So in this Brave New World, doing nothing is discriminating. Oh dear…

As 1 said. Nice bit of political posturing by Jennette Arnold, I assume she’s trying to raise her profile.

Hmm. So there is a requirement for councils to provide services for people who pay no taxes to the council is there (and yes, councils do this for residents, but lets assume residents will pay taxes if they can)? I am not sure how this would play as an electoral issue – the people of London are surely more likely to back Boris Johnson over this than a Labour party which seems more concerned with minorities than the whole population.

As I have said before, there is a serious problem with trying to incorporate nomadic people into sedentary societies. I don’t think treating them just as another minority is actually the answer anyway – since at least the other minorities are part of the community, when by definition nomadic people are not.

I have no objection to nomadic communities who wish to move around the country but I object to specialist legislation requiring local council to accommodate them.

So in this Brave New World, doing nothing is discriminating. Oh dear…

Yes, they’re called “legal obligations”. Shocking, I know. I never knew there certain things the govt was obliged to do either.

Memo to Boris: think you’ll find a perfect site next to Sunny Hundal’s garden.
(Next to where he keeps his motorbike.)

“So there is a requirement for councils to provide services for people who pay no taxes to the council is there (and yes, councils do this for residents, but lets assume residents will pay taxes if they can)?”

Travellers on authorised sites pay council tax.

The way to reduce costs to council tax payers would be for local authorities between them to provide a total of one square mile in authorised pitches:

http://www.travellerstimes.org.uk/list.aspx?c=00619ef1-21e2-40aa-8d5e-f7c38586d32f&n=3829a7f2-fd96-4c23-bfca-b5f61729ba7c

e.g. the cost in Bristol for evictions fell from £200,000 to £5,000 after authorised pitches were provided.

So scrapping targets for pitches increases costs to everyone.

Have you ever visited these sites Sunny and reported on them?
This is an area where the ideal and the reality can have a rather large gap between them.
It must be difficult trying to engage with a transient community. Short of ID cards anyway.
Schooling must be a real issue. As with Work and Pensions.

It’s all very well to condem people for taking a Daily Mail point of view at first, but no one on LC ever answered my question of how the French were meant to deal with Roma people living in camps in the woods on the edge of towns.
The best answer I got was a bit of a mantra: ”Due Process” – without ever saying how you might do that.

don,

Thanks. Didn’t know that.

I think the only problem there is the opportunity cost of the pitches themselves – how long are they vacant and what could that land be worth.

A further problem, which this story illustrates to me, is that the current system seems wrong. As a localist, I have a real concern that this is central government telling local government on what to spend their money, which is clearly wrong: if central government want money spent, they should spend it.

As a liberal anti-racist I can see the need for ensuring that nomadic groups can be homed without causing extra conflict (I cannot see how the different social norms can ever happily coexist…) which effectively means forming reservations for them amongst the sedentary community, so providing pitches.

But shouldn’t it therefore be central government who takes responsibility for ensuring pitches are available? Local councils are being forced to spend money in a way that the majority of their voters would probably not like (a serious issue if the government is serious in freeing up spending decisions and re-empowering local councils) by central dictate – and receiving central grants to do so I presume. Why is this necessary – why not make provision for those who do not fit into the communities through which they pass a role for central government (same as for military personnel, who have a similarly detached (if for differnt reasons) relationship with their community in many postings). This would stop nomadic people becoming a political football locally and mean it would simply be an issue of planning (which admittedly is local) and allocation of places.

What nonsense. If these people are homeless then London boroughs presumably have a legal obligation to house them. If they choose not to accept such housing, that’s their right.

damon/cjcjc

Can we manage to drop the stereotypical portrayal of gypsies and the like please. I know there are serious cultural differences in attitudes to property and the like but to make comments which could be interpreted as references to ‘thieving gyppos’ is hardly going to convince anyone of anything other than you have no argument (and that possibly assembly member (/assemblywoman – what is the proper title/abbreviation) Arnold is correct after all).

There’s no such thing as doing nothing, there is only intervening in ways you like or are ideologically blind to. Boris not providing sites is mirrored by someone evicting travellers from somewhere else. There is always a “doing”, the point is to get the right doing done.

“I know there are serious cultural differences in attitudes to property and the like”

Hahahahahaha

damon/cjcjc

Can we manage to drop the stereotypical portrayal of gypsies and the like please.

What are you on about? I asked Sunny if he’d ever visited any of these sites.
That’s a fair question is it not?
Especially when things like this are said in the opening post:

A government needs assessment in 2008 found that 811 additional pitches were needed across London.

That’s a hell of a lot of pitches, and it sounds like just managing them would take a council workforce of hundreds, even thousands.

