Interesting article about Travellers by a Traveller

bobbyss · 25-06-2017 10:22PM

BigEejit wrote:

There was a factory in Galway that made flags that employed mostly settled travellers, I often ate lunch alongside them in the cafe and they were mostly sound, however there was a halting site up the road and we needed eyes in the back of our heads, kids and sometimes adults on the prowl constantly looking for things to disappear. Anyway one time we were having a chat in that cafe and one of my workmates asked one of the guys from the flag factory how many from the halting site were working there and he was told that the families in the halting site never had and never would have gainful employment. I never could understand why some (all?) travellers were allowed to just opt out of employment.

If you marry at 18 by 40 you could easily have 10 or more kids. Think of all the welfare you could get. Of course if you do that you are condemned to poverty.

dd972 · 25-06-2017 10:51PM

:eek: Traveller thread still open 39 pages in.

A record?

seamus · 26-06-2017 09:40AM

BigEejit wrote: »

There was a factory in Galway that made flags that employed mostly settled travellers, I often ate lunch alongside them in the cafe and they were mostly sound, however there was a halting site up the road and we needed eyes in the back of our heads, kids and sometimes adults on the prowl constantly looking for things to disappear. Anyway one time we were having a chat in that cafe and one of my workmates asked one of the guys from the flag factory how many from the halting site were working there and he was told that the families in the halting site never had and never would have gainful employment. I never could understand why some (all?) travellers were allowed to just opt out of employment.

This is the thing. If you watch those, "Big fat gypsy..." programmes on channel 4, most of these people are in fact not short of "gainful" employment.

Between various types of construction jobs on the side, trading in stuff and running markets, I would imagine most travellers have a relatively liveable level of income coming in.

And that's great. The main issue is obviously the sources of the stuff they trade, the quality of the work done and payment of taxes on earnings. It all goes under the radar, so there's no credibility. As a result they're "unemployed" on the official statistics. The true level of unemployed/non-earning travellers is something we'll never get a handle on unless we can find ways to encourage working travellers to legitimise themselves.

And why in the fcuk are people who have never spent their lives moving from place to place referred to as settled, surely settled is travellers who have ceased their itinerant ways.

To be fair, I would have thought like that for a long time too. But they've recently been granted ethnic status, and hence the right to call themselves travellers. And that's fine, it doesn't bother me at all. As I say earlier, ethnicity is where you come from. You can be Irish and not live in Ireland, and you can be a traveller who doesn't travel.

Recognition of traveller as an ethnicity doesn't (or at least shouldn't) entitle anyone to anything except the right to call oneself a traveller.

Maguined · 26-06-2017 10:23AM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Troskty's description of those whom join the travellers in this 'underclass' is instructive: since these travellers are demoralized by the political economy that has been created in the interests of finance capital, we can invoke from our study of dialectical materialism that travellers' tendency towards withdrawal and inertia would be transformed after capitalism has fallen.

This is just plain wishful thinking and assumption and nothing more. You have no evidence that the travellers reluctance to engage in employment is caused by their rejection of capitalism. You also have no evidence that the fall of capitalism would result in travellers jumping into employment. You don't create theories based on the facts, you write a narrative without facts to fit your own political bias.

FireFoxBoy · 26-06-2017 12:02PM

Travellers and Muslims are part of the politicial re education movement run by the EU -Find mew minorities and gain favor with them. For years our perception of travellers has been totally misguided and they're not the thieving social parasites that we once new they were. They don't have a culture, it's as simple as that.

eamonnq · 26-06-2017 12:09PM

Aye, totally misguided.

https://www.thesun.ie/news/1180566/members-of-irish-traveller-gang-arrested-in-%C2%ADholland-for-attempting-to-run-down-and-kill-cops/

whisky_galore · 27-06-2017 12:17PM

"Culture"

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/watch-shocking-footage-shows-sulky-crash-in-kilkenny-795308.html

27-06-2017 12:34PM

whisky_galore wrote: »

"Culture"

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/watch-shocking-footage-shows-sulky-crash-in-kilkenny-795308.html

Settled people's fault boss

BrokenArrows · 27-06-2017 12:39PM

I read the whole article and i feel bad for the guy who worked his ass off and was still seen as "just a traveler". However he makes the same stupid statements that all travelers do about things that they experience.

1. He complains that the school just expected him to drop out. Well, he admits himself that his siblings had already dropped out so you cant blame the school for trying not to waste their time on someone who was very likely to drop out.

