The Travellar Problem

gary the great

There is a big problem with travellers in Ireland today and county councils are implementing polices to try tackle the problem.

Trying to settle them just isnt working.

What do you think needs to be done? I dont think they can be intergrated into communities and i think halting sites is the only way forward.

WHats your opinions on this?

davej

/me tries to get post in before flamebait troll-thread gets nuked

davej

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

what do the travellers say they want?

Keyzer

Here we go again...
Whats the next one due up? the "are goths cool" thread?

gary the great

The travallers want everything, and everything on their terms, which is unacceptable.

pwd

what policies?
Only policy I've noticed is they are exempt from everything. Taxes, licences etc.
They aren't the worst; skangers are worse.
Should be treated like everyone else is. Should discuss things with the head honchos maybe.

Zombrex

gary the great wrote:

The travallers want everything, and everything on their terms, which is unacceptable.

I didn't realise we could ask for that!

I want everything! And I want it on my terms and I want it now!

Seriously, can we try and limit the I-just-got-hassled-on-the-bus-by-knackers-and-now-I-am-mad posts to one a month.

Keyzer

I agree, the mods need to start cracking down on these stupid threads.
Same thing over and over again.

Xterminator

Wicknight wrote:

Seriously, can we try and limit the I-just-got-hassled-on-the-bus-by-knackers-and-now-I-am-mad posts to one a month.

To be fair to the poster, i think they've tried to avoid the ive just been hassled and i want to vent type post.

If you dont want to rehash, you can always ignore, but why should the mods crack down on somebody starting a discussion. I mean most topics have been discussed before, when you come right down to it.

X

Keyzer

Xterminator wrote:

To be fair to the poster, i think they've tried to avoid the ive just been hassled and i want to vent type post.

If you dont want to rehash, you can always ignore, but why should the mods crack down on somebody starting a discussion. I mean most topics have been discussed before, when you come right down to it.

X

Because its a rehash of the same crap every month.
Theres at least 4-5 threads that keep coming up over and over.

i.e Travellers, Goths, Fat People, Woman Drivers etc etc.

Sleepy

What annoys me most about these threads is the amount of people that post to them to whinge that they come up all the time. Just ignore it if you don't want to discuss it.

gary the great

if you dont want to discuss get lost.....


Anyway fingal county council spend over 17million a year on travellor accomadation, but have admitted nothing is changing and that every year its the same over and over.
the problem is they get a new halting site, but when somebody dies, they have to move on due to tradition.
Something has to be done, they have to change their traditions, this is 2005, their traditions are costing our tax payers a fortune

They should get payments for having less kids or something,then they will eventually go away
and the influx of english cream crackers must be halted.

BuffyBot

ive just been hassled and i want to vent

www.blogger.com - I believe it's great for that sort of thing..

Keyzer

Keyzer wrote:

Because its a rehash of the same crap every month.
Theres at least 4-5 threads that keep coming up over and over

So what? Just because you had the chance to have a discussion about Travellers or other such topics, a while ago, shouldn't be cause to prevent other posters from having a go. New posters should have the right to discuss these issues if they wish, especially there is a tendacy to lock these types of threads, which prevents the keeping of the topic within one thread.

There's been a number of threads about Travellers, and they always get locked by the mods, so its still a topic to be re-surfaced from time to time.

As for the traveller issue itself, I'm not going to comment, since I've been in most of the other threads at one time or another

billy the squid

BuffyBot wrote:

www.blogger.com - I believe it's great for that sort of thing..

better still give boards.ie fifty quid and get one of their journals, best part is you can have private posts.

now where was I ... Oh yes

here is a big problem with travellers in Ireland today and county councils are implementing polices to try tackle the problem.

sources please

Trying to settle them just isnt working.

that is why they are called travellers. would you expect some snob from D4 to live in ballymun or ballyfermot? why should they move into estates where they are not liked even before they have moved in there. have you ever seen the protests that start when building a halting site is even suggested in an area?

What do you think needs to be done? I dont think they can be intergrated into communities and i think halting sites is the only way forward.

WHats your opinions on this?

If that is what they want then more power to them.

The travallers want everything, and everything on their terms, which is unacceptable.

if nobody wanted everything then they wouldnt do things like play the lotto every week. if no one wanted everything we would have no rupert murdochs, no bil gates, no richard bransons, No Michael O learys. People who wanted everything and used their imagination to acquire it. progress is made by people who want everything on their terms.

