SWMBO watched all the episodes. I couldn't bear to be in the same room, I reckon I would've put a foot through the screen.
What suggestions do we have for so many of them having their faces pixelated or 'not wishing to be seen on camera'?
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Ok, ill bite :-)
Ive watched a couple of episodes. They certainly are colourful people. I think on the one hand some of them suffer discrimination and on the other, some of them have a victim complex and see it where it doesnt exist ( like the pub that was closed at Appleby - they had trouble one year so the next year they closed for the fair. seems fair enough, its not a slant on a whole community, its protecting your own ).
Ive not yet had a good experience with the travelling community and I once had a truely shocking proposal from a couple of them that ill never forget.
I do feel sorry for how the women are treated though, it seems they make somewhat better wives than any women ive ever met.
Maybe Rattle should buy himself a caravan to solve the dating problem...
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...like the pub that was closed at Appleby...
Appleby horse fair is always a lively gathering.
It attracts lots of tourists as well as participants.
Travellers come from all over this country and Ireland, so a bit of old score settling is inevitable.
And there's genuine horse trading going on, which is bound to lead to a dispute or two.
When something does go wrong, these are not the sort of fellas who ring Trading Standards.
Last edited by: Iffy on Wed 16 Feb 11 at 18:43
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It reinforced all my prejudices.
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It certainly did nothing to dispel mine...
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Only seen part of one episode, and the bit that amazed me was when some of the young men in a Mitsu L200 (I think) came across a queue of traffic caused by an RTA (looked like someone lying in the road). So they just took an alternative route - the pavement!
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>> Only seen part of one episode, and the bit that amazed me was when some
>> of the young men in a Mitsu L200 (I think) came across a queue of
>> traffic caused by an RTA (looked like someone lying in the road). So they just
>> took an alternative route - the pavement!
>>
They go round, roundabouts the wrong way here, and race transit vans through the streets - I am being serious as well, not making this up to flex a opnion.
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>> When something does go wrong, these are not the sort of fellas who ring Trading
>> Standards.
It seems that they will, however, call the cops. Or at least will grass each other up.
tinyurl.com/6hxqoc3
Sorting things out "the traveller way" indeed...bunch of fakers...
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>> What suggestions do we have for so many of them having their faces pixelated or
>> 'not wishing to be seen on camera'?
It would render the camera unserviceable.
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>> >> What suggestions do we have for so many of them having their faces pixelated or
>> >> 'not wishing to be seen on camera'?
>> It would render the camera unserviceable
If they were seen on camera, THEY would render the camera (and its operator) unserviceable.
I'm pretty open-minded but, as a member of the law-abiding majority, I see very little overlap between their code of ethics and mine. I've had various business dealings with them in the past and from my experiences I can understand why venue operators blanche at the prospect of hosting their wedding receptions.
Last edited by: Dave_TD {P} on Wed 16 Feb 11 at 22:57
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Having been to Appleby shortly after the aforementioned fair and having spent the night in a nice hotel there right in the middle of town I found the stories from the locals who had had their sheds robbed of tools by persons unknown during the fair period hard to bear...
And as to the stories of those whose properties faced onto the common land where the travellers gathered being used as a "convienience area" I must admit these were even harder to believe. Especially as they all seem so law abiding.
I did start to wonder why all the police were there on the TV Prog if there was no good reason....
"Tarmac your drive Guv"
As always
Mark
Last edited by: Mark on Wed 16 Feb 11 at 23:51
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Have you seen the way that their pre-pubescent girls dress?
They should be put in care.
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Isn't this prole TV that no one who could read or write would bother with (unless they were highly paid TV reviewers, that is)?
Like the 15 or 20 programmes about disgusting medical conditions that seem to be running at the moment. You wouldn't look at them either. Or indeed about two thirds of the rest on all channels.
Give me RoboCop any day.
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I'd buy that for a dollar, AC.
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>> Isn't this prole TV that no one who could read or write would bother with
>> (unless they were highly paid TV reviewers, that is)?
I think I've asked this before, possibly to you AC - don't you find 'people' interesting, especially ones who are very different to yourself? Isn't it just natural curiosity?
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>> especially ones who are very different to yourself?
correct me if I'm wrong :)
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>> don't you find 'people' interesting, especially ones who are very different to yourself? Isn't it just natural curiosity?
I'm surprised actually that anyone could ask me that. Perhaps you haven't read any of my posts.
The problem isn't different people, it's television. If you watch tabloid TV out of curiosity you always end by feeling frustrated, because so much is falsified, omitted or distorted that the thing usually makes no sense in the end. People complain about the print media, but TV is far worse perhaps because it's so powerful and apparently immediate. The camera can't lie, can it?