2. He complains about the living conditions that travelers need to live in. ie. No running water, sewage, electricity etc. Well tough ****. If you choose to live the life of a traveler the government should not be expected or required to provide you with places to stay. If i decide one day to travel around in a caravan i would be expected to pay for a place to stay in a camp site, not just pull in at some random place and complain about the conditions.

3. He complains that they shutdown the town when all the travelers arrived for the funeral. Well in my personal experience when a large quantity of travelers arrive into one place then trouble is guaranteed. The kids will steal from shops, the parents will get very drunk and start fights either with the locals or with other members of the traveler community.

4. He complains that people treat them as they are a waste of space. Well you admit yourself that your father was a drug addict, mother was illiterate, siblings are secondary school dropouts. He is the first person in his family to show any signs of success.

5. He complains that locals blocked an attempt for the council to place them in an area. Well you cant blame the locals. There is not a single halting site that ive ever seen that has looked well. The council build these and they look great and immediately they are filled with broken down and stripped cars, caravans, old mattresses, rubbish, burning rubbish, wild horses tied up on any bit of grass.

The simple fact is that travelers need to take responsibility for their own actions and the assumptions that people make about them.

Its only when the majority of travelers become educated, work and act like responsible members of the community by not leaving their halting site looking like a bomb site will the rest of the country stop assuming that they are scum.

Hammer89 · 27-06-2017 12:41PM

Omackeral wrote: »

It's a well written piece. It's nice to read something from a personal POV from someone within a community that doesn't often get the microphone..

That's because they'd nick it.

I've had plenty of pretty bad experiences with travellers over the past year or so and although I wouldn't generalise and say they're all knackers, I dislike a lot of them.

Roger Hassenforder · 27-06-2017 12:49PM

BrokenArrows wrote: »

2. He complains about the living conditions that travelers need to live in. ie. No running water, sewage, electricity etc. Well tough ****. If you choose to live the life of a traveler the government should not be expected or required to provide you with places to stay. If i decide one day to travel around in a caravan i would be expected to pay for a place to stay in a camp site, not just pull in at some random place and complain about the conditions.

Ah, but you see by not providing them with sufficient culturally appropriate accommodation, we're infringing their human rights.
Or something

whisky_galore · 27-06-2017 01:00PM

FireFoxBoy wrote: »

They don't have a culture, it's as simple as that.

I would say they had a culture (past tense), what's there now is simply degraded traces of that culture.
They don't use horses for transport any more, just fooling around on sulkies which hardly counts as 'tradition'. Horse trading is reduced to buying and selling nags. It's a fair bet that their language is at least endangered if not on the way out. Tinsmithing is extinct.
Socially, it's like the Irish were 150 years ago, arranged marriages, wary and/or intolerant of outsiders and those they would consider as deviant, highly conservative, superstitious and religious and prone to the odd faction fight.

MuffinTop86 · 27-06-2017 01:05PM

There's a halting site near my house in Galway and recently a number of them were asked to leave because of overcrowding so what do they do? Park caravans along the road and put cones around them, making it totally dangerous for passing traffic.
The main issue I have with the writer of the article is that they expect the non traveller community to make the first move regarding acceptance and integration. Why isn't it the otherway around? It's just that same sense of entitlement that makes up their DNA.

Though I'n biased I'lladmit, I'm very anti-traveller and the above video is one of the main reasons.

sbsquarepants · 27-06-2017 01:06PM

Hammer89 wrote: »

That's because they'd nick it.

I've had plenty of pretty bad experiences with travellers over the past year or so and although I wouldn't generalise and say they're all knackers, I dislike a lot of them.

That's the general consensus I find. Everyone I know who has had to deal with travellers will tell you the exact same thing (and I do mean everyone, without a single exception) It is not that I just know a lot of bigoted racists, it is that travellers as a group are not very pleasant to deal with. There are of course exceptions to that, as there are to everything. But as a group, best avoided plain and simple.

ScumLord · 27-06-2017 01:27PM

FireFoxBoy wrote: »

Travellers and Muslims are part of the politicial re education movement run by the EU -Find mew minorities and gain favor with them. For years our perception of travellers has been totally misguided and they're not the thieving social parasites that we once new they were. They don't have a culture, it's as simple as that.

They did have a culture. Like with any nomadic gypsy culture the world they lived in changed.

Globally after the world wars borders were drawn up that trapped Gypsies in a country they never belong to. In Ireland the lands became private to the point there really isn't any piece of land in Ireland that someone doesn't claim ownership over or at the very least that some bank/law doesn't hold someone responsible for what happens on that land.

