Karlos- Location: Dover
- Registered: 1 Oct 2012
- Posts: 2,543
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,878
Seems Deal is not quite as up market as it thinks it is, at least our unwanted travellers know how to behave themselves.
Just Sioux likes this
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Sue Nicholas- Location: river
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 6,025
You are quite cutting at times Brian .I think Deal is lovely .
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Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,090
We are unfortunately short of council sites which by law DDC should provide. I spent 8 yrs on DDC bringing this up. Nothing got done. Until we provide these we will have these temporary illegal camps or even worse 'permanent' ones like opposite Blazing Donkey.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Sue Nicholas- Location: river
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 6,025
Yes Bob many years ago I attended a conference at Canterbury with the Cabinet member of DDC.It was noted then we hade very few traveller sites in Kent.We have the one at Aylesham,but where else.I must say the representatives of the Travelling Community spoke/most eloquently ,,far better than me.We had Travellers children at St Radigunds whenI was Chairman of the Governing Body.
Yes they do get frustrated by not having sites so hence they park up illegally.Travellers are a special community and travelling is there way of life.When I was a child they used to park up and work on the local farms .You will always getbias.Wonder how many can recall the Older Grandmothers of the families selling wooden pegs or Lavender bags.A regular sight where I lived as a child .
yes the councils are at fault they must provide more sites with basic needs.Travellers donot want to live in Social housing .
When I was a teenager we had an American base near where I lived.Yes on a Saturday night there would be trouble with the local, lads resenting the yanks who had the money and chased the local girls.No I did not marry one but two of my friends did.
I don’t condone bad behaviour ,But some Councillors are at fault .Provide more sites.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,878
There are so many different kinds of Travellers around from when I was young, then as far as I can remember there were only the traditional gypsies who had a very strict behaviour code or the very occasional tramp.
Now there are also New Age who are seldom a real problem. We had them living in the woods near Tilmanstone for a short time when we lived there, maybe a bit odd to look at (to us oldies) but the ones we met were well educated and pleasant to talk to.
Then we have the diddicoy or tinker kind who cause all the problems that we have now come to associate with travellers, rubbish strewn everywhere and no respect for others. This is the group that nobody wants living anywhere near them and who can blame us
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,090
According to the 2011 Census there were 58,000 ‘Gypsy, Traveller or Irish Travellers’ which is about 0.1% of the population.
Looking at the prison population however one in 20 inmates – or 5% – told Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) that they considered themselves to be Gypsy, Romany or Traveller in 2012-13.
The proportion is even higher in secure training centres (STCs), which hold young people between 12 and 18 years old, with 12% considering themselves Gypsy, Romany or Traveller.
In Medway STC in Kent, this figure was 22%.
Today I have heard numerous reports of our recent visitation in Deal which have not been covered in the local press from fighting in the streets and mass shoplifting down to the guy who runs the ice-cream van on the seafront serving a whole queue of traveller kids and asking for payment was told in no uncertain terms to 'f**k off'.
Apparently they were last seen heading towards Sandwich ............................
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Dover Pilot- Registered: 28 Jul 2018
- Posts: 346
Last seen parking up on Victoria Park, seems Deal has become the pikey capital of Kent.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,090
It is a tenet of neo-liberal economics that there is no such thing as a free lunch. This is obvious baloney. There are free lunches everywhere. The problem is that those free lunches are no longer served to people doing useful work. They are instead handed out to the owners of a few favoured asset classes through untaxed gains. We have created far more tax breaks for rent-seeking than for productive work… and then we wonder why Britain has a productivity crisis.
I must admit I enjoy a few free lunches myself – literally. I own a small crash-pad in Deal, in what was until recently the undiscovered paradise that is East Kent (suggested slogan: ‘The friendliness of northern England, the climate of northern France’). Every time I arrive, I set off down the high street and splurge on food from several of its many fine delicatessens: heritage tomatoes (£4), olive focaccia bread (£4.95), small-batch coffee (£6.50), that kind of thing. My wife, who has a narrower conception of home economics than I do, will then ask: ‘How much did that all cost?’ And I reply: ‘Nothing at all. In fact I’m probably up on the deal.’
By splashing out on expensive foodstuffs, I help ensure the proliferation of desirable retail outlets in the town. Desirable not only to me but to visitors from London. You see, joining me in the queue for the olive focaccia are two vapid tossers from Fulham visiting for the weekend. And the next day one of them is going to say: ‘Gosh, Jonty, you can buy sourdough here for more than £5 a loaf. I suddenly feel safe. Let’s buy a house here.’ They visit the estate agent next to the place selling hand-crafted orzo, and that’s when my plan pays off.
Cost of lunch – £35. Increase in value of our property – £100. Result – happiness. Indeed my support of mildly overpriced artisan retailers has been so successful that in 2013 the Telegraph named Deal its ‘High Street of the Year’. The only problem is that this increase in my wealth comes at the price of endlessly shifting money from the productive economy to the extractive economy. But it’s the property owner not the bread maker who gets the tax break.
Why is this? My theory is that, since the death of Bernard de Mandeville in 1733, all economists, and by extension everyone in the Treasury and the Bank of England, are by temperament either frugal (they disproportionately enjoy saving) or else are tightwads (they experience disproportionate pain in spending). Adam Smith was a genius, yes, but let’s not forget he lived with his mum. (These are scientific categories: in 2008, the economic psychologist George Loewenstein calculated that about 24 per cent of the population were skinflints – people who find the pain of parting with money so great that they underspend.) Skinflints find it much easier than spendthrifts to attach a spurious moral virtue to their behaviour, resulting in an absurd bias towards encouraging accumulation not consumption.
Why are there no tax breaks for spending as well as saving? We have Pigovian taxes on forms of consumption deemed to be bad: booze, fags, increasingly cars and flights. Yet there are no Mandevillian tax breaks on consumption which brings positive externalities. Under a future Sutherland regime, for instance, there would be no duty paid on beer drunk in a pub. That is because, by drinking in a pub, you are supporting an institution which benefits everyone around you, which by drinking a can of beer at home you are not. After leaving the EU, we are free to do this kind of thing. It’s the man making the focaccia who needs a break, not the person who owns the house next door. Taxing property gains and supporting food makers? Who would do such a thing? Um, Singapore.
Rory Sutherland
Spectator 28/07/23
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson