How long will Boris last?

Where the law is concerned trisher I would like travellers to be treated exactly the same as everybody else.
Having police in the family I know that is rarely the case due to the aggression shown them ( the police) when they enter these camps.The lies, false alibis and physical menace shown is beyond belief.

yeahbut the only thing I can find someway upthread is the fact that travellers( just Romany and Irish) are treated as an ethnic minority after all.
In a camp near me, they are mainly not from these groups,it does vary according to region.

When various members of a traveller camp in Gloucestershire were put in prison, the crime wave caused by them in that shire and nearby shires fell dramatically.

However, it is incredibly difficult for the police to get convictions. Now and again they will instigate huge operations ( at huge cost) to try and reduce crime in a certain area, but generally can never keep on top of things.

trisher: I don't suppose the Nazis started off wanting to exterminate people simply to treat them differently because they were different which is what many on this thread want.
I think it has been made very clear on this thread that we DON'T want them treated differently. We want them treated the same as everyone else, to abide by the law....that's all. Can't you understand that? What is this obsession you have with the Nazis? It's not healthy.

I was expecting that. What is needed is an underrstanding that differences are many and just as you wouldn't object to someone following their own cultural heritage by living as an extended family in a single dwelling, you shouldn't object to someone wanting to live a travelling life and not settle in one place. That's treating people differently and approving one lifestyle and not another (but I appreciate some need that explained clearly).

It is not the travelling that's the problem trisher. It's the law breaking that's the issue. How any times do you need that explaining? It matters not what race they are, or how they choose to live, but if they abuse local people and commit crimes that is not acceptable. Are you saying they have the right to do these things because it's part of their culture?

Chestnut Have I said anyone has the right to committ criminal acts? On this thread travellers have been blamed for committing crimes there is no evidence to show they are responsible for andmany other things. This has been Tory policy on Travellers
The following is a summary of Conservative policies which have affected Gypsies, Roma, & Travellers during the time the Conservatives have been in power.

Changed Planning Laws to Remove Ethnic Protections for Gypsies & Travellers

In August 2015, the Conservative government, now with a new parliamentary majority, changed planning laws to redefine Gypsies and Travellers as “persons of nomadic habit of life whatever their race or origin”. Not only removing the ethnic component, the changes also limited the definition to only those who regularly travel. Any ethnic Gypsies or Travellers who did not travel, whether through choice, age, or sickness, were no longer protected by ethnic status in the planning process. It meant that Romani and Traveller people suddenly had to define their ethnicity by how they live. It changed the system to deny people their own identity whilst persecuting them for it at the same time.

Removed Duty on Councils to Provide Gypsy & Traveller Sites

The same 2015 amendment to the planning rules also restricted the number of new sites which could be built in local council areas. The planning changes severely restricted the number of sites which could be built on Green Belt land, delivering on an earlier Tory election promise to limit Gypsy & Traveller sites.

The last Conservative government had already repealed most of the duties of local authorities to provide official sites with the Criminal Justice Act in 1994. But under the 2015 planning amendments, the circumstances in which temporary permission for Gypsy sites could be given in the Green Belt was severely restricted. Furthermore, the new planning laws removed the requirement for an up-to-date five-year supply of deliverable sites as a significant material consideration in planning decisions involving the grant of temporary planning permission in sensitive areas. From 2015 onwards, local councils were expected to “very strictly limit” any new Gypsy & Traveller sites in open countryside.

deny people their own identity whilst persecuting them for it at the same time.

The Conservatives further removed the duty on councils to assess the accommodation needs for GRT through Section 124 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016. This removed the duty on local authorities to assess the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers in their area as a specific category (a duty created during a Labour government with the Housing Act 2004).

Cuts to Traveller Education Services

Cuts to Traveller Education Services began almost immediately after the Conservatives took power. By 2011, almost half of England’s 127 local authorities had completely abolished their Traveller Education Services or drastically cut their staff levels. The speed and scale of the cuts drew protests from the National Association of Teachers of Travellers (NATT+), with the joint president Linda Lewins commenting at the time: “I’m gobsmacked by the speed at which it has happened, I’m watching 20 years of hard work being pulled apart.” Her association was forced to close entirely in October 2018, after nearly every Traveller Education Service in England was cut or closed by the Conservative government.

Cuts to Legal Aid

In 2012 the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LAPSO) was passed which, amongst other things, cut the provision of legal aid for numerous areas of law such as welfare, housing, family and debt. The act also changed the rules which automatically made those receiving benefits eligible for legal aid. The number of people receiving aid through the early legal advice scheme in the year before the cuts was 573, 737. In 2017-18 it was down to 140,091.

