So my quiet town had a visit from our traveller 'friends' this week and

[AndThatsWhatIThinkOfYou]

They wonder why people are so against them setting up camp where ever they please.

They arrived last Wednesday on a football field with a park and caused a whole load of trouble, for example, going to the petrol station handing over euros, being told they won't accept euros as payment, they simple got in their vans and drove of.

Made a visit to our local Sainsburys got caught shoplifting, were locked in until police were called.

Local children playing on park got beaten up with sticks by the traveller children.

And to top it all of 3 vans pulling up outside a local pub, very busy, dropping their trousers and all three disgusting men casually took a shit one by one on the pub doorstep. Got in there vans and drove of.

Then left the football field and park in an absolute mess. Rubbish everywhere.

Each incident police were called but nothing has been done.

So AIBU to wonder why travellers think this behavior is acceptable? and why can't anything be done to stop it?

yes was it offensive to read what a certain group did and have done in lots of towns around the uk

Are travellers justified in denying their daughters the right to an education entitled to do that "because it's their culture and they are entitled to it"?

Most people aren't saying none of them do these things and those that are forced to move around and have no where to go are obviously worse behaved...seeing as their lives are often quite shit, basically.

But this thread is full of generalizations. I had no idea MN had so many closet bigots and racists on this thread. It goes to show how uniformed people are when they think it's a lifestyle choice. yeah, for bored middle class white kids who want to piss off their parents but not for most. They are a race, they have their own culture that is tightly bound to generations and generations of traveling, until relatively recently. Some do decide to forgo that culture and try to adapt to ours but it's not a case of just moving from a caravan to a house.

Anyway, will hide this thread and hope that MNHQ delete the fucking thing.

The travellers who used to live near me were awful, I caught some trying to break the lock off my garden shed one morning bold as brass and they left making threats to come back later with bigger men and bolt cutters. They were only early teens and the police were not interested. The policeman told me the 2 I described were well known locally and no action could be taken because of their ages which they were well aware of. I think its too much hassle for the police to try to bring a case unless its something really serious because they can just move to another site.

The Police are terrified of being 'politically incorrect' with travellers and ethnic minorities (or whatever you want to call them). They are paralysed with fear most of the time.

almost three quarters of this thread are people stating the incidents they have had with travellers. This can't be a coincidence? There are only a few playing the race card I can only assume you havent had them staying in your town

Tabitha, I said on page one that traveller women get the shitty end of the stick.

In the last round of budget cuts, in amongst all the other cuts, two that were made affected travellers' children who wanted to go to school. There was a bus service to take traveller children to school. this vital for those kids as their parents might not have had the same background of being at school every day, and they don't like car pool with the other soccer moms, so that cut has kept some traveller children away from school. A teacher friend of mine used to give resource hours to traveller children. That was cut too. Only children with assessments and psychological reports to back up their sn get the resource hours but travellers don't access those services, so they aren't getting the resource hours they might have got before when the label traveller gave them an entitlement to some extra help. Also, have heard of teachers paying for (or arranging) text books for traveller kids in sixth class who wanted to do their homework and fit in and go on to secondary with the rest of the class.

trust that anybody in favour of more of these traveller sites would be more than happy to live next door to one, and send their children to a school with many traveller children enrolled?

there is a council run traveller site near me. A council employee lives on site and maintains the site, provides advice and support to the travellers and acts as an advocate / spokesperson if needed, should anyone from the outside come to visit. I have been to the site on many occasions due to work, and whilst people aren't overly chatty, the atmosphere was certainly friendly. There has been no trouble or complaints about the site. I would be happy to live near a well organised legal site like this one, and send my children to school with their children.

I live in a naice area and there is a traveller site about 100m away from us. Think it has about 6 caravans. On the grounds I didn't even realise for the first 2 years we lived here I can't say I'm that bothered.

There is very occassionally problems with teenage lads riding motorbikes where they shoukdn't round here but I have no idea if they are traveller or settled teenage lads or a mixture of the two.

"Are travellers justified in denying their daughters the right to an education entitled to do that "because it's their culture and they are entitled to it"?"

No. But the Home Ed laws exist, and anyone can legally choose to educate their child at home, which is the course usually chosen. It is very hard to ensure that a travelling family is providing a 'full time education suitable for their interests and aptitudes', in the same way as it is hard for an attendance officer to compel school attendance on a family which moves often.

However, as I said upthread, while I do find the denial of education to traveller girls distressing - and in individual cases of bright girls I have taught I have been angry about their likely future - it is a problem 'from my perspective' rather than an 'absolute' problem.

The problem could be reduced, btw, if one of the main issues - co-education during the teen years - could be circumvented. Appropriate transport to the nearest all-girls school - a little like transport to the nearest catholic school for those of that background - would help, or would certainly have been an acceptable solution to the Traveller mums that I knew.

I've only got to page 7 so apologies if what I say has already been said. I have no experience of travellers, so this is just from reading this thread:

firstly, it seems that those who have had, generally universally, bad experiences of travellers are those who have lived alongside them. Whereas those who seem to have better experiences are those who've worked with them. I don't think you can compare these 2 things. I do think that unless you have lived alongside them, as a group, you can't really comment on what they are like to live with, surely. Working with them isn't the same at all.

secondly, I don't think you can say 'swap Traveller for black/Asian/Polish etc' because those groups (sorry, not the right word) generally don't set themselves quite so apart from the majority indigenous population, and don't live quite such insular lives. Possibly ultra-orthodox Jews (for example) are just as insular, and certainly have, to the outside view, some rather peculiar practices, but they, although living outside mainstream society, still live in accordance with accepted social norms of this country, and abide by the laws of this country.

