...It is important to state that it is not communities that commit crimes but individuals. Those convicted are squarely Henry Long, Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, not thousands of innocent people who share their heritage. Tarring all Travellers with the brush of these men’s callousness is as unfair as tarring all Catholics for paedophile priests or all eskimos for daft militant wog attacks.
Yet to completely ignore the cultural context of this crime is wrong. Henry Long, the ringleader, was removed from school at the age of 12; he followed his father and grandfather into the thieving “trade”. Albert Bowers left school at 11 and before the trial had already picked up three youth convictions. These young men could not read or write. For years they had not known school or structure. Their education was in petty crime.
Such problems do not solely beset Travellers but they are far more prevalent among Traveller communities. If we want to be a country where all are treated the same, where all live by the same rules and where the state does its best to furnish each with a decent chance in life, we have to end the squeamishness that prevents open talk about Travellers. This squeamishness is down to two fears. First, the fear of retribution. After the verdict on PC Harper’s death it emerged that the judge, Mr Justice Edis, brought the first trial to a temporary halt over an alleged potential plot to intimidate jurors. Extra security measures were brought in. Jurors were referred to by number not name. One juror was dismissed for acting oddly in court, mouthing pleasantries at the defendants. Whether she was motivated by misplaced friendliness or fear of someone up in that public gallery we do not know, but most will not be shocked by revelations of intimidation.
The fear of the bullet, the knife, the burnt-out car; this helps the lawless elements of Traveller culture maintain a certain power, and gives the law-abiding majority of Travellers a terrible name.
The second fear is that of being labelled racist. Since the Equality Act 2010 recognised Gypsy, Roma and Travellers as ethnic minorities, race has been used to shield this culture from due scrutiny. Sensible questions about why those within these groups are more likely to be in prison, more likely to be illiterate or more likely to suffer domestic violence prompt cries of racism. In April a Channel 4 Dispatches programme titled The Truth About Traveller Crime was dubbed “dehumanising” by activists and investigated by Ofcom. Desperate not to offend, the authorities turn a culturally sensitive blind eye.
The fears hush most into silence, and the silence means the stand-off between Travellers and the rest of society continues uneasily. Many feel disquieted to see the mobile homes rolling on to a local beauty spot, a portent too often of littering, mess, anti-social behaviour. Meanwhile those in Traveller communities are hardly “living their best lives”. Travellers die about ten years earlier than the rest of us. They have higher rates of chronic illness. Their suicide rates are six times higher.
You might argue that they choose to live like this, but the babies born into that life don’t. Many are destined to repeat the same pattern: leave school in your early teens, drift into a life of odd jobs and petty crime, never move beyond the circles you were raised in. As long as the culturally sensitive force-field exists around Travellers, these children are abandoned to a fate that should not be tolerated in 21st-century Britain.
It is a scandal that some Gypsy and Traveller children are taken out of school at primary age; that some start work as young as ten; that about 65 per cent of Traveller children are persistently absent from school; that they have the lowest attainment of all ethnic groups throughout their school years and are far more likely to be excluded. Are we to be surprised when they choose crime?
>>26654 In primary school my best friend's parents were travellers who moved into a council house when he was born. He and his family are lovely people. They play in bands a lot, and help run festivals. If you met them you wouldnt think they used to live in a van.
I have no interest in labelling anyone a racist. I was specific in what I meant by "compassion fatigue" and how hard it can be to keep up empathy for others, or how circumstances can lead us to associate characteristics with groups of people rather than the issues they face.
Saying a particular group is more likely to commit crime due to unemployment, or charity workers might burn out due to constantly running into the same issues, isn't equivocation.
I also didn't say that the number of posters here is "large enough to have negative stories but too small to have positive stories", what I said was:
>I am certain you can find people who have regular direct contact with minority groups that both praise and criticise said groups.
Even if other posters hadn't jumped in with nice anecdotes about travellers, we can't take it as representative. Maybe >>26663 has a point, but that makes me worried about the times when no one has a positive story to chime in with -- would having only negative anecdotes justify distrust? I don't want things to go that way.
The poster >>26655 also raises a valid point, and that's not equivocation, either. I don't mean to single out posts, but you can see an example of it in this thread. Negative characteristics are expected of travellers, good characteristics are in spite of the fact they're travellers:
>If you met them you wouldnt think they used to live in a van.