Travellers had trades that they sold when they came to towns, so before we became a heavily commercialised, globalised country small towns used to look forward to the travellers turning up to fix things, sing for them, sell them exotic goods, then the settled people changed and no longer needed the travellers, so the travellers lost their place in society, they lost their jobs and then weren't welcome anywhere so had nowhere to go.

27-06-2017 01:33PM

Roger Hassenforder wrote: »

Ah, but you see by not providing them with sufficient culturally appropriate accommodation, we're infringing their human rights.
Or something

I think it was by providing something like 40 or 50 sites of the 1,000 it was felt would be needed, providing sites with open sewers and dangerous power supplies etc. etc. Think that's what the findings of the Council of Europe were based on.

We are on the thinnest of ice when we are being smart about our obligation to provide accommodation and our failure to reach that standard. Because the matter was considered, submissions taken including from the Government, and a decision made. If someone is critical of that, beyond the "what do you expect from Germans" type stuff, they should criticise by reference to specific elements of that decision.

27-06-2017 01:37PM

MuffinTop86 wrote: »

The main issue I have with the writer of the article is that they expect the non traveller community to make the first move regarding acceptance and integration. Why isn't it the otherway around? It's just that same sense of entitlement that makes up their DNA.

The author of the article in the OP was 4 when her mother was first reduced to tears by her treatment by other adults. Her brother 11 when he committed suicide. How should a girl under 3 or a boy under 10 reach out and make the first move?

end of the road · 27-06-2017 02:07PM

BrokenArrows wrote: »

I read the whole article and i feel bad for the guy who worked his ass off and was still seen as "just a traveler". However he makes the same stupid statements that all travelers do about things that they experience.

1. He complains that the school just expected him to drop out. Well, he admits himself that his siblings had already dropped out so you cant blame the school for trying not to waste their time on someone who was very likely to drop out.

2. He complains about the living conditions that travelers need to live in. ie. No running water, sewage, electricity etc. Well tough ****. If you choose to live the life of a traveler the government should not be expected or required to provide you with places to stay. If i decide one day to travel around in a caravan i would be expected to pay for a place to stay in a camp site, not just pull in at some random place and complain about the conditions.

3. He complains that they shutdown the town when all the travelers arrived for the funeral. Well in my personal experience when a large quantity of travelers arrive into one place then trouble is guaranteed. The kids will steal from shops, the parents will get very drunk and start fights either with the locals or with other members of the traveler community.

4. He complains that people treat them as they are a waste of space. Well you admit yourself that your father was a drug addict, mother was illiterate, siblings are secondary school dropouts. He is the first person in his family to show any signs of success.

5. He complains that locals blocked an attempt for the council to place them in an area. Well you cant blame the locals. There is not a single halting site that ive ever seen that has looked well. The council build these and they look great and immediately they are filled with broken down and stripped cars, caravans, old mattresses, rubbish, burning rubbish, wild horses tied up on any bit of grass.

The simple fact is that travelers need to take responsibility for their own actions and the assumptions that people make about them.

Its only when the majority of travelers become educated, work and act like responsible members of the community by not leaving their halting site looking like a bomb site will the rest of the country stop assuming that they are scum.

the people who make the assumptions are the ones who need to take the responsibility for making such assumptions. the rest of the country will stop thinking they are all scum regardless of the actions of some, if that has to be done via the law or via making it toxic to do so like we have managed to do with other minority groups then that's what will need to be done. the discrimination supporters need to stop victim blaming and take responsibility and stop making excuses.

MuffinTop86 wrote: »

There's a halting site near my house in Galway and recently a number of them were asked to leave because of overcrowding so what do they do? Park caravans along the road and put cones around them, making it totally dangerous for passing traffic.
The main issue I have with the writer of the article is that they expect the non traveller community to make the first move regarding acceptance and integration. Why isn't it the otherway around?

when those who bother to try face discrimination anyway, then why should the rest bother? it has to be mostly on the settled community as some of them are the ones doing the discrimination and convincing travelers it's better to remain margianalised.

MuffinTop86 wrote: »

It's just that same sense of entitlement that makes up their DNA.

so no different to much of the irish anyway?

MuffinTop86 wrote: »

Though I'n biased I'lladmit, I'm very anti-traveller and the above video is one of the main reasons.

are you "anti" other groups as well, or just "anti" traveler because you can? you are just using the video as an excuse aren't you?

