travellers

Travellers are always a contentious issue, we used to have a regular 'visit' till the council built soil barriers around our local green space to stop them pulling onto the land. They did always leave a mess behind them and according to some the local pilfering rate went up whether that was truly down to them or just an imagined thing I'm not sure. Travellers usually have some kind of 'business' concern on the go whether its building works, driveways or car repairs etc etc, that's how they earn their money . Living the kind of life where you are constantly moved on can't be easy but its the way they choose and I think the children are the most to suffer constantly changing schools/location can't be good.. but its their choice to live life how they want.

Many of the travellers (as distinct from Romany gypsies) are Irish and many have homes in Ireland so they make a good living here.

I do think that if people own a property elsewhere, either in this country or overseas, which they can readily access and live in, then any entitlement they have to services over here, especially to any housing rights or benefits, should be discretionary on an investigation into why they are claiming help when they have their own home elsewhere.

OH, and this is not an anti-Irish posting, I am half Irish myself.

We had travellers encamped very close to our house in North West London some 20 years ago and when they moved on it cost the council over £1 million to clean up the site. My children could not use the bus stop near the site when they came home from school as they were threatened and the path from the bus-stop was being used as a latrine. The local shops reported a sharp rise in shop lifting.
They said they had come to the area because there were good schools but none of the children went to school and if they were planning a long- term stay why did they create such a mess?
It can't be an easy life especially for the women and children and it is self perpetuating.

Travellers can also be of a long heritage line but not be Romany. We had several families at the school where I was HT as there was a council travellers site near us. The families were as different as any other set of parents. Some supportive and polite others less so! Children were not a problem any more than any others. However we very rarely saw the fathers and it was unusual for the boys to transfer to secondary school although some of the girls did. They were all always spotless and well dressed! All were anxious about allowing kids on school trips in case we lost them so we often allowed a traveller mum to come with us. It was often an education for them as museums/theatres etc are not a key part of their cultural heritage. Often they would be absent for most of the second half of the summer term when they went travelling to Kent in our case. Also had time off for Appleby Fair.

Money gained through scrap, driveways, 'trading', labouring and car work.

It was my experience that the young women wanted to have a better local profile ( tidy site, education for their boys etc) but culturally they did what 'their' men told them. Fab collections of Crown Derby china!

Having a distinctive culture is no excuse for anti-social behaviour.

I was not suggesting it was!

I was simply saying there are , within the whole gypsy/traveller community different but equally long standing groups and that within those there will be good and bad!

Their anti social behaviour can be VERY threatening and Police are often wary of entering traveller sites. I've known pubs in East Anglia trashed or even burned to the ground because of fights breaking out and the police not doing enough to prevent it. Farmers have to go to great lengths to protect machinery from theft and most fields have trench barriers where there are no natural drains.

As the TV series 'My Big Fat Gipsy Wedding' showed, a lot of people would like to know where their huge amounts of back pocket cash comes from.

Here's a website that has lots of interesting information about gypsies and travellers and their cultures.

In Davyhulme, Trafford, where some of my family live, the traveller who was on Big Brother (Paddy) had a house on the edge of the field where my SIL's football team played Sunday League football. He moved after a year. One morning, SIL got there to set up the goalposts, to find three horses grazing on the field. Knowing they belonged to Paddy, a bare knuckle fighter, he was apprehensive about asking him to move them. Paddy came charging out of the house, apologising for having not moved them in time - he put them there to graze because the grass hadn't been mowed. He helped set the goalposts up and bought the team a pint in the pub after the match.

They had a few chats about the (few) travellers who are a public nuisance. They become high profile, whereas people who behave just as badly in their own homes and surroundings are dealt with dfferently. Travellers have values that are different, better and worse than 'us' but they are just another section of our communities who make their living and take are of their families.

Travelers left a mess of litter after the annual Appleby Horse Fair (well worth going to if you get chance). You should see the state of the park and the lane here I live after Theatre in the Park each year. Not a traveller in sight, and we residents kick up a fuss to get it cleaned up immediately. They never learn - it'll happen again next tme.

www.grtleeds.co.uk/Culture/communities.html

Yes, every community has a mix of good and bad people in it but when one community consistently acts in a way that causes trouble for its neighbours then they will all get tarred with the same labels

Let me give an example outside the travellers. For 15 years I lived in the university area of Reading. One year the student intake included a disproportionate number of vandals, cars were damaged, it is a big joke to get from one end of a road to another without walking on the road, you walk on the cars instead damaging, boots, roofs and bonnets, 20 at a time. Gardens and drives were vandalised, our garden gate was taken off its hinges. It was found in a Hall of Residence. DD came home from school to find a group of students using our garden as a lavatory.

Residents complained and had meetings with the authorities. We would be told how wonderful and altruistic many students were. Personally we didn't care all we knew was that our property was being damaged and it was costing us money and security. After three years the vandals graduated and the problem resolved itself, but those three years of wanton damage seriously affected university and resident relations for years.

I am sure there are good and bad in the travellers community, as there is in any other, and I suppose like every other community the bad get all the publicity.

We always have travellers visit our local parks for a number of weeks during the year, before moving on. They do leave a mess, but the council never seem to stop them in any way. As far as I can see, they do what they like.

We have an annual fun fair, called the 'Mop' visit out towns. These are travelling fair-ground people, with caravans, just like the gypsies. They are rough and ready, but unlike the Irish tinkers they never leave a less behind them.

Saw onlin today:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2348061/My-big-fat-gypsy-degree-First-traveller-attend-Cambridge-University-graduates-FIRST-History.html

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2348061/My-big-fat-gypsy-degree-First-traveller-attend-Cambridge-University-graduates-FIRST-History.html

Inspirational. Looking at the background in the photos she looks like one of the 'Mop' travellers I mentioned earlier.

Good for Zoah! It's interesting that the article says she had the ambition to go to Cambridge from being a child because she worked at a fair that was part of a May Ball one year. Brilliant!

But she is a showman's daughter, not a traveller.

They are all part of the whole travelling community.

No, there is a real difference between the Fair ground community, Gypsies and Travellers, who used to be referred to as Irish Tinkers, but that obviously is not acceptable usage these days. Each group is distinct and has its own culture, the only thing they have in common is, generally, a travelling life style which means they tend to live in caravans.