Dale Farm

[eFestivals]

So is your complaint about capacity ? The travellers where apparently provided with a list of legal sites with spare capacity ?

Watching the Channel 4 documentary a few weeks back showed a number of legal traveller sites that the travellers had declared "not suitable" ...

So is this a case of their being no alternatives... or no alternatives to their liking ?

maths isn't your strong point is it?

There's less than 25% of the pitches needed for all of the travellers that there are, and many of those pitches are designated as transit sites which means that permanent residence is not allowed (so just as 'illegal' as Dale Farm) - which I suspect is why they might have said they're weren't suitable. How can a kid attend school when he'd have to move all around the country just to be on legal sites?

If someone told you that the only place you could live legally was (say) Cornwall, hundreds of miles from where you're settled, you'd say "oh, that's perfect" would you?

Why not try considering things on the same basis as you'd consider them for yourself? You might get to realise what an arse you're being.

[eFestivals]

List of legal traveller sites....

https://docs.google....&hl=en_US#gid=1

As you can see from that list, Basildon has a total of 25 pitches, all permanent (and so likely to be already taken). There's 49 pitches being evicted at Dale Farm. You do the maths.

And from that list there's a total of 14,895 pitches in the country - and a population of 300,000 travellers. Get the calculator out again.

[eFestivals]

I suppose ultimately I don't understand how someone can deem themselves a "traveller" and not travel....

th

then you understand so very little about the issues that you have nothing of worth to say on the issue.

Put as briefly as possible: it's because society has forced them to become more settled. Society has said that's what they should do - so they've done it, and now society has said "oh, we don't want you to settle either".

My priority is to put a roof over my families heads, everything is secondary, including location... Something you simply won't accept from me.

What you don't get is that's absolutely no different to them.

Having got a roof over your family's head (just as those travellers have as well), you'd do all you could to stay there, because anywhere you might be forced to move to would be no less temporary than the place they're trying to move you from.

What you might want has no relevance when society says "you're doing what we force you to do", yet change their minds about that constantly and force you somewhere else.

[eFestivals]

You can't get away from the fact though that some of the sites have capacity though...

and you can't get away from the fact that despite law having existed for over 20 years putting a statatory obligation on each coiuncil to provide sites for travellers, over 50% never did do.

And because those 50%+ councils didn't want to, that law was then abolished meaning tha\t there was then no provision at all. Travellers were told to buy their own land.

Like Dale Farm, which they bought and for which they had a perfectly reasonable expectation of getting planning permission, given it's past use as a scrap yard and given that it was next door to an existing traveller-owned site.

You expect the travellers to abide by the law when councils and the govt never did. But it's all the travellers fault, eh?

[5co77ie]

There's some iconic photos coming out of this -

[5co77ie]

Instances of police violence reported by trained human rights observers and witnesses include:

-Witnesses report the use of tasers by police from the beginning of the eviction

-Police forced entry onto the site by using sledgehammers to break down a wall of a fully legal plot on the edge of the site. This is not only in violation of court order and constitutes criminal damage, but it is also highly dangerous. Vulnerable and elderly residents had stayed on that plot expecting to be safe as it is protected through court decisions, and were highly traumatised as police sledgehammered through the wall. At least two women residents sustained head injuries.

-Batons have been used on supporters and residents from the beginning of the eviction

-Severe injuries of residents and protesters have been witnessed by human rights observers and the press. One woman sustained such serious injuries from police that she had to be admitted to hospital.

- The plot of a resident who needs a breathing machine to survive has had it’s electricity cut.

[eFestivals]

No Neil...

I have put a legal house above my families head... BIG difference... I conformed to the law regarding my housing choices...

if the councils had conformed to the law and govts had forced them to, then Dale Farm would never had existed.

So what we have is councils saying "we ignored the laws about our obligation to travellers, but we won't allow travellers to ignore the laws regarding travellers".

And what you're forgetting is that the laws you say you conform to - actually, you don't, there is no law which says you have to live in a house - are specifically designed to discriminate against travellers, at the bequest of people like you who are too ignorant to even start to understand the issues.

As I keep saying: you say people should conform to the law. The council's action is ensuring greater law-breaking than if they did nothing. It is that council and others who are causing the law to be broken, by their own breaking of the law.

[eFestivals]

Doesn't take a genius to see a massive flaw in those expectations... Very naive...

Yup, too true. It's extremely naive of anyone to think that there's reasonable people around with a working brain. You're the living proof of just how naive that is.

[eFestivals]

Losing the argument so your getting nasty ?

Whatever... Leave you to it...

Nope, it's a statement of fact.

You've shown just how little you understand the issues, and are unable to recognise any solution aside from those people living their life in the way that you believe that all people should live their lives, in a house "cos it looks better".

These are the things you've said.

[eFestivals]

Your dogma is unhelpful...

says the man only posting unhelpful dogma.

Pointless looking to 30 years ago... Its about where we go now...

More to the point, it's about where those travellers go now. So where do they go as you're the man with all the answers.

Your suggestion of legal traveller sites has been shown as impossible because there's already too few pitches. Your suggestion of living in houses as offered by the council is impossible because the offer is not to all residents.

So what do they do? Suspend themselves from the air somehow?

Cos the only other alternative currently open to them is that they they move from land they own where they don't have planning permission to land they don't own where they don't have planning permission. How's that any improvement in regard to the law? It's not, it's a worse situation.

If you'd like to tell them where there's land they can buy where they'll also get planning permission, I'm sure they'll take it up - so please, tell them, where, and it's all sorted.