Anyway fingal county council spend over 17million a year on travellor accomadation, but have admitted nothing is changing and that every year its the same over and over.

Limerick City Council is spending the same amount on houses for settled people in O'malley park, and its still a kip.

the problem is they get a new halting site, but when somebody dies, they have to move on due to tradition.

you are wrong there, burn the caravan the dead person lived in some traveller families do this, but I have never heard of a family moving out of a site because someone dies on that site. it is not like they have buried that person there.

Something has to be done, they have to change their traditions, this is 2005, their traditions are costing our tax payers a fortune

I can think of more expensive traditions than the travelling community, why not get rid of them say Irish language, or Irish music, or maybe get rid of UN peacekeeping, theres a tradition we could do without.

vibe666

Keyzer wrote:

i.e Travellers, Goths, Fat People, Woman Drivers etc etc.

I was cut up by a fat female gothic traveller towing a caravan with a skanger passenger and I demand the right to vent about it!

no really.

stiflerssister

oh for christ sake. what is everyones problem with travellers? how many of you actually KNOW a traveller. yes there are the bad apples. but there are fools in every comminity! they live differently...they were raised differently and just because they dont suit the way you would bring somebody up means you hate them?? your sayin its a problem they get exempt from many things. well guess what, if you didnt have to have a tv license you would be pretty happy. they have terms, and so do we. (with other things) they have agreements with the government WHICH they do stick to might i add.
all this excessive complaining wont get you anywhere. travellers hate you because YOU give them a reason. if have of you were decent people, you wouldnt HAVE to flinch when they walk past you, they are HUMAN BEINGS JSUT LIKE YOU! so start talkin about something worth while, because you are disgusting for rating people YOU dont know.

I'm amazed that someone has actually posted to a thread like this after all this time. I'm even more amazed you actually managed to find the thread. :rolleyes: Thats commitment to having a rant.

Sleepy

IMHO we'll have equity with travellers when local authorities give me land to build a house on.

Tha Gopher

stiflerssister wrote:

oh for christ sake. what is everyones problem with travellers? how many of you actually KNOW a traveller. yes there are the bad apples. but there are fools in every comminity! they live differently...they were raised differently and just because they dont suit the way you would bring somebody up means you hate them?? your sayin its a problem they get exempt from many things. well guess what, if you didnt have to have a tv license you would be pretty happy. they have terms, and so do we. (with other things) they have agreements with the government WHICH they do stick to might i add.
all this excessive complaining wont get you anywhere. travellers hate you because YOU give them a reason. if have of you were decent people, you wouldnt HAVE to flinch when they walk past you, they are HUMAN BEINGS JSUT LIKE YOU! so start talkin about something worth while, because you are disgusting for rating people YOU dont know.

lol.

How many do I know? How many have you even met, let alone known?

the_syco

pwd wrote:

what policies?
Only policy I've noticed is they are exempt from everything. Taxes, licences etc.
They aren't the worst; skangers are worse.
Should be treated like everyone else is. Should discuss things with the head honchos maybe.

Skangers pay tax, and if sh|t hits the fan, can be sent to jail. Knackers just move.

Oh, and please note the HUGE difference between travellers (who actually travel) work in decent jobs, and knackers (who camp in your field untill you pay them to move), don't hold down any legit jobs, etc.

stovelid

the_syco wrote:

Skangers pay tax, and if sh|t hits the fan, can be sent to jail. Knackers just move.

Travelers are exempt from jail sentences?

Ayla

Coming at this situation from the outside (I only moved to Ireland 2 years ago) I originally thought feelings about the travelling community was prejudiced and unjustified. I thought people liked complaining about travellers and it was just a popular topic to whine about.

I live in a town where there was a halting site set up for at least a year (it was there before I moved here and at least a year after). I saw no problems with the site; the travellers lived there peacefully and it seemed like a good arrangement.

Then within a short timeframe there was a wedding and a funeral.

All businesses, pubs and shops throughout town shut down and everyone hunkered down for the duration. The halting site was gutted overnight and multiple cars and caravans were set on fire. Then the travellers disappeared and left the site in a complete tip.

Now my *only* problem with the traveller community is how they receive a site and living accomodation from the council and have no responsibility for it when they choose to destroy it and move on. Then they go looking for a new site somewhere else and the town they just left is forced to clean up after them.

