Saturday 3 September 2011

”…the most aggressively disenfranchised ethnic minority in this country today…”

Libby Brooks on Dale Farm:
The mood on Dale Farm yesterday morning was one of quiet desperation. There was frustration and disbelief at the proceedings of the previous day, when the high court rejected a last-minute injunction to prevent the eviction of the 400-strong Traveller community from their site in the Essex greenbelt…
There can’t have been that much disbelief, surely? It ought to be quite a familiar occurrence to them by now…
While the Dale Farm case has its own particular eccentricities, it can only be seen as part and parcel of a consolidated shift in coalition policy to further marginalise what is arguably the most aggressively disenfranchised ethnic minority in this country today.
Libby thinks they have an unbeatable hand in Victimhood Poker, clearly…
And it does nothing to set Britain apart from the systematic discrimination of the Roma people that has swept west across the continent since the EU's eastward expansion.
Oh, right.

I didn't realise that in Italy and Bulgaria and all those other places having problems with the Roma, the local councils did nothing for ten years, arranged 'diversity training' for their bailiffs, etc. I thought they just swept in one night and burned them out!

Silly me...
The cycle of marginalisation prevails, even though research by the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that it would take as little as one square mile of land to serve this modest need.
Great! Where do you live, Libby? We'll create the site there, eh? You won't mind, will you?
Of course there is another side to this, and those living near – usually illegal – camps complain of noise, rowdiness and unhygienic conditions. But sites needn't be a nuisance if they're well managed.
And there's the rub. Illegal sites, by their very nature, won't be. Back to that square mile of land - when are you hanging your washing out? Because that land-clearance equipment can make everything a bit dusty.

Get the kettle on - the dozer drivers take it with three sugars. You'll need about 20 mugs. Don't bother with the best china, though, eh Libby?
There are a few optimists who hope that the Dale Farm eviction will mark a watershed in Britain's relationship to its Traveller population, and that the sight of weeks-old infants and an elderly woman on a nebuliser bulldozed out of their homes could galvanise the public and politicians to finally take the huge inequalities faced by this community seriously.
Most likely, there will be whoops of joy in Essex and feelings of trepidation
Given the widespread ignorance of Gypsy and Traveller culture in this country…
Widespread ignorance? These people have lived with them for ten years and they want them gone! Everyone who comes into contact with them wants them gone! These poor souls know far more that they ever wanted to about 'gypsy and traveller culture'.

The only people who, it seems, don't want them gone are people who never, ever have to worry about them moving in, and who will be on to their next cause by the time the dust settles...
… it is convenient to dismiss this community as childishly refusing to conform to the social and legal demands of a property-owning democracy.
Convenient and accurate.

Actually, no-one cares what their lifestyles are like, frankly. Just the part where they cross over into criminality. Just like everyone else....
And it's easy to ignore the concessions many have already made, attempting to integrate into settled communities despite the hostility they encounter there, and travelling only in the holidays for the sake of their children's education .
Yes, well, there's one small problem with their 'attempts to integrate into settled communities', Libby. They usually don't end well.
In the spring Channel 4's My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which portrayed the community at best as comedy vulgarians, unleashed a barrage of abuse that would have set the Twitterati aflame had it been directed at any other minority.
And whose fault is that? Did they not invite Channel 4 in? They weren't animals living on the Serengeti, subject to secret filming from a boulder-cam!

25 comments:

Macheath said...

Time for a bit of selective editing?

...a consolidated shift in coalition policy to further marginalise what is arguably the most aggressive[ly disenfranchised] ethnic minority in this country today...

After all, how many other minorities regularly settle disagreements with bare-knuckle fights?

Interesting, that effortless segue from '400-strong Traveller community' - with a capital T - to 'systematic discrimination of (sic) the Roma people that has swept west across the continent'.

wiggiatlarge said...

The amazing efforts by our multicultural supporting class in their efforts to help this case and others similiar just shows how out of touch they are,and by out oftouch i mean never seen and been affected by them or lived near.
I did live near late seventies early eighties when this first started and only by playing the system is the other half of this site "legal" ,our system allows this type of endless delay ,delay and eventually "win " result everyone except the travellers pays .They have commandered the local school that must have the worst attendance record in Britain and get seen first ,ie walk straight in to the local doctors as they are a "special case" any local can give good cause for not wanting them there as can the good people of Cottenham in Cambridgeshire who have had a similiar invasion.
To those who say if we provided proper sites this would not happen,i recall Bury St Edmunds (where near i also lived) having a purpose built site with all the mod cons totally destroyed by the inhabitants ,it was then rebuilt at great cost to the local taxpayer (not the travellers of course) for the same thing to happen again ,a year later the travellers councilor whatever they call themselves were bemoning the fact there weren't enough sites in the area and they couldnt be blamed for the circumstances they lived in!
When i see and hear the the handwringing, the children on display ,the women singing hymns outside this camp i see a big con and one thats gone on far to long ,sympathy ,not from me and i would bet from almost anyone thats had years of aggravation in all forms from them.

