I welcome the young people who will give evidence to the committee this morning. Although you have been told about most of the people here, I will introduce myself and the others around the table. I am Kate MacLean, the committee convener; Delia Lomax is the committee adviser; Richard Walsh—whom you have already met—is a clerk to the committee; and Kay Ullrich, Michael McMahon and Cathy Peattie are MSPs and members of the committee. We are hoping that you will give a brief talk, after which members will ask some questions. You do not have to answer any questions that you do not want to answer, but the committee wants to hear what you have to say. I hope that you will take the opportunity to have your say.
I have been doing voluntary work with Save the Children for a couple of years and the main issue that I want to consider is discrimination. In England, Gypsies, and in Northern Ireland, Travellers are recognised as ethnic minority groups, but that is not the case in Scotland. As a result, if a black or Asian person in a school is called a "black so-and-so", they have a case. If someone calls us something, we can try to take the case to court, but there is not a lot we can do, as we are not recognised as an ethnic minority group. In my experience, such discrimination is harsh on kids.
Thank you very much, Nadia.
I am here to talk about education in schools. Schools are not equipped for Traveller children. My experience is that some teachers do not want the Traveller children there. One school put all the Traveller children at one table at the back of the classroom.
My experiences have been somewhat different from Nadia Foy's and Sharon McPhee's because I have stayed in a caravan all my life and travelled. We have a house, which we live in for perhaps two to three months of the year when the weather tends to get cold.
We offer to pay for skips, but the authorities just will not bring them.
There are a load of problems regarding Travellers. I do not think that we can deal with all the issues today, but we can try to cover the basics. The basics are discrimination—
And education.
As Nadia Foy said, travelling is not just a word. For instance, we had a meeting with an MP a few months ago, who asked us, "Can you stop being a Traveller?" I thought it was a bit stupid for a man of his age to be asking me that. No, you cannot stop being a Traveller.
I was asked how long I had been a Traveller.
It is something you are born into. You will always be a Traveller.
People are afraid of what they do not know. In my experience, people do not know a lot about Travellers. I have been around the Stirling and Alloa area for about 10 years now. Even many of the people who know me personally still ask me, "What do you do in a caravan?" or, "How do you live and how do you get water?" or, "Do you all get together every year?" They think that we are a tribe who get together to do our chants or whatever. I usually give them a few stories, but it is not like that.
I have said before that we are willing to visit schools to educate kids about Travellers. I have visited two schools to educate them about how we live and about my experiences of going to school. That is good, but I think that every school needs to know how to handle a child who is a Traveller. Traveller children are not any different—they look the same, live the same and act the same as the next child. The only difference is that some children stay in a house and some stay in a trailer.
We are being forced to settle, either on caravan sites or in houses. We are not getting a chance to live on roadsides or in camps—either regular camps or in lay-bys. The authorities try to give us council houses or sites. They are trying to confine us.
They are trying to stop our culture.
We cannot let it happen.
That sums it up.
We are born the way we are born. It is not as if it is something that has happened overnight. Our grandparents' grandparents' grandparents' grandparents were all Travellers.
We should not feel like second-hand goods. We should not feel ashamed of what we are. We want to stand up and tell people exactly who we are and what we want.
We are very proud of what we are.
On the situation in relation to doctors, a young girl on the site where I have lived for six years on and off—I say a young girl, but she was 21 and had two children—went to the local health centre. She was very wealthy, drove a nice car and had nice clothes and jewellery. She looked beautiful and the people in the health centre were lovely to her, but when they put her name into the computer, the address came up as a Gypsy site, and they said to her straight out, "We can't have your kind of people in here." Her little girl was very sick and she had to take her to the hospital because the local health centre would not treat her.
So the kitchens never get used.
