Dale Farm Eviction

[niceguy2]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-15163750

It seems sanity has prevailed. Let's hope there are no more delays and the site is cleared ASAP

I rather like Viscount Rothermere. Rather a nice name. Smart guy. What's not to love

There is a massive shortage of housing in this country. And yes, it's not inexhaustible so if a traveller takes a council house it won't go to a homeless person. But single homeless people tend to be offered B&B accommodation or at most a one bedroomed flat. As I understand it, most of the travelling community are made up of families (ie they need a different sort of housing for multiple family members). So actually your argument should be 'by taking up a council house they are preventing a teenager mother and her babies from having a home' ?

I'm still unconvinced on the fundamental question of whether these travellers want to be settled anyway? If they don't, and that's their right not to be - is there really any point in offering them a house. Surely a better answer is offering a network of sites that they can stay on for limited times (then they can travel on between them). I don't mean that to sound oppressive. I'd genuinely like to know what the solution is to this conundrum. Because you can't be nomadic and not move.

The current situation is untenable for all concerned.

What I don't understand is why this isn't solvable. There are some permanent sites. There should clearly be more if there are more people who need them. And that requires proper planning. Long term planning - we can't fix this in a year, but probably in 15 it could be fixed.

takingbackmonday he does smell slightly of biscuits though (but not in a bad way)

not to mention the 18m

like i said, maybe in the bigger scheme of things and the huge number of homeless some arrangement could have been reached and money spent elsewhere.

Niceguy, my preference would have been for an adequate site to have been put into place before 18m spent and social housing/hostel places used for people who dont really need or want them.

I myself have been in homeless accomodation twice. Once when i was 15 and 3 years ago with 2 kids in tow. Its hard to get a place as most people are put in b&b's. Did you know a b&b is just that. A bed, your breakfast then piss off and dont come back till 6. Luckily i made it into a homeless hostel before waiting 7 months for an emergency council house.

A family of 6 have been put in a homeless hostel with one room so that just proves there are no houses available and they are using homeless accommodation.

With regards to teenagers, some are placed in b&b and some in hostels. I was in a girls hostel with 6 others. But yes they also go into b&b's depending on availability. Hostels are preferable as you dont have to go out all day.

You wouldnt be offered a flat till your 18 now. I think it was 16 in the 90's.

You are not taking a house just off a single mother but also family units who for financial reasons have lost there home, cant afford private rental etc

whats with the

If 90% of Traveller applications are for the sort of housing they normally occupy, in the sort of surroundings they normally place it in, in other words where they, given their culture, feel at home (and obviously this is land that they own and not land that is someone else's) then they are being sent a message that their preferred type of accommodation (trailers and chalets with separate wash blocks and toilets) is not acceptable to the rest of society. That is to say, the legal planning process is being used to give them the message that their culture is not acceptable in Britain, despite the requirement for every council and LA to respect the culture of recognised ethnic minorities.

They tend not to make applications for brick and mortar homes so direct comparisons are not possible, but the fact that their applications for their sort of homes are turned down in such huge numbers bespeaks an unwillingness to accept their culture as it applies to type of dwelling.

In addition, fears that are often expressed about letting one family develop a site and ending up with hundreds of them are pure racism (and are often couched in terms that suggest infestation) -- and again, they ignore another basic aspect of their culture, their tendency to live in extended family groups with many generations all close together.

I still think the whole problem could be resolved a lot quicker with a bit of compromise. The travellers won't compromise. They want what they want and they won't accept anything else. They could take accommodation and still take to the road when the desire takes them.
The ones in my town could have stayed forever if they had given a bit of thought to keeping the place tidy.
The councils in return could offer them more sites.
In return for respecting the local areas, the local residents could cut them a bit of slack.
Compromise.

another generilisation that only single mothers want or need council housing

5 reports have been given to government in the last 20 years which have more or less been ignored. Read the link i posted at lucnh time which was a review into housing needs for travellers. There hasnt been another study done of the travellers housing needs since that one to my knowledge or which i can find online.

The is because I find the whole thing quite perplexing - it wasn't a judgement of you :)

I don't think it's only single mothers who want or need council housing, it was just an example. I could have said 'people coming out of care', 'people who have lost their homes through redundancy/marital breakdown etc'. But my point was this: travelling families tend to need larger accommodation than would generally be offered to single people by councils.

Whomoved -- yes, there is absolutely no point in offering them council houses (and disingenuous, even downright inflammatory, of Tony Ball to keep on shrugging and saying they have been offered houses).

For the most part they do not want a brick and mortar house, and most who do live in houses have bought a site and built and paid for their own house. They even shy away from mortgages. They tend to prefer owning to renting, and this is one reason they prefer to have their fully paid for trailers and chalets to live in even if they pay a council rent on a legal pitch.

