Brenda Power versus the Travellers

I suppose if you give a sweep of many country towns a problem with Traveller violence does exist. I remember the thuggery committed at The blessing of the the graves in Blessington co Wicklow last summer for instance. You report whats's there to see in plain view. Say it like it is. The NY Times didn't skimp on reporting on Irish and Italian criminality in NYC in the 20th century.

A million and one opinion pieces have been written on a multitude of topics based on the writers opinion, experience and the experience of the vast majority of the population. Unfortunately for Brenda, on this occasion, her opinion and experience fell under discrimination legislation. Dosnt mean it wasnt an honest and true piece, just that this particular piece of truth is banned from being told.

Didn't we do this last week ??

Here is a reply left on thejounal.ie, I couldn't agree more with it.



As long as we encourage a culture of victim hood, we will continue to raise victims, and so the cycle or underachievement continues.
One of the things that holds back open and reasonable discussion on matters regarding the travelling community is that they themselves (and other people also) are too quick to jump in with ‘discrimination’, ‘anti-traveller’ and ‘racism’ accusations.
So it is well near impossible to get any kind of dialogue going because if you express a negative opinion at all you are then in the firing line for accusations of discrimination.
I’ll give an example- there is traveller accommodation quite near my home (a medium sized town within 50 min’s drive of Dublin well known for having experience issues with travllers in the past ). At our residents meetings for the entire community the issue of rubbish being dumped on the road outside the travellers halting site was raised.
The response from the travellers representative about the issue was ‘youse just don’t like travellers’ quickly followed by absolute shut down and refusal to discuss the matter. People’s hands are tied in situations like that.
It’s impossible to make changes when one side will not acknowledge unacceptable behaviour but instead insists that they are being picked on for being a traveller. Surely it is the other way around. Travellers don’t like non travellers. That’s why they treat them with contempt and are backed up by the pseudo-intellectual-liberals who soft-voice their opinions on discrimination, exclusion and all that other nonsense.
They (the travellers) and only they are the architects of this discrimination. Why not try assimilation for a change? That would require doing a day’s constructive work and meeting one’s social obligations. This is not in the curriculum of these card carrying members of the victim culture.
It is my opinion that they should be referred to by nationality like everyone else and stop letting them use the tag traveller as an excuse to get away with things. Plus I don’t think traveller describes their lifestyle anymore (I went to primary & secondary school with travllers- none of them actually traveled in their caravans except for expensive family holidays to lourdes & Euro Disney in the summer when they’d use their bespoke vactation campervans instead) They are just accepted but there has come a time where they should be brought to book about how they live outside the system and yet still benefit from it.
By being lenient with travellers, they have now become above the law. Would anyone here be able to park a caravan anywhere and leave litter where they like? The bottom line is that Travellers do this.
I think Government policy should target the women mainly; education and housing and integration coupled with vigorous tax law enforcement and enforcement of law regarding schooling ((Most of the traveller kids I knew left school after their confirmation) is the only hope for positive change .Then their mortality rate and their infant mortality rate might start to fall but pussy footing around with their rights without responsibilities is doomed to fail.

20Cent wrote: »

The John Joe story is on almost all the front pages of today's papers. Power was wrong to label all travellers as violent thugs this was racist and incitement to hatred.

Irish travellers are not a race. They are at the most an ethnic group.