I will start by saying that I agree with just about all of your posts on the forum.
The above is pretty much spot on, in particular, how easy it was to get free money from the government back in the day. One time, the missus and I went to Neath dole office to make a new claim. Daughter #2 was about 3 months old. We said that we were of no fixed abode and the lovely lady dealing with our claim said that if we were NFA we couldn't possibly be living together if we didn't live anywhere so therefore should make two separate claims. OK, so I made a claim as a single parent for daughter #1 and other half for #2. That meant lots of extra money and double child benefit and crucially didn't have to sign on anymore. Just free money every fortnight, result! That was about the same time that the government came up with The Enterprise Allowance Scheme, a dodge to massage the enormous unemployment figures. If on the dole you'd say that you were setting up a business, submit a business plan and then get financial support for a year or two to get you going. It was more than dole moneyand full rent would be paid as well. I knew loads of people who would set up businesses as songwriters, puppeteers etc and then bugger off to India or Thailand for a year or two and live like kings! One huge positive of this was that genuine applicants of the scheme could form bands, become artists and various other amazing thing nand really focus on it and actually make it work without having to spend most of their time flipping burgers to make ends meet. I bet many reading this will love some of the music that exists now purely because of that government support.
As far as dole vans visiting traveller sites..... erm, sorry no. It did happen once and it was clearly a government ploy that would get reported in the media and influence public opinion. Oh boy,and did it work. Arguably the last ever proper |Free Festival was tail end of July '92. Happy Daze Free Festival. The year before it was at Bala and I was somewhat involved in it. Castlemoreton happened in May '92 and there was a huge police crackdown on us lot. I thought that I'd chance my arm and contacted Dyfed Powys Police hoping to negotiate a site for Happy Daze '92 using a false name, Philip Mitchilum. I asked them to get in touch using the small ads in The Shropshire Star newspaper. They didn't, they ran a huge article appealing for Philip Mitchilum to get in touch! Got the press cutting somewhere, will have to dig it out.This resulted in me, the missus and a mate \Stef agreeing to a meeting with them in the Newtown police station. As we were walking up the stairs an obviously undercover copper said "Hi James" . sh*t, the blag name clearly didn't work very well. We all sat down in some conference room and Chief Inspector John LLewellyn Williams asked about Philip Mitchilum. I replied "Fill up my chillum". They really didn't see the funny side of it.Complete sense of humour failure.
Anyway, cut a long story short, they agreed to provide us with a site for the festival. We were parked up in some forestry near Meifod called The Dragons Back at the time and the Chief Inspector randomly popped up a couple of times for a chat. He was actually clearly a good bloke. The day before the festival he returned really late at night...we thought it was a wind up and there'd be no site given to us, and told us where we could have the festival. Obviously we had no time to check the location out but it seemed OK. We immediately shot off to the nearest phone box to make some calls to spread the word and next day off we went.
The site was kind of OK...except that it was owned by an ancient farmer. Poorly fenced and sheep everywhere. The sheep hadn't been moved away. Loads of sheep killed by travellers dogs which was obviously reported in every newspaper.....and the icing on the cake was, for the first time ever, a dole office was set up on site for EVERYONE to sign on. Didn't matter bwhat name you gave,whether you were entitled to dole or not, you got a Giro on the spot. Completely unheard of. The number of people in the queue to sign on was almost matched by the number of press reporters there. Remember, this was just after Castlemoreton, the largest Free Festival/Rave ever in the UK, the one that caused the Criminal Justice Act to be brought in which ended the travelling scene along with Free Festivals and raves.
It was this that created the urban myth that mobile dole offices used to visit New Age Traveller sites.
