I live on the Essex Hertfordshire border, and we've got Gypsy Travellers here, some on council provided sites, some living in houses. Every now and then some are passing through, and move in on an empty patch of derelict land and camp for a few days, and you get people saying the same kind of stuff we've just been treated to. And I find that kind of talk personally offensive, just as I'd find the same kind of talk about other ethnic groups.

Most of the Gypsy Travellers I have known are people whom I'd sooner have them as neighbours than the kind of people who say that kind of stuff. And I have had them as neighbours too, and good neighbours.

And of course there are dodgy people living in caravans, just as there are in houses. And there are people living in caravans who make the same kind of offensive generalisations about housedwellers as some housedwellers do about Travellers, and that doesn't help either. And when they feel under threat, they gather in larger nuymbers for protection, and that makes them seen as invaders.

But the real people who mess up the countryside live in houses. When a group of travellers move it can look messy - especially when they've had to move on in a hurry because of harassment by housdwellers, official and unofficial. And people who are insulted and treated like vermin are often going to respond by acting in line with the way they are accused of being.

I can think of a patch of ground where some travellers got moved on, and it looked pretty messy. A few weeks later, you wouldn't know they'd been here it was the kind of m,ess that merges in and disappears. But it doesn't look like that now - housedwellers put down concrete parking places for their own cars, and big iron fences as well. It's a permanent eyesore now. Quite legally.

And the reason I worry about the kind of song that started all this is because it helps make people feel that it's all right to make those kind of offensive generalisations. And I don't want anyone under the illusion that this kind of thing doesn't matter. And that does not mean I object to the words of the song being posted here.

Here is a link to Another Spring, a song I wrote about this kind of stuff, on my website.