Posted on 08/31/2011 3:25:15 PM PDT by dynachrome
Hundreds of anarchists and student protesters are plotting to join the battle against the bulldozing of Europes largest illegal traveller camp. Police fear bloody confrontations with bailiffs and officers as outsiders attempt to turn the protest into a politically motivated riot. About 50 anarchists have already joined the 1,000 travellers at Dale Farm and Basildon District Council has spent ten years trying to remove around 500 travellers from Dale Farm after they settled beside dozens of legal plots. It ended up in the Court of Appeal last year when 80 families on 52 plots were ordered to leave. The council issued a 28-day notice to leave the camp which expired at midnight last night. It said it would be checking compliance in the coming days. But police insiders fear that when council-appointed bailiffs arrive it will either trigger
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Are you a Nazi? They have this thing about Gypsies ~ they like to murder them.
About 50 anarchists have already joined the 1,000 travellers at Dale Farm and Basildon District Council has spent ten years trying to remove around 500 travellers from Dale Farm after they settled beside dozens of legal plots.Just because there's a cradle to grave dole available doesn't mean these poor thieves are not oppressed by society. /s
No, the term "Travelers" for white gypsies, once known in the U.S. as "The Terrible Williamsons" (google it) until about the early 80s, and known in the U.K. as "Tinkers" for probably at least 150 years, goes way back BEFORE "political correctness" in the U.S. Gypsies are swarthy, dark-skinned "Roms" of colorful big-earring fortune-telling fame. Travelers -- a name they even use for themselves -- are gypsies in that they never stay put for more than six months (there are exceptions, such as the Irish traveler town in North Carolina, I think it is, and also a big clan of I think Scottish Travelers in Arizona somewhere). Their cons, unless they've changed, have been home improvement scams, all over the U.S., and they've been carrying on in the U.S. since at least the late 1800s.
There are basiclaly three kinds of Travellers. Irish travelers tend to live in trailer parks. Scottish travelers tend to live in very upscale luxury apartment complexes. I know very little about English Travelers, except that the few in law enforcement that know much about Travelers figure that the English are the least prosperous of Travelers. Travellers are ostentatiously "Christian," by the way, which rather fries THIS Christian's hide!! Just FYI.
Travelers is actually an old term for Irish and Scottish itinerants that live like the Rom or Gypsies. We have some groups of them in this country centered in the Carolinas. St. Petersburg Florida used to get infestations of them every few years that got newspaper headlines of “The Terrible Williamsons Are Here” due to most of that particular group being of the Williamson clan. The Travelers do mostly fast scams like tarring driveways and renewing roofs with waste motor oil and such and don’t get into the “romantic” Gypsy stuff like Tarot so much. They steal everything they can pick up.
No. It is Celtic gypsy wannabes with a long history. The full term is Irish Travelers and it includes a lot of Scots, too. In England “Travelers” is not a euphemism. Everybody locks their doors when they hear the word and loaded their shotguns back when some people had shotguns.
There is a whole enclave of Irish Travellers in SC. They spend a good part of the year travelling all over scamming people on home repairs then they return to their posh homes for the rest of the year. They are totally bad news.
I had the great pleasure of spending an afternoon interviewing Wanda Mary Normile about Traveler lifestyles and her role in that scam, which was intended to be the greatest Traveler scam ever!! That is ... until they got caught! {^) I quite liked Wanda Mary and hope she's doing well; she had sincerely renounced her Traveler status (she was a "breed" in any case, as one of her parents was not actually a born Traveler).
As for Scottish travelers, hundreds of them lived in the same luxury apartment complex where I lived every spring and summer from 1990 to 1994 in Los Angeles. They are very bizarre people. Anyone who thinks they're too smart to be scammed, is a sitting duck for a genuine Traveler. They are born and bred to scam, and come from at least 15 generations of that tradition. They are experts.
Why would you call me a socialist? What have I ever done to you? I was referring to the “Anarchists” in the “Headline” and not to the discussion of ethnicity. I should have made that point clear.
LLS
Yes, there was even a TV news show on that group (I forget what it was called). I am glad I wasn’t born a Traveler! What miserable life, especially for women.
They don't tan well.
Now, the McCaffreys and McCafferties ~ ever hear of them? Similar practice but you'll find them more engaged in interstate autotheft, or sometimes actually working for mafia families.
One interesting aspect of the few Travelers I've met (or is that few "hundred") is they all suffer from some serious dental dysplasia replete with spare teeth. That's genetic. Kid who rode to grade school with me (liked to sit by me every day on the way home) had some gold fillings in a couple of his spares.
Be very careful. I would imagine the Travelers are not all that happy with the Anarchists and all the cops they’re going to attract. It’s not enough that they have to put up with the bulldozer guys, now it’s cops ~ huge swarms of cops.
Yes, the name McCaffreys, McCafferties, Stuarts, and a whole bunch of other names crop up (I've kept all my research files). I wasn't aware of the auto theft, but I do know that for ALL travelers, LEOs who were serious about getting them understood that the only way they could nail Travelers to any decent effect was by going after them via RICO laws. Might as well try to glue down water as to try to nail a Traveler.
