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.......

Believe me OP it is not the council that has dragged the case on for 10 years

And how much do you think the council has spent on providing services for the travellers in 10 years?

No-one accused them of boiling babies and you are not doing your cause any favours by falling back upon ridiculous, extreme and untrue claims.

I have just watched an extremely thoughtful and even-handed Channel 4 documentary. Which raised all the entirely valid points about the need to provide enough sites for Travellers and gypsies (although personally I'd add 'those who have nowhere else to live' but whatever). However, it also showed the state of some places where Travellers have pitched up over the Summer, when apparently they do go travelling. It showed the fly-tipping around the site and the loo paper and shit left in the bushes.

It was careful to point out the cameras were not there when the garden rubbish and rubble was dumped. However, strange co-incidence that so many of the vans pulling the caravans were plastered with the names of 'garden clearance' and building companies. Traveller teenagers who spoke to the film company - with permission from the adults - explained that they don't use the loos in their caravans because it's disgusting to use the loo near where your mother cooks. But not disgusting to leave your shit in the bushes for someone else to clear up, apparently.

I have just enrolled DS in pre-school and they didn't ask for any proof of residency. My experience is v limited, but I have nothing to suggest that primary school will be any different.

@ Tethersend - can I just be the first to say... YEAH!

Cote DAzur, the effect the arrival of this massive new community in a tiny rural village has had on the village school has been massive. I can assure youthat Essex CC has tried its damndest to provide an education fo rthe travellerchildren as is absolutely their right. Sadl this has had a massive knock-on effect on a small (very small!!) village school

Btw, I used to live in Shepherd's Bush, where there was a Traveller or Gypsy site (don't know which) sandwiched between the Westway and the two sliproads to the Westway. Horrible and I felt sorry for anyone who had to live there. But there were plenty of council tower blocks that were also hard up against the dual carriageways - and not much spare land in Shepherd's Bush to create new sites.

I live within 5 miles of the site btw

I uncerstand that Essex has more offically designated traveller sites than anywhere else in the south of England btw

Edam, I asked you if you would like to accuse them of boiling their babies, since you were being so free and easy with the speculation about their real estate holdings. I haven't claimed anyone has made that specific baby boiling accusation, just drawn an analogy.

You're right that they do not like indoor bathrooms. A lot of sites have outdoor toilets or a toilet block. Various nomadic people have their own versions of 'kosher' rules of living and the Travellers have theirs. There are also traditions regarding washing of clothes. (One more reason houses do not work for them) Sites that have toilets that are constantly backed up, or insufficient in number or non-existent end up very unsightly.

Where do you think your household rubbish ends up and how pretty does it look?

Cote, you need to take into account the element of hyperbole here. ('"Illegal camp appeared overnight. Large number of traveller children enrolled at local village school.")

Erm math, it is true that a huge number of traveller children enrolled at the village school.

Don't assume, that because someone disagrees with you that they are making up stuff because they are bigots. That happens to be true.

Your boiling babies 'analogy' was insulting hyperbole and you should apologise.

I certainly don't dump my household rubbish on open land. As for 'not liking indoor bathrooms' why the hell does that give anyone the right to leave public land - or indeed any land - strewn with their shit? This wasn't an authorised site with public loos, it was open, public land that the Travellers had moved on to in the Summer - near Brighton. If they dislike their own human waste, how do they think other people feel about it?

Hyperbole doesn't mean 'making up stuff', Curryspice.

No apology Edam. Get off your high horse. You can't just make things up about Travellers, hit 'post message' and then insist your feelings are hurt because someone calls you on your insinuations.

I wasn't 'darkly hinting'. I was copying and pasting directly from a news site. As you have been. Just because what I quoted disagrees with your views doesn't make them less valid.

And as I, personally, do not break the law, I have no issues with it. As far as I'm concerned it works perfectly well. And our law system is considered good and fair by the vast majority.

Which is exactly as it should be.

No it was Edam who was doing the hinting, Sarah.

Math you are so patronising and smugly superior you make my teeth itch.

I know what hyperbole means thank you.

