Travellers

Some time over the Bank Holiday weekend some travellers parked-up in the car park here at work and have been living there in several caravans. This has caused some amusement to everyone here, but is no doubt a slightly less than professional image for the company. I wasn't really surprised when I looked out of the window this afternoon to see that there is a large flatbed lorry with a crane in the car park now, and it is lifting the caravans and taking them away. I'm not sure how the gypsies feel about this, but I can guess that they're not impressed.

Now I would be tempted to feel sorry for them, as I would for any generally persecuted group of people. However, this is the same lot who were camping on park about half a mile down the road for a week, and when they moved on they left the most horrible mess you can imagine. I don't just mean rubbish (although they could have put that into bags, at least), but pretty much everything you can imagine a group of people producing in a week. It was grim.

I know there are perfectly respectable groups of gypsies and travellers out there that care for their environment and are decent people, but all of them suffer thanks to the actions of people like those in our car park. Can't they see that they just make things worse for themselves? I don't pretend to know what the solution is, but it probably involves responsibility on their part before they can expect people to tolerate them.