As revealed in the Historic Aviation Tangmere sign thread, thoughts about Travellers.

It’s interesting to note that on this aformentioned thread that a lot of bad feeling was expressed towards the Travelling community, myself included.
However, they can’t all be bad, what are people’s thoughts on the subject.
When I was a kid, we used to have various Romany famillies living on waste ground near where I used to live.
These people had traditional caravans and didn’t cause any harm to anyone.
I remember during the big freeze of 1963, one family lived in a green canvas tent with a stove chimney sticking out the top, every night they used to bring their horse into the tent with them so it wouldn’t freeze to death.
Eventually they were given a former colliery house by the local council and, yes, you’ve guessed it, they turned the garden into a scrap yard and put the horse to graze on the colliery playing fields out the back, we thought it was amusing, but I’m sure the neighbours didn’t.
Even now, there are famillies that temporarily move on to sites in the area and cause no problems.
There is a small green between here and Dunmow and every year a couple of caravans move on there for a short time.
They make no mess, apart from the obvious, under the hedge, and always leave the place tidy with dustbin bags waiting for the refuse collectors.
The problem is with the council run ghettos, some of these are a bit grim and relatives are encouraged to move in and thus the sites illegally expand, then you get the planning issues that annoy me.
I can think of some bad, no go areas around here but won’t name them.
My missus used to work in a local car sales room and they had a hell of a lot of trouble, fortunately one of the staff was a 6ft 6 Irishman who knew the family backgrounds of some of these people and always got the firm out of trouble.
So is it a tradition we should accept or what.
Your comments please.