They are seasonally nomadic and there is no conundrum here. They tend to spend the summer on the road. This is why LAs who keep a Traveller and Gypsy census do both a January and June/July count of trailers and families on both authorised and unauthorised pitches. Most who have children (that means most of them) want to see the children in school. Hence the need for somewhere they can remain for the school year, and a site where a trailer can park, with family close by, is all they want for that. Most of them who have children in school do not want to face eviction and the chore of finding another place to live, getting the children settled in a new school, getting to know a new community and settling in.

It has been estimated that all that is needed in terms of new site provision is the equivalent of two football pitches worth of land. That is the pity of it.

mathanxiety thank you for explaining that. The only travellers I have ever known were settled so I didn't know about the summer progression. Blimey two football pitches. That's not a lot is it. :(

Olympic stadium 2013?

Fifi, in an ideal world I would have too. But it's wrong to negotiate with someone holding a gun to your head.

Can you imagine me building a house without permission then refusing to leave until the council gives me permission to build another, in the area of my choosing? Sounds a bit unreasonable doesn't it?

Or how about I refuse to leave and my "compromise" is instead of asking the council to pay me back what I bought the land for, I ask for 400x the value instead?

I then reject homes offered to me by the council. Homes which as others have said will have come at the cost of others who otherwise would have been ahead of them in the queue.

Then I claim I'm being made intentionally homeless when I reject the very homes I'm offered that others would kill for.

I think the powers that be have bent over backwards to compromise with the travellers but they've simply been utterly unrealistic in their demands.

As I said before, if they'd been more sensible in their approach and demands then I'm sure none of this would have happened and the council would have shuffled this quietly under the carpet.

Martha, can youy shed some light on their mating rituals and nocturnal patterns?

You seem very knowledgable.

is that meant for me arthur

apologise who, been abused non stop off Arthur so tetchy

if you read the gov link its got on why they cant travel, school the kids etc. Math explains it more eloquently than me

The mating rituals have already been done (My Big Fat etc). Nocturnal patterns -- I'm guessing lots of telly, cups of tea, packets of biscuits, ironing...

Math, you are missing the point. Planning laws apply to everyone. In every ethnic minority. Why does any message have to be sent other than 'you can't have that, it's contrary to planning law.'
If you choose to add a codicil to this, saying and also because you are a gypsy, then that's up to you.
Like I said up thread. My friend has to move to Spain in order to live in the way she wishes, and I have to accept the fact that in staying here in the uk, I can't live in the manner I wish, because it's against the law.
As for what you mentioned about fear of infestation, In law we have 'precedent'. Once one person is allowed to act outside the law, then their case can be used to strengthen the cases of others wishing to do the same. It's not just a 'we'll be infested with gypsys issue, it's an 'now everyone can do it' issue.
Planning regs will be redundant.
You keep mentioning their culture, and how they must live as it dictates, but in this country, the law comes first. It has to, or there will be anarchy.
Start abandoning laws to suit people's beliefs and then what is to stop other cultures exercising the right to live as their culture dictates?
Girl babies abandoned in the street. Corpses left in trees to rot, or floated down the nearest river. Men with several wives, who regularly beat and rape them.
I'm not racist, I truly don't care where you come from or what you believe as long as you live in peace with others.
But stupid as they can be, laws are laws, and they are there for a reason. What gives anyone the right to live outside the law?

Distinguishing features?
That would be helpful.

Another question please mathsanxiety if you don't mind. Honestly I am genuinely curious.

Where do they go in Summer? Do they just go to the regular sites and make them bigger? I know it's hard to generalise what everyone does but in principle, how does it work? And how does that fit with work?

The men who dug up our road working for a very large infrastructure company for a very large water authority were irish travellers (I know because we got to know them when they were sat on our driveway for a month). They were here for about three months in the summer.

Do the men travel without the women to the work or do they all camp near where the work is. Is work why they travel?

Someone pointed out yesterday - they call themselves Travelers, yet they want to stay in one place forever.

How does that make sense????

It doesn't.
HTH

Next question

Moondog - stop having fun immediately - Getlost will come down and shout at you!

Planning laws are so labyrinthine that they have spawned a cottage industry all their own.

The manner in they wish to live is far from against the law. In fact the manner they live is recognised as part of their culture and their group is recognised as an ethnic minority, with councils and LAs required to take all that entails into account when dealing with planning apps.

They are not criminals by virtue of being Travellers, and nor are the Romany. There is nothing illegal about living in mobile or potentially mobile accommodation. There is nothing illegal about a nomadic or semi-nomadic life. Those aspects of their culture are protected by law.

'Start abandoning laws to suit people's beliefs and then what is to stop other cultures exercising the right to live as their culture dictates?
Girl babies abandoned in the street. Corpses left in trees to rot, or floated down the nearest river. Men with several wives, who regularly beat and rape them.'

And as for this, for the love of puppies, get a bloody grip.

Well, Moondog, a lot of them have Irish surnames, but again, not all. Freckles, blond hair, brown hair, black hair, red hair, arms and legs, feet (two). Some wear clothes that might be considered crimes against fashion.