What gave you the impression that I made any stereotypical portrayal of gypsies themselves? That I said schooling was probably an issue? That keeping tabs on nomadic people in the ‘Work and Pensions’ scheme of things might not be so easy?

I love Boris
He was yet another member of The Bullingdon Club

Thats Mr George Gideon Oliver Osborne
and our prime minster Mr David William Donald Cameron

To think that any of them in this club have nothing but good thoughts the for less well off is a joke.
they are all nice guys who have worked very very hard and came in their house and said to their wives i got a really good job at the local council working on the bins.

Again is it just shows you all how New politics in the uk is ran by rich people who have no social value at all.

I may be just unlucky if my parents could send me to Oxford then get me in to that club may be i could change the world my self >?

But i really don’t think Boris is being raciest.

may be a touch of elitism ?
But we all know that is totally acceptable in uk politics today

damon,

Sorry – took the question another way. I stand corrected.

“Gypsies and travellers are a legally recognised ethnic group”.

Are they? Are the terms “gypsy” and “traveller” synoymous? If not, what’s the difference? Is it explained in a legally valid document somewhere?
As I understand it, ethnicity is based on biological factors, either clearly visible or ascertainable by biological investigation. It seems to me however that one can make a claim to belong to this particular ethnic group purely on behavioural grounds. If I get myself a van, don some gold earrings, and stick a clay pipe in my gob, all I’ve got to do is to verbally claim that I belong to this ethnic group and hey presto, I belong to it. Logically, if you posit an ethnic group, you have an intellectual obligation to explain a decision method by means of which members of the group can be distinguished from those who are not members.

Otherwise, what’s to stop me claiming my membership of the ethnic group known as “people who live in houses”?

This thread has been posted on LC and its existence really needs to be defended by people who support this site and its mission statements.

A government needs assessment in 2008 found that 811 additional pitches were needed across London.

This figure needs to be rationalised. Has anyone who is quick to suggest prejudice and racism actually thought how a council is meant to acheve the required number of pitches?
The opening post linked to this article about the London Bourough of Barnet, where 22 picthes were origionally called for.
http://www.times-series.co.uk/news/8401959.Plans_for_gypsy_and_traveller_pitch_targets_scrapped/

Later reduced to 16. I think we need some expertise here from people who actually know how these kind of numbers of pitches could be achieved in one borough. And how they would be run and who would be eligible to use them and how.

@9 Watchman: “As a localist, I have a real concern that this is central government telling local government on what to spend their money, which is clearly wrong: if central government want money spent, they should spend it.”

As another localist, I tend to agree. But.

1. The majority of all council income comes from a government block grant. This is crazy and something that all liberals should seek to reverse. Unfortunately, block grants compromise the relationship between local and central government.

2. Whilst noting Don Paskini’s comment that travellers renting a spot from the council pay a local tax, the majority of tax paid by travellers goes to central government. It is thus understandable that when central government hands out a block grant there will be caveats that travellers get a reasonable share.

3. Reality shows that if councils were not ordered by central government to provide accommodation for travellers, councils would do as little as possible. In a sensible world where most councils raised revenue locally and a minority depended on the block grant, the requirement for central targets for the number of traveller sites would remain. Travellers have to live somewhere.

4. Given that travellers pay more tax to central government than local government, the cost of traveller sites should be carried by central government. Not a top slice off the block grant, but directly. Council tax paid by travellers would then become a more evident income.

5. Most travellers do not wish to live on a council plot. They wish to buy land or get a long term rent.

I think I have got something very wrong here.
Calling for ”22 pitches” in Barnet is not the same as 22 site locations. It’s just a site which could cater for 22 famalies.

So I got that totally wrong, and I might say that councils shouldn’t be against doing at least that much for Traveller groups.

Last year the Tory councillor and Boris’ fire chief Brian Coleman said gypsies should “stay put in Ireland”.

That does sound a bit backward at first …. so what provision should a local council be obliged to make for overseas people like the Irish Travellers who haven’t even arrived yet?

I know the Traveller site in this link, as I used to work just along from it, and it seemed to work pretty well.
http://www.croydonguardian.co.uk/news/4889510.Plans_will_double_traveller_sites_in_Croydon/
But how does a council make for provision for people who have no links to the borough?
I know that in Croydon you will not get any council help with housing if you are not from the borough or have been deemed to have made yourself intentionally homeless.

If anyone knows how these sites where people come and go work, I would be interested to hear how. Are they to be somewhat like a regular caravan park where you would make a booking in advance and then come for your desired stay …. if they was room available of course?

Does the site I linked to, which I think is quite settled, have to accept new groups of strangers coming and going on an expanded site?
And who qualifies to live on such sites in the first place? Do you have to own your own caravan? Can Roma gypsies from eastern Europe stay on them too?

It’s an interesting thread, but has thrown up more questions than answeres I think.