My partner is a Traveller.
Imagine how much fun he had growing up as a Gay Traveller.
The way society treats Travellers is a massive factor at play here.
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There are a group of travellers that regularly break down the barriers, that are specifically put up to stop them, at a leisure centre near me.
I was in there walking my dog when they broke in one one occasion, driving around thirty assorted vehicles through the grounds almost running over my dog and ploughing up the grass turning it into mud.
I reported it but apparently there isn’t much the police can do.
When they eventually do go, they leave the fields in a complete mess.
The stream at the bottom is completely blocked with rubbish, including old furniture, tyres and general waste and the field which has three football fields on it is strewn with rubbish.
The local paper reported that on one occasion the council had to pay out around 90k to clear the mess and repair the damage they made which will be paid by the tax payer which, of course, doesn’t apply to these travellers as they don’t pay any.
This isn’t a one off, this happens quite regularly, and they are despised by locals simply because they are so disrespectful, cause havoc in the local pubs and shopping centre and seem to be outside the law.
On the other hand, there are a different group of European travellers that come through, although in much smaller numbers with just a few vehicles and they stay for a few days but when they leave, all there rubbish is bagged up and left by the side of the road and there is very little mess or disruption.
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The difference being that there a plenty of gay, black, asian, African etc. doctors, nurses, engineers, lawyers, delivery drivers, chefs, taxi drivers, hairdressers, shop owners etc. that all work hard, pay taxes, don’t steal and contribute to the society that we live in as well as conform to the rules and culture of it.
Gypsies literally don’t do that. The entire culture is about operating outside of the law and society so that they don’t have to pay tax, don’t have to work, etc. while still benefiting from it in the form of begging and stealing.
They don’t pay tax, they purposefully keep their kids out of school so they don’t pick up our values and beliefs, they sell their pre-pubescent daughters in to marriage, send their kids and wives out to beg and shoplift. It’s disgusting, there’s nothing to respect there.
Now I’ve had more experiences and interactions with “romani gypsies” in mainland Europe than travellers/pikeys in the UK (not that I’m entirely sure what the difference is) so maybe gypsies are just worse than pikeys but from what I hear from my friends interactions with them in the UK they seem to be on the same level.
When Romania joined the EU, there was literally an influx of gypsies from one day to the next in Denmark and it was fucking carnage. They came in and went around beating up homeless people to steal their sleeping spots and meagre belongs, drove them away from their normal hangouts, literally started shitting in public parks and setting up gypsy camps in the middle of Copenhagen. Shoplifting and other crime rates shot up over night, it was comical.
Literally every stereotype about gypsies from Romania was confirmed within 2 weeks of Romania joining the EU, at least in Denmark. I don’t know how the UK has managed to remain so free of them, maybe because it’s an island, but if you speak to mainland European populations you’ll find almost no sympathy for gypsies or gypsy culture whatsoever.
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weeeell that’s just a shit post my friend.
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For us gypsies aren’t really a ‘thing’ tbh. Not like in France. I thought gypsy/traveller populations were limited to France/UK anyway.
Exactly.
They don’t pay any sort of tax yet still use all the facilities that the rest of the tax paying public pay for.
Even worse, they make so much mess wherever they go, it cost the local council tax payers more than they normally pay to clear it up.
To anyone who thinks their anti social behaviour is ok I would ask them, what would it be like if everyone had the same selfish attitude of paying no tax and having no respect of the law and other people.
There would be no civilised society and we would be knee deep in our own excrement and waste.
For every negative story about gypsies, I’m sure there are many more where the same group move into an area and then leave completely unnoticed.
Obviously, there is a proportion of that group that undoubtedly give the rest a really bad name. At my school, there would be gypsies who set up in the fields. All outdoor sports were cancelled for the entire school for weeks at a time. They’d leave everything in a complete state which quite frankly fucked me and 1500+ students right off (including teachers who then had to organise some other shit to do in that same free time).
It’s very easy to understand why people have such a dislike for gypsies and how the stereotype is continually propagated. I’m confident many of the students who went to my school really dislike gypsies based off just that one thing that happened a handful of times when they were at school.
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That’s exactly right. But it’s a lot easier to shove them altogether and blame them collectively.
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This is the problem. Literally all it takes is one negative interaction and then for the rest of peoples lives they hate and judge any Traveller they see.
I’m not immune to it, I worked six years in a shop and had lots of negative interactions. Looking back though it’s pretty clear they were far outweighed by positive ones, by Travellers who came in, did their business and left. Just like any other group of people.
