To think that rights/wrongs aside, a council needing to make £300m cuts should focus it's funds somewhere other than evicting gypsies?

[Blubell]

I know there are massive fors and againsts in the Dale Farm evictions, and I don't want to start a big travellers debate, but in this time of austerity measures, and the fact that Essex council needs to cut £300m in 3 years, is evicting the site now, when it's a case that has been going on for 10 years really the best way to spend the little cash they have? Its been reported it's going to cost the council £18m to return the site - which used to be a scrapyard so hardly a place of outstanding beauty - back to greenbelt, how many carers, libraries etc will be lost to fund that? Just a thought.......

Yes, Math , re the police inactivity, I'll tell my farm owning friend to drop a line to our MP, I'm sure that'll change everything

For all I know, she may well have done - but you know, this is just something that goes on in our village, we all have lives to lead, jobs to do, businesses to run. When the police tell you there is no further action to be taken, give you a crime number and tell you to claim on the insurance, that's what you tend to do. But thanks for reducing my post to a sense of being 'massively put-upon'.

I do think that the police tend to give Travellers a wide berth and turn a blind eye to much of the anti-social behaviour and certain indescretions (such as driving without insurance, or not wearing seatbelts, or fly-tipping for example) because they are fearful of opening up the can of worms that is an accusation of constant racial harrassment. If they suspect based on previous intelligence/evidence that a small group of people are responsible for a particular crime spurt, or are regularly flouting driving laws or whatever, and that small group of people all happen to be from the same ethnic minority group and living in very close proximity to one another, the police have a nigh-on impossible task on their hands. 1980's Stop And Search anyone?

People don't get turfed out of their homes because they behave unlawfully. They are evicted because they break the terms of their contracts. Criminals who do their time in prison return to their homes for the most part, where their families still live while they serve their sentences.

No, Notacitychick -- it's a serious question. Why don't the police do their jobs? They are paid to uphold the law. Paid by the general public whose property is being stolen and vandalised in fact. If it's not important enough to you and your neighbours to see to it that your elected representatives know that the other public servants are not doing their job, then that is your choice to make. Maybe people who are willing to put up with substandard service from their police and elected representatives get the service they deserve.

The put-upon comment was directed at a previous poster who also expressed a fervent desire to see the downfall of the Eurozone and Britain's exit from the EU.

My son had a very expensive bike stolen from a friends back garden recently, where he had left it overnight as it was too rainy and dark to cycle home. It got left there for a few days and eventually when he went back for it, was told it had been stolen.

I went to speak to the parents to find out what had happened, I was told 'We know who did it, everyone knows'. (The youth in question had seen it over the fence and repeatedly asked to buy it but had been told it wasn't theirs to sell, so it seems he helped himself ) 'but there is no point calling the police because they won't do anything. And if you call them then they will think it is us who grassed, because it was from our garden, and you will make it impossible for my family to be safe here. No-one challenges these people, they do what they like. You won't see that bike again'

What the hell are you supposed to do faced with a situation like that? We just had to write off a £350 bike!

FN, if the police feel hamstrung by wishing to avoid the appearance of racism, they need to figure out how to avoid it and get on with their jobs.

The constant moving on of Traveller communities makes it not really worth their while though -- why would you bother going to the effort of dealing with people who will sooner or later be someone else's remit, after all. Is it easier just to wait for the inevitable eviction or voluntary moving on?

You call the police and you make the report.
You sit up at night to wait for the harassment.
When it happens you call and report the harassment.
You keep on calling as the harassment keeps on coming.

You make an absolute nuisance of yourself. The squeaky wheel gets the oil.

math - planning law is an implied contract between all landowners. I won't break it on my land and you won't break it on yours. The Dale Farm people are just ignoring it.

Math Thank you for clarifying you weren't referring to me as put upon.

But, FellatioN is right, if you don't realise that this is the case, then I'm afraid you are living in some sort of 'Dixon of Dock Green'/'Heartbeat' land, where every crime is investigated by your local bobby, who then solves it with ease, and the perp goes 'it's a fair cop guv' and they all live happily ever after.

I wouldn't even begin to know how to address the lack of police response - but I know a letter to an MP wouldn't do anything! Our local counseller, unfortunately is all too aware of what goes on, and he speaks to the villagers 'off the record'. The police don't even like to set foot on the travellers camp, as far as I can make out, as they get such a hostile response.

I'm sorry if this doesn't fit in with your academic argument of 'but all public servants are accountable', but as I said before, we all have our lives to lead. Most people don't actually have the time or inclination for a massive fight for for a police investigation, over, say, a smashed windscreen.

Scarah is also right

SarahStratton -- you prefer to fulminate behind the twitchy curtains and pontificate about the law, and not do anything to see to it that the law is upheld?

When petty crime goes unpunished it tends to become a bigger problem.

When people prefer to point fingers instead of getting off their arses and actually making an effort to be heard by those they elect, then communities go down the toilet. Do you expect the democratic process to work without any direct involvement from you? Do you prefer to pile on anecdotes about the Travellers and contribute to the breakdown of relations and the fragmentation of communities?