In a pig's ear it can't. What's more it does it casually, accidentally, as well as with careful malice aforethought.
I'm not saying it has to be like that. I merely observe that it is, more often than not. I know quite a lot about how it happens too. It's quite boring though.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Thu 17 Feb 11 at 15:51
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>> >> don't you find 'people' interesting, especially ones who are very different to yourself? Isn't
>> it just natural curiosity?
>>
>> I'm surprised actually that anyone could ask me that. Perhaps you haven't read any of
>> my posts.
Oh but I do, which is why I was a surprised at your question. But it makes more sense now.
I think that some of us don't think as deeply about things as you*, so are happy to plonk themselves in front of a TV after a hard day's work and watch something that tells us a bit about something we weren't previously aware of. We might be aware it's by no means the whole story and that it'll usually be slanted to be entertaining rather than factual. But it can still be enjoyable to watch, sometimes...
* I'm pretty shallow on the whole
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Like Focus I'm happy to watch some *factual* TV rather than drama. It sort of drifts over you and facts can be cherry picked as they create interest. Helps to wear the Daily Mail filter goggles though :-)
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>> *factual* TV rather than drama.
Is that "factual" as in TG?! :-)
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Heh heh... but you flatter me really Focus. I often stay up most of the night watching thoroughly deplorable movies and even the sort of thing I know is just awful TV. For example the other night I got hooked by a reality programme about cooking, four people inviting each other to dinner and backbiting between courses. Three of the four were quite unpleasant exhibitionist carphounds, and one of them 'won' the competition prize of £1000.
I'll never look at it again. But I did sit through most of it.
'think deeply about things....' I wish!
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>> For example the other night I got hooked by a reality programme about
>> cooking, four people inviting each other to dinner and backbiting between courses.
Come Dine with Me - excellent! There's hope for you yet :)
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I just read that some gipsies, or whatever they now prefer to be known as, are now planning a class action against the broadcasters for 10 million quid, because the programmes were denigratory and they say people are now shunning them.
snip, eh? ;-)
Last edited by: VxFan on Fri 18 Feb 11 at 16:07
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They weren't shunning them before, then?
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Thats quite funny since the content is their actions, including dressing young girls up like adult women 'on the pull' and wedding dresses that owe rather alot to a box of Quality Street.
Thats before you get onto the men. It doesnt portray them in a good light because when you shine a light on them, it doesnt look good.
Even assuming the editing is against them, their behaviour speaks for itself, they just cant nor will they ever be able to see it because they really are very different people.
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We used to stand at, among others, the big Newark Antiques & Collectables fair, held six times a year.
Irish tinkers/travellers were always there, coming over from Ireland via Holyhead and travelling to the fair with their vans, lorries & families.
An experienced policeman we spoke to reckoned that they could always follow the route these people took by the number of break-ins and other thefts committed along the way.
Once at the fair, the menfolk engaged themselves in stealing anything not tied down, or in tents without security (slitting the canvas to enter).
The older women took young children around the inside stalls to pinch anything they could (a close neighbouring stall-holder to our stand had several thousand pounds in takings stolen from under her stall, probably by a child). We had some quite valuable pottery nicked.
The young tarty girls were out on the game - one 100% real story was from a chap in the toilets at a urinal, looking up to see a traveller girl standing by him asking "can I hold that for you"!
These people look on any non-traveller as absolutely fair game provided by God for their exclusive plucking.
Evil, the lot of them.
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I can't claim particular expertise landsker, but if you can't vouch personally for all those allegations - and it doesn't look as if you can on the face of it - you probably shouldn't have passed them on.
Of course certain human categories can seem annoying as such, in their own right so to speak. But there's no need to exaggerate despite the occasional real extreme event. It only causes trouble and upsets people.
Go on, call me a wet grauniad-reading metrosexual if you want. I'm used to it. Fortunately there are many others taking the opposite, equally severe view.
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"Wet grauniad reader" wouldn't that be a bit awkward and messy. I agree with you AC.
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Genuine part of a conversation I had with my Primary 6 son over the toast and marmalade this morning.
"Dad, what do people mean by "race"?"
"Well, you know in your class, there are some children with different skin colours and so on?"
"Yes"
"Well, some of them are from a different racial background to you and that's why they look a bit different in some ways. It just means mainly that somewhere back in time they or some members of their family came from another part of the world where people tend to look like that"
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that, they don't seem different to me"
Maybe, finally, we're getting somewhere...
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In this particular case, its nothing to do with race.
People who don't contribute to society, deserve no respect from society.
