The cost of evicting travellers from Europe's largest illegal camp will be around £3.5million, a council admitted yesterday.You can see why some councils just give in, can’t you?
Taxpayers will have to pay up to £2.5million to forcibly remove 90 families at Crays Hill in Essex and return the land to its former greenfield state.Of course! Make it difficult and expensive enough to stop you, and you can get away with a hell of a lot…
A further £1million will have to be found to pay for a massive police operation amid claims that any attempts to evict the families will result in a 'bloodbath'.
The bill for Basildon Council, which also includes removing 15 families from another site at Hovefields in nearby Wickford, represents 11 per cent of its annual budget - or around £20 for every person in the area.If I lived there, I’d consider it a bargain…
Or, since it’s an illegal action, we could look at the confiscation orders so beloved of NuLabour to help pay for this – most of these ‘poor travellers’ have a lot of high end 4x4s etc.
Sauce for the goose, after all…
9 comments:
Policeman: This your car, mate? ANPR informs me that it is neither taxed nor insured. Step out because I am impounding it.
Traveller: I have Traveller immunity, can't you pigs read?
Policeman: I must apologise Sir, I did not notice your Gypsy Council Sticker. Allow me to stop the oncoming traffic so you may pull out in safety. Have a pleasant day, Sir and don't forget to look in on the party our Chief is holding for your good selves at the weekend.
Policeman (returning to colleague): That was a close one - but I think we are in the clear.
With these operations, they need two coppers per gyppo, let's call it five gyppoes per 'family, and round it up to 1,000 coppers to be on the safe side.
Let's assume the operation takes up a whole shift and a copper costs £250 per shift (£50,000 divided by 200 a year). Yes I know coppers don't get paid £50,000 a year, but there's other bits and pieces involved.
1,000 coppers x £250 = £250,000.
I accept I may have missed out a lot, but I'd love to know what they are going to spend the other £750,000 on.
"..don't forget to look in on the party our Chief is holding for your good selves at the weekend."
LOl!
"...I'd love to know what they are going to spend the other £750,000 on."
Publicity, consultancy fees and the refreshments for all the 'planning meetings' they plan to hold, I shouldn't wonder...
I spent 2 years working in what was laughably called 'Traveler Support' which seemed to consist of endlessly driving from site to illegal encampment to site clocking up 62p per mile - I was coining it.
I'd like to say that I bonded with these people but I didn't.
Without exception the Scottish and Irish were total scum although the English Romanies on the whole were OK.
I got chased by dogs, covered in piss when I sat down in a trailer, called all sorts of things, threatened and never once got offered a hedgehog baked in clay.
As far as I could see they weren't poor - the gold worn was amazing - and they were simply sponging off the state.
I wouldn't give them a bloody penny.
SteveShark
"Without exception the Scottish and Irish were total scum although the English Romanies on the whole were OK."
As you say - the English Romanies [albeit ones of distant Irish descent] whom I know are hard-working and tax-paying property builders on legally-bought land.
But that's my social life; I don't generally hang with the long-term unemployed.
I do tend to meet benefits claimants at work because, well, I happen to be a benefits adviser.
But the ones with the biggest grudges and entitlements and the shortest documented working lives do tend to have surnames beginning with 'M' and 'O.'
So there may be something in what you say as a nationwide trend - assuming you didn't only work in my part of the Northwest, that is..
North Northwester -
This was in North Buckinghamshire. The 'rough' end of the county, although they have several sites down the 'posh' end.
Sometimes the families get council houses and settle - which seems to me to make a nonsense of the whole issue - but this often results in eventual eviction.
One notorious 'settled' family was rehoused three times by the same council and evicted three times by the same council.
You have to wonder at the lack of coherent thinking there, don't you?
The big cases make the news but smaller sites are springing up all round the country.
Usual scenario, traveller buys land. Puts mobile homes on land then asks for planning permission. Permission is refused on policy grounds. Traveller appeals. Planning Inspector grants 3 yr temporary permission because traveller's children attend local school etc. and there are no other sites in the area.
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/south-warwickshire-news/2009/02/12/travellers-to-stay-put-92746-22913598/
""Without exception the Scottish and Irish were total scum..."
I did wonder if there was an 'Irish traveller' connection to this story, reading between the lines...
"The big cases make the news but smaller sites are springing up all round the country."
Indeed. As this story shows: " One of the travellers, Sabrina Ford, 21, said: “We’d like to know what the council is going to do for us, are they going to put bays in, give us toilets and an electric box for everyone?
“To be honest I’m more than happy to move if they put everything back and so long as they fix everything.” "
Well, of course you are, love. It's not your money, is it?
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