No-one wants them as neighbours,

Like I said before let me have your address and I'll gladly pass it on to them as a welcoming place.

Look Talky, its like this. I've never done anything to a traveller, and have no intrention of starting now. However the other way round, my community has incurred two large bills for the aftermath of travellers. I've twice had my workplace broken into by travellers and vehicles decimated for spares (transit vans with bonnets gone, doors removed, headlights taken and so on). My local forest is innundated with "new age travellers" and there are as a result no go areas and crap everywhere. The situation at Thetford is as described and ongoing. My brother in laws landscaping business routinely has equipment stolen by "gypsies" often as described in the Tesco scenario above, in broad daylight. The Police rarely take any action to protect either his, my or anyone elses rights in this.

Now if you can find something somewhere that means that I'm culpable in this situation please do let me know. In the meantime I will continue to take people as I find them and make my judgements based on the reality that I have to deal with. Right now they boil my piss for the reasons given.

But there's travellers and travellers – important to rememeber that, and apologies if you are bearing it in mind. You can complain about the travellers that wrong you all you want, that's fine, but don't start getting prejudiced because that's a slippery slope.

Just to make that clear – prejudice means saying 'these people' meaning all travellers, when you mean just the bad ones. Which may or may not be in the majority, I do not know.

There are probably many travellers who are willing to call all fixed abode dwellers evil nazi c**ts, which would hardly be fair either would it?

There's a semi permanent camp a couple of miles down the road from us. Generally, we dont see that much of them (hate to put it like that, sounds like I'm talking about a different species), but on the odd occasion I have, I've found some of them are ok, and some of them arent, just like the rest of us really – weird eh? 🙄

Just to make that clear – prejudice means saying 'these people' meaning all travellers, when you mean just the bad ones. Which may or may not be in the majority, I do not know.

So just to be clear to everyone in future, start your sentence with "Pikey thieving scumbags" for the bad eggs, and "those lovely travelling folk" for the good eggs, rather than "these people".

This thread is really delightful – difficult to imagine a thread title dehumanising/belittling any other group in society would have lasted this long.

Shall I try starting 'blacks, bit like monkeys aren't they' or 'asians, they all smell of curry' and see what happens?

And my point is lets not let political correctness get in the way of the facts. My experience is that I have never had a good traveller experience, it look a lot like I'm not alone in that. Maybe there are good reasons for that, but my views in that are equally as valid in theirs should they see me as a "nazi ****". In fact by token of the fact that I am not advocating extermination, racial purity or any of those things I suspect my views may well have greater validity than their supposed one.

The fact is the situation is as it is, and it is no good pretending otherwise. What we do need is a proper debate, and genuine efforts to deal with it. I come at it from the simple position that the law of the land should apply uniformly to all people regardless of who or what they are. If you are not prepared to do that then either accept the consequences or leave. (I have no problem with changing law either should it be necessary.)

Currently the “travelling community “ operate outside of the legal framework of the country, that is not entirely their fault, I agree. However, it is not reasonable to just pretend that its not a problem, because it is. Failure to address the reality will lead to vigilante actions ultimately, and that is entirely wrong.

BB you can come up North and I will show you estates where people dump their furniture in the street [ sometimes from their 12 th floor flat, leave a mess everywhere and generally are filthy and socially irresponsible. Some of these areas are rife with crime and drugs and are a no go area for most people. We have to pay the council to clean up the mess they make and tax payers pay…Not really much different from what you describe of the travellers where you are.
Some people are irresponsible but I cannot call an entire race, group or class of people names because of what some of their number do- lets be honest none of us know what % of travellers leave a mess rob etc. I suspect it is similar to other people at the lower levels of the wealth/education upper end of the social deprivation system though. It is wrong and I do not condone the behaviour you describe. Perhaps if we engaged positively with these people or gave them appropriate services like water and bins they may live life a little cleaner /better. i suspect depriving them of legitimate sights, forcing them to trespass to camp is just fanning the flames
EDIT: BB lets not let political correctness get in the way of the facts…nor logic interfere with your bigotry 😉 I accpet some of what you say is reasonable and get your point but when you say

If you are not prepared to do that then either accept the consequences or leave. (I have no problem with changing law either should it be necessary.)

You do start to sound like the BNP. These are native aboriginal Britains you are deporting BTW

And my point is lets not let political correctness get in the way of the facts.

Political correctness – aka 'not being a racist'.

I'm not saying there are no issues with travellers, but the generalisations and bigotry (yes that word again) on display here don't do anyone any favours.

gave them appropriate services like water and bins they may live life a little cleaner /better

They're called campsites, or even houses.

Sorry, jumped straight in to page3 Have we blamed Thatch yet ?

Campsites only have 4000 places and there are stimated to be about 100000 travellers. Hard to be a traveller in a house really. Not like gypsies are stopping you building mor ehouses when we run out of houses but we no longer provide a similiar service to them

BB you can come up North

No need got the same issues down here. However, in much the same way as the travellers, pretending that all is lovely and everything wonderful in the garden won't resolve that either. As I said before my opening gambit and the one I stand by is that the law of the mlnd should apply equally to all. That is not merely punative measures, but does expand out across the spectrum to their rights too, but then also to mine and of those like me.

Currently it clear that that is not the case and that is wrong.