I lived in a suburb of Dublin that was frankly a dive for a long time but has over the years dragged itself up by its bootstraps to become a very pleasant place to live thanks to the gritty determination of small groups of residents who would not allow the thugs, thieves and graffiti artists take over. It is no fun to round up volunteers or to take part in a litter drive through a corporation estate on a wet Saturday afternoon or to spend time campaigning for provision of a football field or tennis courts, attending meeting after meeting for ten years with officials from the council and pointing out that there was a population of about 4,500 under the age of 18 with absolutely nothing to do except drink cider at the beach, joyride, and deface walls, but people got out and did it for the good of all. It is no fun to have stones thrown against your front window because someone called the Gardai again to report the gang that was sitting on the cars parked on the street outside. But people did it for as long as it took and it is now a lovely place.

I am not dismissing any posts. I am wondering why you don't take your complaints to the police and keep on taking them, and then further if the police don't seem to care. By taking the matter further, I mean complaining about the police and keeping on complaining until someone took the matter up. This is what it took in the place I lived.

Planning law is not an implied contract.

Notacitychick -- again, you get the service you demand from your public servants. This is how some places stay as 'leafy' as they do. It takes a lot more effort in some communities than it does in others to see to it that the police do their jobs. That's not an academic argument. It's the sorry truth. Nothing gets handed to anyone on a plate.

Math I thank you for 1. your victim blaming, and 2. the lesson in how to make your community nice.

With the greatest respect to you, though, you do not know what it is like here. Your posts are very patronising - you are applying an academic argument to someone's life, and a situation you have no knowledge or experience of. These things are far more complicated that you give credit for.

Math do you even read other people's posts? What about fellationelson's points? You're the one pontificating from behind a curtain as far as I can see.

Then you can see planning law as just something we all have to obey and that includes the persons who call themselves travellers. But you cannot define it in any reasonable way which excuses them from obeying it.

The same applies to e.g. the law requiring motor insurance or do you think math that theu should be excused from that too?

Just what obligations do you think they do have?

I apparently read far better than people who mistake remarks directed at other posters for remarks directed at them. I have answered FN's points. Apparently my experience of getting the police to do their jobs is not applicable because it is academic, or it happened in Ireland, or or or or...
Do you have any idea how 'naice' places to live get to stay that way, Notacitychick?

Andrew -- The Travellers are not excused from having motor insurance, unless the police have decided for whatever reason to turn a blind eye to Travellers who don't have insurance, in which case for all practical purposes they are in fact excused... Not sure what the situation in Britain is, but in Ireland anyhow Travellers have long complained about the refusal of insurance companies to sell them insurance. They have picketed insurance offices to press their point and demand the chance to buy motor insurance and comply with the law.

'Planning law' is not the straightforward black and white proposition of your imagination, Andrewofgg. Apparently you have completely missed the point that when it comes to pp the process is cynically abused by people determined to keep Travellers out of their communities 90% of the time. Ditto the fact that retrospective pp is the kind most Travellers receive, and that this is available to and used by people in the general population too in large numbers.

Actually Sarah the local residents are not also victims; they are the ^only victims.

'But you seriously have no idea of what the consequences are for someone who does.
In theory, that is precisely what should happen, report to the police and it gets sorted out.
In practice what does happen is report to the police and get your car trashed, a brick through your windows, or you are followed and intimidated.'

SarahStratton, if you are not happy with the way the police do their jobs then you need to take the matter further. Unless this is how you want to live your life of course. If living in a place where the police are responsive to your concerns is something you value, then it will take work and commitment to get what you want. In practice, there are no automatic consequences of the kind you describe for people who make complaints to the police in 'leafy' places, because people there are willing to make nuisances of themselves. Don't knock it til you've tried it.

I wouldn't mind if cuckoo land was near Dale Farm!

'Yes math but most applications for retrospective p.p. are in respect of trivial breaches and concern applications which would have been granted if they had been made prospectively,'

And you know this -- how?

So you don't believe me about the motor insurance. You are wrong in all your other assumptions so why would this be any different?

LOL at 'cynical' Do a google search for retrospective planning permission. You will find forum after forum of cynicism on the part of homeowners. There's a lot of it about. Oh what lawlessness. The cunning of people who notice that there are time limits beyond which councils may not act...

No LOL for 'these lawless people' though. For anyone still interested in the question of vilification or demonisation (since we seem to have a problem with the word racism) note painting with a broad brush there -- are all Travellers who apply for retrospective pp, which is a perfectly legal part of the process, cynical and 'lawless'? Why are Travellers 'lawless' while the many others who do this get off with the assumption that their applications would have been granted if they had got around to filing them?

math you really are in cloud cuckoo land - in my village these matters are taken further - by the villagers, the residents association, the local town counsellor and by the pcso. It makes not one iota of difference - because the police won't go onto the travellers sites unless it is something like abh or murder. They just tell you to claim on your insurance.

I'm sure in your little Dublin suburb, the local thugs wouldn't and couldn't call 'racism' and 'discrimination' the way the, erm, 'perpetrators' do in my situation.

No, I am living in a nice suburb where the police do their job.