Working from home, as I do, I occasionally listen to the radio during the morning. Yesterday on Woman's Hour on Radio 4, I heard an item about discrimination against the traveller community. The subject of ethnicity and racial discrimination came into the conversation.
I must say I've never seen Gypsies as anything other than British. The problem we have with Gypsies round here has nothing whatsoever to do with ethnicity, but the fact that, without fail, they leave a bloody mess behind them. About half a dozen to a dozen caravans (the modern kind with expensive 4 x 4s, not the quaint horse-drawn ones) come onto the common in front of our house and the men go to do some garden clearing work in the locality, and then leave all the rubbish dumped in the hedge, along with household rubbish, children's toys and even human excrement from their toilets.
We have to go out with bin bags and collect a dozen or more sacks of rubbish that they can't be bothered to deposit somewhere more suited - the horticultural detritus just has to be left. They're an antisocial pest. When we were building the house we used to offer them the use of our fresh water tap, but after the way we were repaid we no longer do this.
It's not racial discrimination - it's antisocial discrimination. I couldn't give a bugger what race they are.
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