Removing legal aid is an assault on the democratic rights of ordinary people, one which disproportionately affects Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers.

When the cuts were first made, the government of the day proposed that advice agencies could plug the gap. What happened instead was that the advice agencies were also decimated by cuts in local authority funding alongside legal aid firms, law centres, and citizens advice bureau. The agencies which rely on non-governmental, often charitable, funding are just unable to support everyone who applies.

Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers who already had unequal access to justice because of structural discrimination, were now significantly less likely to receive free legal advice or representation. Without legal aid most people who need legal help, with housing or planning issues for example, must either cough up the money for expensive lawyers or simply give up. It affects all sorts of areas of life where you might experience discrimination, but now no longer have the tools to fight against it. Access to justice is something that should be available to all citizens in a well functioning democracy. Removing legal aid is an assault on the democratic rights of ordinary people, one which disproportionately affects Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers.

Halted progress on a UK National Roma Integration Strategy

Every EU member state with the exception of Malta (because of an absence of any permanent Romani population) and the UK have submitted a National Roma Integration Strategy (NRIS) to the European Commission. In 2011, the Commission passed its EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies which required all European Member States to create plans to end discrimination and better include Romani and Traveller people in their countries. The Conservative UK government argued that these things are already sufficiently covered in existing UK legislation, and that there was no need for a specific strategy to overcome the exclusion of Gypsies, Roma, and Travellers.

Their response to the EU said that they believe the problems faced by Gypsies, Roma, & Travellers will not be fixed

“by singling out specific groups for special treatment. We are moving away from a centrally dictated approach towards one in which the Government encourages local areas to take the lead. Government will act only exceptionally.”

This is called mainstreaming. And the problem with mainstreaming something like the inclusion of severely marginalised ethnic groups is that there ends up being very little responsibility on anyone to actually do anything about it. Especially in a multicountry state like the UK where devolution means you might benefit more from GRT policies and strategies in one geographic over another. For example, the Welsh Government has written its own NRIS which means more money is specifically spent on GRT policy issues.

Increase of Police Powers to Deal with Unauthorised Encampments.

In February 2019, Sajid Javid announced plans to beef up powers granted to police to deal with unauthorised encampments (unauthorised encampments being any roadside stopping of Gypsies or Travellers which doesn’t have the express permission of the local authority). The new police powers will allow officers to intervene in cases where two or more trailers are parked on public land (the previous threshold was six). They will also have the power to ban specific individuals from returning to a certain site for a year (previously the maximum was three months).

Most Gypsy & Traveller families stop on unauthorised sites because they simply have nowhere else to go.

Most Gypsy & Traveller families stop on unauthorised sites because they simply have nowhere else to go. Roadside stopping was long ago made illegal, many of the ancient stopping sites are barred, bouldered, or gated off to stop them gaining access, and there is no duty on councils to provide halting sites for Gypsies & Travellers who still live a nomadic lifestyle.

Injunctions

In recent years there have been an increasing number of council-wide injunctions against “persons unknown”, which are aimed at Gypsies and Travellers, under this Conservative government. In the last two years more than 32 councils in England have obtained court injunctions to stop Gypsies & Travellers camping on public land. Those who stop illegally on land under a court injunction can face a fine, imprisonment, and having their property seized. These blanket-bans are specifically aimed at Gypsy and Traveller families and solve none of the root problems which force them to stay on public land (a severe lack of sites). Families are being driven from one local authority area to the next. “The problem is, if the next borough has the same injunction in place, they then have to move again,” says human rights barrister Marc Willers. “There’s nowhere else for them to go. They’re being driven into the sea.”

Priti Patel Proposals to Criminalise Trespass

This is not such a new idea. The Tories promised this back in 2010 and it’s been floated a few times since, most recently in November 2018 by Conservative MP for South West Bedfordshire Andrew Selous. It has since made it into the Conservative’s election manifesto, so perhaps should be treated a little more seriously.

“The Ireland option” as it has often been referred to in Conservative circles (due to the Republic of Ireland criminalising trespass to prosecute Travellers in 2002) would allow the police to confiscate on sight the vehicles of anyone suspected to be trespassing on public land with the “purpose of residing on it”. So this doesn’t apply, for example, to a Conservative councillor stopped in their mercedes on the side of the road, this is specifically aimed at people in the UK who live a nomadic life. It criminalises travelling and it is completely discriminatory. In case we were in any doubt, the new Tory manifesto spells it out for us:

We will tackle unauthorised traveller camps… give the police new powers to arrest and seize the property and vehicles of trespassers who set up unauthorised encampments, in order to protect our communities… make intentional trespass a criminal offence, and we will also give councils greater powers within the planning system.