That is right. They never get used. The facilities were provided for us, but they were not arranged properly. I have brought that up at previous meetings. My uncle owns a bit of property and has done building work, so we know that a house that is being built will not pass health and safety regulations with arrangements like that, because they are unhygienic. If my uncle was building a house with the toilet next to the kitchen, he would get a 50 per cent grant to put the toilet in a different part of the house, to comply with health and safety requirements.
I would like to make another point connected with what Nadia Foy said about the girl getting put out of the doctor's surgery. That would not happen if you were black or Asian, but because you are a Traveller it is allowed to happen. To tell the truth, I think that is just disgusting. That is one change I would like to see. We are not animals; we are people.
I feel most strongly about what Nadia said about the position of the sites. She has covered most of the points.
Are the witnesses ready to take questions now? Not everyone has spoken yet, but you can speak at any time.
Perhaps the witnesses could all respond briefly to my first question. What do you as young people enjoy and value most about being a Gypsy/Traveller? I know that you talked about traditions and grandparents.
I enjoy being able to travel about.
I value being independent and not having to depend on staying in one place where I would have a job. Travellers have a couple of their own trades. We can move around, do our trade and make a living, while living the way we prefer to live.
Freedom is important.
Our lifestyle is the same as everybody else's. I go to church every Sunday; I am a born-again Christian. We have meals with our families and we visit our parents and grandparents.
We go to the cinema and to nightclubs.
It is the same life as everybody else has, but if you wake up one morning and think, "I'm sick of looking at this place," you can pack up and go.
What is most difficult for Gypsy/Traveller young people?
Discrimination.
Harassment.
People treat us perfectly and everything is great until they find out that we are Travellers, when their attitude changes completely, and we become rubbish.
When policemen come to camps, they do not consider each person to be an individual. They speak to us as a group, as if we were a tribe.
As if we had a leader.
They will say, "Last month, this place was destroyed," or, "Rubbish was left here." They will not treat us as individuals. That is what we must put up with. Many families will get up and move without saying anything, just to avoid harassment from the police, local councils and others.
Last year, when the Appleby fair was taking place, I went to a nightclub in Carlisle, which some Travellers had hired for a private party. We were travelling there with our seatbelts on in a nice car that was taxed, insured and roadworthy. I do not know whether the police could tell from looking at us that we were Gypsies, but they followed us for about a mile, then pulled us up. A policeman asked for our names and dates of birth, which we told him. I asked why I was pulled up. He said, "We've had a lot of Gypsies about here." I thought that he knew that we were Gypsies by looking at us, but he did not. He said that he wanted to check that everything was okay. I said, "I'm a Gypsy." He was quite shocked. I said, "Have you got a problem with that?" He said, "No." He tried a chat-up line, which did not go down very well with me.
He was trying to get something on her.
There was nothing, however, because I was driving within the speed limit and I had stopped at the traffic lights. Obviously, I knew that the police were watching me, so I was being more careful.
They have that effect.
A similar thing happened to me. My boyfriend and I were driving in a car and were pulled over. The police did not know that we were Travellers and had no reason to pull us over. They told us that we were going too fast. They asked for my boyfriend's name and address. When they found out where he lived and that he was a Traveller, they turned the car upside down, to try to find something. They looked under the bonnet, round the wheels and everywhere else. The car was brand new. As Nadia Foy said, the police will turn cars upside down to see whether they can find something. They will check all the computer records, too.
If Traveller families have diesel vehicles, many police officers will check whether they are using red diesel. Many Traveller farmers, especially those who have vans, are constantly checked for that.
Raiding sites now and again is something else that the police do.
I have experience of the police walking into my mum's caravan without a warrant, and looking in our cupboards and so on. There were never any reports to them of anything having happened, so they had no reason to come in, but they were obviously looking for stolen goods or whatever. That happened in Fort William. They took their own time to look about, raking through the caravan and the vans.
Every so often, the police raid the Lochgilphead site, which was mentioned earlier. They have no reason to do so; they just want to see—
Honestly; they check cars, generators and everything.
