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.......

ANdrewofgg -- The National Party was dominated by Dutch speakers, and so was Pretoria.

English speakers did very well of course under apartheid as long as they were white. For historical reasons, English speakers tended to resist the idea of SA becoming a republic and separating from the Commonwealth, a policy that was aggressively pushed by the National Party, and did not therefore support the NP in great numbers until the 1960s when international opposition to apartheid started making itself felt, and a sort of white SA vs. the world feeling developed.

In other words, your impressions of SA history are bollocks.

Is all that bin collection money ring fenced?

Alice...me thinks you are on the wrong thread
This is the "Gypsys' go home...oh you are home" thread, not the "Sod job losses and cuts',I just don't want a smelly bin" thread

So many threads...so little time.

No, crazy - trying to indicate the Dale Farm thing isn't about cost as in OP, but more like your suggestion

We have some travellers around at the moment, Haven't seen where they have set up but they spent the whole day on the shore picking whelks, which is bloody hard work.
They will eventually move on, they always do, and it's usually about three caravans at the most.
I'm so sick of all the stupid racism posts, my knowledge of Dale Farm comes from the News, and posters on this thread.
I think most of the posters here are speaking from their direct experience of their own personal experiences of living beside particular traveller communities, one of them being Dale Farm.
I did see the 5 ladies on This Morning, they were very articulate and made lots of good points.
But I did get annoyed when they said they 'wanted nothing to do with the local community' and just wanted to live with their own group. Isn't that racism too?

Lady, no, that is prejudice. For racism you need to be in the group with the power to do something with your prejudice.

But could that unwillingness to mix with the local community be due to the hatred and abuse that they may have suffered at the hands of the local community,which I know goes on as I speak from personal experience.

alice that is not the definition, at least not the legal definition of racial discrimination. It is a two-way street. A black employer who tries to give black applicants for work a leg-up by preferring them to better-qualified white applicants may find it comes expensive at the Tribunal and so it should. It is is about individuals, not groups.

math listing a handful of powerful Afrikaners does not negate my point that they were not all rich and powerful. In the nature of things those that were not do not leave much trace in the history books. I don't doubt that many of them voted for the powerful Afrikaners whom you mention.

In any event this is not South Africa in the twentieth but Britain in the twenty-first century and nobody has the right to be segregated - except at household level - from those of another ethnic origin.

OK, they were not all rich and powerful. I will humour you and say there were four of them living in tar paper shacks who derived no benefits at all from being white Dutch speakers in SA from 1948 to 1994.
.

The NP won the overwhelming support of Afrikaaners in general elections and from the 60s on, the support of English speakers too. This was no 'handful of powerful Afrikaaners' -- this was the party that represented Afrikaaner interests, including Afrikaaner republican sentiment/ SA-Boer nationalism and the oppression and exploitation of non-white people in SA.

You are quite right that this is not SA but the UK we are talking about, and the whole apartheid thing (which you brought up) has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the Traveller situation.

I think there is a lot in what you say, Dipsyistipsy.

Andrewofgg, it is about not seeing people as individuals but instead lumping them together as 'them', part of a certain group who are 'not like you'.

Andrew It's a political definition, not a legal one. This whole debate has been about exactly that distinction.

Math I try not to do what you say - I try to treat people as individuals endowed with the same rights and subject to the same laws as I am. Obviously I don't always succeed - neither do you - neither does anybody. And people who say "My family and I are travellers and we want to live with and among other travellers" are treating everyone else including me as part of of a group which is "not like them". Glad to learn you agree that that is wrong.

I was indeed the first to mention Afrikaners - by attacking them and all apartheid meant. And saying that I want nothing like it here. Not even self-imposed apartheid.

Alice you can define things how you like, but courts and councils must follow the legal definition which makes no distinction between discrimination against white people, black people, Asian people, travellers, or any other ethnic group.

It would indeed be impossible to change that under European law. And a good thing too. Apart from anything else, what if a member of one group said to be oppressed discriminates against members of another such group?

So back we come to the question of why Travellers' pp applications are turned down 90% of the time, and to the opportunity for expression of racism, prejudice and discrimination that the planning application process presents to communities.

Because this is really not about hordes of settled families all itching to knock on the doors of trailers and welcome their new neighbours with home baked goodies if only the Travellers wouldn't be so standoffish. This is not a question of self imposed apartheid. It is a case of once bitten twice shy. Travellers are well aware of what is written about them when they apply for pp and they are also aware that they are being moved on by LAs without anywhere else to go as described below.

From Gypsies and Travellers: Facts and Figures - Dept for Communities and Local Govt. publication:
'Since 1994 many local authorities have seen Gypsies and Traveller policy as purely a matter of enforcement against unauthorised sites, without making any new site provision. They have often used combined police and council powers to 'drive the problem away'. At the same time, Gypsies and Travellers have become more likely to want to live on settled sites. The combination of a desire to have stable permanent accommodation, the experience of being constantly 'moved on', the shortage of public sites and the cost and difficulty of establishing private sites has led some Gypsies and Travellers to buy land and develop sites before obtaining planning permission.' At the same time, the lack of alternative sites to go to has made challenges to eviction notices more likely to succeed. There really is a sensible alternative to spending £18m of taxpayers' money on an eviction, and that is spending far less and providing suitable alternative sites.

