I've put this in the media section because....well because its lonely in there right now And the only place most of you will have heard about them or have any information about them is from the media. Maybe the odd encounter, but most likely the media.

Travellers (as they like to be called) are a mixed bag. The reason I know so much is that I have daily contact with many of them, and am quite close to many more.

As far as I am concerned this is unfortunate, and you can leave a large part of your conceptions of travellers (that you probably got from watching Snatch) at the door.

That is, the nice parts, mostly. Sorry if you like 'em but, although I do like a lot of things about them, they are not what I consider `good` people.

Neither are they amazingly sensible, organised or intelligent - they have a lot of knowledge and experience exploiting those who do play by the rules, and that is why they will have outsmarted your granny who had her roof unnecessarily re-done, or had her driveway tarmac'ed with low-grade bitumen for 4-times the right price.

Travellers are mostly conmen and thieves, there is no getting away from that fact - I have them in here several times a week boasting about their scams and thefts and if I knew I could report them without consequence I would stitch every last ba*tard of 'em right up with the law. But the boss married a traveller and one thing you may have learned from Snatch that is correct is that they are obsessively protective of their family.

Do one of them over and their family will most likely either steal from you or destroy what is yours until they feel they have been avenged. Crude and misguided vengeance masquerading as some kind of righteousness.

It is so quintessentially typical of them as a culture: what we have always believed is true, and it did our great-great-grandfathers well enough so it'll do for us too!!

Insular and uneducated they are, most basically, a blight and a hindrance to modern society.

A classic example, and the main point of this entry, is the boss Brother-in-law who had a hernia operation recently, and after less than 12 hours out of theatre he discharged himself - against the stern advice of the the surgeon and specialist.

The reason? An old traveller proverb: "don't ever go to hospital, its full of sick people".

How fcuking immature. They now largely avoid hospital because of news about the MRSA superbug, the latest and most potent in their misguided and antiquated folklorish ideas about real society - there's about half a dozen deaths due to that bug out of about 10 million patients annually, way-to-go ye English media: you scared so many people away that they now die in their beds at home, they aint got MRSA, just a series of fatal complications. Perfect

The boss' brother in law had his operation wound rupture on Saturday, he has spent the last 5 days in bed getting a bag of blood the size of a party-pack coke bottle drawn off him every day and his goddamn nuts have swollen (with blood) to the size of softballs. Also, now, he has an infection with it as well; how terribly surprising! He lives in a filthy old mobile home!!

He would of course have preferred this to being safely in hospital where they would most likely not have let it happen due to constant monitoring, or at least could treat it properly if it had occured. As it is, he hasn't physically moved since Saturday.

All because of his crazy folklorish beliefs and lack of trust in any society that doesn't openly and publically advocate theft and exploitation of the weak for personal gain. I should feel sorry for him, but I find myself not giving a rat's *albartroth*