They check people's caravans and vans, just to see whether they can find something in them, which is terrible. Would they do that in a council scheme? Would they raid a scheme every so often, just to see whether they could find something?
We are obvious targets—we are there and we are on the road. To them, we are in the wrong. They have the upper hand and they will take advantage of that by any means that are available to them.
You said that you felt that no one listens to you, that people do not understand about your traditions and that they make assumptions about you. You did not say that you were clans—what was the word that you used?
Tribes.
That is it—I like that term.
It is about changing stereotypical views.
Yes.
We can do that by coming to meetings like this—that is why we do it. I have been to many different kinds of meetings, such as educational meetings and, with the Maryhill project, meetings with housing departments and doctors. I was even on television talking about the site in Inverness. We were trying to change people's attitudes, but all we can do is try.
We can only tell people about the way we live and about how we try to make a living. However, trying to tell somebody about that is more or less impossible. We bring all the information and say what is what and so on. However, having a wee conversation and trying to tell you what life is like is far from the truth, because we cannot go into proper detail. I cannot remember the details and tell you what was said or what happened.
I should advise the witnesses that if they want to say something but do not want to say it in public or for inclusion in the Official Report, we can go into private session after this discussion. We would still be able to take those comments on board, although they would not be recorded in the Official Report.
Cathy Peattie asked earlier what we could do to change things. We have been to loads of different meetings, but we got the impression—I did, in particular—that people were not really listening. I talked about that with Michelle Lloyd earlier. The people we were meeting said, "Uh-huh. Next question, please". A lot of that goes on, just so that people can say that they have met us.
There must be hundreds of issues that come up and the people with the power must sort out those issues. We have been trying for years to get our point across. Basically, we are getting pissed off with trying to do so because still we cannot get anything done. That is what we are trying to say.
I volunteered to go to schools and health education meetings to give information to teachers and children. We want to show them our background and a bit of our life to let them see that we are just normal people.
You need more help than that.
We are here talking to you, but many other young travellers who are fed up with the situation do not say so. Their frustration comes out in other ways and they get into a lot of trouble with settled communities because of it. There is a lot of friction and the situation is getting beyond a joke. A lot of young Traveller boys are getting into trouble for no reason—or, rather, because of the problem of discrimination, which could be stopped.
As Clementine says, problems are caused by the fact that the boys get angry.
A lot of Traveller boys are fed up with the situation. We are here and we hope that that can help to make a difference, but we cannot speak for everybody.
About a year ago, there was a Christian convention in Stoke-on-Trent. About 90 per cent of the people at the convention were born-again Christians who would not throw papers out of their windows and so on because that is bad testimony, and who had the Christian fish sign in their car windows along with passages from scripture to bear witness to other people. However, when we went to a garage and politely asked for a can of water, we were refused and were told, "We won't have your type of people here."
You talked about the bairns from Gypsy/Traveller families being made to sit at the back of classes. We have heard some evidence that education is difficult. Can you outline some of the issues and tell us whether you think that home education has worked?
What do you mean when you say that education is difficult?
How do the young folks and kids feel when they go into schools? You have told us a bit about problems in classes, such as people having to leave the class while the teacher talked about them—that is appalling. Is that the general feeling of the bairns?
Yes. As soon as the kids go in, the other kids look at them and whisper.
It has got to the point at which kids are getting told that they must stick up for themselves in the schools. Kids come home every day saying that they are being bullied, but they must attend school to get an education. Therefore, parents tell their kids that they have to stick up for themselves.
That woman should have known better. When I was attacked at school, the teacher said, "It must be your fault, because your kind of people have behavioural problems." That is disgusting.
I went to school between the ages of five and nine. My father went to the same school, and his brothers, sisters, cousins and his father before him went to it. The school had had Travellers in it before me. My sister went to the school and went on to high school, so she got quite a good education. But I got bullied and called "stinky" and "smelly". I am not being funny, but I went to school dressed better than most of the pupils—I was always clean and tidy, whereas a lot of the others were not. I am not being discriminatory; I am just saying that what they were saying about me was not true.