Effectively this will mean anyone who parks anywhere (even with the landowner's permission) will be a criminal and can have their goods seized. It's discrimination. And it's frightening.

I think most people would want to protect communities from people who abuse them or steal and damage their property. Don't forget the rubbish left behind. If any travellers do these things then I'm sure we can all agree they have broken the law and there needs to be effective legislation to deal with that.

Does that include criminalising anyone who stops somewhere with the full consent of the landowner? Chestnut because the proposed legislation will do that.
If you lived on a street where organised crime gangs operated would you expect to be automaticlly assumed a criminal?

I AM saying that most rural thieving is done by travelers because a good proportion is recovered from traveler sites when the police go in. The rest appears on auction sites in a different area in a month or two, a prosecution is rare, because unless they are caught red handed they get away with it.
The police use drones now to survey the sites, they can then send in an armed response squad and remove everything that cannot be documented by the travelers.
The other particularly nasty activities are stealing pet dogs to resell or for breeding, also migrants for slave labour, not to mention illegal hare coursing.

There are other criminals at work as well, large farm machinery is targeted by East European gangs, others target vehicles for export to Africa or other places where no questions are asked.

You are overthinking this trisher. Some of these people are experts in evading the law so where there is good evidence of criminal activity or harassment of local residents then the Police need all the powers they can get. That is the purpose of this legislation, not ethnic cleansing.

Trisher mentioned the Ireland option, that made the situation much worse, unable to continue over there they came over here for the easy pickings they have found due to bleeding heart liberals
It’s nothing to do with discrimination, it’s nothing to do with being nomadic either, it’s to do with avoiding the law.

Can you explain how stopping people staying in places where the landowner has given permission will help stop any crime please? Or will it just mean that innocent people will be penalised because of a few criminals? I take it even the most prejudiced of you don't think that all Romas are criminals?

trisher: Can you explain how stopping people staying in places where the landowner has given permission will help stop any crime please?
If a group of known travelling criminals are given permission to stop by an unscrupulous landowner then that will affect the local community. I imagine this will be used with discretion and only when necessary, but sometimes you have to allow for all eventualities.

How can it "Be used with discretion"? It will be a criminal offence. The police will have no option other than to act particularly when the racists start creating. Families will lose their possessions and be made homeless. The traveller is being made a criminal because of their lifestyle, is that really acceptable? This isn't legislation to stop crime simply to stop people travelling. The people who will be made criminals may have done absolutely nothing except stop on a piece of land in agreement with a landowner. Calling them criminal gangs is really pathetic.

The problem in this area is land owned by the travelers arriving at a field with diggers and caravans and setting up camp without planning permission. The land owners are not willing to give them notice to quit. In practice the only recourse to the local authority is through the planning system, and by the time it has been to appeal twice, two years have passed and the site is well established.

Another way they drive a coach and horses through the rules we are supposed to live by. There is a lot of money to be made as well, because in 2 cases traveler sites locally have been sold for development, the owner surfaces, asks his friends to move on.
The locals are only too pleased to grant planning permission to get rid of travelers.

Oh my giddy aunt. I haven't checked this thread for a few days so how on earth did a thread entitled "How long will Boris last" morph into one on the rights and wrongs of the travelling community. I was quite interested in the Boris discussion so may I put my head above the trench wall and suggest that those of you who wish to talk travellers rights etc. do so by all means but start your own thread.

You may want to re-think that Irishlady It's my thread in the first place!!

Well it would have been more helpful then to have called the thread, "How long will Boris last and anything else I can think of while I'm here.

Too late for starting another thread Irishlady !! The new title sounds appropriate!

Irishlady. The thread drifted when one poster mentioned promises in the Tory manifesto which included law and order reforms.
I contributed because it is a issue that affect myself and most other rural properties, we know exactly who is responsible for the criminality, the police know exactly as well but it is impossible to get evidence on any individual that the Criminal Protection Service will back.
All we want is for travelers to respect the same laws that the rest of us do, if they have a genuine nomadic lifestyle that’s fine by me, just cut the thieving out.

If you want a thread called that Irishlady you are completely freeto sart one. The discussions on GN drift. It's a bit like conversations with friends you don't stick to asingle subject, you go where the conversation leads. You also don't turn up half way through and demand the conversation start again, you just slot in.
Davidhs I'm so glad you agree that a nomadic lifestyle should be supported, something the Tories haven't done so far.

Nicola #NotMyPM #SaveOurNHS?
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And the ill-informed believed the NHS was safe in Tories hands and voted for them!

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