h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Planning laws are there for a reason - I speak as someone who bought a house that had been extended pre-planning laws.

Society needs rules for its regulation. Either the rules apply to all society or they ARE unjust.

I don't agree with all legislation, so I can leave the country or ignore the legislation I dis-agree with. If I get caught doing the latter, I fail to see how this is the fault of society. Laws are for all, that is the point of the legal system, no-one is above or outside the protection or juresdiction of the law.

(Of course some people buy lawyers to find the loopholes - now that I do object to.)

There are good reasons for the planning laws, but they are often interpreted in nonsensical ways.

for example there was a case recently of someone trying to build an environmentally friendly house, with reed bed filtration systems for waste water treatment, which don't need a sewage system, but they had a devil of a time getting it planning permission "because it didn't have a connection to the sewage system".

Similarly, there is a problem with education. The actual act says that you must either go to school or get an equivelent education. Most council enforcement officers don't seem to be familiar with the second option.

There are other problems as well.

For example, Margaret Thatcher introduced legislation which requires councils (I can't remember if it is at local or county level) to provide sites for travellers, Yet a lof of councils don't include such facilities in their areas.

This leads to the requirement for temporary sites, especially in the case of engine trouble, but the over reaction of the police means that they only get a ouple of days to do something about it, and are then forcibly moved on.

As you can imagine, if you have to stop fixing your engine, and get your vehicle ready to be towed somewhere else, you undoubtedly don't have time to do any cleaning up of your campsite. hence the mess when they are moved on.

Of course there will be drug dealers and thieves in any community, but I don't think travellers are much worse than any other community, but the prejudice they encounter will obviously make them less likely to be more considerate to those who show the prejudice.

Yes, there is supposed to be an obligation on local authorities to provide official sites, but as a lot of councils have found travellers often prefer 'unofficial' i.e. free, sites.
As a slight aside one of my gripes with travellers are the gonzos who take flowers from graveyards and then try and flog them on, often quite aggressively, as 'lucky flowers'. I've even seen these clowns taking flowers from the middle of traffic islands!

Surely they are not all busy fixing their engines? There is no need for them to make a mess. The impression I get is that they move on indifferent to the mess left behind, knowing that someone else will take care of it (at tax payer's expense).

no, they are not all busy fixing their engines, but there are other things you can be doing which take longer than then small amount of time allowed under a vacate notice.

Generally when you are moved on, you are not allowed sufficient time to pack everything away for travel, and to also clear up any mess on the site. Often they have got a court order yesterday to force you to move by noon today, and the only way to comply with such an order is to do what you have to to be ready to move, and leave everything else as it is.

As these vacate orders should be a matter of publc record, you should be able to find out if your council is making this mistake, and moan about it to them.

obviously there are some people in the community who don't give a damn, but the same is true in any community. for example the person in the residential estate who is always working on stock cars on their drive.

Also you have to differentiate between travellers and gypsies.

Gypsies generally are mostly well behaved as long as your community doesn't force them not to be. Some travellers have taken this philosophy on board as well, but there are some who are basically squaters with wheels, and they are often the cause of much of the bad feeling.

"For example the person in the residential estate who is always working on stock cars on their drive."

And what's wrong with that? As long as it's their drive and the bits aren't spread on the public highway.

what's wrong with it tends to be the way they do it.

Often they are welding where children can see it with no shielding for the harmfull light produced, are hammering dents out as late as 10pm, even when they know their neighbour has pre-school children, and do quite a few other antisocial behaviours as well.

I am not saying that they can't do it properly, only that they tend not to.

Having seen the mess while some sites are occupied & that left behind, I get the feeling that it isn't just left behind in haste, it's the squalor they regularly live in. If they don't care enough to keep the site well maintained while they're there, they aren't going to bother to clear it up when they leave.

If householders behave in an anti-social way, there are laws that can be invoked. This may not cover all behaviour that their neighbours dislike & it may not always be properly enforced, but it does exist.

Your comment hits the spot - but it doesn't apply exclusively to Gypsies. If you ever want to stop eating for a few days, have my mother tell you about some of her tenants and the state the flats were in after only a few months. Yuk!

Pit

I've watched Life of Grime - I can imagine!