I know that Travelers are NOTHING if not survivors. If they have to adapt their scams to the moment, they will, so the group that was primarily doing home improvement scams in the 90s may well be doing something else now! In that particular Scottish group, I didn't see that dental anomaly you mention. They were fair skinned, but mostly brunettes -- a few redheads and blonds, but mostly brunettes, and not a lot of freckling, which seemed odd. Round moon-shaped faces, ruddy skin. And quite ostentatiously Christian. The women had clean fetishes to the point that they washed their linens DAILY. The proceeds fron the apartment complex's laundry rooms went through the roof.
There were some thunderstorms coming up so the Roma and the Travelers associated with, following or working with the several carnivals in the area all decided to hit the little shopping center where we go to the Giant Grocery. There's a Starbucks there so they dropped off the oldsters to just drink coffee and smoke.
THEY went to the grocery store.
BTW, this is across the street from a WalMart, so you know who parks overnight where.
I was in the grocery store and instantly became aware of their presence when a couple of young ladies came up to me and asked me if I was a Gypsy (in that cant of theirs ~ I hear it as Romnichal?)
I said "no" ~ so they figured if I understood what they said I must be one.
From that point on it was a regular freak show. One woman showed me how she swept a shelf clear of the caviar right into the back of her baby buggy. Another one snaked a couple of Virginia hams into her britches and you couldn't even tell they were there.
I'd already warned my wife to hang onto her purse because "THEY'RE BACK" and we both always know what that means.
BTW, these guys travel with black people these days ~ carrying on some scams that used to only work in the South (sell the slave cheap, then come back and get him at night ~ always a big money maker).
Anyway, I figured we'd gotten out of there OK without being pestered by much more than the displays of talent ~ they do like praise for clever artistry in stealing.
When we got home I discovered that my wallet had lost all it's threads ~ they'd been removed neatly. Then, there was a brand new $1 bill in there, neatly folded around my laundry ticket.
That's called "paying alms" ~ which I had thought was a Roma trick, but apparently the civil rights movement has brought them all into the 21st century ~ and now they swap traditions.
The Lindners across the street were a tad different. They used to go to the Indy 500 and build viewing stands on the infield. Then one race they fell down and a bunch of people got hurt so they went into something else.
All winter long the kids would spend an hour or so in the evenings splitting $1 bills down the center between the two faces. The neighborhood kids (raises hand) got to help.
The adults would spend time splitting $20 bills the same way.
Come spring they'd use a little starch or something and iron on a $1 back to a $20 front until all the piles of $1s and $20s were gone. Then time to hit the carnivals and shows throughout the Midwest.
As far as I can tell Treasury dept has made the bill splitting deal obsolete.
I swear, Travelers must be charmed somewhere. Even though you know how rotten they are, even though you see the aftermath of old folks who've been scammed out of very dime of their life's savings but worse, their dignity and self-respect, even though you see poor kids who never get beyond 6th grade (if that) because their parents pull them out of school, even though Traveler children never have their own rooms -- there's something about them that one can't help but romanticize and admire.
They truly are survivors, not only because of their ability to adapt quickly and well, but because of their ability to -- in spite of all their horrible deeds -- solicit a kind of grudging admiration. Like I said ... they're just unbelievable.
Thanks for sharing such a great story!
Save for later.
There has been a series on TV recently named “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” that claims to document the UK Travellers’ wedding customs. Simply amazing. I’ve forgotten the chanel, and I don’t know if it is still on, but I watched open mouthed.
These folks (in the UK) are NOT poor, but they definitely are driscriminated against.
Let me tell you all something about these travellers.
I live in a town just on the southern edge of the English city of Birmingham. At the start of the spring, there was a gypsie wedding in Birmingham. 700 travelling folk from all over the country were going to attend. With Birmingham being a big (formerly) industrial city, there’s not much space in the centre of town, so naturally in the weeks before the wedding, they started showing up on the outskirts of the city.
They rocked up on some public land (where kids, including myself, play football). They took over the whole of the field, and most of the adjacent public car-park too. The local community cinema (staffed by volunteers) had to close because traveller kids were hanging round outside, robbing cars and intimidating patrons. They were also systematically raiding the shop and stealing ice-cream, popcorn etc.
My local petrol station locked the doors and all interaction with staff had to be done through the hatch, because so much stuff was being nicked inside.
Lead piping was torn off several local church roofs (one of which dates back to 1300) because the scrappage value for it is high, and they think they can do what they like.
The stench of human waste was so bad it was vomit inducing. They didn’t bother putting stuff in bins, they just left it on the floor. After the wedding, they left and didn’t bother to tidy up. It looked like a twister had been through the makeshift camp.
Local kids were beaten up. Pubs closed early. My friend’s Dad is the caretaker of a school and they ripped the gate down in order to camp on school property. They then sold the gate for scrap!
Whatever your romantic notion of these people is, disregard it. They are absolute scum.
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