Very few have bought in the last 10 years !!
If someone has bought a house in the vicinity in the past ten years, then they would have bought in the full knowledge there was a travelling community in the locality so why buy there in the first place when there would have been lots of houses not so close
More of a dilemma if you have bought a house in Crays Hill and now cant sell it because of Dale Farm, are intimidated taunted and threatened every day, have had faeces and rubbish thrown in your garden and be told by the I.T.'s that it was themselves that had committed the act. It must be nice to be far away from the Dale Farm enclave and be able to ‘side’ with them, and blame Basildon Council who have been trying for 10 years to evict them. It is nothing to do with ‘Ethnic Cleansing’ whatsoever, they have broken the law, plain and simple.
Hear Hear, to both of you
total agreement from me, !
What if the law is wrong in that the site they built on was a rubbish tip prior to building on it? but that because it lies inside a greenbelt area it’s been designated as greenbelt…this happens all the time to all sorts of people not just travellers. The planning regs are to blame, surely. Plus the high cost of property in the UK.
2 of my best friends are lawyers for both travellers and settled housing cases in the UK. Travellers frequently don’t get stop-over points in the UK, despite it being a legal requirement and are also frequently evicted from their own land despite needing healthcare etc…
It must be a big dilema, feeling not wanted by “society”, encouraged by your culture not to have anything to do with it but having to depend on it at the same time. If you don’t beleive in the education system , for example, but dont have the means to educate your children yourself you are caught out somewhat.
I worked at outdoor festivals recycling the waste, for 15 years and experienced a lot of predjudice all across the UK due to being labelled a “new age traveller”; from my childrens school, to the grant making authorities supposed to be supporting eco businesses, to councils to campsite owners and even occasionally from my clients, the festival organisers (especially the big one,Glastonbury …yes that was yours Micheal!)
HOWEVER, with age, comes wisdom and I have concluded that a huge amount of ill feeling could have been avoided if only 80% of my so called “fellow travellers”, including, I have to admit, me, hadn’t insisted on being so stoned all the time. I cant help also noticing that people with zenophobic views also, paradoxically, tend to suffer more than others, with serious health issues with tobacco, drink or prescription drug problems of excactly the same kind.
This is even more of a useful observation, when I take into account my mental health nursing expereience, gained after being a traveller…which was that many people with mental health problems were also racist, or predjudiced in some other extreme form and that most patients in care would eat junk food in preference to the healthy stuff that most staff would eat.
Travellers ALL receive short shrift due to the culture that they are stereotyped by no matter which type of traveller they are. Each individual case is unique, yet the stereotypes determine the cultural attitudes both within the travelling groups and outside of it…Personally, I still feel I am disadvantaged due to the mistreatment I had to put up with in the 90’s but that I spoiled my ability to cope with it by getting so smashed in the 80’s.
I feel more able to travel in france, with less discrimination, but equally, have been robbed by travellers three times here and never in the UK and my son was bullied by travellers throughout his 4 yrs at french school.
How confusing is that?
I think we are getting off-track here. Nobody is arguing on what is, or what is not, the Traveller way of life. What we are disputing is whether it is legal for a group of people, of whatever genre, to simply invade a property, erect dwellings, siphon off water and electricity and then believe that because they are of a different ethnic group, this is all OK? It IS NOT OK! I think that even the travellers who are there legally, must feel that they are being hard done by; they are after all paying for taxes and services whereas the other groups are not.
How many contributers to this discussion have just driven around and thought “Mmm, nice place place! Let’s move in there” and simply appropriate it. Isn’t this stealing?
Jeanette, this is the last time I reply to your posts, it is bad for my health!
If you apply these “guide lines”, because you do not say whose definition this is, your definition applies to all of those who decide to live on benefits whilst being perfectly capable of working.
You must, therefore, think that this is a valid culture.
Exactly, John!
I very much consider the rights of minorities, indeed I am in such a group as all expats are living in France, I pay my taxes and stick to the rules even those I don’t agree with. Maybe not the speeding rules but then when I get caught I pay the fine rather than cart on about my human rights. If I am not happy with my chosen country and its laws I am also free to leave as are these Travellers.
“What I fail to understand is why it has taken the council so long to get to this point”
The simple answer is probably because it didn’t suit Basildon Council, their policies or plans at the time and they might even have been in the process of local elections, all political but never practical. Fifteen years ago, I was in a planning dispute with my local authority, the details I’ll not go into as very complicated but the upshot is that ten years prior to this, we were given full consent for our business and then because a new person arrived in the locality who became a green eyed monster and couldn’t accept someone in the back of beyond was making money, we went through hell and back for two years, nearly lost everything and ended up making a deal out of court with the council who backed down at the eleventh hour. So I know what it’s like and it’s not nice at all. We would have lost our livelihood and our home which we built ourselves. At the end of the day, this is why we sold up and moved out of the U.K.
Excellent idea. Off to trawl the DM website now for some inspiration. Oh and watch a bit of Jeremy Kyle…
I think it’s called sarcasm Jeanette.
The Dale Farm community has rights like all other citizens of England. It also has duties and responsibilities like all other citizens, one of which is to obey the law. You cannot claim one without accepting the other.
They have broken a law which applies to all citizens. If the law appears discriminatory it is because of their chosen lifestyle, not because it is deliberately so. That would not be permitted under either British or European law.
Surely this has little to do with the protection of minority groups and so much to do with the right and wrong of free loaders, who cares if they are Irish, French, English, African, They choose to live in the UK in making that choice comes a requirement to uphold the law, they choose not to in the case of Dale farm and therefore should be subject to the laws of the land, ie evict those not legally there and demolish the illegal development.
What I fail to understand is why it has taken the council so long to get to this point, I am sure it didn’t happen overnight and when the Travellers started to increase beyond the planning consent why wasn’t it stopped then? as it would have been if it was an extension going on to the back of my house.
James, I think spreading this thread out was a masterstoke, and the making of your financial salvation. All you have to do is charge €1 per post, find a few more contentious topics, and you’re home and dry.
For me this is not an issue about travellers or gypsies or discrimination or whatever but simply about the law. The people being moved on are being treated like any other citizen of this country in these circumstances. The illegal squatters are being moved on and the legal residents are staying. The fact that there is a legal traveller site next door emphasises that this is not discrimination.
In fact if the illegal squatters were allowed to stay that in itself would be a form of discrimination, in their favour, and since nobody is in favour of discrimination, not even the travellers would approve of that…would they?