Why should the "settled" population be required to provide a site and accomodation then clean up after the travellers when they move on? Also why should local businesses and premises be scared that their property will be the target of vandelism? That's the part of this situation I see a big problem with.

the_syco

stovelid wrote:

Travelers are exempt from jail sentences?

Seems so. Knackers can trespass, litter, threaten you, and not goto jail.

Livvie

Thanks to the poster who said that all topics have been covered in one way or another, and that new posters should be able to discuss them. I can understand how it might get boring, but I guess the answer is that if you have nothing new to say, or just aren't interested, then avoid the thread.

I'm interested in learning about Traveller culture for a book, and would appreciate in hearing from anyone who is familiar with it.

dr_manhattan

Good points from Billy the squid, a rare thing in these type of discussions I find.

To be honest, though subjects such as racism and the traveller population seeem to be covered again and again in here, I don't find it dull cos I haven't been in here in years and in a country with a history like ours, so-called 'ethnic prejudices' that some call racism are an extremely important topic.

Especially as we all get more and more euro signs beside all our names from corruption and subsidised property speculation.

In my opinion, our issues with travellers are deeply rooted in our postcolonial adddiction to ownership and property: they are the final frontier, easily shown in the way that anyone who's disliked in irish society is referred to as a "knacker".

First off, I'm assuming that this is really a thread about "travellers who break the law" rather than "travellers" - seeing as everyone keeps talking about the laws "they" break.

Well, people break the law. At every level of this society we have a need for compromise in a greedy society that does not basically respect the law. Our own leaders are under investigation constantly, showing that all the way through our society, we take what we can and leave others to clear up the mess: From farmers polluting rivers to sponsored companies wrecking land, to irresponsible and fugly strip mall development.

We should look at our cities as settlements, and look at their outskirts, and compare our own dumping to that of the traveller community. After all, two things seem to unite local nimbys in ireland: Halting sites and Public dumps - not in my back yard, no sir.

We should also look at the disrespect occasionally shown to members of our community, and compare it to the routine disgust with which we treat members of travelling communities. These are *ongoing* serious problems, and peoples attitudes are not changing, so we know that pointing the finger is pointless.

Because we have to examine our own glass house before throwing stones. Whether we like it or not there are two sides to the situation.

Travellers are not a better or worse society than ours, they are a smaller, different society. We have to realise what notions of tolerance mean, not just sentences and acts of charity but a genuine personal resolution to adjust the way we think about people so they don't get on our ****ing nerves so much.

Nor should we, out of some liberal guilt complex, completely ignore and sidestep the problems caused by irresponsible and disrespectful traveller behaviour. But here's a thing:

We - settled people - do not know anything about traveller society. I went to school with travellers and have done business with them on a couple of occasions, find them very equitable people but the fact remains: when they speak I am barely able to understand them, and when someone tells me about their society I believe them, because I know nothing else to say different.

This is not a good thing. Whoever's fault it is, we have become two separate, uncooperative tribes. Neither of us disputes the right of the other to take the name "irish" so therefore it is both our faults that we cannot live side by side. The anecdote about people closing up their businesses is terrible: terrible because of the fear felt by people, but also because of the fundamental inability to negotiate because nobody knows anything about the other group, or cares to.

Make no mistake: when food runs scarce or the political climate changes, these are the foundations of ethnic cleansing. The righteous indignation of neighbours, undealt with and across cultural divides, eventually leads to very bad things.

And shame on us, for a country that often wears the opressed mantle of an ex colony to not work harder to cooperate with our own "inidgenous population" is just disgusting at the end of the day. The irony of trendy irish twentysomethings tripping the rain forest peoples and the cherokee, or the hmong peoples or the zapatistas in mexico, and then returning home to buy an apartment and demand legislation against the "scum" lowering their property prices.

Ah, sick days off work with lemsip...

One more thing also: to those who say "if I say I'm XYZ will I get free housing?" and the like - well, yes you will.

If you adopt a lifestyle and pursue it with enough vigour, you will create a family and a way of living that will inspire people to emulate you. It will be very hard work, and you will have to use all your resources otherwise what you do will be meaningless. But within three or four generations of your children, possibly even within your lifetime if you're young now, your 'people' will have their own little customs, games and will probably speak with an accent or dialect.

At that point, you can look into being subsidised in the same way that any group of people do who are recognised as a legitimate people. Best of luck. In the meantime you'll do the settled person thing because it's what we do and how we choose to live our lives: life's hard eh?