Be Excellent To Each Other

Come on then, let's have a row over this, see how many BeeXers we can get to leave the forums over it.

Personally, I think planning permission is on the whole a good thing, and should be respected.

Follow the gripping saga here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/blog/2011/ ... itons-live

I don't know too much about this situation, but I do believe that all cultures and lifestyles should be respected. However, the travellers who steal copper/petrol/leave shit everywhere unfortunately give them all a bad name.

Let's face it; this lot are clearly shit at being 'travellers'. They've been there for ten years!

I've read a bit about it, but not enough to make my mind up. They're clearly breaking planning laws, but I'm not sure what kind of other options they have in terms of places to stay.

It's a difficult one to resolve. Their way of life appears on the surface of it to be incompatible with modern culture that holds that every scrap of land in the UK is owned by someone, and is subject to planning regulations.

On the other hand, as Curio says, they've been there for a decade. That's plenty of time to at least go through the planning process. If it gets rejected, that's one thing - but not bothering to even try doesn't exactly show willing.

How come they've been there for so long before getting evicted?

I'm a bit in conflict with this one.

On the one hand, I have some sympathy with the attitude that you should be allowed to buy a piece of land and live on it, free from harrassment from the state, provided you aren't causing harm to others, and do so in reasonable harmony with the environment and live in a self contained way. Because I'd quite like to do that.


The problem with that is, from what I can tell, this lot do cause some harm or at least distress to their neighbours, and I don't see it all being down to predudice or jealousy that they're able to avoid dodge planning laws, more importantly building regulations, taxes and apparently the law of the land in general.

Because that's the other side of it. A someone who owns a house and land, and has been through the planning system (and been knocked back in previous attempts to build things), I can see the point of people who are irked by their ability to have dodged all that, and will approve of the crackdown.

That's before you get into the whole "special treatment" thing of a claimed minority ethnic status, which is perhaps more the Daily Mail side of the coin.


Haven't read up everything on it this morning, but is this Dale Farm the same place they recently found a dozen "slaves" being kept, in a shanty-town type living situation?

The local travellers camp when I was growing up, has just been found out to be running human slavery and has been for the past 15 years or so. Also, we used to regularly get groups of proper travelling travellers setting up on the park a couple of streets away. Surprisingly crime went up massively when they were there, and they left the place as an utter shithole when they moved on.

My sympathy is laking somewhat...

Apologies if that makes me a right wing forum nazi

Different camp, that one was in Leighton Buzzard.

Dude, we're all right wing forum nazis here, didn't you get the memo?

Nein.

I don't see the problem, all of their houses have wheels, right?

They own the land. It's a violation of planning regs (because they're living on land that doesn't have planning permission for a shanty town), not a trespass issue.

Nuke.

Site.

From.

Orbit.

I haven't followed this story as closely as others have, but surely they've got to play by the rules? Planning permission is there for a reason.

Start and end of discussion on this point. Doesn't matter who the fuck you are or where you're from, you can't build on green-belt land without planning permission. Expect to get evicted and your house knocked down.

The fact they're scuzz-ridden pikeys is entirely secondary to all other arguments

if there's anything to get annoyed at here, it's the jobless shitbags that are these full-time protestors. Those people that will fight any cause they learn about,and enjoy spending their lives in a constant pseudo-righteous 'protest' against many imagined wrongs in the world. Y'know, the ones that rage against the state while being supported by it.

Even so - living permanently in illegally located or constructed dwellings is forbidden by law, and in general law abiding people don't do it - it tends to make the news when they don't (like that guy who built a mansion behind a wall of bales). It does seem to have taken a long time to enforce here, and therein lies most of the fight.

I'm waiting to hear from Anonymous X on this one.

I understand that the Council has offered Council housing to those at the site who qualify for such housing (the elderly, vulnerable, children and slaves).

I've no idea if any of them have taken up the Council's offer but I heard that they "can't live in bricks and mortar" according to someone on Radio 4 this morning. I have no idea if that's a fact or what.

Anyway, my opinion has been coloured by working in a pub as a youth and seeing what torment they can do to a reasonably quiet pub. They devastated the land nearby and left it in a right old state. The treatment of the dogs they kept made me sick - I think the RSPCA went to see them but their powers were limited and they did nothing. A couple of years passed after they'd been moved on and another load came and settled on another site. They were exactly the same and crime went up and as they found a base in the pub the trouble went up each night and locals stayed away. Anyhoo...if anyone has a nice story of a helpful polite traveller let's hear it to off-set my own experience!

You'll have a long wait, fellow mod-type person.

I worked in a Petrol Station near a pretty small traveller site in Middlesbrough. They were awful. Drive offs, smoking on the forecourt, dirty kids shoplifting whatever they could carry.

So... no, no good stories from me.