Not on green belt land where nobody else would get pp.

If I am refused pp for an extension which I want because my family is expanding that does not mean the council has to find me a bigger house or somewhere to build one.

And people who want to live "among their own kind" are seeking self-imposed apartheid - whatever their motives.

Finally councils cannot be blamed for what residents write about them and cannot let it influence them.

The key point is simply this: that LPAs must consider the application, not the applicant. And that applies across the board.

What part of councils' obligation to provide culturally appropriate accommodation for traditionally nomadic Gypsies/Travellers do you not get, Andrewofgg?

You are probably not a member of an ethnic minority whose culture includes nomadism so no, the council is not obliged to provide an alternative for you. You can go ahead with your extension and hope the council won't notice for five years, after which you are out of the woods. Plenty of people do.

From my previous link:
-- 'Why do Gypsies and Travellers camp on other people's land or develop land without planning permission?

There is a serious shortage of authorised sites for Gypsies and Travellers across the country with approximately one in five caravans on unauthorised sites. This has led to a growing tendency for Gypsies and Travellers to buy land and develop it without planning permission (unauthorised development) or camp on land that they do not own (unauthorised encampment).

The problem dates from 1994 when the duty on Local Authorities to provide appropriate sites was removed. In place of this, Gypsies and Travellers were encouraged to buy their own land and seek planning permission. In practice, however, this has proved unworkable, as many Local Authorities have failed to identify appropriate sites or to grant planning permission. In addition, Gypsies and Travellers, wanting a more settled lifestyle, have bought land where they could, rather than where it was most appropriate.

-- What is the Government doing about solving the problems created by unauthorised sites?

Gypsies and Travellers are a part of our society and need appropriate places to live, just like the rest of the community. If they cannot find an authorised site, their only alternative is to camp somewhere that is not authorised. So it is clear that the problem of unauthorised development and encampments can only be solved by the provision of more public and private sites.'

So there's the answer to your statement 'LPAs must consider the application, not the applicant. And that applies across the board.' The simple truth is that LPAs do listen to the campaigns against Travellers that are mounted by residents. Elected officials are sensitive to the fact that there are no votes in Traveller friendly policies, and pp is denied to Travellers due to local pressure.

The problem is that racial discrimination against travellers and gypsies is more widely tolerated than against other ethnic minorities,people would not dare complain about a black family applying for pp but would not hesitate to complain about a traveller family applying for pp.
A recent case near to me was when a Romany gypsy family applied for pp for a small site,over 300 letters against the pp were sent(from a small village),over 25% of these contained racially abusive comments.

It is not the function of LAs to provide sites. That was done away with in 1994. The former law was unworkable; where sites were provided (1) illegal encampments sprung up nearby of people "waiting for a place" and (2) the fixtures were regularly found to be missing after those renting had moved on; I draw no conclusions.

An appropriate place to live is one which is physically possible and not on green-belt. It may not be precisely what people want.

Dipsy many of the objections councils get to developments contain material which does not set out a proper planning ground and they have to be ignored. There is an appeal procedure which the DF people have gone through and lost.

By the very fact of applying for pp do they not commit themselves to abiding by the result? Why should they then be allowed to ignore it when it does not suit them? In short why are they to be considered above the law? and why are the Council and the residents to be denied the protection of the law?

If a council does not have a reasonable alternative (that means 'culturally sensitive' btw) to the place the Travellers are being evicted from it makes it easier for them to contest the eviction. So ipso facto councils do have an obligation to provide sites. And councils have always had an obligation to spend their taxpayers' money responsibly. This means providing authorised sites and not spending £18m on an eviction.

Travellers are not above the law and do not consider themselves to be above the law. They just have a better grasp of the subtleties of the law than you do, Andrewofgg.

Authorised sites where? On greenbelt land?

By "culturally sensitive" do you include anything unlawful such as attempting to exclude those of other ethnicity out?

And why are the residents near dale Farm to be denied the protection of the law which forbids greenbelt development?

You say they do not consider themselves above the law. If the law is amended to forbid retrospective pp for new construction - and the idea has been floated - will they stop doing it?

But the residents near Dale Farm have built illegally on green belt land and had pp granted retrospectively so why dont the council treat the travellers the same.

By culturally sensitive I mean on sites in trailers or mobile housing of some sort and with large extended families closeby as opposed to scattered in council housing. Anyone else wishing to move in could of course hitch up their wagon and move in if there was room and depending on what protocol the council had for assigning places on a site.

It is up to the councils to find sites, somewhere, or redesignate greenbelt land or former industrial land unless it has features that would make it dangerous. That is if they are serious about how they spend taxpayer money.

(Your insistence on harping on about self imposed apartheid is really silly.)