@Mike

I hope the kid is OK.
But overall I’d imagine the kids are in more danger from home-grown joyriders. Or just everyday traffic.

Living with horseshite on our roads every tourist season and not a traveller in sight to blame, damn it.

99% eh?
That statistic was appropriately calculated was it?
Or just pulled from thin air?

I personally would not like to live near Travellers and I don’t know many people who would but making up stats doesn’t further your argument.

It’s called hyperbole, Ciaran – it wasn’t supposed to he a legit stat. Surprised you didn’t spot that – it’s pretty obvious. Over your head…

Hyperbole

A four syllable word for bullshit.

My neighbours have 3 horses in their garden.

They are NOT Travellers and own their home. Would Phil intervene here?

Did they get it for free?

Ehm pretty sure council tenants pay rent James. The clue is in the term “tenant”.

Sorry, my bad…….. I should have said ‘practically for free compared with most people’. And if that rent is paid with dole money then it is for free.

Oisin, the ”rent” they pay is a token figure which is taken from the free money they are already given by the tax payers.

i love counting all that free money i get off james every week

yeah..you’d wear out shovels burying it.

To be honest, now you ask, I’m more concerned about an ignorant bigot venting horseshite on the Journal at the moment.

But then I must have ‘never had an encounter with any of them’…even though I often talk to my Traveller neighbours, and find them good humoured decent people..not something I can say for a few of the Missus Bouquets and other snobby herd-thinkers knocking about.

My next door neighbour IS a TD … can’t get him shifted at all. These TDs act as if they are above the common people with their big cars, big pensions and their comings & goings at all hours of the night. On top of that aren’t TDs the guys who continue to support the economic pirates that beggared Ireland?

You think that should be the responsibility of ministers? I would have thought TDs and ministers should be focusing on national issues (the huge amount of them) rather than something like horses (or dogs?) in a back garden. Hasnt the problem for years been that TDs are more concerned about speed bumps and potholes and less about the national issues?

Spot on Fiachra..but so much easier to lash out at Travellers than the horsey set who run scamsville central.

Maybe one day someone will ask about the special spa swimming pools for pampered thoroughbreds with a sprained fetlock in a state-subsidised bloodstock industry while our kids hospitals are reduced to shaking buckets in the street to maintain overstretched facilities.

Mudder Oirlind…raisin ‘em yet. Gombeens.

Thats the problem there. A TD should only be concerned with the Country as a whole and not local constituents. That should be the local councillor’s job.

yeah, Chris..but you can lead paddy to porter…but you’ll never make him think.

Why

because as far as i can make out its a common occurrence, people just dont want travellers living near them and often with good reason, be as pc as you want but the facts remain

The fact remains that paddy is bigot by nature, and easily decoyed away from his real enemies onto scapegoats…so much easier than thinking.

have to disagree Damien in this case, i have had a lot of first hand experience with travellers and they bring the discrimination on themselves, ive been beaten up by gangs on them on 2 occasions, my grandmother was mugged by them, they burgled my parents house, they stole a cement mixer and boat trailer from my father, theyve wrecked some scenic areas in my locality by leaving awful piles of rubbish everywhere, its easy to say they arent all the same but when they arrive the outcome follows a particular pattern, every pub in my town closes when they show up because they have a riot and wreck the place everytime they are allowed into a pub, i dont consider myself a bigot, i consider them bigoted against non travellers

I’ve been beaten up by gangs in several parts of this country, so far not by Travellers. I don’t presume everyone in that town are thugs
My local serves local Travellers, and occasionally visiting Travellers very warily. I had a pint in their company last night. They are the best of neighbours, and one of them is just about qualified at third level. He’s leaving this country because he knows he won’t be judged either by his achievements against a cartload of opposition, or by his thoroughly decent family.

Thats what bigotry is RP, making a generalised false assumption from a set of limited occurences. If you exclude and abuse generations of people because of their origins, expect blowback. It happens with blacks in the US and elsewhere; exclude people and the first consquence is that kids go criminal, often with a vengence.

What always surprises me is how the Travellers internalise the hate and take it out on each other rather than their settled tormenters. And this scapegoating torment, like child abuse, was deliberately driven by established pillars of our saintly and scholarly society as diversion from their collective, and ongoing, respectable criminality.
I often encounter hostility from Travellers at first meeting, because they are expecting the usual prejudice. A little respect often dispels it. Not always. But as often as with the hostiles in the settled herd.
Think about it.

sorry damien but im talking about the large majority encounters i have had with them have been negative, i had no pre-conceived notions about them before they attacked me, and i also have been attacked by non travellers, but not almost every time ive met them, or anywhere close to it

Patrick,
How many Travellers do you actually know?

You are reading the false media (Fox News / Irish Independent). Stop allowing yourself to be duped.

Yes of course. Maybe you should go to the PSNI about this seeing as you seem to have so much detailed information and evidence. This doesnt sound like something you pulled out of your rabid anti-republican ass after reading too much kevin myers at all.

Maybe the PIRA did that in the past but I would love to know where and to who its happening to right now and im sure the PSNI would love to know too because i havent heard about that in Derry anyway! Oh, wait maybe its just the usual baseless accusations?