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When does 'no respect' become a list of dubious allegations though? There is a real difference.
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AC, thanks; you've expressed perfectly the thoughts I've struggled to crystalise.
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I suggest you go visit Newark, and Billericay to ask the local tax paying, rate paying contributing members of the community where the respect boundary lies.
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 19 Feb 11 at 21:30
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Funny you say that. My ex lives there with my boy and she often mentions the travelling community in conversation, seems its an ongoing topic. She had to secure her back garden like Fort Knox after repeated thefts. Field over back was an unofficial campsite, thefts stopped when campers moved on. Lifes full of coincidences.
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My experiences with travellers:
2001 - large group moved on to a field at the end of the road we were living in at the time. The local newsagent who we were friendly with reported gangs of kids with Irish accents walking in, stealing openly in front of staff, and walking out. Similar experiences reported by staff at the local Tesco and the local petrol station. On one occasion the newsagent remonstrated with one of the kids, only to have a larger youth, again with an Irish accent, walk into the shop a hour later, threaten the proprieter's 15 year old daughter with a knife and threaten to return that evening and burn out the shop. The police's enthusiasm seemed to evaporate when it became clear the perps were travellers, and the excuses started coming thick and fast. Visits were allegedly paid to the camp, but nothing ever came of it.
When these travellers were eventually evicted from the land, the cleanup bill ran into tens of thousands of pounds, and involved the removal of significant quantities of human excrement, six burned out cars, one burned out caravan, and three smashed up motorcycles. All except the caravan had been stolen from the local area in the month.
Everything above was witnessed either by myself or people I trust, and was documented in the local newspaper.
2002 - Work colleague had the bonnet, front wings, grille and headlamps stolen off his Nissan Primera in broad daylight outside the office. Quick thinking receptionist got the van's registration number and called the police. Van not registered to anyone, but was spotted by local police entering the nearby permanent travellers site. Investigation proved fruitless. All the travellers denied owning it, or knowing who owned it. Then they became threatening, and the police retreated 'for their own safety'. This was never pursued.
2008 - Gang of travellers turned up and asked my father in law if he wanted the drive he was preparing tarmaccing. He said he wasn't interested. Woke up the next morning to a gang of them unloading their truck to start work. When he asked them to leave, they became abusive and demanded money for their inconvenience. For some reason, the prospect of the police did bother this lot, as when my mother in law called them, they drove off.
2010/11 - Eldest daughter is in a school class with four traveller kids, who aren't allowed to mix with anyone outside their own group, are repeatedly disruptive in class (six year old kids who think nothing of telling a teacher to "snip off!", and the school have to jump through all manner of administrative and 'human rights' related hoops to deal with them. Talking to some Army friends whose have kids in the same class, they are technically entitled to the same 'traveller status' for their kids, but have all turned it down on principle. It entitles the kids to free school transport, extra lessons and a wealth of additional 'emotional support' that the rest of us don't qualify for.
I'm sure there are good individuals, but as a whole, they are despicable people who live without regard to consequences, the law or wider society. They give it large about independence and their traditions, but will be the first to claim state education for their kids, state healthcare when they get sick, or the human rights act when things don't go their way. Utter parasites.
Last edited by: VxFan on Tue 22 Feb 11 at 10:29
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>> In this particular case, its nothing to do with race.
>>
>> People who don't contribute to society, deserve no respect from society.
I wouldn't say that, if you don't contribute to society, you deserve no respect. Rather, perhaps, that you don't contribute to society, you shouldn't expect anything from society.
I don't have a problem with people not contributing if they don't want to. I would have a problem with people taking from society and not giving.
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I can vouch for my own experience and the situation that landsker describes is actually tamer sounding than my experience, so I can easily believe it.
I was propositioned in graffic terms ten years ago by two girls too young to even have a paper round who approached me with a propsal that was etched permanantly in my memory for the rest of my life.
Not only did their swagger terrify me, but they had no issue with making the proposal to the two boys I was looking after at the time who were only 11 and 12 and then turning on me realising the boys had no clue what they meant.
Ok I was 18 at the time, so I knew what they were talking about, the boys just thought it was funny, but the gravity of what they were doing wasnt lost on me at the time.
Its the one and only time as an adult ive felt intimidated by a child.
So yeah, I believe it 100%.
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Conversely, most summers, a group of travelling people used to park up in a field behind our old house in rural Scotland for a week or three. They specialised in drystone wall repairs and construction and moved around the country where the work took them. Culturally different of course but mainly charming people. Almost as if they came from another bygone age. They never stole from us or any of our few neighbours despite our very lax attitude to security. Over the period of eight years we were there some of them became firm friends. They always tidied up the campsite before moving on and our little community was annually briefly enhanced by the chance to understand their ways. Not once did we encounter the sort of negative behaviour being cited above.
