I should perhaps make myself a little clearer. The "gippos" I'm referring to are no more Romanies than I am Martian. They are just vagrants with beaten up cars, tumbledown caravans and a larcenous streak a mile wide. In this country to declare yourself a traveller is to become one in the eyes of the authorities. They travel from "work" to "work" mob-handed. They trespass wherever they feel like it, setting up "camp" on farmers' fields or a supermarket carpark with impunity. And they'll break down gates and fences to get there. Instead of doing the obvious thing - condemning their caravans, forcing their cars off the road, taking the kids into care to get them some education and arresting them as soon as they poke their noses into the area - the law actually protects them. The local police and government bodies are not allowed to evict them unless some alternative site is found for them. The laws were put in place to protect the real gypsies but by usage the legal umbrella has been extended to cover all gypsy-like people. A friend of mine who is an old-style policeman would like to hound them right out of the county, but instead finds himself facing down the local population who want to deal to the b**stards.

Wherever the gippos go the petty crime rate soars, people are intimidated and things get very tense. They hang around their makeshift campsites, just dumping rubbish any old where - mattresses, old furniture, burnt-out car bodies and zillions of plastic bags. When it all gets a bit much for these precious creatures, they up stakes and move on to make some other community's life a mystery, leaving their ordure behind them without so much as a backward glance.