I've got myself a bit jumbled there, sorry, my thoughts aren't translating into the written word very well. Hopefully someone more articulate will come along and make sense of them!

I see your point about living alongside rather than working with. Being a teacher is perhaps a little different - one is very closely embedded in the local village community, many of the school staff are locals etc etc, and the contact is over a very long periodof time, including both pupils and their families, thoguh parents' evenings, in the playground before and after school etc etc - plus home visits by the reception teacher.

Certainly the local residents who worked in the school - as teachers, TAs, lunchtime supervisors etc - would say exactly the same as I have about our experience of Travellers, because we all experienced the same things, in school and out.

"I trust that anybody in favour of more of these traveller sites would be more than happy to live next door to one, and send their children to a school with many traveller children enrolled?"

Yes. Absolutely. I would cheerfully have enrolled both my children in the school that I taught in, and lived in the village. The reasons I did not dp so were entirely due to distance (I commuted a long way, in the opposite direction to my husband, so we lived between) and a wish not to teach my own children.

I have to clarify I have lived 2 km from a halting site for almost 18 years. Personally I have never had a bad experience. I also had 2 great friends who were from a settled traveller background and they are rightly so proud of their heritage. the halting site is immaculate. It has bin collections and portaloos.
i have also listened to this racist tosh all my life from my ivory tower dwelling middle class mother.
I do not support unsocial behaviour from any person, unacceptable behaviour like racism should not be tolerated. But those of you wanting to eradicate the culture are disgusting and are no better than the Australians trying to eradicate the aborigine problem. The same issues exist there and for the same reasons and the rabbit proof fence solutions offered by some disgusting posters show the disgusting rot present in the settled community too.

Those who are comparing the criticisms and saying that if you replaced the word Traveller with Black/Jewish/Polish/Muslim are missing the key element of many of the complaints.
The communities mentioned may have insular traditions, eat different foods, wear different clothing and speak another language or two. None of those practices impact negatively on their neighbourhood. I live in a very mixed community, a decade ago I worked in a town with very polarised areas split on racial lines.
Flytipping, trashing an area, stealing to sell on, destroying fencing and woodlands and land, violence, intimidation and aggression to and within local communities. Mistreatment of animals.
Are these criticisms usually made of Jewish, Black, Muslim communities?
Why not?
Why do so many people worry at the idea of Traveller sites being set up, and why do so many communities and councils put huge time and effort into preventing return visits of travellers to unauthorised sites, following the experience of a previous year? The measures are not illegal, where is the racism?

MrsOakenshield

secondly, I don't think you can say 'swap Traveller for black/Asian/Polish etc' because those groups (sorry, not the right word) generally don't set themselves quite so apart from the majority indigenous population, and don't live quite such insular lives. Possibly ultra-orthodox Jews (for example) are just as insular, and certainly have, to the outside view, some rather peculiar practices, but they, although living outside mainstream society, still live in accordance with accepted social norms of this country, and abide by the laws of this country.

Some groups do set themselves apart - and not just ultra-orthodox Jews. Some are due to language barriers, some by having separate schools etc.

Many travellers do live in accordance with accepted social norms and abide by the laws of this country, including some in every form of traveller society. And some whole groups of people who live a nomadic life, such as travelling showmen, have internal social norms that make them very law abiding.

Sweeping generalisations about "Travellers" and lumping all travellers in together is like saying "Jews have some rather peculiar practices" (your words - merely extended to the whole diverse range of Jews).

To generalise is to be racist.
To say that all the experiences you have had with a community are completely positive or completely negative is not, if you are talking about your own experiences and not anecdote and second-hand rumours.

Not many positive experiences for me either I'm afraid.

We have regular visits from the travelling community in my area, usually for a week at a time, and each time the place has been left a total pit, crime rates rocket, people are shitting in shop doorways in broad daylight.

I've worked for a company contracted by our local council, both to maintain the permanent sites and clear up after the travellers, and the bill was seriously immense.

Mains electricity at the camp was tampered with, horses would be stabled in the toilet blocks, buildings were destroyed or rendered inhabitable and had to be refurbished constantly. Anything of any value stolen. And the shit, everywhere. Fecal and litter. It was disgusting beyond words (plenty of photographic evidence to support this).

In the end we had trouble getting any of our maintenance team (of 22) to go to the site to do the work (it really was vomit-inducing), and they would risk having their tools stolen, threatened with violence/guns, general intimidation from young males at each visit.

The council just shrugged their shoulders and kept paying the bills.

yes, absolutely. I'm just mulling over why it is people seem to have so many bad experiences (not just opinions, actual experiences) of Travellers than they do of other ethnic groups taken as a whole. And I was wondering if their very insularity was a reason, whilst pointing out that some insular groups, such as ultra-orthadox Jews, still manage live within mainstream society without ever (I don't ever remember reading a thread about any on MN, for starters, or in the news) garnering all this negativity.

I'm not claiming to know the answers! Definitely not.

you cann all say what you about culture but shitting on a doorstep is disgusting and not acceptable i feel sorry for the Op and what happened in her area, but not all travellers are like this but some think it is acceptable to fight and have no boundries this is where the problems lie imo ,

No I definitely think the most appropriate parallel is the aboriginal communities in Australia. People being pushed out of their way of life and marginalised and mistreated by a majority dominant culture. The need for their way of life being sidelined. Mainstream culture determining where these people could live and operate in their home country. People coming to the country from other cultures have more need to accept the new culture because they or their family have made the choice to come to this part of the world. Travellers have stayed put and the majority culture had done its damnedest to try to convince them to be absorbed into their culture instead.