[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Livia

Disgusting. I don't know if it's the same in Ireland, but the police are scared of confronting them. Last year in Cromer - a costal town - the place was all but shut down when the travellers arrived... and it was like an invasion. And where were the police? Nowhere. Afterwards they apologised and said that lessons had been learned, etc... but the fact is that the locals had to fend for themselves.

And as AJ was saying about the supermarket... I've seen them descend on a supermarket en masse and the staff have had to follow them round the shop. There's also been a spate of them nicking stuff from charity shops. Charity shops!

A Labrador was stolen from my local village. Eight years old, beloved family pet... taken by travellers and used as a bait dog in a dog fight. The owners were distraught as you can imagine. Another part of the traveller culture we're not supposed to interfere with?

Conversely, not far from me, not even a mile, is a Romany camp. It's immaculate and they're really nice people, their kids go to the local school, they use the local pubs and there has never been a problem with them.

Travellers cannot continue to be a law unto themselves, and hanging flowers outside this couple's house was a provocative act.

Yeah same here alright. And the whole reason there is such a massive "us and them" divide and why people might come across as generalising is because they don't seem to have to follow the same rules as everyone else in the country. If I had a horse and treated him the way they do with theirs, I'd be arrested and probably never allowed keep one again, they get to keep theirs on other peoples land and not feed them etc