I suppose you have to speak as you find of course but that was our experience.
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Well this is of course true - they are as varied a group of people as any.
My family used to employ them in the 40's to do farm work, infact memebers of my dads family were travellers aswell, many of my dads cousins were although not so much these days, the tendancy to travel for work died with that generation.
If you watch all of the series, there is a girl with a job in a shop which is apparently unusual and she seemed 100% decent. There is certainly no typical traveller, other than the obvious travelling bit, but as ever you will only hear about the bad things - nothing new in that.
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>> I suppose you have to speak as you find of course but that was our
>> experience.
Indeed your experience of a different group of people. A much smaller group of people.
Not the other group we are referring to. The same group who smashed up the Surrey Police Helicopter because it was achieving a little too much success.
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There are travellers and travellers, presumably. As with other groups. I do not doubt for a second that the wrong sort turn up at certain regular events of the type described by Landsker. Not in itself cause to condemn a whole group.
There is a council maintained travellers camp very near here. No bother at all for some years now; but on occasions the wrong sort have arrived, accompanied by a crime wave and leaving the site itself in a mess some time later, including trashed facilities.
Link from the Telegraph. I was looking forward to lower caravan insurance premiums, but it hasn't materialised!
goo.gl/dq4de
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>> I can't claim particular expertise landsker, but if you can't vouch personally for all those
>> allegations - and it doesn't look as if you can on the face of it
>> - you probably shouldn't have passed them on.
>>
I can claim that expertise; I lived with travellers for about nine months around 1987.
A pretty low chapter of my life, but the experience taught me a helluva lot.
Landsker is not exaggerating.
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All as may be, but broadly speaking if you kick a dog it will bite you, stroke it and it will show you affection. There are always exceptions of course.
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There's a tale I've heard of a Police Officer from a Romany background working for a large inner city Police force - he was, along with another, despatched to an illegal encampment - there were some verbals exchanged and a threat issued and the Officer rose to the challenge. He stripped to the waist and a fist fight ensued - the Officer leathered his opponent and they quietly moved on as requested.....
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Well, personal experience is personal experience, and one wouldn't doubt those.
But the point is well made that people are variable, or perhaps that categories that seem the same are different in reality. It still makes me uncomfortable to see an entire, not very well-defined group accused of a variety of crimes and social misbehaviours so to speak in general. It may seem like that when you have a nest of real toerags at the end of your garden but it probably isn't really.
As I say, I have no special expertise here, but hop pickers and fairground workers for example may display marked differences in their behaviour. I have never been unlucky enough to be persecuted by such people, although I have noticed that they aren't always winsome exactly.
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"Our" lot used to bring us rabbits in exchange for access to our garden tap.
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Ive found the hippie types in general to be rather nice people, I know several personally with the stereotypical old bus and rather too much 'breeding' going on - lack of TV I suspect!
I think he is a travelling musician from what he has said in the past although he definition of work isnt mine, but he seems happy as do his family.
They are certainly travellers in the real sense, but theirs is a philosophy which includes a fair degree of towing the line and I can imagine he would be horrifed if he had upset anyone.
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Travellers took up illegal residence on common land near the farm on which we lived.
The usual experience followed, things started to go missing from our yard and yards and outhouses round and about.
My mother, who would normally run a mile from any dispute, was a parish councillor and became the focal point for the campaign to move on the travelling thieves.
Things were not so different then, the police couldn't catch a cold, let alone a criminal, and were not the least bit interested in the shanty town on the common - civil dispute.
The matter was brought to a head when one of the thieves threatened my mother with a shotgun.
It was nothing personal, she was acting as the figurehead of the local opposition.
But even West Mercia Police found the casual use of guns to threaten a citizen difficult to ignore.
The thieves were evicted when about half the force, and all of its firearms officers, turned up at the common at 6am one morning.
The mess left by the thieves had to be seen to be believed, but as it was a public health hazard, the council put some resources into cleaning it up.
Concerns the thieves would return were addressed by digging a metre wide and metre deep trench around common.
Thus a little, but regularly, used local amenity was denied to everyone.
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A tactic so often used to avoid dealing with the problem.
There are no picnic lay-by's around now with with toilets in that haven't been boarded up to prevent the local gay community meeting there.
One, local to us, even had the snack bar removed by the council as well in an effort to cure the problem.
