The thieves are getting younger.

Commendable?????

There are many traveller groups and they don’t like each other at all, not all live in caravan camps many are settled but that does not mean they have abandoned their heritage.
There is a high ranking Romany family closeby settled for decades, even so they havn’t integrated locally the gates are closed and keep to themselves, when there is a funeral hundreds come to pay their respects.

Irish travellers are different closed camps where nobody knows anything, when there has been a lot of thieving in the area the police get a riot squad together and retrieve most of it. It’s rare that anyone is convicted there is no evidence who took it.

I can imagine the interview with the 11yr old
Q who told you to drive the caravan
A dads mate

Q who is that
A Jim

Q we’re does Jim Live
A don’t know

And so on

Eventually the mother is interviewed who says well I put him to bed at 9pm he must have climbed out of the window.

They are all well coached.

Irish Travellers are a separate group. They are recorded differently by different data collectors.

Genetically separate.

www.ed.ac.uk/usher/news-events/news-2017/gene-study-reveals-irish-travellers-ancestry#:~:text=Irish%20Travellers%20are%20of%20Irish,into%20their%20history%20and%20heritage.

So? Irish travellers are still Irish.
Roma are a different group for classification purposes.

And updated in 2022

www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/summaries/gypsy-roma-irish-traveller/

Oreo

Time will tell if it’s travellers or not but it’s very possible from other cases I’ve read about locally.
And since when did Irish travellers become another ‘ethnicity’?
They’re as Irish as anyone else in Ireland.
Or as English as anyone else in England for that matter.
There are Romany groups but by no means all are.

2000 in the UK 2017 in Ireland

I don't imagine the boy had any choice in the matter.

My husband drove cars on private land from being a young teenager, he also passed his test a couple of weeks after his 17th birthday.
However he was never taught or encouraged by his father, brother or uncles to steal vehicles!
This thread was never meant to be about the travelling community just the temerity of the boy involved!

Time will tell if it’s travellers or not but it’s very possible from other cases I’ve read about locally.
And since when did Irish travellers become another ‘ethnicity’?
They’re as Irish as anyone else in Ireland.
Or as English as anyone else in England for that matter.
There are Romany groups but by no means all are.

Oh Bluebelle you are cracking your head against an enormous brick wall on this thread😳 but you have lots of support from myself and others!

You’re right some set it as their goal, a big deal at that age, even younger really ambitious youngsters can fly a glider solo at 14 and a powered aircraft at 16, supportive parents of course.
The UKs latest F1 driver 18 yr old Oliver Bearman finished 7 th for Ferrari in the Saudi GP

Katie59 an early boyfriend of mine learned on private land and took his test 2 days after his 17th.
I think it is more common than you think.

lemsip

pascal30

I don't understand how he could have hooked up the caravan to the car in the first place. He must have had an adult accomplice..

well of course he did! He was the driver of the car though!

He was the driver but he can hardly be held accountable at the age of 11..

Grammaretto

A friend who grew up in a farm could drive from an early age. She was the youngest of 6. Her mother would ask her to drive to the shops.
"But I'm only 15 and can't drive on roads".
"Oh yes, I forgot", mother would reply.

That amused me. This case doesn't.

One of my nephews had been driving in fields and farm roads for years, booked his test a few days after his 17th birthday, told his mum the day before and passed without any lessons at all. No theory in those day but had read the Highway Code, I didn’t hear of any accidents, my own sons were pretty good too. More recent lads seem to be more accident prone, 2 grandsons have been quite seriously injured in separate crashes.

Years ago we had caravans parked illegally on common land near our house and the kids were driving cars over the common. It's not a difficult skill to learn if they can reach the pedals.

A friend who grew up in a farm could drive from an early age. She was the youngest of 6. Her mother would ask her to drive to the shops.
"But I'm only 15 and can't drive on roads".
"Oh yes, I forgot", mother would reply.

That amused me. This case doesn't.

The owner saw the caravan being towed away, the boy was not alone stealing it but was alone driving off with it. The police were called (and probably only attended as the owners were on its tail) and they pulled the driver over. The boy was arrested for various offences including Dangerous Driving. He's been released on conditional bail. The owner reported all this on Facebook.

I was reminded of the time my friend’s son, aged 14, took the family car out in the middle of the night with his 10-year-old brother as passenger. Luckily his driving was erratic enough for him to be stopped by police and taken back home to his shocked parents.

Nobody had taught him to drive - he just picked it up by observation. He wasn’t charged, but his parents said they were sure that that was because they were so obviously a law-abiding, articulate middle class family from an affluent area. Unfair, but probably true.

Nowhere as bad as the events under discussion, of course, but all the same it reminded me.

pascal30

I don't understand how he could have hooked up the caravan to the car in the first place. He must have had an adult accomplice..

well of course he did! He was the driver of the car though!

V3ra, maybe you just can't see the funny side of my offhand remark.

I think that there must have been adults behind this, preparing the number plates and probably hooking up the caravan. I've seen a documentary in which a young French lad of only 12 drove a tractor on the family farm, so that part doesn't surprise me.

Bridie22

It's called Humour 🙂V3ra !

It's not remotely funny though is it?
An 11 year old child has been set up to go out and commit a very serious crime.
There could have been awful consequences for himself and other people.
Where are the adults who should be looking after him and keeping him safe?
What a dreadful life.

I don't understand how he could have hooked up the caravan to the car in the first place. He must have had an adult accomplice..

Luckily he didn't hurt anybody, im as shocked as all that an 11 year old could do this,and the fact that he didn't hurt anyone is why I made the Humours remarks " cracking driver"!
Please don't make more of my remark than necessary.

Bridie22

Another Bluebelle supporter here, cracking young driver though !

Wonder if he'd still be a " cracking driver", if he'd killed a young family , or anyone. Admiring criminals, the world has gone mad.