Meeting on use of former Swansea greyhound track to house travellers is branded as racist
A MEETING on the use of a former Swansea greyhound track to house travellers has been branded racist.
An event is due to take place at 10am tomorrow (9/3/13) at the site of the former greyhound track on Ystrad Road in Fforestfach.
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A notice has been added beneath the notification of the meeting. It reads: "Protest against racism on the travelling community
Organisers placed signs in the area to promote the event which is designed to deter councillors from deciding to choose the site as a second location for travellers in Swansea.
Many of those signs have either been removed or defaced and in some cases with messages suggesting the event planned for tomorrow morning is racist.
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Swansea mum Alyson Jones has played a key role in organising the protest and said the event was not designed as a racial attack.
Mrs Jones has a 10-year-old daughter who goes to school in Waunarlwydd and she and her family have lived in the area for 12 years.
She said: "The racism comments are wrong.
"We were not saying anything out of order."
Mrs Jones said the signs and posters were merely promotional tools for the protest and designed to encourage people living close to the proposed site to take part in consultation on the issue being run by Swansea Council.
She added: "There is a councillors' surgery in Waunarwlydd Community Centre after the protest and we will go straight to that to put our questions to the councillors.
"Then, next Thursday evening, we are arranging another meeting and one the following Thursday.
"These meetings will be at the Joiners Club in Ystrad Road."
A meeting organised by Gorseinon Town Council is also due to be held in the Brighton Road Club in Gorseinon on Tuesday, March 12, at 7pm, to discuss responses to the consultation regarding two sites in the town which could potentially become home to travellers.
More than 500 people turned up to a meeting to discuss the proposed sites off Heol y Mynydd at the Gorseinon Institute on Tuesday, February 26.
The meeting had to be moved to the Brighton Road Club to accommodate the audience.
People living in Swansea have until the end of March to give views on proposals by Swansea Council to create a second Gypsy and Traveller site.
Swansea has only one legal site which is full so the council is looking at providing further accommodation.
A three month consultation is now under way seeking views on the work carried out so far in the search for the most appropriate location for the site.
The local authority is running an exhibition at Swansea's Civic Centre from Monday, March 18, until Thursday, March 28.
Swansea Council has also set up a dedicated website for people to register their views and provided copies of all the online information at libraries throughout Swansea for viewing along with comment forms.
Council leader David Phillips said: "It's important that we give everyone the opportunity to have their say on the process we are using to find a new site."
6 Comments
by clive1963
Saturday, March 09 2013, 12:57AM
“put it down the gower”
by Mr_Reality
Friday, March 08 2013, 10:11PM
“skylander! The morons who support the travellers, excuse their anti social behaviour, and accuse the decent general public of racism never ever campaign for or offer to have the travelling community to live amongst themselves.
Yep! They are the biggest bunch of hypocrites you'll ever likely to see. In all my years I have never read or seen a news story of a traveller supporter begging or offering for them to live in his/her area, house, or grounds. By the own standards they judge us they themselves must also be racist!”
by Mr_Reality
Friday, March 08 2013, 8:59PM
“ATTENTION! ATTENTION! ATTENTION! Traveller supporters, defenders, pro-decision makers, and downright imbecilic hypocrites! Why not convert your pro-traveller views, concern, and accusations of anti-traveller prejudice, racism, and bigotry etc into direct civil action to give yourself more than the minus- zero credibility you currently have?
May I suggest you maximise publicity for a swift resolution and response to your concerns. Please contact The Evening Post and Swansea Sound's Kevin Johns Sunday morning phone-in. OFFER YOUR OWN PERSONAL SPACE AND POST CODE AREA (driveway and rooms available?) to the traveller subculture you're so obviously concerned to defend and wish to be undemocratically enforced (Where are the actual votes/petition(s) for it?) upon everybody else.
Why haven't you started your own pro-traveller petition? Please do explain why you haven't gone door to door to personally collect signatures from your neighbours as part of a strategic campaign to have a traveller site situated next to your own house?
Have you made provision for a public meeting? Will you and your traveller supporting kind be demonstrating outside County Hall? What about a demonstration on your own street with a campaign to have a traveller camp dumped upon your own area?
We can all just see it now….. You with megaphone in hand with unbridled enthusiastic rallying of your fellow placard waving neighbours and traveller supporters exalting the cause……. "What do we want?.....An itinerant traveller camp!......When do we want it?… Now!"
Yeah its all really going to happen isn't it you imbecilic traveller supporting hypocrites??????”
by williamwaun
Friday, March 08 2013, 7:20PM
“No more Gypsy sites in Swansea please. If these people are put next to your house, the prices will dramatic decrease. There are plenty of sites out of towns and villages. Why do the council want them in the middle of towns and villages.”
by weslangdon
Friday, March 08 2013, 6:13PM
“Hadoken; what an unpleasant little bigot you are”
by brochadav
Friday, March 08 2013, 6:06PM
“The traveller site has to go somewhere. Why should one section of Swansea have all of them.
We have 2 gypsy families in our street, we don't often have trouble but when we do, it's big.”