Irish Traveller culture to be promoted through school curriculum: Posted on BBC website!

Well, yes, exactly like arrest him, and we know from statistics provided earlier that there’s a very good chance of him being convicted, jailed and serving more time than someone who isn’t a traveller, engaging in the same sort of antisocial and criminal behaviour.

The whole thing around convictions and sentencing and their effectiveness in rehabilitation is probably best done in another thread, but one of the issues with it is that all too often there is no attempt at rehabilitation when they’re locked up, and more often than not it’s the only time a son like the one you describe would see their father, if not the rest of the family like their mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, etc… because it runs in families, not as a consequence of biology or the fact that they’re really, really closely genetically related than is far too close for comfort, but because of the fact that it’s part of their victimhood narrative and being unbending to authorities which they refuse to acknowledge have any legitimacy over them.

Prison time solidifies their reputation, not detracts from it. They imagine in the same manner as many people with a martyrdom complex that being sent to prison is something to be proud of, that it’s evidence of them being oppressed for standing up for themselves. It’s an ineffective solution to the problem basically, it does nothing more than exacerbates and encourages them.

Sadly, Traveller culture is riven with criminality. There is an obvious tolerance for and glorification of it within that community. This is proven both by statistical fact and the lived experience of all but the most insulated of us.

Perhaps a greater effort to enlighten and encourage that minority as to the necessity of a law abiding cultural outlook would be of wider benefit than the educational policies espoused.

The latter is largely an academic sop while the former would save and improve lives; of Travellers themselves first and foremost.

Yeah rinse & repeat ain’t working mate

there’s people going to work & paying tax in jobs that are been harassed by this lad & propert being damaged. Imagine been in their shoes

Travellers & scumbags with multiple convictions are a walking gold mine for the legal profession’s. This is the problem.

The irony of this lol

The Amish no?

Could someone give a few examples of traveller culture that has enriched us as a nation?

Lowering housing costs. I know an estate in Sligo where several families moved in and the houses were being sold for a fraction of the price a few years later.

Taught us to fear any nomadic neighbors in the area.

To constantly be weary of any brand new Hiace/Transit/van with a yellow reg.

Gave us the skills to aptly screen for ruffians from booking venues through cute methods like requesting card payment only.

Showed us how not to treat an animal.

Killed the appeal of fake tan due to overdoing it.

Showed us that farm equipment can also be subsituted as lethal weapons.

They teach us how to groom little children into being wives at 15.

God, where would we be without the tinkers.

I didn’t know you were doing no such thing because most fundamentally - I can’t read your mind, and from my understanding of where you were coming from, that appeared to be where you were going with the whole idea of support from the State being contingent upon travellers having to take the soup - give up the way of life that you see as negative, and live the way you think would be best for them.

I was trying to suggest that we put your ideas in a realistic context, by asking you directly which one of the two violations of Article 8 would you like the State to impose specifically on travellers first? Because that’s the only way your ideas could or would be applied, in return for support from the State, and I was trying to show you that they would immediately constitute a violation of human rights. That’s what I meant by an attempt to impose your ideas on travellers.

If I’d known we were just spitballing, then that’s an entirely different matter and I would have known not to take your ideas seriously. I take your ideas seriously in the first place because I imagine you do actually give a shìt about whatever the discussion happens to be about.

If there is an overwhelmingly high amount of violence, intimidation, squalour, illegal dumping, theft, scamming, animal abuse, domestic violence prevalent in a group which only comprises a low number, what's wrong with observing this? Are facts hatred? What traveller site do you live close to?

There isn’t though, and stating the above is not a fact, it’s an opinion, and it’s misleading to present the behaviours you’re describing in such a way as to convey the idea that they are behaviours solely observed among travellers when they are not. It’s employing an association fallacy. Each of those behaviours on their own are by far and away more common among people who are not travellers, solely by virtue of the fact that travellers only constitute 0.07% of the Irish population, and the issues you’re describing are far more widespread than even if every traveller engaged in those sorts of behaviours, they still wouldn’t come anywhere near to the number of people who aren’t travellers who engage in those sorts of behaviours.