People like our ‘Jim’ like to make totally unsubstantiated claims/innuendos and then run away….
If anyone makes any comments against a FFG minister or God forbid their totally infallible leader, then they are going to go all out with the one liners about the IRA …. its part of their rehearsals that they put on every morning… Ask a question or say sometthing someone doesn’t like … then its the usual smoke and mirrors … SF … Shinnerbots … IRA … or a combination of all three when things get really hot.

I often wonder if the Sinn fein supporters are purposely lying or just ridiculously deluded.

@Sean Beag… It’s a little from column A, and a little from column B…

@fiachra
Wow you live in Derry and know nothing about RAAD ??

……’They haven’t gone away ye know’

You arent seriously linking RAAD to SF are you? If you are you are more deluded and disconnected than I thought! RAAD and the 32CSM despise the shinners, especially in Derry- the vitriol between the two is almost worse than the vitriol between republicans and loyalists! SF members are being threatened 24/7 and the shinners are very worried that the 32CSM will take control of the Creggan/Bogside and actually use their power to stop people even meeting with the dissidents in Derry. I thought you were just going to say some random ex-provos and try to link that with SF but RAAD is just ridiculous! You must hear the word republican and think SF involved but i can assure you the dissidents, in Derry at least, hate shinners more than the british-its the SDLP that are actually campaigning for some of the dissidents realeases or at least dialogue at the moment because the shinner just wont do it(bar meaningless votes in councils and a a few token speeches!) Look up the damn thing before mouthing off some of this nonsense- I do have a problem with SF in Derry but its certainly not that fantasy and it really annoys me when people lie about things like that to divert atttention away from political problems in the South- at least get informed enough so its believable that you care!

@Fiachra

You presume to know things about me ? Like where I am from or what information I have ?

Maybe you should go to your local police station if you think you are so clued in.

You make an interesting reference to “taking control of the Creggan and the Bogside”.
Taking control from whom may I ask ??

No i did not, you are using your own fanatasy as some sort of excuse (or deflection) from hogan, and a rather obivious and irrelevant deflection at that. And no, i dont make any presumptions about you as i cant due to you having a fake name and twitter account with only 7 tweets! Why would i go to the PSNI if theres nothing illegal that i know of- the taking over im referring to is support and electorally based, not the paramilitary aspects you are alluding to. And may i add that it is you that needs to go to the PSNI as you are saying a party in the NI government is actually still paramilitary- a very serious claim and something im sure the Unionists would be interested in anyway if you had even a shred of evidence. Oh, wait you didnt actually want it to be regarded as that did you? No, you wanted to make a point about something you know very little about so you could insinuate a link between SF and the dissidents- a false link, you care nothing for the situation in Derry, only your capability to influence the false mindset of SF still being the IRA for your own electoral purposes. I am not great fan of SF in Derry, and have issues with them nationally as well but this use of unfounded claims against them in the North is both pathetic and frustrating and only serves to boost their support. If you focused on the facts, the policies and even factual historical references maybe you might get somewhere in attacking SF but vague, unfounded and false allegations is not the way to do it.

I didn’t realise you we’re a constitutional scholar on top of everything else, Eileen. Is there no end to your talents?

Vincent Dolan
No. There is no end to my talents. :)

Godwin’s Law fail…

He is a Minister, do you know the duties of a Minister towards all citizens. They have local Councillors and T.D.’s, to deal with it and a politician shouldn’t use the office of minister to favour or discriminate against a particular group!

Well done Stephen ,the runaway winner for stupid comment of the week . Either you don’t know much about history or you have deliberately trivialised the nature of the SS and their part in mass genocide. God i hate these all too predictable attempts to be anti-establishment, as if we had right wing government “tough” of crime . Only this week I saw a case where a guy shot a man in the head while out on bail and he had amassed 179 previous conviction , many for burglary, assault etc . Is that the type of thing you would expect to see in an “SS” led state ? Cop on now .you’re not back in the student union bar trying to impress a hippie chick are you?

Remember that it was SF that supported the SS and the Nazis.

What are you blowing about, are you a FG supporter Tensing?

@Patrick, SF are an awful bunch. FG are not far behind them, It’d be good If everyone commenting would fly their political flag as they do?

Dead right Stephen.. Travellers never harmed no man. Just tryin to live.
Boss..

Yes Stephen, because i found your comparison of FG to the SS to be ridiculous, ipso facto im FG supporter. strange the irony in you thinking that because i dissented from your puerile view that im a FG sympathiser :P .No Im not an FG supporter in fact i think they are just the other side of the FF coin but doesn’t mean we have to write nonsense comparing them to the SS

Be patient Tensing, FG will show their colours and the nation will show them theirs at the ballot box!

You were not showing so compassionate a side, Stephen when you were advocating Ireland to stop all foreign aid to Africa to Charlie Flanagan. Did we grow a conscience.

Speaking of the ballot box, Stephen. Just a reminder: 34

Sorry to break the news to you.

Michael McDowell was a member of the Fine Gael Party before joining the PDs.