Racism and the Travelling Community

billy the squid · 19-05-2007 12:14AM

Tha Gopher wrote:

.2- How many people actually speak Shelta according to the census?

Was there an option for shelta on the Census form. I doubt many religious types put latin on their cencus forms, it doesn't mean they cannot speak it.

3- Who judged pikey/knacker offensive and buffer not? Did pikey only become bad after Snatch was released? From re reading the post it seems you are saying a slang term can only be used if the community itself came up with it to label themselves by. Surely by that logic, if the settled community never referred to themselves as buffers and it was a traveller word for us, then yes, it is offensive?

Because buffer is settled person in the Cant language. it is a translation not an insult. Pikey/knacker is not a translation Knacker is an English language word which is used in a way to degrade someone. much in the same way as Queer was used in a way to degrade a gay person. Queer is a legitimate word in the english language, however it is how it is used that determines whether it is insulting or not.

billy the squid · 19-05-2007 12:15AM

Tha Gopher wrote:

1- I dont pick on you, I highlight whoever I think has made the most ridiculous points in the thread. The "why dont we pre-judge Cork people" one having been the best so far.

2- How many people actually speak Shelta according to the census?

3- Who judged pikey/knacker offensive and buffer not? Did pikey only become bad after Snatch was released? From re reading the post it seems you are saying a slang term can only be used if the community itself came up with it to label themselves by. Surely by that logic, if the settled community never referred to themselves as buffers and it was a traveller word for us, then yes, it is offensive?

4- Minor Offences I think was the name of it. Should be in the true crime section of your local Easons.

Brian- good for you, however I think you would agree you are probably in the minority. As pretty much every traveller bar one Ive met has been aggressive, dodgy, or plain rude, and that includes my time in the service sector (the ones in your shop were good. The ones in the takeaway I worked in treated staff like a butler, flicking their fingers for attention, "you there boy!" being a more common attention grabber than "excuse me" or "sorry mate", never with a word of thanks). When working people see them getting payouts for pub admission discrimination and other nonsense we get pretty sick of paying our taxes.

All one can do is put their head in their hands and say "beda galioon soolia"

InFront · 19-05-2007 03:26PM

brianthebard wrote:

Dude I got the same sh!t from my customers, settled or travellers. I have a simple policy, all people are bastardS. I'm pretty equal about my hatred for humanity.

I have no doubt but that if everyone adapted this policy of hating all people, all things, universally and equally, it would bring about a huge international wave of peace and pacifism:D

CreepingDeath · 19-05-2007 04:56PM

OHP wrote:

If you adopt a child say 4 or 5 months old from any race colour or walk of life. That child will adapt to your way of thinking, your way of life and your behaviour.

So you think that travellers as a whole, are equal because... when they were born they had the "potential" to do anything eg. become doctors ?

So what?
Nobody is racist against 5 month old babies.
We're racist against the fully grown versions who were brought up in that deeply disfunctional culture. The ones old enough to commit anti-social behaviour. The unemployed ones who are parasites on Irish social welfare system.

brianthebard · 20-05-2007 12:53PM

InFront wrote:

I have no doubt but that if everyone adapted this policy of hating all people, all things, universally and equally, it would bring about a huge international wave of peace and pacifism:D

I'm expecting to hear from the Nobel people any day now.

Tha Gopher · 20-05-2007 12:58PM

billy the squid wrote:

All one can do is put their head in their hands and say "beda galioon soolia"

Eh? Its my fault the traveller customers were ruder than the average Joe? CreepingDeath pretty sums up the reasons for prejudice. I recall from previous posts you are a traveller yourself. Im a north Dubliner from an area that doesnt have the best rep. I have better things to do than defend the actions of the scumbag elements. The likes of Pavee Point seemingly dont, they dont seem to realise that supporting Frog Ward and the Dunsink travellers isnt really good PR. If they want to improve traveller image, maybe they ought to completely disassociate themselves from these type of scumbags. In short, I have absoloutely no problem with decent travellers who have jobs, dont claim and dont commit crime. What I have no time for are the criminals and those who defend them.

billy the squid · 20-05-2007 01:54PM

Tha Gopher wrote:

Eh? Its my fault the traveller customers were ruder than the average Joe? CreepingDeath pretty sums up the reasons for prejudice. I recall from previous posts you are a traveller yourself. Im a north Dubliner from an area that doesnt have the best rep. I have better things to do than defend the actions of the scumbag elements. The likes of Pavee Point seemingly dont, they dont seem to realise that supporting Frog Ward and the Dunsink travellers isnt really good PR. If they want to improve traveller image, maybe they ought to completely disassociate themselves from these type of scumbags. In short, I have absoloutely no problem with decent travellers who have jobs, dont claim and dont commit crime. What I have no time for are the criminals and those who defend them.