It means an exaggerated statement that is not meant to be taken seriously. That statement was not hyperbole. It was true. HTH

I appreaciate that you have principles in this matter. I applaud them and agree with many of them. However you need to ensure that you don't let actual facts of the specific case in hand, get in the way of your opinions and beliefs about the issue in general.

My household rubbish is recycled or goes to an energy-from-waste plant. I separate it carefully for this to happen.

The use of landfill is falling rapidly in this country and counties like Hampshire and Gtr Manchester will approach 0% in the next few years.

Dumping rubbish is not legal and not necessary.

I actually stopped posting on here for a while because your inability to see anyone else's point of view as being credible is intensely annoying and rather insulting.

This does need immediate action. If the council fails to enforce the orders they have obtained for a couple of years or however long you think they should wait, then they could find themselves having to restart legal proceedings, at vast expense. They might also be at a much greater disadvantage if things have happened in the meantime to alter the status quo.

After 10 years of fighting, perhaps it is time the travellers accept they have lost?

Good googling, Curryspice.

SarahStratton - Pot, kettle, black....

EldritchCleavage this is a classic case of a council painting itself into a corner on the taxpayers' dime. Nobody put a gun to Tony Ball's head or to the head of anyone else on the council and forced them to adopt the hard line they have adopted, but if the taxpayers of Essex are happy to see their money squandered to the tune of £18m because of intransigence and poor leadership on the part of their elected officials then good luck to them. The offer of negotiation of some sort of dignified end to the imbroglio by no less a body than the UN has been turned down just recently; apparently Basildon DC is determined to spend that £18m and have the costly showdown it has set its heart on. If I had a family member who was affected by this expensive ego trip on the part of Tony Ball and friends, with services cut or a job lost, I would be clamouring for his head on a stick. The joke is on the Taxpayers here.

Math - with the greatest of respect, if you'd had them at the end of your garden for 10 years then you'd be hacked off too.

I personally think the council are going to be left with egg on their face over this one. It's long been known that this was going to be costly. I know the council's solicitor and she was saying how expensive this course of action was nearly 5 years ago so it is no surprise.

If the travellers DO win this one though, then the laws with regard to planning will need rewriting for every one.

This illegal part of the site are a law unto themselves, very few pay council tax, they swap homes to avoid the council officials over this so that Mr Traveller living at 2 Dale Farm suddenly lives at No 4 meaning the whole bill issuing ( which he ignores) starts again. The water is not all paid for, the supply coming from pipes which supply elsewhere. Most have had offers of legal pitches but don't want this (they'd then have to pay council tax, water rates etc).

I live nearby and a sizeable number of the illegal site cause massive problems locally. Not surprisingly those affected are backing the council 100% on this.

Am I reading this right? A bunch of illegal settlers should be allowed to continue to do so, without paying any utility bills nor taxes, because they have a common dislike of indoor plumbing?

If a nomadic lifestyle is their "culture", then they should get moving. If they decide to settle in one place, they should abide by the same rules as everyone else - build on land with planning permission, pay council taxes, etc.

Perhaps they should all go and live in Vanessa Redgrave's garden.

I have sympathies with the nomadic life, but there is absolutely no excuse for shitting on public land and leaving bog roll strewn everywhere just because you have a cultural aversion to using a toilet in a caravan. Respect for culture is a two-way thing and most of the non-travelling community has a cultural aversion to treading on human shit. At least dig a fucking hole

" if the taxpayers of Essex are happy to see their money squandered to the tune of £18m "

You should consider the possibility that the people of Essex want these people gone at any price.

I doubt they feel the money is being squandered, I know the people I know who live there don't think so.

I wouldn't mind where they lived if they had to abide by the same laws snd rules of social decency as the rest of us.

When they don't pay council tax, they have no right to anything from the council.

They also have incomes, they should be paying income tax like the rest of us.

When they start making a contribution to society, they will have my sympathy. Until then, they will be viewed by many as freeloaders. Because whichever way you want to look at it, whether you support them or not, they are freeloaders.

No heritage is that special that it deserves the right to make up their own rules as they go along, without any recourse.