Three years on what was a lovely stop for families with picnic tables on the banks of a river just off the A1, where food for a family and a toilet stop could be had very cheaply on a journey has been entirely given over to the gay and dogging community and ignored by everyone else.
Pat
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I went through a phase a few years ago of using a gas stove to make hot drinks while on my travels.
I stopped doing it partly because the reason for a single male stopping in a lay-by was mis-interpreted several times by other male 'users' of the lay-by.
And as Pat says, we are not talking about remote locations at 3am in the morning.
I was propositioned, or weighed-up for propositioning, in lay-bys off trunk roads in broad daylight.
Easy to make nudge-nudge jokes about that, and I can look after myself.
But I would be lying if I didn't say each experience was unnerving and unpleasant.
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Pat,
The issue here is people who want sex with strangers in a odd or public place. I don't think most who identify themselves with the 'gay community' would claim ownership of cottagers or doggers.
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The Business Park I worked at most recently was a renowned dogging site - used to be quite intimidating for women at particular times of the day.
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Thanks for the explanation Bromptonaut, I admit to not researching it too far:)
It happens a lot where there is a regular overnight stopping place for lorries, including Chester motorway services lorry park, so it's always ignition off and curtains drawn across quickly for me.
Pat
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cheers Pat, I'm just doing my bit as the forum's PC warden.
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>> It happens a lot where there is a regular overnight stopping place for lorries, including
>> Chester motorway services lorry park, so it's always ignition off and curtains drawn across quickly
>> for me.
Just made me wonder Pat, as a female trucker, are there many time when you feel unsafe?
Hope that isn't a weird question, I just wondered.
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No not really SS.
Certainly not in the situations above as I'm really of no interest to them.
I always prefer not to park up alone in a lay-by and sit there in open view during the evening to any passing vehicle, but that risk is the same for any lorry driver.
The only time I've felt at risk is when I'm woken in the middle of the night by the vehicle rocking or noise that sounds as though someone is in the trailer. It's usually the diesel or the load they are after though, and sitting quietly with your heart thumping, while dialling 999 and whispering your location, will usually see them long gone by the time Plod arrives.
If I'm on an MSA lorry park, like Chester, I have no fear as we always look after each other.
Pat
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The Business Park I worked at most recently was a renowned dogging site
Do post up the address and post code. :-)
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...The issue here is people who want sex with strangers in a odd or public place...
At what cost to the majority of the population who don't?
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Iffy, as a above I was mildly challenging a stereotype of gay men & public toilets.
No ideas about how 'public sex' can be stopped.
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According to Hunts CC, removing the snack bar would do it:)
Pat
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Well I was always hungry afterwards.
I live near the premier, top range dogging venue in the whole of England
A3/M25 junction - Wisley Common. Some nights they queue to get parking spaces.
Dont go dog walking there, even poor fifi gets propositioned.
You want to know the reasons for the popularity of snack bar sites for dogging?
The outside picnic tables. I will say no more.
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>> The outside picnic tables. I will say no more.
That some kind of splinter group?
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Well now you know where the phrase "laying the table" came from.
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Perhaps someone should tell Hunts CC to open the toilets, and let the snack wagon back into Wansford then, just as long as they remove the tables which are still there.
Pat
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Yeah, funny how they never got to the root cause.
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I live near the premier, top range dogging venue in the whole of England
You Would ! :-)
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I didnt know that for some time, till I tried to find out why there were traffic jams at 10:00pm on a Sunday Evening.
I am waiting for a lexus to turn up one night,.
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I must have led a partially sheltered life. I'd never heard of such things until relatively recently. A retrospectively funny event was some 5 or so years ago when I pulled into a picnic area near Stonehaven on my own to drink a coffee, eat some sandwiches and make some phone calls. A car pulled in to the space next to mine also driven by a lone male occupant who it became clear was trying to attract my attention. I nodded a greeting but ignored him as I was on the phone. It took quite a while for the penny to drop with me at which I made a speedy exit...
Last edited by: Humph D'Bout on Sun 20 Feb 11 at 11:56
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Good God.
I'll be afraid to stop in layby's for a slash or to roll a joint now.
If there's one thing that spooks me it's people looking at me funnily.
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Well, on that occasion I had planned to have a wee too but decided discretion was the better part of valour and waited until I spotted a MacDonalds...
Didn't fancy a Big Mac that day though...
Last edited by: Humph D'Bout on Sun 20 Feb 11 at 12:16
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>> Didn't fancy a Big Mac that day though...
>>
You were the fancied Big Mac weren't you?
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>> layby's
Coussine is a semi-literate prat
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Perhaps Coussine used to work at a greengrocer's? ;>)
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Big fat gypsy weddings - Stuu