You will also note from previous posts that I hold no truck with scumbag elements, whether they be traveller or settled person.

The only interest Pavee Point had in the Ward/Nally case was seeing that equal justice was served. Everybody wants, and is entitled to equal justice. As far as I am concernedNally killed another man and escaped jail on a technicality, A fair trial was impossible due to the media coverage. but that is a whole different arguement. Pavee Point campaigns for the rights of the traveller, It is no different from any other marginalised group having their advocates and support groups. The homeless and those affected by crooked landlords have threshold, the immigrants have the NCCRI, why should the travellers not have their advocate group?

brianthebard · 20-05-2007 02:35PM

Tha Gopher wrote:

Eh? Its my fault the traveller customers were ruder than the average Joe?

Perhaps its because you treat them differently cause they are travellers? Or perhaps your bigoted outlook makes you perceive all the travellers faults in a stronger way than the settle customers? Or perhaps, as I suspect, they are not actually ruder than an average person, since they are in fact, an average joe?

Conar · 20-05-2007 02:53PM

As much as I hate to say this I am a little more suspicious of travellers than I am of settled people, similar to how I am a little more nervous of people with their hoods up when its not raining. I know most travellers are not bad and I know most people that wear hoods aren't bad but the stereotypes are hard to ignore sometimes.
This is my problem that I need to work on though, not the travelling communities issue.

How do people think the issue can/should be resolved?
Surely its a big enough issue that merrits some attempt at a resolution.

Personally I feel that the government should be doing a lot more to look into exactly how travellers want to fit in to our society and how it can work.
There's obviously a big difference between our cultures but unless we address the issues in a public forum then I don't see anything ever changing.

It seems funny that nationalists and unionists seem to have done a better job of looking past their differences and concentrating on their shared goals than we do with the travellers.

Until we sit down with the travellers and discuss what we expect/want from eachother then I don't see this divide ever changing. This once again brings it back to the governments issue and it is they who should be dealing with this obvious problem.

Tha Gopher · 23-05-2007 02:23PM

billy the squid wrote:

You will also note from previous posts that I hold no truck with scumbag elements, whether they be traveller or settled person.

The only interest Pavee Point had in the Ward/Nally case was seeing that equal justice was served. Everybody wants, and is entitled to equal justice. As far as I am concernedNally killed another man and escaped jail on a technicality,

As far as Im concerned, Nally executed Ward. Granted he was terrified at the time, but imo the first shot was self defence, the second was either murder or diminished responsibility. However, Ward still deserved his fate. My point is that anyone from the traveller rights side who wants to improve their image should not be campaigning loudly for a fair trial. A career criminal went after an old man, got killed. End of. Pavee Point supporting him and the Dunsink rioters just backs up all the "stereotypes" the settled community have.

Perhaps its because you treat them differently cause they are travellers? Or perhaps your bigoted outlook makes you perceive all the travellers faults in a stronger way than the settle customers?

Maybe. Or it could just be that they are disproportionately anti social and that incarceration fugures back this up. You decide.

Hobbes · 23-05-2007 07:00PM

Tha Gopher wrote:

Or it could just be that they are disproportionately anti social and that incarceration fugures back this up. You decide.

I think your full of crap tbh in this regards. Your figures don't add up.

While there are no figures that point to Travelers (if anything no proof they are what you say they are) if you cross referenced prison population demographics vs Traveling community population figures based on age you would find they wouldn't make up the majority at all, and that is only a figure based on the maths of it so it would be a maximum if even that.

Even so you could cross reference against county vs traveler population and even if you were to imagine every person in Prison was a traveler it wouldn't even make them the majority.

And if you ask me to back that up I will as soon as you supply actual evidence to your claim first (I've already done the research. Have you?).

eth0_ · 26-05-2007 09:21AM

Until a few years ago, despite having many negative experiences with travellers, I wasn't quite willing to condemn them all. But then a settled traveller who was working in my company (and on a decent wage) was discovered to have been stealing brand new laptops and other computer equipment from a store and selling them on boards and ebay - and had been doing this for months.

