Kicked out of a Taxi for speaking Irish.

GaelMise

Kathleen McAleer, 21, a mental health nurse, was travelling in the car with three other passengers in the early hours of December 16 in Glasgow. She was travelling across the city with her friend and two first cousins from Donegal. Her cousins, Joseph and Anthony Blair, 19 and 21, are native Irish speakers.Ms McAleer claimed: "The taxi driver turned around and said to [her cousins] 'Stop speaking in that language'.
"We didn't really know how to take it. He said: 'When you are in Britain, it is English you speak.'
"I said to the driver 'Excuse me', shocked that somebody would say that to them. "She told the taxi driver that he was out of order, and she claims that he told the group to get out of his taxi.

Independant

Unfortunatly not all that surprising, plenty of people in Ireland that are just as intolerent of the Irish language.

J_E

Any link to this? Bets on it being Daily Mail, by the way? Or Indo

Edit: That'll do

"An Irish woman has claimed that the taxi driver, who has not been named, threw the passengers out of his taxi at the side of the road at 2am after they objected to his demand that they stop speaking in Irish."

This sounds fishy...especially when Scottish Gaelic isn't all that different.

GaelMise

Cydoniac wrote: »

Any link to this? Bets on it being Daily Mail, by the way? Or Indo

Edited OP. from the Independant

SEPT 23 1989

Not this sh1te again:(

Jimoslimos

I'm not overly surprised. There is an element of anti-Irish sentiment in parts of Scotland, not quite as overt as the sectarianism up North but still present.

keith16

Can't she just complain to the relevant authorities in Glasgow and we can all get on with our lives?

kneemos

What's Scotland without racism?

J_E

keith16 wrote: »

Can't she just complain to the relevant authorities in Glasgow and we can all get on with our lives?

Not with the valiant Daithi O Se at the helm! Boy, are they in for trouble now :pac:

anncoates

Up the Ra..

Santa Cruz

Have a trip up the Gorgie Road when Hearts are playing Hibs or Celtic and you will see how overt the anti Irish and anti Catholic sectarianism is.
Anyone who thinks an independent Scotland will be friends of Ireland are in for a shock

Amirani

Could well imagine that there's Irish taxi drivers about who would throw Arabic speakers out of their taxi. There's intolerant douchebags everywhere, best thing you can do is ignore them - they're bound to earn themselves a Darwin award eventually.

Santa Cruz

anncoates wrote: »

Up the Ra..

Which shows why sectarianism is on both sides

tdv123

Well that's Loyalism for ya.

tdv123

Santa Cruz wrote: »

Which shows why sectarianism is on both sides

What was sectarian about what the post or what the driver said?

anncoates

Santa Cruz wrote: »

Which shows why sectarianism is on both sides

That's unpatriotic Brit talk.

pablomakaveli

Not surprised. In my personal experience people from certain parts of Scotland hate Irish people and not afraid to show it. Funnily enough when i've met people from NI from a unionist background over here, i've never had any problems with them. Scottish people on the other hand i have.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

humanji

Were they kicked out for not speaking English, or for speaking Irish? That's the thing. I know we all love a good "Why does everyone hate Irish" thread from time to time, but it can be a simple case of classic general racism.

WilyCoyote

Cydoniac wrote: »

Any link to this? Bets on it being Daily Mail, by the way? Or Indo

Edit: That'll do

"An Irish woman has claimed that the taxi driver, who has not been named, threw the passengers out of his taxi at the side of the road at 2am after they objected to his demand that they stop speaking in Irish."

This sounds fishy...especially when Scottish Gaelic isn't all that different.

I hear you Cydoniac. But some Donegal people (like Ms Danielle O Donnell) speak Irish with an American accent and that could have been very disconcerting to a Hun taxi driver

Jimoslimos

I wonder if the driver would have kicked out two deaf people conversing in BSL, a language with the exact same status as Irish in the UK - an officially recognised minority language.

Daqster

Cydoniac wrote: »

Bets on it being Daily Mail, by the way? Or Indo

Will The Mirror suffice?

http://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/stop-speaking-language-taxi-driver-2999820

Or perhaps I could interest you in The Evening Times?

