in two years - except they had no intention of doing so.

It's also not true to say they have nowhere to go. Apparently they have land in Ireland and Europe.

They need to move out. They've cost the local council millions, and local residents have suffered. I don't feel sorry for them: I feel sorry for the residents.

I don't understand why anybody feels sympathy for them. They're the authors of their own misfortune. They'll be fine. There's people much worse off.

If they wanted to settle in order to educate their children, they were free to buy houses legitimately, or rent, like everyone else.
There have been illegal traveller sites near us in the past, and they quickly became no-go areas for non-travellers, due to the presence of human waste and unrestrained vicious dogs, mainly.

YABU

It's unfair & immoral to show a blatent disregard to the law, as they have done.

You can't turn a "blind-eye" to the laws of the land for one group of people because they are a "special case", that way leads to a breakdown of society & chaos for everyone...

I have no sympathy.

Basildon Council has stated that they have offered the travellers alternative accommodation in the area which they have refused to take up so I have little sympathy for the "we have nowhere to go" line.

Whoever asked about council tax - it can be charged on any dwelling which is a permanent domestic residence so they should be billed for council tax. Whether it is paid or not is a different matter.

Essex is very overpopulated and building land is at a premium. I don't see why this particular community should be allowed to flout the law. If the council don't apply the law then it just sets a precedent for every cowboy builder in the area to build wherever they like.

You can't ignore all the rules that most of society manages perfectly well to live by, and then shout 'racism' and 'discrimination' when the rest of society objects.

This seems to me a perfect example of the kind of issue that's great fodder for the type of hand-wringing liberal who lives in a nice insulated bubble, and can take a moral high ground from a safe distance as they aren't affected by it at all.

I grew up in Ireland in the 80s and 90s in an area with a large traveller population (partly settled, partly in a large halting site nearby) and there are a lot of issues with Irish traveller culture to be honest. At least in my experience education for either gender isn't really valued and women are expected to marry very young and have a LOT of children. There were also issues with travellers letting their horses run loose (we even had them in our garden occasionally if we forgot to close the gate), a practise which the council only cracked down on when a local child was kicked in the head, and a fair bit of destructive squatting in empty houses. The house two doors down from us was squatted by a big traveller family and completely trashed. And there was a hell of a lot of trouble, as the two main traveller families in our town have had a violent feud going on for as long as I can remember. There is a lot of anti-Traveller prejudice in the Irish settled community, but it is rooted in some real negative experience. Reconciling the two cultures takes a lot of give and taken on both sides, and claiming to be somehow above planning legislation is not give and take.

PS There's been a large influx of Irish travellers into the UK and to be honest as an Irishperson I can understand why people here get frustrated at having to provide for new arrivals from Ireland in addition to their own travelling community.

There's also a question of how much society or the state should go out of its way to accommodate 'alternative' lifestyles. For example if I chose to have a very large family, as may Irish travellers do, then it is up to me to live with the financial and practical consequences of that. The difference is that I as a settled Irish person can't play the "its my culture" card.

YABU - why should they get special treatment? They should have moved out years ago.

It has probably been said before on this thread but if I failed to pay my mortgage I would get kicked out of my house along with my one year old and I seriously doubt the bank would be wringing their hands over where we were going to go. I also have serious health problems but I don't think they would care too much about that either.

TBH if I were a resident of that village I would want them gone too. The line 'not all of us are trouble makers' always gets trotted out in relation to travellers and illegal sites - so how come there is so much trouble whenever they set up camp around here?

They should go, liberal hand-wringers notwithstanding.

A group of travellers recently camped round the back of a retail park where my DP works.

Groups of young teens, shoeless, were rampaging around the store he works in.

In other stores (with more portable, stealable stuff), groups of them were going in, announcing "We'll be taking stuff. It would not be advisable to try to stop us" or words to that effect, and helping themselves.

The Police were called, of course, and in fact stayed around for most of the day. They'd been moved on by teatime but I highly doubt any of them ended up in any sort of trouble. Needless to say, they left a remarkable amount of mess, considering they'd only been there a day.

Lovely people, travellers.

Glad to see lots of sense being talked on this thread.

"well-meaning halfwits"

My complete wanker of a drug-dealing cousin's GF supports them too. I saw her in the local paper. She has been committing benefit fraud for nearly ten years (living with working partner) and illegally sub-letting her council house, taking rent in cash while claiming housing benefit for the house and living elsewhere.

(Yes I have tried to report her but my Aunt is very cagey about crucial details such as her surname no use using cousin's obviously)

So it isn't all about hand-wringing liberals and how telling that someone like that would be on the side of the people from the site.

Totally agree that fairness and equality depend on a cohesive set of rules for all. This situation is not unfair. I do feel sorry for the children but as has been pointed out, it has been brought upon them by their parents. Now that is unfair.

somewherewest, I had forgotten about the horses. At one point, there was a loose horse on an A road with poor visibility at least once a week. The impression I got was that settled people who treated their animals the way this group did would be prosecuted for cruelty (and breeding of dangerous dogs), but that never ever happened.

There are responsible travelling folk around. Ages ago, there was a woman (and later, her partner) who camped near our house for a short period each year. She would take on a bit of work when she was here, and normally you'd hardly know she was there. Her caravan was always parked discreetly, she cleared up after herself and she looked after her horse better than she looked after herself. She was pleasant but very private, so no-one knew her that well, but she was mainly welcome. I sometimes wonder where she is now, and hope that the antics of other travellers, who move in huge destructive groups, have not caused people to be prejudiced against her.

The awful thing is all the rioters and protestors and general looking for a fighters will end up there going on about police oppression and violence. So predictable. More cost to the state. More special pleading. No doubt some last minute appeal to Europe.

If there is an appeal to Europe i hope Basildon Council just rides roughshod over it, as the travellers have done over our law, and I hope for the sake of the residents they just take the flak later. Once they're gone, they're gone. It's not as if Europe can send police over to force the travellers back onto the land.

It was built illegally what did they expect. they are the ones who moved in there knowing it was illegal so it is their fault if they have to move their children.I believe they were told eight years ago to leave and have been dragging it through the courts so the ones with children under eight have no excuse whatsoever. And if they have been making other people's lives a misery then they have no right to sympathy.