So single handedly this scumbag managed to further bring down his "race" by showing that even when they have an education and a good job, they still feel that helping themselves to other people's property is ok.

DublinWriter · 26-05-2007 04:37PM

eth0_ wrote:

But then a settled traveller who was working in my company (and on a decent wage) was discovered to have been stealing brand new laptops and other computer equipment from a store and selling them on boards and ebay - and had been doing this for months.

...and of course someone from the settled community would NEVER do such a thing!

Tha Gopher · 26-05-2007 04:46PM

Hobbes wrote:

Even so you could cross reference against county vs traveler population and even if you were to imagine every person in Prison was a traveler it wouldn't even make them the majority.

I point you back to the Cork example again. 80%. Checkmate.

I cant find the link from way back after googling it (which I presume means I made it up. Boo-urns). It is, however, in a traveller related thread on feedback from quite a while ago if you care to look (cant search on this browser for some reason). And, as said, seeing as Martin Collins didnt object to the 10% figure quoted on the late late Id have some doubts as to the lower-end accuracy of it. This thread is descending still further into real life vs armchair pundits.

DublinWriter wrote:

...and of course someone from the settled community would NEVER do such a thing!

That one is brought up every time. Nobody ever said settled people arent likely to do it.

irish_bob · 01-06-2007 08:48PM

Until a few years ago, despite having many negative experiences with travellers, I wasn't quite willing to condemn them all. But then a settled traveller who was working in my company (and on a decent wage) was discovered to have been stealing brand new laptops and other computer equipment from a store and selling them on boards and ebay - and had been doing this for months.

So single handedly this scumbag managed to further bring down his "race" by showing that even when they have an education and a good job, they still feel that helping themselves to other people's property is ok.

travellers are incapable of being straight , even it was in thier interest both financially or socially , they would perfer go crooked, as far as im concerned , travellers see it as a prinicipal of thiers to rip people off

im self employed , i own a hardware business , 2 years ago a man who was clearly a traveller came in to my yard and offered to paint my sheds , his price was quite resonable so i agreed to give him the job
it took him and his men about 2 days , i paid him ( cash of course) and he left
within 6 months the paint was completely gone of the sheds , he had obviously just added a drop of paint to a few barrells of water
painting sheds be it for business men or farmers is a common serivce provided by travellers and more often than not they do a piss poor job
as i said earlier , it is a principal of thiers to rip off people

i tottaly reject the claims that us the settled community dont do enough to make travellers welcome and help them to integrate , travellers choose to isolate themselves from the rest of society , they are as far as im concerned genetically pre disposed to be dysfunctional and crooked , i would not trust a single one of them as far as i could throw them
in relation to the man who painted my sheds again , i had to give him 100 euro more than originally agreed when he had finished the job
this is another cute trick that travellers pull , while i was aware of this i paid him because as many people know if you dont pay a traveller the extra money he wants , he and a bunch of his tinker friends will return later and steal something on you , theyve no decency and no standards and shaking hands with one when you are after agreeing on a deal means absolutley nothing
the sooner they die out in this country the better

Tha Gopher · 04-06-2007 11:06PM

Indeed bob. Id have to think hard for an example of anyone who I know who gave a traveller a break/chance and didnt get shafted. I know quite a few who took a risk and ended up out of pocket, myself included. Over the past two weeks my experiences of the traveller community consisted of

A family on a communion day out trying to scam a net cafe owner out of the price of two free drinks after one drink they paid for got stuck in the vending machine, leading the father to feckin attack the yoke
Two who stank to high heaven arguing over bus fare (Im not sure I have ever seen a traveller get on public transport without attempting to scam the driver)
And third, the theft of my mothers windscreen wipers, almost certainly by travellers who were in the vicinity

What I hate about the pro side is their hypocracy. For example, you know full well that if, lets say, there were travellers camped in the car park of their local supermarket as used to often happen, that they wouldnt dream of parking anywhere near them, as if they have any intelligence they know they will likely become a victim of the tyre scam (slash your tyres and then offer to repair/replace them at a lower cost than a mechanic would). You know full well that they wouldnt dream of renting property to a traveller. Yet they sit at their computer screens banging on about equality and stereotyping?