How do you overcome that? We have heard that bairns are not necessarily getting the education that they need: they are colouring in pictures or doing work that is not relevant.
I taught myself.
How can we overcome that? How can we ensure that bairns get the education that they need?
A lot of people think that it is not worth while teaching a Traveller's child, because they go on to lead their own way of life.
A lot of Traveller children do not get the opportunity, through education, to make another way of life.
Yes. That is why we do it. To change the situation, teachers could work with the children and with us. They could sit down and ask the children what they want. They could come out to the sites and talk to the parents.
On certain sites, there are playbuses or teaching facilities for younger children. On sites such as the Kirkcaldy site where Peter McPhee—who is sitting next to me—lives, there are some facilities for teaching a group of four children. Someone comes and teaches them on the site, but they should mix with other children.
Do you think that that isolates them?
Yes, it does. But in the Highlands, where I stay, there is no education at all—there is nothing for children, although there are a lot of Traveller families up there. There should be a bus or something that could come to the regular camps for Travellers. Even if Travellers themselves were to do the teaching, they should be able to get some money for teaching facilities.
So the idea is to have home education or computer links with schools. Could that be tried?
Yes, Traveller children could be taught more about computers, because this is the age of the computer, and everybody has to learn about them. That would benefit Traveller children a lot.
It would be good to have a computer on each site and get the kids involved, because there are 15 and 16-year-old girls and boys who cannot read or write, although many younger ones can read and write a little bit. Older boys who are 15 or 16 years old will not just walk in and say, "I'm going to start high school again." That is out of the question. They need something to get them involved and interested.
Kids can learn about computers, but they have to get a basic education, which a lot of them do not have. With Michelle Lloyd, I went recently to a school in Golspie. Before I went, I made some leaflets for the kids to tell them about my background and lifestyle. They were expecting somebody totally different. I went smartly dressed and was very polite. I was sent a letter afterwards, which said that they could not believe that I had left school at the age of 9, done all this work for Travellers, helped myself, and been to Geneva to the United Nations. The teacher was impressed. I am willing—I cannot speak for everybody else—to educate not only children, but adults, because there are lots of adults who have stereotypical views.
Would it be helpful for teachers and others in education to visit Travellers as part of their training?
Coming to the sites would be a bad idea. They would look at where you live, the site and your things. They would look to see whether it was clean, and at how your kids were dressed. If they saw something that they did not like, it would stick in their head.
I think that it would be a good idea.
We are talking about education. The camps are dirty. I do not expect that anybody here would stay in them.
It is like us saying that we want to find out more about people who are not Travellers. How many of you would invite us into your home to show us how clean your toilet, bathroom, kitchen and living room are?
Would any of you want to do that?
That would be an invasion of privacy.
For educational purposes it would be good to come and talk to parents, but not for any other reason.
The little kids and teachers would look at people and know that they have seen where they live.
Another thing about Traveller families, as everybody here will agree, is that they are very close. Because discrimination has existed for so long, they feel that they have to protect the home. They are strict-living.
And they are protective of their children, especially their daughters.
I visited the site at Lochgilphead, and I was interested to hear you talking about it. I speak for my colleagues when I say that we got a lot out of our visits to various sites. We were certainly well received. Clementine MacDonald brought home to me the kind of discrimination that you face when you asked how it would be if the police raided a council scheme. We know as politicians that there would be absolute hell to pay if that happened.
That is correct.
Could you tell me what those trades are? What sort of employment would you like to be able to take up in future? Have you had the training opportunities that would enable you to pursue a particular line of employment or career and, if not, what could be done to help you achieve a career, employment or whatever goal you want? That was a rambling question. You have talked about the failures in education for Travellers. How do those failures affect employment opportunities?
