From an email received the other day regarding travellers camping on playing fields in Cottingley near Bingley:
...my husband has been to the playing field this evening and reports there are several large mounds of tipped rubble/earth around the perimeter of the field, bags of "household" rubbish and waste, i.e., bottles, cartons, empty tins and general rubbish, strewn around. The main problem is the large volume of human excrement on the path over the stream between the playing field and the Yorkshire Clinic and possibly on the land adjacent to the banks of the stream bordering the Yorkshire Clinic grounds - my husband did not dare venture this far, deterred by the stench of the visible excrement and also the smell of urine emanating from the immediate area.
Employees of Bradford Council's Parks Department are now undertaking the clean-up with the costs falling on local council tax payers. What makes me most angry about this invasion isn't the fact of some travellers parking on some council-owned land (this is despite the Council making more than adequate provision for travellers in the District) but that they then proceed to leave us, quite literally, to clear up the crap they leave behind.
I have no quarrel with people who make the choice to live a nomadic lifestyle trundling from place to place with their vans and caravans. But, if they want the host population in places they stop to treat them with any sort of respect, it is necessary for travellers to behave with at least a modicum of human decency and civilisation. If such a disgusting experience were unusual we'd perhaps be understanding but it is repeated time and time again by groups of travellers passing through the locality. Broken gates, ruined football or cricket pitches, copious dumps of rubbish and a cavalier approach to what we might call waste management - this is what people see from travellers rather than some sort of adorable and misunderstood minority ill-treated by us folk in houses.
It simple terms whoever you are, don't leave your mess for the rest of us to clear up and expect any sympathy or consideration.
....
2 comments:
Meanwhile we read sometimes of people being fined for allowing a bit of cigarette ash to drop to the ground.
The simple solution to these invasions is for the authorities to arrive with tractors and drag all the vehicles off the pitch, but seizing enough of them to cover all the costs of the clearance operation. The travellers then have the choice to pay the costs or lose their precious vehicles - they'll soon get the message.
(And meanwhile the Police can conduct checks on the fleet of Transit vans to establish veracity of ownership, insurance, fuel-type etc - an illuminating task, I suggest).
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