On 29/07/2016 08:23, Another John wrote:

snipped

My son lives in North Kent. I was at a family function the other day and
was talking to one of his older neighbours, who was complaining about
the number of "pikeys" (his word) in this area these days (though he
implied that there'd always been a presence). He said it was to do with
the amount of building (i.e. casual jobs) in the area.

Very often words like this originate with the "travelling folk" as they
like to call themselves.

Maybe a corruption of the Irish 'Garda'.

Cheers
--
Syd