The failures affect employment opportunities for Travellers in that Travellers have to adapt their own employment, which is usually building work or tree work, which are mainly for men. The women do work such as selling things.
In a lot of places, such as the islands—the Isle of Mull or the Isle of Skye; the sort of places that I go every year—there are still a lot of old Travellers who have their own trades, such as making wooden flowers or working with tin. My granddad makes water cans, basins and so on. He is a tinsmith—he makes all his own tin. Such trades are dying away. It is not only the trades that are dying out, the tradition is dying out. Who goes to the doors? We call going from door to door selling things hawking.
I have also done that.
A lot of older people ask, "Have youse got any wooden flowers?" or, "Have youse got any of what you usually sell?"
They usually ask for clothes-pegs.
That is dying out. There are lots of trades that Travellers do. Certain families even do their own different things that others do not do. A lot of families will do something that others will not. There is whelk picking, which is a big thing for some Traveller families.
If we do not have an education and have no qualifications or degrees, what kind of jobs are we going to get?
Exactly.
I used to go from door to door selling rugs but we settled down for a while, so I got a job. The job that I got—considering my education—was in a restaurant. I would work from 10 o'clock in the morning until 1 o'clock the following morning, with a five-minute break every hour, so I packed in that job.
Therefore, it is easier just to go to doors and sell things.
Getting a job means settling down. We have to be in the same place day in and day out for as long as we need to—we cannot just pack up. We have to give notice, or we would have to break a contract, because sometimes a contract can last for three months at the minimum. Our way of life—our culture—is to get up and say, "Right. I'm gonnae go and try somewhere else and see if I can get a job today."
Our way of life is travelling.
The men might not have qualifications, but the boys of Peter McPhee's age and younger go with their fathers. That is their education. They learn the trade so that when they reach 17—the age when they can have a driving licence—they get their own vehicle, they get their own work stuff and are put out on their own.
They have a van, they go out working and so they have money at 16 or 17.
Sometimes they are even younger than that.
Are you saying that there is not really much call among young Travellers to look for employment outwith the traditional employment that is available?
That is up to the people themselves.
It depends on how they feel.
Exactly—it is up to each individual. It would be good for the older ones—those who want to learn—to be able to go to college at night.
That would be good, but many people are too settled in their ways for that.
Travelling families are very protective. Some of the children will not get the opportunity to have an education. They cannot say to their mum and dad that they will stay in one place until they finish school. Choice comes down to the individual, but not when you are talking about nine or 10-year-old kids.
I was not talking about nine or 10-year-old kids, but about people who are older—16 to 19 years old. If they want to go to college, they can do so.
There are obvious barriers, as you have told us.
Those barriers are hard to break through.
Yes, it is the chicken-and-egg situation. If young Travellers do not go to school regularly, they will not get the necessary qualifications and so on. It is horrifying to hear about discrimination in education. One of the things about going to school is that, in school, children receive information about things such as health and social education. If young travelling children do not go to school, they will not get that sort of information; or will they? Is there another way that children get information on things such as health education?
Traveller families are different in that way. They teach their own children about health and things like that. We have different views on certain subjects. Traveller parents teach their children about things in their own way—
Sharon McPhee can say the word "sex" if she wants to.
Traveller children do not get sex education at school, they get it from their parents.
They get it when the parents think that the children are old enough to understand it.
Parents are very protective and it is the parents who teach about health issues.
It is not so much health education, but more the facts of life. Their mothers teach the children that.
Or their friends.
School days should be the happiest days of somebody's life, when you have no problems or worries, because you are a child. Children want to play at playtime, have their snack, chat with their friends and have a good time. I can say honestly that my school days were the worst days of my life—I would never put my kids through that experience.
I am not sure whether any of the witnesses have kids, but when you have them, will you send them to school?