They are one of the most marginalised groups you can possibly imagine.
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Who thinks anti social behaviour is ok?
Well, regardless of whether the chicken or the egg comes first, the way travelling communities are spoken about openly by people like you, is it any wonder they have no interest in being part of our society?
I certainly feel like integration would be more likely if we didn’t just openly talk about them as if they’re all scum. Social cohesion is something of a two way street, it might help encourage cohesion to treat them like people for a start.
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If you have a poorly managed, very rapid influx of poor immigrants or refugees from an ethnic or national background into a culture that is alien to them, you’re likely to see crime/chaos/big societal issues as a result.
But if it was an influx of black people, Africans, Arabs, Bangladeshis or whatever, I highly doubt you’d be here saying it confirms all of our fears about worst traits of these groups. You’d at least stop to question how this rapid change was being managed by the governments in question and also look at whether its a case of the country in question not having the infrastructure to deal with such a rapid influx of people. You’d question the decision makers who set the wheels in motion, not just look at the immigrants on the ground and the actions of some of them. At least, I think you would do that, because you are generally quite a considered person who looks beyond the surface for causes of societal problems.
But when it’s travellers, you seem to cite the chaos caused as being evidence of your dislike for them as being warranted.
This is what I meant about finding it interesting that travellers seem to be the last remaining community that otherwise reasonable people will talk about it completely generalised, negative terms.
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I would imagine no one.
They don’t want to be integrated into society.
That would involve them having to be responsible and paying their taxes.
As I said, it’s not all travellers but certainly a high percentage that seem to want all the advantages of living in a civilised society without the responsibilities.
I’ve seen them regularly and the damage and mess they leave behind and it’s no wonder people shun them.
They think they are above the law and in other circumstances would be taken out of society and locked up.
Who else in society would get away with what they do on a regular basis?
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Marginalised or choose not to integrate? I’d go with the latter for the most part due to cultural reasons.
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So if we identify the problem as being “travellers don’t want to be part of our society”, we then have to ask ourselves how that problem can be potentially solved. My point is that talking about them as if they’re all scum just pushes them further away.
If someone has identified a problem, but then behaves in a way that can only exacerbate that problem, it takes the wind out of the sails of their argument just a little bit for me as the person reading or listening to them.
I have a problem with there being people who refuse to pay taxes but still want to live in our country and use the infrastructure that our taxes pay for, and that is a clear issue in the travelling community more than a lot of other groups. I’m happy to be challenged on that, but I don’t think it’s an unfair thing to say. I also don’t think it’s right to occupy a community space, treat it like shit and then abandon it in a fucked up state. That’s definitely something that goes on too. So no arguments on that front.
But then you have to ask yourself what can be done about the problem, the problem we have identified here being: travellers don’t want to be part of our society. What can be done to change that. I think that if I were a traveller, I wouldn’t be encouraged to integrate into a society if it felt like the people within that society had already dismissed me as being criminal scum right off the bat.
Basically, I think that you and Cristo have identified a problem and are then behaving in a way that can only exacerbate the very problem you’ve identified.
It’s my opinion that behaving in a way that further isolates a community negates your complaints about them not wanting to be part of our society, because your actions can only serve to make that problem worse.
But if you can make a case for how continued hostility towards this community is going to help the problem you’ve identified, I’d love to hear it.
From my interactions with them, it’s not me who is being hostile to them, it’s the other way round and that’s why they are shunned in society.
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On two occasions as a teenager other black teenagers tried to mug me. For a couple years at school some Pakistani, Muslim kids used to quit regularly bully me.
Let’s say I didn’t have the thousands of positive interactions with good friends and classmates from those communities in my childhood, and that the bad experiences were far more numerous (as is the case with you and travellers) and I was on here talking about those groups as people do about travellers. Tell me honestly that you wouldn’t have a problem with me doing that? I think I’ve seen enough of your posts on non footballing matters to say.
If it was the same people who tried to mug you on a regular basis, then you would be very wary of them, regardless of their colour.
That’s the same way I feel about the large group of travellers that come and ruin the countryside near to me.
It’s not a one off.
They park up, stay for a while, then leave a mess that takes ages to clear away, which costs the local tax payer a fortune, while ruining the surrounding fields and woods.
What’s to like about them?
Why would I want to integrate with people who are anti social and have no interest in integrating themselves?
Stupid dickheads. Some of these wankers are only strong in numbers. I hope their foreskins fall off
Glad you’ve come out of it better the other side.
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As I understand it, that’s an issue that has already been dealt with mate haha
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