"your bugbear didn't."
One more time - yes it did.
While we were away we got to meet family members of some of the singers we recorded.
One described how "No Travellers served" notices was the first writing she learned to recognise- thanks to the deliberate policy of not allowing them to stop long enough to get an aducation she didn't manage to learn to read until in her mid teens.
We were shown two pubs in the Bristol area that still displayed these notices, one in a front window, the other inside over the bar.
The people we met where highly amused at the suggestion that these notices were either scarce or no longer around.
Over the last ten years it has been more common practice to display them inside the pubs, but since Dale Farm they have moved back into prominence in full public view.
One Traveller told us that the most humiliating practice was of going into a bar and, where they are suspected of being Travellers, ignored by the bar-staff and eventually having to walk out unserved.
Not only have these notices always existed - throughout the time we worked with Travellers anyway, but they, and other forms of racist discrimination appear to be on the increase.
I remembered this, from a review of our Travellers CD in Musical Traditions, from Geoff Wallis

"FROM PUCK TO APPLEBY: SONGS OF IRISH TRAVELLERS IN ENGLAND
Musical Traditions Mtcd325-6; 2 Cds; 158 Minutes; 2003
It may be 2003, but the window of a pub just a couple of hundred yards from my front door still carries the sign 'Travellers by Appointment Only' and they don't mean salespeople from the snacks industry. In many other ways, however, the lives of Irish travellers in England have changed substantially since Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie made these recordings of their songs and stories between 1973 and 1985 (with the assistance of Denis Turner). As the collectors note, the ready availability of the portable television was already sounding the death knell for the fireside gatherings at which many of these songs were passed on."

Guest CS
"but I also know that I'm not "lying" when I say I've never seen such a sign"
And I never accused you of doing so - or if I did, please point it out.
On the other hand, I described having seen these signs in Salford and you seemed to be doubting my word.
"You just need to read the local paper to know about that."
I am not claiming that these signs are the main form of abuse, I am saying they are a part of the dehumanisation of Travellers that has made other abuses acceptable - I do read the papers and am fully aware of what is happening to Travellers - up to 7 years ago I was witnessing it first hand and occasionally been on th receiving end, due to the company I chose to keep - I have yet to read here that anybody else has spent any significant time with Travellers.
This thread was started by Keith to call into doubt the existance or the occurrence of these signs - am happy to expand it to other abuses I have read about and personally witnessed (at the risk of accusations of thread drifty by the OP)
Keith
Will cover your own racism later as you seem to be incapable of dealing with more than half a dozen sentences at a time.
Jim Carroll