[eFestivals]

But hang on... We already both agree that the council should have a legal responsibility to supply sites... and they should be forced to do so...

So lets not get confused on what we do and don't agree on...

Right, we're getting somewhere.

The councils "should be forced to do so". I agree.

So should they "be forced to do so" before adding to the problem of illegal traveller sites and so lessening the problem, or after they've made the problem worse by evicting these people?

As you've finally recognised, the solution is more legal sites for travellers (tho of course that requires you to also accept one could be next door to you, because they have to be somewhere, they just can't disappear).

So how is causing there to be more illegal sites by evicting these people who have nowhere to go addressing or lessening the problem?

[eFestivals]

Apparently they where informed of space in St Helens...

Is it too much to ask them to relocate to this available space ?

I don't like Barry Fish who lives next door to me. I insist that he and his family is transported hundreds of miles away to the Shetland Islands, that's the right place for them, not next door to me.

Edited October 19, 2011 by eFestivals

[eFestivals]

Well actually I said this on page one...

....and followed it by saying that the council should follow thru on the law and evict these people and make the situation worse by doing so because there's nowhere for them to go.

Do you want solutions, or do you want the law applied regardless of consequences?

[eFestivals]

?

Fact is if I was unsuccessful in gaining planning permission for my extension I am about to build I would of had to move...

You're happy living your normal house dweller lifestyle with all the benefits in law that come with it such as an almost-guaranteed planning permission for your extension.

If you'd like to give travellers the same 'almost-guaranteed' in regard to the law we're sorted. So that means that if your neighbour accepts your desire to build your extension, then you accept your neighbour's desire to demolish his house and turn the land into a travellers site.

Are we sorted? Or are you wanting a greater right than you're prepared to give travellers?

[eFestivals]

Part of that would come from the council being forced to provide sites...

and part of that would come from people like you being forced to accept their existence.

All the while people like you are saying "they should have sites as long as they're not near me" then society has a problem. The problem is that people like you believe that you should have more rights than other people who have a different lifestyle tradition.

Their lifestyle tradition is not more harmful to others than your own lifestyle tradition. Until you can accept that people like you will continue to discriminate on no different a basis to any racist.

[eFestivals]

I don't want ugly shit developments next to me... That is not racist...

Yet EVERYONE gets ugly shit house developments next to them (the 'ugly' changes for each person, so if you don't think one development ugly you'll think the next one as ugly), but people are accepting of them, of the necessity of them. It doesn't stop them happening (as the 95% planning permission approvals for them gets to show).

There's no less necessity of traveller sites. The same ideas should apply all round: accept it, the people who'll live there have the same right to their lives as you do (but which the 80% refusal rate gets to show doesn't happen).

[eFestivals]

Can I just point out that by the same accord the travellers don't want to live next door to me because I am surrounded by houses...

And if they do, buy one of the houses...

Its not about race its about development of land...

It's about racist discrimination being applied to the development of land.

95% of planning applications for 'solid' (brick, etc) developments are approved. Only 20% of traveller site planning applications are approved.

They are both equally uses of land for living on. So those approval rates gets to show that discriminatory rules are being applied.

And those discriminatory planning rules have a direct and provable racist lineage.

[eFestivals]

So what you are saying is the travellers are racist because they don't like my house ?

Sorry to highlight the craziness in what you are saying...

If you'd like to show me a long history of housing developments being rejected on the objections of travellers - and at a rate of 80% average - then you might have a point.

FFS.

[eFestivals]

As it ever accrued to you they are getting rejected on planning grounds...

Objections from residents are only valid if they are raising valid planning grounds...

Are you suggesting that if I applied to turn that land into a caravan park I would of been successful ? To prove racism this would have to be true...

yes, they're getting rejected on the basis of planning rules, but planning rules that are discriminatory. What part of that aren't you getting????

[abdoujaparov]

Oh sorry for having an opinion....

I don't think many people understand them.... Some of them build houses and call themselves travellers... Its all very odd..

[eFestivals]

The bit where you say it is to do with race...

It comes into it because the planning rules have been arrived at precisely to try and stop travellers from upsetting the sensibilities of house dwellers. Travellers of all sorts have never been welcomed in this country, and all sorts of things have been done to force them out or marginalise them.

They are not given the same rights to their existence as house dwellers are given.

I can't believe you still can't get this.

[abdoujaparov]

and if they are opting for a permanent home then there is no reason, other than personal preference, that they can't take up available and approved housing like everyone else does...

We really should stop calling people travellers if they want a permanent home surely...

[kaosmark2]

Through out this the travellers have openly said they would use violence... The police are allowed to use force you know. Its all quite legal.

[eFestivals]

and if they are opting for a permanent home then there is no reason, other than personal preference, that they can't take up available and approved housing like everyone else does...

We really should stop calling people travellers if they want a permanent home surely...

[eFestivals]

So should we stop calling people Jewish if they dont go to a synagogue every week? Being a traveller is a cultural and (in the case of Romany gypsies) an ethnic identity. You dont stop being a traveller because you stop living a nomadic lifestyle...

yup .... tho it's often the case that they don't want to stop, but the changed circumstances within the country mean it's the only realistic choice.

The places available for them to park temporarily have been eroded over the years, meaning that when they are able to stop somewhere they then become resistant to being moved on.

It's a vicious circle, made all the more vicious by the likes of Oaf then saying "We really should stop calling people travellers if they want a permanent home surely...".