I could post a screengrab of 3 esteemed members of a travelling community from near glasgow poking about my yard looking for stuff to pinch at this point, but I won't.

edit: Dooh, of course

There used to be (might still be, I haven't checked) a travellers site next to the hospital in Wrexham. I remember seeing their kids running into the hospital shop, stealing a load of sweets, and running out again. Once the security guard managed to trap them in the revolving doors but they started spazzing and banging against it, and the slack-jawed moronic patients that couldn't get into the door started complaining, so he had to let them go. You know how I feel about kids pilfering confectionary.

There comes a point when enough anecdotal evidence can be considered pretty representative of a particular 'culture'.

So is it people who aren't legally allowed to be on land are being told to bugger off from land?

Erm.... nothing wrong with that.

There's nothing wrong with evicting them, but they will just go somewhere else.

So, you're advocating extermination. Glad we got that sorted.

You monster.

Are they british people? Send them to the highlands in scotland, let kalmar deal with them

They own the land; they're just living in properties for which they do not have planning permission.

Somewhat amusingly, this only applies to half of the camp. The other half they do have planning permission for, and own, and will remain there.

One argument is that 20% of 'gypsy' planning apps are approved compared to something like 90% in the general population, so there's a clear discrepancy there.

I'd rather look at what percentage of the general population who are looking to build ugly caravan estates get planning permission. I'll bet it's lower than 90%.

As for the slave thing - it's not just the Leighton Buzzard site - I worked with someone who was held down west Wales, hooked on crack, sent out to work, beaten for disobedience, etc. Shell of a man. Hits the deck when a campervan drives past his hostel, etc. He was one of many according to him.

I'm willing to bet there's plenty of decent traveller communities though, and eagerly await any evidence that they exist.

Oh. Well then they should have applied for planning permission before they built on it in the first place then!

My unqualified guess is that they're doing things like buying cheap land - cheap because planning permission is unlikely to be granted - and then trying to get permission for it. As we can see here, if its unlikely, they'll do it anyway.

Do they drop litter?

My belief system states that I must accept and defend all groups of people and their right to live their lives the way they want to, unless they drop litter.

Well, I'm sure a productive discussion will come from calling people 'pikeys'.

Fucking hell, beteo.

What is the acceptable nomenclature these days? Chavs? Gypos?

It's terribly hard to keep up with what I'm supposed to be saying. They really need to get out that latest Newspeak dictionary faster.

In fairness, the number of people using the term 'pikey' in the thread is ONE (two if you count yourself).

Hardly the board going all mental.

I know - don't you just hate it when someone lumps together a whole group of people by some identifier and tars them all with the same brush?


Doh!

And you can't really call them travellers as they clearly aren't very good at travelling.

But pikey means traveller....

You're right though, there's nothing inherently itinerant about the current culture amongst those of Irish extraction who refuse to integrate into society because it would curtail their anti-societal activities.

In the same way that 'paki' means 'someone from the Indian subcontinent', yeah.

Since when? Aren't chavs pikeys?

Ah, so it's an abbreviation of a longer word, often misappropriated to the wrong group of people?

"The Oxford English Dictionary traced the earliest use of "pikey" to The Times in August 1838, which referred to strangers who had come to the Isle of Sheppey as "pikey-men"." Huh!

It's a bit thin ice to start declaring perjorative terms as innocent because they used to be, though, hmm.

Since about 1500, if memory serves. But whatever. I came in here to see what people had to say, as I know so little about the situation that I thought I might learn something. It appears I was mistaken.

So how about facting us in rather than starting a row?

How old are you?!?

Not where I come from - a pikey was always a member of the travelling communities that passed through from time to time. Chav I never heard growing up, not till I met a guy from Cheltenham in 2007 who used it to describe youths who generally behaved in an overtly intimidating and criminal manner.

I think the cross-pollination of the term comes from places like Lincolnshire where the itinerant passers-through engaged in overtly intimidating and criminal behaviour. We never used to lock our garages when I was growing up, but we did after my (poor, Irish) family was cleaned out of two month's worth of food by the regular passers-through. Oh, how we laughed when one of our burglars got shot by Tony Martin a few years later.

1: I've seen this innocent term declared pejorative, which I consider to the thin ice, etc etc.

2: Gary Glitter wasn't a pejorative term until he bummed some children. Now it is.

Frankly, any community that fosters a 'them and us' attitude to the wider world and would place the 'protection of its own' over justice being served on an individual within their numbers can expect, at the very least, a label or two. Particularly one that has been in use for centuries and has only had the meaning changed by prevalent stereotypical behaviours from among their own number.

To be fair, it was only five minutes ago.

Also Meaty has had "I hate pikeys" in his sig for years so tackle these problems at source, ta

Satire is fine.

Not renowned for cleaning sites up before leaving, based on every site I've ever known them leave, let's put it that way.