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/taxi-driver-in-irish-rant-probe-147474n.23005857

nxbyveromdwjpg

But why were they speaking Irish anyway?
Seriously. It's 2013.

tdv123

humanji wrote: »

Were they kicked out for not speaking English, or for speaking Irish? That's the thing. I know we all love a good "Why does everyone hate Irish" thread from time to time, but it can be a simple case of classic general racism.

Because of our freedom.

tdv123

nm wrote: »

But why were they speaking Irish anyway?
Seriously. It's 2013.

No, it's not.

nxbyveromdwjpg

tdv123 wrote: »

No, it's not.

You win

Jimoslimos

nm wrote: »

But why were they speaking Irish anyway?
Seriously. It's 2013.

Well whatever year it is, languages will come and go but good old-fashioned intolerance will never die.

Pumpkinseeds

Slow news day? Not another fcuking pointless thread about the Irish language, news flash, most of us don't give a sh*t about the Irish language, the sooner it dies out the better. Nothing personal, I'm just sick and tired of hearing some nonsense about the Irish language, it's been done to death at this point, if only it was stickied.

woodoo

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Slow news day? Not another fcuking pointless thread about the Irish language, news flash, most of us don't give a sh*t about the Irish language, the sooner it dies out the better. Nothing personal, I'm just sick and tired of hearing some nonsense about the Irish language, it's been done to death at this point, if only it was stickied.

Why do you think you have the right to decide what threads appear on boards. There is a very simple solution if you aren't interested in a particular subject.. don't look into it.

WilyCoyote

nm wrote: »

But why were they speaking Irish anyway?
Seriously. It's 2013.

I wouldn't believe a thing you say after that.

The Backwards Man

There's more than a little stench of fish from that story. If you can find a 19 and 21 year old speaking Irish in the Rosses at 2am on a Monday morning I'll give you €1000, never mind in a different country.

woodoo

The Backwards Man wrote: »

There's more than a little stench of fish from that story. If you can find a 19 and 21 year old speaking Irish in the Rosses at 2am on a Monday morning I'll give you €1000, never mind in a different country.

More likely to speak it abroad. I spoke more irish working in holland than i ever did here.

ShamoBuc

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Slow news day? Not another fcuking pointless thread about the Irish language, news flash, most of us don't give a sh*t about the Irish language, the sooner it dies out the better. Nothing personal, I'm just sick and tired of hearing some nonsense about the Irish language, it's been done to death at this point, if only it was stickied.

Then don't click on the " Kicked out of a taxi for SPEAKING IRISH" thread...problem solved;):rolleyes:

tayto lover

I was beaten by an Irish teacher in school because I had trouble learning the Irish language. Nobody cared back then either.

ShamoBuc

tayto lover wrote: »

I was beaten by an Irish teacher in school because I had trouble learning the Irish language. Nobody cared back then either.

Me too, but then again, all my teachers were Irish;)

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

Wattle

GaelMise wrote: »

Independant

Unfortunatly not all that surprising, plenty of people in Ireland that are just as intolerent of the Irish language.

You wouldn't get kicked out of a taxi in Ireland for speaking Irish so stop linking the two together. There is no link. A lot of people are indifferent towards the language. That's completely different from the bigotry that these people encountered.

tdv123

Were ever the Orange Order has a big presence people seem to have a blind hatred of people different to them.

SpaceTime

Well, the taxi driver would get a shock when people in England don't even realise he's speaking English an think a strong Glaswegian accent is "Scottish".

But, his statement isn't even fact and what's even more shocking is that Scots Gaelic sounds very similar to Donegal Irish, so he could equally have been chucking out highlanders / islanders too.

And, he's totally wrong given there are approximately half a million Welsh Speakers in Britain along with speakers of Scots Gaelic, Cornish and other minority languages native to the island itself.

Welsh has official language status too meaning that official publications etc and interactions with the UK Government must be possible in Welsh.

woodoo

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

It allowed us to communicate without the dutch bosses knowing what we were saying. They all spoke perfect English.