27-06-2017 02:20PM

Novalee Tangy Phlegm wrote: »

Settled people's fault boss

Here we go again.

You guys are incredible.

Roger Hassenforder · 27-06-2017 02:21PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I think it was by providing something like 40 or 50 sites of the 1,000 it was felt would be needed, providing sites with open sewers and dangerous power supplies etc. etc. Think that's what the findings of the Council of Europe were based on.

We are on the thinnest of ice when we are being smart about our obligation to provide accommodation and our failure to reach that standard. Because the matter was considered, submissions taken including from the Government, and a decision made. If someone is critical of that, beyond the "what do you expect from Germans" type stuff, they should criticise by reference to specific elements of that decision.

not legally binding though , so can't see the state giving much of a toss.
Dangerous power supplies frequently consist of tap ins to the grid, not exactly RECI standard, with dodgy multi plugs on 62% sites appraised. No smoke alarms on 77%. A smoke alarm is <10 quid, but they couldn't even rise to a smoke alarm, but have no problem shelling out on a new Pajero* open sewers are an issue in unfinished estates across the country.

councils are wasting millions repairing halting sites, clearing rubbish(not to mention illegal roadside dumping after they've moved on) with staff frequently attacked when they do go in. Little wonder they're substandard.

E.g.:
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/axe-thrown-at-official-working-on-halting-site-395180.html

http://clarechampion.ie/traveller-accommodation-management-under-scrutiny/

http://www.limerickleader.ie/news/local-news/191327/Traveller-banned-from-Limerick-halting-site.html

let the councils provide them, but until they are owned by travellers themselves, and made responsible for them, this isn't going to get any better.

*opinion

rustynutz · 27-06-2017 02:31PM

I for one am delighted that travelers have been declared an ethnic group, at least when travelers are robbing, conning and tarmacking their way through Europe, the locals won't think all us Irish are the same. And believe me, that is what's happening at the moment.

MuffinTop86 · 27-06-2017 02:43PM

end of the road wrote: »

when those who bother to try face discrimination anyway, then why should the rest bother? it has to be mostly on the settled community as some of them are the ones doing the discrimination and convincing travelers it's better to remain margianalised.

Bother? If being discriminated against is causing upset and suicide, then it's hardly a bother to try to change that is it? A few people can't do it. The travellers as a group have to entirely change the general perception of themselves. Non-travellers can't do that for them.

so no different to much of the irish anyway?

Well now you're discriminating too.

are you "anti" other groups as well, or just "anti" traveler because you can? you are just using the video as an excuse aren't you?

Yes I'm anti animal abuse.

end of the road · 27-06-2017 02:53PM

MuffinTop86 wrote: »

Bother? If being discriminated against is causing upset and suicide, then it's hardly a bother to try to change that is it? A few people can't do it. The travellers as a group have to entirely change the general perception of themselves. Non-travellers can't do that for them.

no . the settled community just have to stop discriminating. we were able to do it for other minority groups, there is no excuse.

benjamin d · 27-06-2017 03:05PM

end of the road wrote: »

no . the settled community just have to stop discriminating. we were able to do it for other minority groups, there is no excuse.

Ever wonder why we were "able to stop" discriminating against other minority groups?

It's been asked a few times why people don't discriminate against blacks or gays or whatever you're having yourself... maybe ask yourself why that is? Why is there an almost universal mistrust of travellers in Ireland? Why ISN'T there the same attitude towards other minority groups?

Surely if all of these people are simply bigots as you believe, the same attitudes would be prevalent against other minorities?

27-06-2017 03:11PM

Maguined wrote: »

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

Troskty's description of those whom join the travellers in this 'underclass' is instructive: since these travellers are demoralized by the political economy that has been created in the interests of finance capital, we can invoke from our study of dialectical materialism that travellers' tendency towards withdrawal and inertia would be transformed after capitalism has fallen.

This is just plain wishful thinking and assumption and nothing more. You have no evidence that the travellers reluctance to engage in employment is caused by their rejection of capitalism.

I bave never claimed that travellers reject capitalism. That would be an absurd claim to make.

Most of this thread seems to be people inventing bizarre counter-arguments that nobody has made.

Do you guys have such untenable positions that you have to keep resorting to invented claims? Or is there a comprehension problem? This is astonishingly repetitive.

Travellers DO engage with capitalism. I am making the point that our economic system has served them badly, as it has served wider society badly.