MrAngry61 said...

I just feel very sorry for the neighbours of Dale Farm - one of whose back garden is steadily being encroached on by Traveller 'dwellings'/boundary fences.

FWIW, travellers squatted about 300 metres from my home - in the fortnight that they were there crime went through the roof, the streets were full of lumpen children asking for money & cigarettes, and everything not nailed down (including my dustbins) was stolen. Finally their parting gift was to leave a 15 foot high pile of refuse on the site they'd squatted, as well as perhaps a ton of rubbish around the area.

If they declare war on the local population, why should it have to 'accommodate' them?

Uncle Badger said...

"Roma people"? I heard one of them interviewed on the BBC (of course) yesterday. She was Irish, as so many of them are.

Anonymous said...

"coalition policy"

Oh, them again. But I bet no one in the 'coalition' actually ever discusses this. But if they did, it would be along the lines:

a) we have potential voters -- home-owner and law-abiding voters -- being pissed off if we do nothing;

b) we won't get any votes from the hordes of Travellers as they have no interest in doing anything but stealing, and we won't get any votes from the rabble who support socialism as they only vote for red donkeys;

c) even if we made the Travellers all comfy and cosy and going without want, they (and the other rabble) still won't vote for us 'cos we are nasty. Apparently.

Quick Draw McGraw said...

Roma people? Since when did Roma people have Irish accents? These pricks aren't Roma, they're fucking IRISH!

Paul said...

You should have heard the pikey muppet on Sky News comparing this to the Nazis' attitude towards the Gypsies in World War II. Embarrassing.

Are they always like that?

Ian R Thorpe said...

Seems very strange to me that the lefties campaigning for these people can overlook the ancient and deeply entrenched cultural idiosyncracies like wife beating.

Can their place in the victimhood hierarchy earn certain people indulgences like giving money to the medieval church earned some right bastards a guarantee that their sins were forgiven?

KenS said...

... arguably the most aggressively disenfranchised ethnic minority in this country ...

In what sense, I wonder, are they disenfranchised?

Merriam-Webster gives the following definition: "to deprive of a franchise, of a legal right, or of some privilege or immunity; especially : to deprive of the right to vote"

No one is refusing them the right to vote, and if they are being refused some privilege or immunity (from obeying the rules that the rest of us have to obey) then that is no bad thing and they must surely be pleased they are being treated as equals (with the rest of us).

Hexe Froschbein said...

The Roma are currently colonizing Dortmund and Berlin (amongst other places, but well, those two places are getting so bad, even the local Turkish community is complaining and refusing to school their children with the Roma kids)

Word has gotten round in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, that there are rich pickings in Dortmund working the street prostitution[0], and in Berlin[1] the Roma are enriching the left's heartland (much to the amusement of everyone.

You guys don't know what diamonds you have with your Irish caravan chavvy dwellers... heh.

Now it would be interesting what happens if you put both of them on a pitch... my money is on the Roma though, because their motto in life is not 'not give a duck about nothing(mainly because they have nothing)', whereas the Irish Travellers have a LOT to care about.

Interesting times call for lots of popcorn...

[0] http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.welt.de%2Fpolitik%2Fdeutschland%2Farticle13564376%2FDortmund-der-Strassenstrich-und-das-Roma-Problem.html
[1] http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://indexexpurgatorius.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/zigeuner-mullen-park-zu/&ei=Y2tiTr2wC9K6hAeN1bHDCg&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB8Q7gEwAA&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dcafe%2Bedelweiss%2B%252BZigeuner%26num%3D100%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26hs%3DBqa%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26prmd%3Divns

Anonymous said...

Meanwhile, in another aggressively policed area.....

.....the Met announced it is to interview 7,825,360 more suspects in search for anyone who might have been, or knew someone that was, naughty in recent weeks.

Anonymous said...

The thing that really pisses me off is that these hand wringing lefties are effectively arguing that the pikey scum should be exempt from the law.

Could I be next in the exemption queue? I know of a few righteous lefties who need their faces panelled in? Anyone see a flaw in the plan?

English Viking said...

Anon,

I can see no flaw in a plan to thrash lefties.

Carry on.

Ed P said...

I was pleased to hear on the radio that Vanessa Redgrave's mother had described her (when starting university) as terribly right wing! Now the old trollop has bucked the trend and become more left wing in her later years. Or maybe it's all an act, eh Rosalind?

Rob said...

