So... illegal travellers' sites. There's one I haven't touched on yet.
Michael Howard says his wish to crack down on illegal sites is about common sense and fairness. But surely common sense would lead to more legal sites for travellers? I don't want to state the obvious or anything, but you can't blame gypsies and travellers for illegally settling on private land if there isn't enough public land available. Do people really think that a community that's been itinerant for generations is going to turn up at a site, notice the 'Private Property' sign and say "oh, okay then, sod this caravaning malarky, let's settle down in a nice semi-detached".
This is simply a case of the settled community trying to marginalise and criminalise travellers. It is good that travellers exist. It's good that there are people who challenge the accepted way of living and offer alternatives. Various communities and races have lived in this way for generations and the resulting cultures are rich and exciting. How are they going to continue to thrive and develop if the Tories lock everyone up?
6 comments:
Ooh, how exciting! Let's have an online fight!
I can imagine that it would really piss me off if people behaved like that where I lived (although I can't quite imagine travellers wanting to come to Stratford!) It's a bit like when you see tourists drop litter or stand at the bottom of escalators because London's just a big playground to them while the rest of us are trying to get on with our lives.
You may well be right that being itinerant affects the way you view the world around you, but if any progress is going to be made it's only going to happen through intensive talks with these groups. I think it's equally as important that the government takes the time to learn about these communities and work out a way for everyone to get on with their way of life without causing upset to anyone else. There's got to be comprimises on both sides, but the most obvious one to me is that they re-open some of the old travellers' sites.
Smulford has made sense of something for me: london is just a bunch of people who were intending to be itinerant and got stuck, that's why it's such a fucking dump.
As I understand it, the government used to provide legal sites for travellers, but this was scrapped by the tories, and Labour dragged their heels reinstating it as they decided they'd rather spunk the cash on SureStart programs and big shiny millennium domes.
Am I allowed to call Michael Howard a cunt? He's just trying to stir up the petty bigotry that lies inside a lot of Brits. Developing legal traveller's sites would be a pretty cost effective way of making everyone happy.
What's Michael Howard's solution for the problem? Keep moving them on until the friction turns them into vapour? Send them all to the gulags? Typical small minded tory shitwittery.
Obviously i can't speak for the level of propriety and parliamentary language meg wants on her blog, but if you can't do it anywhere else feel free to come and call him a cunt on mine!
There's a legal travelers' site in our neighbourhood and I can say with certainty that 50% of the people who live on the site are or have been involved in some sort of criminal activity. If it's not abandoned cars/caravans that seem to appear at the same time that someone on the site gets a new car/caravan it's the youths (and adults) that beat up and attack local residents. Just the other week three teenagers from the travelers' site went in to the sports centre and indiscriminately attacked a younger kid in there who was having a birthday. They punched and kicked him to the ground inside the reception before running back to the site where no one can touch them.
How's that for inter-community relations!
Yes travellers often seem to cause a disturbance but the problem is that if there is no space on a legal site then the police can't move traveller off and illegal site, which is why they can stay on peoples land!
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