To give an example, our legal, political and economic systems (led by liberal economic interests) attaches the utmost importance to property rights, even at the expense of social welfare. If I inherit 1,000 properties, my right to inherit them, and subsequently abandon them, is considered more important than any human rights attaching to homeless people who may be sleeping in the doorways of my inherited properties.

Now, this emphasis on property rights not only deprives society of a fair distribution of resources, it also instills an economic anxiety in the holders of private property, and a tendency to shun from society those ethnicities and changes that are considered a threat to private property: at various times over the centuries, the jews, the communists, African Americans, Roma people, and travellers.

This division does perpetuate intergenerational distrust on both sides of the conflict, and this is essentially why I always deny that either side can be held to be 100% responsible for the poor inter-ethnic relationship.

You also have no evidence that the fall of capitalism would result in travellers jumping into employment.

It stands to reason that if you remove a major source of the conflict: the economic and political material which favours private property and other financial interests, all disillusioned workers and associated classes will have an incentive to ignore past divisions, since the basis upon which such division has existed, will cease to exist.

The new lumpenproletariat may well be the dearly-beloved 'captains of industry' of late capitalism, living in a libertarian camp on the fringes of society, but that's a kind of human sacrifice many would be willing to make.

....... · 27-06-2017 03:16PM

This post has been deleted.

Professor Moriarty · 27-06-2017 03:25PM

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

I bave never claimed that travellers reject capitalism. That would be an absurd claim to make.

Most of this thread seems to be people inventing bizarre counter-arguments that nobody has made.

Do you guys have such untenable positions that you have to keep resorting to invented claims? Or is there a comprehension problem? This is astonishingly repetitive.

Travellers DO engage with capitalism. I am making the point that our economic system has served them badly, as it has served wider society badly.

To give an example, our legal, political and economic systems (led by liberal economic interests) attaches the utmost importance to property rights, even at the expense of social welfare. If I inherit 1,000 properties, my right to inherit them, and subsequently abandon them, is considered more important than any human rights attaching to homeless people who may be sleeping in the doorways of my inherited properties.

Now, this emphasis on property rights not only deprives society of a fair distribution of resources, it also instills an economic anxiety in the holders of private property, and a tendency to shun from society those ethnicities and changes that are considered a threat to private property: at various times over the centuries, the jews, the communists, African Americans, Roma people, and travellers.

This division does perpetuate intergenerational distrust on both sides of the conflict, and this is essentially why I always deny that either side can be held to be 100% responsible for the poor inter-ethnic relationship.

It stands to reason that if you remove a major source of the conflict: the economic and political material which favours private property and other financial interests, all disillusioned workers and associated classes will have an incentive to ignore past divisions, since the basis upon which such division has existed, will cease to exist.

The new lumpenproletariat may well be the dearly-beloved 'captains of industry' of late capitalism, living in a libertarian camp on the fringes of society, but that's a kind of human sacrifice many would be willing to make.

It would seem that you are using Travellers to make a wider point about society and politics. This greatly dilutes any argument you make about Travellers per se.

Glenster · 27-06-2017 03:43PM

ScumLord wrote: »

They did have a culture. Like with any nomadic gypsy culture the world they lived in changed.

Globally after the world wars borders were drawn up that trapped Gypsies in a country they never belong to. In Ireland the lands became private to the point there really isn't any piece of land in Ireland that someone doesn't claim ownership over or at the very least that some bank/law doesn't hold someone responsible for what happens on that land.

Travellers had trades that they sold when they came to towns, so before we became a heavily commercialised, globalised country small towns used to look forward to the travellers turning up to fix things, sing for them, sell them exotic goods, then the settled people changed and no longer needed the travellers, so the travellers lost their place in society, they lost their jobs and then weren't welcome anywhere so had nowhere to go.

Doesn't everyone have a culture from 200-300 years ago though?

I'm sure my ancestors were dirt farmers who ate champ/colcannon for every meal. And used to hang around a stone wall cottage with a thatch roof singing songs to each other.

Or maybe they didn't have a farm and were just travelling labourers, turning up and fixing things and signing songs.

I always think that Traveller culture from the old days is probably fairly close to what mainstream Irish culture was in the old days.

27-06-2017 04:07PM

....... wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Her brother wasn't. An 11 year old hanging himself. That's pretty grim. We should take no pride in the fact that one person rose above the treatment she received from adults to succeed, in does not excuse that treatment in any way.

BrokenArrows · 27-06-2017 04:24PM

One question id like to ask the writer of the article is how much persecution did she receive from other travelers for trying to better herself.

Interesting article about Travellers by a Traveller

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