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.......

All Travellers? All Travellers have a creed of robbing people? All Travellers rob people blind as a right? They all do it? And they all suppress women and subjugate their rights? All ??

The key issue wrt racism here, AWA, is that use of the plural when complaining about behaviour you ascribe to Travellers. You clearly do not understand that, whether you have 'lived racism' all your life or not.

Besides discrimination for creed or culture it also consists of using or implying 'all' when describing objectionable behaviour of individuals in a group -- speech that defames, demonises, vilifies or accuses all members of a group is racist.

Notacitychick, from Wikipedia, fyi, since we appear to be digressing:
'Going postal, in American English slang, means becoming extremely and uncontrollably angry, often to the point of shooting people dead, usually in a workplace environment.

The expression derives from a series of incidents from 1983 onward in which United States Postal Service (USPS) workers shot and killed managers, fellow workers, and members of the police or general public in acts of mass murder. Between 1986 and 1997, more than forty people were gunned down by spree killers in at least twenty incidents of workplace rage.'

yy Math

I'd give it a rest everybody, who doesn't agree with math and alice.
We are all, of course, racist to the core, and to continue to disagree with them is totally pointless.
Cos they are right, innit.

math you are a hoot.

I still think you're being very prejudiced - after all, the cases in the US were arguably due to the appalling worker's rights and working conditions of US postal workers.

Are you going to tar UK postal workers with the same brush?

Can you point me to any cases in the UK where it's happened? It's an extremely offensive term to me, as it suggests that purely by being a postal worker, you are likely to go crazy and gun down your boss. Are you saying this is the case? Do you often glibly use offensive terms like this?

I never read copy & pastes either scarah - lazy posting imo.

whooooh. verry scarey, msnet are changingw hat I'm typing

Anne, what do you mean, they are changing what you're typing?

I can't type sarah.
if i pause for a moment; evertyhing is ovverwritten

'Your post calling everyone on the thread 'bigots' is exactly the kind of response people get if they dare to tell of a negative experience living near a travellers's site.'

Again, at what point does piling on the anecdotes start to constitute vilification or demonisation, in the words of Jon Bergman.

'the cases in the US were arguably due to the appalling worker's rights and working conditions of US postal workers.' haha
Those poor put upon public service workers all over the world, all they have to do is sort the post, deliver it, and somehow resist the temptation to dump it and take the afternoon off.

Shock, horror!

Oh my god math stop with the prejudice against postal workers will you? So you're allowed to vilify public health workers are you? Doesn't fit in with your political ideology comfortably though.

What are you saying? - people that aren't postal workers go on punching and shooting sprees you know. Can't stand to read that sort of bigotry and prejudice. Tuts.

Oh, and I will share my anecdotes and experiences exactly as I like on a relevant thread - just as hundreds of other MNers have.

*public service workers not health.

I mean, not only are you demonising postal workers, but you are also making thinly veiled digs at people suffering mental health problems and breakdowns. Offensive

Anyway, I'm with LadyBeagle, I'm off of this thread. People are clearly taking my posts in a way I did not intend.

Can't find thething I just read about £16 million for Travellers' sites going underspent because councils don't want to incur the wrath of local voters. There is no national planning body to do it, so nothing is done.

Well aliceliddell councils don't have to spend it "because it's there" - it's not Mount bloody Everest. As for not wanting to incur the wrath of local voters, that's called democracy. I don't want a national planning body taking over the proper functions of councils - do you?

Yes I would welcome a National planning body rather that local councils,we might then get some consistency instead of the mess we have now.

Unless you want no housing, no wind turbines, no bye passes or loads of by passes (depending), no high speed trains, no adequate Traveller provision, etc. If you're happy with having none of that, then keep it at Parish council level. Heard of NIMBYism?

Rubbish, Alice. Turbines, roads, HST and the like are for the benefit of the whole community and have to go somewhere notwithstanding the NIMBY types.

But settlements for the people who call themselves travellers and want to live with others of their own culture - many aspects of which are unacceptable - are only for the benefit of those individuals and to the gross disbenefit of those near to whom they seek to live.

So there is no comparison.

They should be expected to house themselves as others do, lawfully as individuals or families, with no apartheid-era separate development, and at their own expense. That's not NIMBY: that's equality of treatment.

HST aren't much use to people who don't live near train stations, or live near inaccessible stations. Could go on, but can't be arsed, really. You get the basic idea.

Andrewofgg,many travellers live along side the settled community quite happily and have been accepted by the settled community.

I actually found your post quite disturbing But settlements for the people who call themselves travellers and want to live with others of their own culture - many aspects of which are unacceptable unacceptable to whom? Whilst I accept some travellers may have anti social habits not all do and to tar all with the same brush is wrong and discriminatory.