Michael Higgins Praises Travellers Contribution to Irish Society

the poster stated 40 hours a week until 65, for which i corrected him to state that not everyone works exactly 40 hours nor works until 65 for various reasons, so therefore you are actually agreeing with and are backing up what i stated.

the fact we pay for everything isn't relevant to what the poster said, since the poster talked about everyone paying for themselves, which ultimately isn't true, since the average individual is not likely to have paid the exact full cost of the services they use or have used, such as education, health, roads, etc.

Your evidence consisted of a single article which you obviously assumed supported your opinion, and I never disputed the fact that there are legitimate cultures and subcultures and all the rest of it.

What I’m saying is that the attempt made in the article you linked to which identifies what they call a “culture of masculinity”, of which criminal behaviour is a subculture of the culture they just identified, doesn’t make it any more legitimate than it isn’t already.

I get what you’re driving at - does travellers culture lend itself to contributing to criminal behaviour, and the answer is no, no more than anything else lends itself to criminal behaviour observed in the general population. Individuals are entirely responsible for their own criminal behaviour. It’s for this very reason that only people who commit offences are held accountable for their actions, not anyone else who hasn’t committed an offence.

Researchers will come up with all sorts of evidence which they claim supports their hypothesis, and generally one of the easiest ways to ensure that their explanations are beyond question is to suggest that anyone who disagrees with it is too unsophisticated to understand it or hasn’t the intellectual capacity to understand it. Works wonders too among people who think of themselves as sophisticated intellectuals, even when an idea is complete bullshìt.

So yes, there is plenty of evidence to support your hypothesis, and no, most of it isn’t behind paywalls - hundreds of authors have written plenty of books on the subject, including the subject of “rape culture”, which you’re keen to point out isn’t a legitimate culture, precisely because it puts you in the cultural framework, as contributing to rape, in the same way as you’re trying to put travellers in the framework of contributing to criminal behaviour on the basis that they are travellers, ignoring the reality of people who commit offences among the general population, because your “culture” hypothesis doesn’t explain what contributes to their criminal behaviour.

Fair play to you, was not an easy thing to do at any stage, and aside from the actual studying, you had to contend with possibly downright resistance from your family and friends. Kudus to you !!!. Also might encourage other Travelers to follow suit.???

Nor have you seen me say all members of any group are the same; I've merely said the attitude displayed above is a reason many people want no dealings with travellers. I'm quite grown up, educated and capable of intelligent conversation, thanks for the concern.

I'm not driving at anything. You implied that culture has no influence on behavior. So I just looked at studies worldwide with no connection to Ireland to see has anyone studied or researched it. Well they have. There's lots of studies. No point posting any of them them as you dismissed them all out of hand as invalid and bias.

If the same behavior was equally pervasive across different cultures and wider society. Then you couldn't associated it with anyone culture or subculture. But if it was disproportionally over or under represented in only some cultures or society's then its likely there is an association.

To be honest I only only ended up in this thread from the MDH thread on partition, and only there from a discussion on the effects of culture/religion, in another country outside of Ireland. While their opinions on Culture are polar opposite this this thread. The Dogma is similar.

You start off saying you’re not driving at anything, and you finish your post with that?

It’s clear what you were driving at, never mind the fact you’ve spent the last two days trying to drive home your point by telling me I’m wrong and it’s unlikely all the studies and research which you can’t produce because they’re behind paywalls is wrong (you know of course they all agree with you), but I’m being dogmatic when I simply refused to entertain your attempt to associate traveller culture with criminal behaviour?

Meh, I’m off to bed, too late for this craic 😒

Refusing to entertain something, (unquestionable certainty) while holding a belief and not be willing to discuss it. Is generally considered dogma. Yes.

I think Higgins is playing to the crowd here. Both the public in general but also playing politics. He's in the spotlight on two issues recently.

One is popular with the public but not politicians. The other is the exact opposite.

Coincidence? Unlikely.

As for the rest of it you can't have a discussion or compromise where people won't engage. Also where the discussion itself is censored or shut down on every platform.

"discussion" that calls a society where there is no travellers because they have all killed each other a utopian society should be shut down.

You’re mixing up a couple of different things there to create a contradiction that doesn’t exist, and not only are you doing that much, but you’re now attributing things to me I didn’t say and I don’t know where you got them from.

I’ll start with your first claim that I’m being dogmatic. I can understand why it looks that way from your point of view when it’s not me who’s flogging a dead horse at all, but @Flinty997 with the whole trying to associate criminal behaviour with culture. I’m refuting their efforts (“I’m only curious”, my arse are they only curious!), because it’s using statistics to present a misleading statement as causation, when it’s nothing more than correlation of two different sets of statistics. Easily shown to be dishonest by showing that the vast majority of travellers do not engage in criminal behaviour. That’s why I’m saying it’s not part of their culture. If you want to talk prison statistics, then travellers are still in a minority among the prison population. So what’s your explanation for the 90% of inmates who aren’t travellers? What’s your explanation for the fact that 95% of inmates are men? How do those statistics fit with the paradigm of “culture”? All the association does in any case is absolve individuals of any responsibility for their criminal behaviour. In reality - individuals choose to commit offences, not because of their culture or anything else. The fact that travellers are disproportionately represented among prison population statistics suggests that they aren’t being held to any different standards than anyone else. Of course they’re going to be disproportionately represented among prison statistics because they have a much smaller population than the general population!

As to your second claim - I haven’t stated anywhere on this thread that we have no business interfering with their culture or way of life. I have said that it is the responsibility of the State to protect their culture or way of life or whatever you want, because they are recognised as an ethnic minority group. Anyone who wants to can say whatever they like to them and I couldn’t actually care less, you certainly won’t say whatever you like to them, you’d sooner just point fingers at all the things you see as wrong, that THEY should deal with. They’re more likely to deal with you by suggesting you sort out the issues in your own community first, because you start pointing fingers (and yes, travellers are often just as prejudiced as non-travellers, why wouldn’t they be, what with being able to give plenty of examples of their own bad experiences with people who aren’t travellers?). So both groups of people are basically just looking to point fingers at each other with neither group actually wanting to take responsibility for their own behaviour. That’s why the law exists independently of either group, so that neither group has to entertain the silly demands of the other groups or entertain their bullshìt. It’s what I should have done when @Flinty997 floated the association between culture and criminal behaviour in the first place. I tried reason, but was told I’m not open-minded, and now you’re suggesting I’m dogmatic because I refuse to entertain bullshìt? Perhaps I’m just not sophisticated as you guys.

Oh what a load of bollocks.

Mickie D would of course have affinity with travellers.

After all most of them like himself have sucked at the taxpayers teat for their entire lives.

Mickie D the ultimate champagne socialist, lecturer in sociology a nice soft science bullcr** area suited no end to him, senator, TD and laterally president.

Nice to see one of the kids is following him into politics to continue the family trend.

As opposed to your shyte where travellers problems are all due to those settled folks who are not nice to them.

Your line is the modern tripe where it is always someone else's fault and there is no such thing as personal or group (when it comes to some beloved groups anyway) responsibility.

Maybe if travellers tried to get on with the other people in this country rather than shaft them at every possible opportunity then things would be better for them.

BTW lest the usual suspects come in with the reference to labeling any group the same, I am not saying all travellers.

But I think the stats prove that I can say most travellers.

And worse still the behaviour is condoned and excused by people like you when you don't blame them but others.

BTW does polite society in your world mean law abiding, being neighbourly, being non anti-social?