Give them a communal stop tap then... just outside the site.

Sky News interviewed some hippy who had chained herself to a car. She said she'd only been there a month.

That’s one of the protesters or “activists” who seem to be there revelling in the excitement of a ruck with the cops. I have no idea what they are “activating” about. Maybe the like the idea of being manhandled by burley police officers in riot gear.

The local (haha) Labour MEP was on the BBC news this morning arguing that for years the travellers have repeatedly tried to pursue applications only for the council to stubbornly refuse.

I wonder if we could have lists of retrospective applications and permissions granted during the last ten years and see if it correlates with local Conservative Party interests.

I contend that the results would be enlightening...

He seemed incapable of explaining how they can be “travellers” when they have remained static on one site for at least a decade. He wasn’t keen on the idea that the majority of comments from viewers to the BBC were clearly anti-traveller.


Also - is there some art school you can go to to learn to paint like this:



It seems that all protests of this nature seems to attracts a certain style of painted art, and it all seems to fall within a similar aesthetic.

when they have been removed let the system check all the benefits that they are claiming
then bang them up so they have a roof over there heads and 3 meals a day without the worry of eviction ...

The Irish "Travellers" actually call themselves Pavees

They are not called "travellers" nor is their culture based on travelling. The term is applied by settled communities that (usually) fundamentally misunderstand their culture.


I'm not keen on the idea that the majority of comments from viewers to the BBC are clearly blinkered, small-minded, logically-deficient and that quite a few are just plain xenophobic.

After all, argumentum ad populum is a genetic fallacy

Sounds close enough to Pikies to be official to me.

In that case they've done a pretty rubbish job of explaining that to people, because pretty much every news agency covering the events still refered to them as travellers. If it was in their interest to disavow people of the preconception, they've rather failed to do so. To be honest, the likes of that MEP are probably doing the residents of Dale Farm more harm than good. He was bordering on the hysterical when I heard him o the radio this AM, and as I've said, anyone who uses the term 'ethnic cleansing' to describe what is in fact a simple legal dispute deserves to be taken on a whistlestop tour of places like Kigali and Srebrenica and (for pity's sake) Auchwitz and Dachau. They simply sound like they've lost all perspective.


*shrug* people are by nature cohesive with people who are like them. Trying to stop people being hostile to those they see as 'outsiders' is a task that even King Canute would balk at. The best you can do is make laws that stop this trait from causing real disadvantage to people. You can't police what people think or say, and indeed those that have tried aren't generally the poster children for the human race. Raging about what people say on radio & TV phone ins is only a slight step less futile than phoning up radio or TV phone ins.

Indeed - this isn’t ethnic cleanings by any definition of the phrase. To apply it to this situation is insulting the real victims of such crimes.



You live and learn. However, they’ve let the term “traveller” be applied to them for so long that that’s the word that’s been associated with them. Just like “gypsy” derives from “Egypt” - places the travelling communities appear to have originated. The protesters, and clearly those who represent them in court, the media etc. have failed to communicate the preferred term.

Oooh - etymology time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Traveller#Etymology

Well, the final group of Travellers walked out yesterday.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-15398254

I was watching the TV coverage and one of the residents - why, by the way, were most of the people who seemed to actually be running things at Dale Farm or who are put up to talk to the press middle aged women? I don't remember hearing a man speak at hardly any point in the whole proceedings - was talking to the 'activists'. She was pointing out that all the residents had now left, there was no point them being there and the residents didn't want them to stay and end up fighting the police, so could they please leave.

They said no.

That pretty much summed it up for me - they didn't give a damn about the actual residents, they were just there to protest for protest's sake.

Jon

From what I’ve got from watching other programmes about Dale Farm, the men don’t want to talk to the media. They let the women do that.

All of the violence I saw on the news the other day apparently involved protesters and none of the residents. Arses.

Why would they be stupid enough to get violent when they've got idiot anarchists on hand to do their dirty work and take all the stick.