Eh, travellers in the UK has become a catchall term for tinkers and gypsies. It's also an acceptable PC term so newspapers like it and frankly anyone not involved in either community probably won't care about the cultural differences between the two. No idea if the family in the article were tinkers or not but from their swarthy skin I'd guess they've got romany blood somewhere. That or fake tan.
"Look at my car. Do you think that was bought with the earnest love of geeks?" - HaemishM
We have them in the US as well. They are also called Travellers here as well. Many base themselves out of NC or SC. Rather than eastern european gypsy heritage many claim an Irish heritage. They also scam people with shody house work and repair here as well and marry their women off at 13-14.
Yeah, we had a group come through here after a bad hail storm that tore up most of the houses using modern construction (aluminum/vinyl siding, shingle roofs). They would target seniors living alone and go to their door with a "new" roofing treatment that would fix their roof for 1/4 the price of new shingles, but they would give them an invoice for a standard roofing job for insurance - but they had to pay the discounted price up front. If they agreed, they'd climb onto the roof with a weed sprayer full of kerosene and spray the roof for about half an hour. Then they would come into the house to collect their "payment" and half the time just knock the seniors down and take any cash and jewelry they had. Classy.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
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