No. I would send them to school only if I knew that the school would not allow them to be bullied. If I thought that they would get a proper education, then yes, by all means, I would send them to school. I would even go as far as to get them a private tutor to have them taught properly, but I would not have them go through what I went through.
That is right. The experiences that we had were that the teachers did not want to teach us.
When I was a kid I, like a lot of other young Traveller kids, was bullied at school. A lot of kids do not tell their mums and dads that they are being picked on.
When my sister was in her last year at primary school, some boys were calling her names. My father went to the school and told the school about it, but the school did nothing. She was still coming back with bruises and with handfuls of hair coming out in her hands. He took her into school and made her go out and fight the boy that was doing it; she went and did what she had to do. The teacher expelled her for sticking up for herself, but the boys who were kicking her legs were never expelled. It was boy versus girl, but when the girl got the better of the boy, the school was not pleased.
I, too, was suspended from school. A teacher was screaming into my face, saying that I was stupid because I could not do the work that the other children could do, but that was because she would not teach me. I said something back to her and walked out of the school. Because I walked out of the school, they suspended me, but they never did anything to the teacher for screaming into my face and calling me stupid. It was I who was suspended, and I was only 10. The adult should have known better, not the child.
How do we change this?
To start any kind of change, we need to be classed as an ethnic minority group. We need to have rights and status.
We cannot speak for all the Traveller people. We can speak only from our experiences.
If you asked an Asian or black person the same question—whether they wanted to be recognised as an ethnic group—they would give you the same answer that we gave. We need to be recognised before anything can be done.
Most people in the settled community have the opportunity when they go to school to develop what one might call leisure skills, if they are good at sport or art, for example. If you do not go to school, what opportunities do you have to develop those types of skills? Are you held back in any way by not having those facilities?
In my experience, we are not held back. My wee brother is 11 and he is a Scottish boxing champion. There are opportunities for individual kids. I am talking from my point of view, but I do not feel that we are denied the opportunity to participate in activities. My brothers and sisters go to school and go on trips. If anything happens at the school, they are involved.
I have a 14-year-old sister and an 11-year-old brother. They went to school in Dalkeith, but my family took them away from the school because my wee brother got stuff sprayed in his eye in the toilets and he had to go to hospital. He was blind for about an hour, so he was taken out of school. On the educational side, my sister is fantastic at drawing; she can draw beautifully. My wee brother is good at sports.
My wee brother is also a boxer.
Leisure is something that you can do yourself. Anybody can teach himself or herself to play football, but it is hard to teach yourself how to read and write and it is hard to do maths out of school.
We have had the opportunity to go to some of the sites and there were a lot of children about, but no facilities for them. Is that something that you encounter everywhere, or was it just our bad luck to go to the sites where there is nothing?
It is the same everywhere. Where facilities exist, they are confined to the sites. There might be a small swing park, for example.
It is only half thought-out and there are terrible safety hazards.
On the site that we are on, there is a big grassy area at one end, with great big boulders that were put up to stop the kids from playing on their bikes on the soft grass.
How much would you benefit from some type of community facility on the site, even if it were just a portakabin in which you could have regular meetings?
We applied for one.
Do you think that that is desperately needed?
We applied for a chalet. In the morning, some women would take it in turns to have a toddler group to give mothers a chance to do their cleaning and washing. The kids would be looked after so that they would not be hurt. In the daytime, the kids would come back from school and would have somewhere to go, with a pool table and a television room. We were going to provide everything in the chalet once it had been provided. We would provide the work, the facilities and even the care. I do not know what happened to that. Perhaps Michelle Lloyd knows.
Perhaps you should find out, rather than leaving it to Michelle.
There is nowhere for 16 or 17 year olds to go at night. If there were a pool table, they would not need to go roaming the streets or have to walk miles. They would not get themselves into bother in the local schemes when they go to the shops.
I would like to change the subject.
Those people can challenge discrimination.