The Left will support any group which is against the norms of society. That travellers scorn the laws of this land is a feature, not a bug, to the Left. As long as travellers are a thorn in the side of ordinary people, the Left will support and encourage them.

Also don't minimise the Essex angle here - the Metropolitan Left HATE Essex with an absolute passion. They remember Basildon in the 1992 election when David Amess pissed all over Labour's chips just when the Luvvies thought they were in. They despise Essex and everyone who lives there. This is their revenge.

Sabrewulfe said...

They ARE NOT `Romani`. At best, they are diddiquoi, but a better term is `pikey`. I lived in Basildon in the 90`s and part of the `noughties`...we knew them as `scum`

JuliaM said...

"Interesting, that effortless segue from '400-strong Traveller community' - with a capital T - to 'systematic discrimination of (sic) the Roma people that has swept west across the continent'."

Indeed, and as pointed out, they're no more 'Roma' than I am!

"To those who say if we provided proper sites this would not happen,i recall Bury St Edmunds (where near i also lived) having a purpose built site with all the mod cons totally destroyed by the inhabitants..."

And let's not forget the site that was paying all their electricity out of council tax!

"FWIW, travellers squatted about 300 metres from my home - in the fortnight that they were there crime went through the roof..."

Some on the left would have you believe that's really all down to the locals seizing an opportunity to blame the gypsies for their own crime.

Yes, I think she is serious!

"Can their place in the victimhood hierarchy earn certain people indulgences like giving money to the medieval church earned some right bastards a guarantee that their sins were forgiven?"

Apparently, to the left, membership of the right group can forgive you anything!

JuliaM said...

"...those two places are getting so bad, even the local Turkish community is complaining and refusing to school their children with the Roma kids..."

*boggle*

"Could I be next in the exemption queue? "

If it's a queue to punch lefties, better bring a flask and sandwiches!

"The Left will support any group which is against the norms of society. That travellers scorn the laws of this land is a feature, not a bug, to the Left."

Spot on!

gildas said...

an excellent deconstruction. As you point out these people areno more Roma than I am. They are what we used to call diddicio - irish peddlers and travellers. now these plots have been changing hands for considerable sums of money - 50K or more. I have one quesion for all these people; where is you taxreturn?

Hye said...

Some on the left would have you believe that's really all down to the locals seizing an opportunity to blame the gypsies for their own crime.

That woman sounds like a right tool:

"I’ve seen a family hand out birthday party invitations to every child in my class except the Gypsy little girl. They “didn’t want Gy**os there.” I reported it as a racist incident.."

Ringmer said...

"Some on the left would have you believe that's really all down to the locals seizing an opportunity to blame the gypsies for their own crime."

Well worth reading Nicola Riding's account of her wedding day in Julia's link - a salutary reminder of reality in amongst the leftie love-bombing.

"I reported it as a racist incident because that’s my statutory responsibility"

And the STASI loves you right back, love.

Miss Chips said...

Gildas, I bow to your superior knowledge, as ever; you may have solved a family mystery for me.

A great-aunt married a Romany Gipsy - a man very well-placed in their ancestral hierarchy - who abandoned his roots to move into a house with her. His family henceforth referred to him as 'the diddakoi', which he explained was a disparaging term for 'half-breeds' and 'them as lives in housen'.

If the term was originally applied to tinkers, it explains why it was, in his eyes, a deadly insult.

JuliaM said...

"That woman sounds like a right tool.."

She's just misguided.

Poor lass, it didn't help when one of her supporters piously opined, in a comment addressing the experience of commenter Nicola and her wedding party, that one couldn't 'assume that individual bad behaviour applied to a whole grouping.'

Unfortunately, her actual post was based on the concept that you could ascribe individual GOOD behaviour to a whole grouping...

Anonymous said...

My experience of gypsies/travellers or whatever is usually confrontational so may be a little biased. Even when caught red-handed they will deny any wrong-doing. If you try and explain why they are so unpopular they look disbelievingly at you. Anti-social behaviour/crime/rubbish dumping etc is just not a problem in their eyes.
Jaded

wiggiatlarge said...

Just as a follow up to my earlier post,itseems that as so much time has been spent doing everything "by the book" and interference by everybody from it seems the Pope down ,its given our friends time to bring in sundry groups that are adept at making it extremely difficult to evict without breaking some human rights law or whatever .
Perhaps if it actually happens those that caused the local population and beyond this expensive nonsense could be charged for the extra manpower etc, No thought not.
As an aside afield about 3 miles from where i currently live has had 2 traveller caravans on it since about March ,i have no idea if they have purchased the land but it all looks familiar ,there are now 6 caravans plus asst makeshift buildings and in the region of 40 horses i think we know where this is going.