PizzamanIRL

Another "Can you say that in English?" thread?

tomwaterford

pablomakaveli wrote: »

Not surprised. In my personal experience people from certain parts of Scotland hate Irish people and not afraid to show it. Funnily enough when i've met people from NI from a unionist background over here, i've never had any problems with them. Scottish people on the other hand i have.

Ya I stayed in a hotel for a weekend over there before and was surprised by the horrible little under-current of dislike/put-downs aimed at irish guests staying there from the staff
have had a good few friend who ended up studying in edinburgh who have said much the same,seems to anyone over age of 25 (though maybe their classmates were just being polite to their face I told them:P)

Carlos Orange

Wattle wrote: »

You wouldn't get kicked out of a taxi in Ireland for speaking Irish so stop linking the two together. There is no link. A lot of people are indifferent towards the language. That's completely different from the bigotry that these people encountered.

The taxi driver is probably sick of people telling him English is a foreign language,as is said in the article. People can be touchy about claims like that.

stefan idiot jones

I was kicked out of a taxi because the driver thought I was spitting at him.

I was talking Welsh.

SPDUB

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Not just the Irish . I know of 2 cases personally - Italian used in a chipper here in Dublin to talk about the customers ( some very disparaging comments ) and Spanish used by Spanish students on Dublin Bus to make similar comments about the fellow passengers .

Nodin

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Slow news day? Not another fcuking pointless thread about the Irish language, news flash, most of us don't give a sh*t about the Irish language, the sooner it dies out the better. Nothing personal, I'm just sick and tired of hearing some nonsense about the Irish language, ............

I'm sick and tired of people who seem to have it in for anything Irish, personally speaking. "Not giving a shit" in their case seems to mean "throw abuse at any opportunity".

Pumpkinseeds

Nodin wrote: »

I'm sick and tired of people who seem to have it in for anything Irish, personally speaking. "Not giving a shit" in their case seems to mean "throw abuse at any opportunity".

Not at all, it's such a dire and dreary language and there hardly seems to be a week that goes by without some dull thread about the Irish language, usually descending into some tedious mess about 800 years of blah dee blah dee blah

crockholm

Yet the amount of times I hear the "shur,we're the best of friends,we're all celts" when Irish people mention scottish people,laughable really how naive some folk are. IMO the runts of the litter in Britain,with sincere apologies to the 3 nice scottish people I have met in my whole life.
Even though the cabbies boss comes across as a real gem in the interveiw,it is most amusing to see the forelock-tugging,self-flagellating responses of some posters about the language when it is a secondary or even tertiary factor in this whole story.

roboshatner

very interesting story.

If you ask a taxi driver for a receipt

and he refuses to print it or says he is out of ink you can refuse to pay.

Nodin

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Not at all, it's such a dire and dreary language and there hardly seems to be a week that goes by without some dull thread about the Irish language, usually descending into some tedious mess about 800 years of blah dee blah dee blah

.....I realise that you find many of this countrys customs and history beneath your dignity. You don't fail to mention it at every turn.

poundapunnet

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Not at all, it's such a dire and dreary language and there hardly seems to be a week that goes by without some dull thread about the Irish language, usually descending into some tedious mess about 800 years of blah dee blah dee blah

How can a language be dire and dreary? As far as I understand it's quite a complex language that's interesting to linguists and I think it sounds beautiful. I wish I spoke it better, one of my best friends is a gaelgoir and it comes in very handy for her. The little bit I do have has come in handy a few times too.

But yeah it'd be nice if people would stop getting all Brits Out about it whenever it's brought up, and it's a dying language, acknowledging that fact doesn't make you some kind of west Brit.

Pumpkinseeds

Nodin wrote: »

.....I realise that you find many of this countrys customs and history beneath your dignity. You don't fail to mention it at every turn.

You're keeping track of my posts I find a lot of Irish gobsh*tery quite embarrassing and tedious tbh. Irish has no relevance to me or my life or to the lives of anyone I know. I just don't get the point of pumping money into it or banging on and on about it. So, some taxi driver kicked someone out of a car for speaking Irish, for all anyone knows he could've mistaken if for Polish or Swahilli. But sure why not take it personally as an affront to the Irish? More English oppression of the Irish:rolleyes: Jesus, people have little else to be worrying about.