It amounts to hatred when it becomes clear that the person is more interested in associating those behaviours with travellers, than they are the least bit interested or concerned with eradicating the actual behaviour which is pervasive in Irish society as a whole.

Fortunately for the people who espouse that point of view, I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt. The benefit of the doubt is a fundamental principle in Common Law conceived by William Blackstone, a Conservative, that became known as “Blackstones Ratio”:

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.

Others prefer to take the opposite view -

Authoritarian personalities tend to take the opposite view. According to the Communist defector, Jung Chang, similar reasoning was deployed during the uprisings in Jiangxi, China in the 1930s: "Better to kill a hundred innocent people than let one truly guilty person go free," and during uprisings in Vietnam in the 1950s: "Better to kill ten innocent people than let a guilty person escape." Similarly in Cambodia, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge adopted a similar policy: "better arrest an innocent person than leave a guilty one free." Wolfgang Schäuble referenced this principle while saying that it is not applicable to the context of preventing terrorist attacks. Former American Vice President Dick Cheney said that his support of American use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" against suspected terrorists was unchanged by the fact that 25% of CIA detainees subject to that treatment were later proven to be innocent, including one who died of hypothermia in CIA custody. "I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent." Asked whether the 25% margin was too high, Cheney responded, "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. ... I'd do it again in a minute."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio

Without knowing the purpose of your pointing out what you refer to as facts, there is simply no way of knowing what your point is, because on their own, they don’t just not mean much, they mean nothing. That is the whole point of giving people the benefit of the doubt.

No, I can’t have known that, and the point I was making is that’s the only way it could be done, and even then it wouldn’t be done because it would constitute a violation of human rights. I wasn’t trying to get at you or anything else, and when you explained your idea about role models, I understood better what you meant, but that didn’t have anything to do with anything being contingent upon receiving support from the State. It was an entirely different approach.

I’m certain of it.

What about the prison stats indicating how high their representation is? Of the prison population, travellers constitute about 8%, the other 92% of prison inmates aren’t travellers.

I've heard the term 'echo chamber' used a lot to describe the type of interaction people have with sites such as this.

It seems you've decided that if hateful content is shared amongst like minded users here, and not flagged within this site, that makes it ok?

I've already shared EU guidelines on what constitutes hate speech. Here's our own, soon to be updated, legislation on the matter.

I fail to see how defining the travelling community as culturally inferior, criminal, or having 'achieved nothing positive' could not meet this criteria.

The only reason I can imagine this is being flaunted so openly is that we have a very poor prosecution record in this matter. It would seem that since 1989 we have only 50 prosecutions for this offence. I would hope that with the introduction of the new legislation a firmer approach will be taken, especially considering the awful proliferation of online hate content such as that displayed here.

I note some of your recent posts contain token qualifiers, along the lines of 'not all traveler are criminals' or 'I don't hate all travelers'. It's hard to take this seriously when you repeatedly spout hateful generalizations and accusations. Are you trying to make what you say more palatable to yourself or others?

I didn't not comment on whether individual travelers are weak or strong. As a group they make up a tiny part of our community, have a history of marginalization, and it seems are accepted as 'fair game' when it comes to hate speech. I question whether some sense of self-pity or self-hatred is involved because what's displayed here towards travelers as a group, strikes may as similar to how insecure children might pick on smaller and weaker ones.

I'd like to believe everyone has to capacity to change and leave the type of hate displayed here behind. I think you and others here are capable of more, and would be better and healthier yourselves for it. Do yourself a favour and ignore what the echo chamber says, look at those definitions of hate speech given by the EU and in law. How could your posts that travelers are culturally inferior, or have achieved nothing ever, not meet these? It might help get beyond your blindness, if you substituted another ethnic group in place of travelers when reflecting on your words.