I didn't mean to say that traveller - spell it how you like - is a term to avoid. It's as good a term as any to refer to people who have a wandering way of life, either of their own choosing or because it has been forced on them.

But it needs to be used with tact, and it's as well to be aware of the different meanings it has. (I once met someone who had assumed that that "No travellers" in a pub meant no "commercial travellers" coming in and trying to get the landlady or the customers to buy things they don't need, like double-glazing or extra insurance.) If someone would sooner be called a Gypsy, that's the word you use.

And please, could we do without using that nasty word "moron" - it's got too many associations from its origins as a nasty term used by nasty pseudo-scientists: moron.n A term used by American psychologists and criminologists of children and adult persons of feeble, undeveloped, or degenerate mind or character. (Dictionary definition.)

And I'm not objecting because I think using the word insults the kind of people Dave Dressup used it of by likening them to people with learning difficulties, but because it insults people with learning difficulties by likening them to insensitive oafs like the people Dave is referring to.

(Other than that I think what Dave Dressup says is pretty spot-on. Except I'd extend "violence" to include the kind of hostility and suspicion that lies behind it, and is often present even when outright violence does not occur.)