"travellers"

Basingstoke council have a startling new strategy for “travellers” and their camps.

Travellers for the uninformed, is the PC description of people who decide that they can park and live anywhere that they like, leave waste (animal, vegetable, mineral and human) behind them and move along when it seems to be at a depth of between waist and knee high leaving others to clear up and pay for it.

Rather than use the powers that, according to the local MP, the police have to move them along if in the view of the officer the site appears to be anything other than transitory (I forget the exact phrase) the council have started digging earth works. So there are now piles of top soil on grass verges on industrial estates, park areas and verges. Parts of the town resemble the Somme now, all designed to deter such people. Another case where a simple law could be passed and enforced by seizing caravans, 4X4’s etc, once the site is established. Again, people who flout society by camping where they choose, and protected and subsidised by that society.

A camp of about 20 caravans is now on a council football pitch, with piles of wood being burned, washing strung up between goal posts, and piles of rubbish strewn about the place. People who have arranged to play at the week-end, and paid in advance for the season can’t play, a minor loss in life but why should they loose out and why do I have to cover the costs via my local tax etc?