Get real. The precious figures they demand showing the higher crime rates are out there if you care enough to find them (I dont, personally)

irish_bob · 05-06-2007 08:27PM

Indeed bob. Id have to think hard for an example of anyone who I know who gave a traveller a break/chance and didnt get shafted. I know quite a few who took a risk and ended up out of pocket, myself included. Over the past two weeks my experiences of the traveller community consisted of

A family on a communion day out trying to scam a net cafe owner out of the price of two free drinks after one drink they paid for got stuck in the vending machine, leading the father to feckin attack the yoke
Two who stank to high heaven arguing over bus fare (Im not sure I have ever seen a traveller get on public transport without attempting to scam the driver)
And third, the theft of my mothers windscreen wipers, almost certainly by travellers who were in the vicinity

What I hate about the pro side is their hypocracy. For example, you know full well that if, lets say, there were travellers camped in the car park of their local supermarket as used to often happen, that they wouldnt dream of parking anywhere near them, as if they have any intelligence they know they will likely become a victim of the tyre scam (slash your tyres and then offer to repair/replace them at a lower cost than a mechanic would). You know full well that they wouldnt dream of renting property to a traveller. Yet they sit at their computer screens banging on about equality and stereotyping? Get real. The precious figures they demand showing the higher crime rates are out there if you care enough to find them (I dont, personally)

you and i gopher live in the real world , we dont have the luxury of that high mindedness on show in here in relation to this topic

carpenoctem · 07-06-2007 12:27PM

If you adopt a child say 4 or 5 months old from any race colour or walk of life. That child will adapt to your way of thinking, your way of life and your behaviour.QUOTE]

I find this a very good and relevant point. Because it's not like all Travellers are born bad, it's just that a lot of them recieve little to no education (or at least unstable education due to moving a lot), and having poor education in todays world does make it a lot harder to communicate with those who do. Travellers, just like settled people with poor education, are prone to violence and anti-social behaviour because they don't know how to make a statement any other way. Take the example someone used early on of traveller children tending to solve arguments by smacking the other party. They wreen't prone to do that when they were born, they were socialised to find this an acceptable way of ending an argument. Why? Probably because their parents and/or other adults in their life do the same thing. And why do they? Because it is the only way they know how to commmunicate and have the upper hand. Just as I don't walk around smacking people that argue against my points because, hey, I have recieved an education that allows me to argue my point eloquently with words, and feel as if I have the upper hand whilst doing so.

I'm not saying this excuses the behaviour those travellers and settled people who engage in crime and violence, but it does offer an explanation to take into consideration.

Personally, I don't judge travellers - if I found out someone was a traveller I wouldn't automatically think they were bad. I like to give everyone a good chance, no matter how many scumbags there might be in their community.

But I do still believe that the Traveller community, like many minorities in out society, contain far too many bad seeds. I've worked in numerous shop here and have been on the recieving end of much abuse from members of the travelling community (by this, I mean those I KNOW were members of the travelling community, out of the rest I'm sure a lot weren't). In those situations I have just been glad that I have an alarm button behind the till or a security guard by the door in case something nasty happens - but it has at all times been empty threats. As soon as they got the message that I didn't respond to their overbearing behaviour, they usually stopped.

As for my view of travellers and other people's views of them - I think both sides needs to change. As other people have said, it's a bad circle of both sides blaming the other. Ig travellers want us to view them as a valuable part of our society, they need to be a valuable part of our society. And they do need to adapt to the laws of our society.

Tbh, I'm a little sick and tired of the travelling community viewing themselves as a minority and therefore thinking that we should accept a lot of their behaviour, when it would be viewed as very anti-social by others. I live closeby two places frequented by memvers of the travelling community and I am disgusted with the stuff they just leave behind them. Not just garbage, but furniture, fridges, washing machines, car batterys... anything they don't need. Seeing as they do not have to pay the bin tax since they don't have a bin, why can't they pay a few quid to move their rubbish to a dump? After all, that's what we have to do with anything we wanna throw out that doesn't fit in a bin. And really, why in the world should they have the right to put up their home wherever they want because it happens to be mobile? Given, there is probably need for a lot more halting sites, but if they were all used in a proper manner I am sure they would be met with agreement if they asked for one.

Many members travelling community like other minorities need to start viewing themselves as our equals and behave accordingly. They need to get involved in society rather than work against it - they need to adapt and at the same time be give a reasonable chance to do so by us.

No idea how to do this - that's for the people in charge to figure out.

Racism and the Travelling Community

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