I appreciate that, but what about your ethnicity? Do people need to know? What would allow people not to discriminate against you and not to treat you separately?
What do you mean?
What are the main things that people who are not aware of your culture and values need to know about you?
We are not going anywhere. We are here to stay and will not be brushed under the carpet.
We have been around for long enough. It is not as if we popped up 10, 20 or 50 years ago. We have been around for perhaps as long as black or Asian people.
The Lord made the world and he made man. After he made man, we started. We have been here since the start of time and will not be put away.
We want recognition.
It is not so much about recognition, although it is needed. We just want a nice lifestyle so that we can walk down the street without seeing a sign in a pub door that says: "No traders, no hawkers". We want to be able to pull on to sites.
People do not know about such things. Even in 2001, people do not know a lot about Travellers because they have never taken an interest.
They think that we wear long skirts, big hoopy earrings, jump over broomsticks to get married and dance around fires at night.
They think that we are a tribe.
When I went to Geneva, a woman who worked at the United Nations asked me, "Do you have many parties?" I replied, "All the time." I never knew that she was talking about stick parties—dancing round the fire. I thought that she was talking about nightclub parties and so on. I was sitting there, having a conversation on a totally different level. She asked me how long I had been travelling—I replied, "I just got my licence yesterday." I thought that that was quite funny, but she did not take it as a joke.
When Sharon McPhee and I went to Bulgaria last month, people kept coming up to us on the street, asking, "Why are you so white?" That is in a foreign country—they are not aware that there are other people like them all over the place.
They touched our hair, too.
Have members asked all their questions? Do the witnesses have anything to ask us?
Where—
What—
Where is—[Laughter.]
I do not usually ask that question, by the way—it is taking a high risk.
What will you do to help us?
What will you do with the information that you have?
We decided to have the inquiry after we took evidence last May about discrimination against Gypsy/Travellers. This is the first inquiry on it that the committee has conducted, and we have appointed an adviser. We have been out, taking evidence on sites, and we have taken evidence from a lot of different public bodies. In June, we hope to publish a report, which will have recommendations that we then take to the Parliament, to try to change policy. We are considering how we can influence changes in legislation, in particular the Race Relations Act 1976 and the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000.
Scotland has its own Parliament now, and its own recognition—nearly. We need recognition as well. Obviously that will not happen overnight, but we cannot wait for 10 years.
Are you talking about awareness raising?
That would be one thing—that sort of education is important. However, it would also be a matter of carrying out changes to policy and to legislation, so that it would be illegal for people to discriminate against Gypsy/Travellers in the way that they have done in the past. That would involve a number of things. Alongside educating them, we have to start with forcing people not to discriminate.
That brings me to something else that I wanted to say. Jonathan Ross is always saying things about Travellers on TV—"dirty Gypsies" or whatever. If he said that about a black or Asian person, there would be war; there would be an outcry. I do not get it, but it is true.
Don't watch him. Turn him off. Let his ratings go down.
It is true—there are different types of discrimination.
There was a children's programme on the telly—
"Gypsy Girl" or something.
Yes; I saw it—it was terrible.
It was pathetic. My wee sister tried to get an address so that she could write to complain about it.
People have cheek to put money into making something like that.
We thought it was highly funny.
Anyway—where do we go from here?
We will take more evidence. We will produce a report in June, which will be discussed in the Parliament. I hope that we will actually start to change things in education and health.
How can we do it, then?
The race relations legislation is reserved to Westminster.
Right—so how do we get in touch with Westminster?
We will probably end up doing that. Anyway, the postcode is SW1A 0AA. [Laughter.]
On behalf of the girls and the rest of the people who have come along, I thank you for having us. There were two people who were also supposed to be here today but, because of evictions that were carried out by the police, they have been moved on and could not be here. Thank you for taking the time to listen to us. It was a pleasure to be here.
Thank you very much for coming.
Meeting adjourned.
On resuming—
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