I'm not pretending to be morally above anyone, here. If I had the constant pain of >>26656 I would probably start associating that behaviour with the fact they're travellers, consciously or not. I already know for a fact I do prejudge people based on appearance and background. What I try to keep in mind, though, is that people of any background can commit crime or be antisocial, and it's mainly the bigger factors that puts someone in that position. Not excusing the behaviours, but understanding that makes it a solvable problem.
I did post an anecdote too, but that's still not the point - I would imagine most people simply don't interact with travellers, and if one helped an old lady across the street or let you cut in line at Tesco because you were only buying a pint of milk, would you even know they were a traveller?
I fail to see how it is racist to define or criticise a culture. Criminality is not genetically imprinted on them, but culturally it is. It is quite literally how they survive whilst being so isolationist. People who deny this do not have experience or knowledge of travellers, or they are making a point on a technicality ("Not EVERY traveller is a criminal"). Ok fine, but most are.
>>26693 >I fail to see how it is racist to define or criticise a culture. Criminality is not genetically imprinted on them, but culturally it is. It is quite literally how they survive whilst being so isolationist. People who deny this do not have experience or knowledge of Jews, or they are making a point on a technicality ("Not EVERY negro is a criminal"). Ok fine, but most are.
You've reshuffled words countless times in this thread in an attempt to shock. No one is going to be shocked anymore this time then the last time, you haven't gotcha'd anyone, because you wield it like a sledge hammer. You don't have a point worth making.
The problem is that is a taboo to hide behind exploring the problem properly, the intention here is not to discriminate the intention here is to reduce the criminal element that harms people and that requires looking at the causes. The problem is the usual hallmark of poverty but there is an isolationist component that reinforces it. The impasse is how do you help a group who don't want help? A blind eye cannot be simply turned because it is damaging to everyone else and would escalate the situation.
Education is the best chance we have of changing anything despite what 'brainwash' lad thinks.
In some cases, yes. In this one: somehow I don't think that most of the people claiming to "not be racist because they are actually all evil criminals" in this thread have their best interests at heart.
>>26712 >I'd always expected that if you killed a copper they'd come down on you like a ton of bricks.
They do, they come down on you to the tune of 16 years. It says so in the article. You halved it so that others would be more outraged, you knew what you were doing.
>You halved it so that others would be more outraged, you knew what you were doing.
Offenders always complete their full sentence but usually half the time is spent in prison and the rest is spent on licence. While on licence, an offender can be sent back to prison if they break its terms.
The system of serving half a sentence in prison and half on licence was introduced by Parliament, and is not something that judges or magistrates have any control over.
No you are either inconsistent in a way that is disingenuous, or an idiot. If everyone relayed the way you did that 8 years would become 4 in the next retelling, and so on.
I know how sentencing works, the only inconsistency here is inside your brain.
>>26716 The driver will most likely serve eight years in prison, based on the fact that most people serve half of their sentence in prison.
The maximum sentence for manslaughter is 24 years.
Neither of those statements are contradictory or inconsistent. By all means double down as much as you want, lad, but you might want to take a breather because you've worked yourself up.
The point, as if you'd actually missed it, is that the (your?) original post with the link to the article did not say "he's been sent down for 16 years, thats not enough, especially considering the way sentencing works in this country!" - if it had, you might be more justified in then arguing you were in the right by saying "but the maximum is 24 years!"
In short, again, as if you didn't already know what you've done, you've used the shorter number to suit your first point and the longer number to suit your second point. This is certainly inconsistent.
As evidenced by at least one other response in this thread, not everyone knows that you only serve half your sentence in a UK prison, so expecting everyone to just understand that is not reasonable.
You seem pretty quick to assume they will only spend 8 yeas in prison though, almost like you are talking out your arse about things you couldn't know because they are in the future. The sentence was 16, so let’s say 'sentenced to 16 years that seems a bit low?' or do you think people would assume you to be a knee jerking mong if you said that?
>>26720 It's almost as if I was responding to a post saying they'd come down on him like a ton of bricks by giving him a 16 year sentence by pointing out the guidelines showing they could have given him a 24 year one.
If anything that's being consistent with the post I was replying to rather than being inconsistent.
>>26727 What's the saying, "If one of your neighbours doesn't like you, he's an arsehole; if none of them like you, you're the arsehole"? Granted there are holes in that but I can honestly say I've never met anyone who was happy to have travellers around their property or who had a nice word to say about them after direct experience. And I've heard these observations from a range of folk. I generally assume that people's sympathy towards Roma/travellers is in inverse proportion to their level of actual exposure.
>>26726 There must come a point where the difference in sentence is just become an arbitrary number to please your brand of mong.
Where the difference in years is indistinguishable to those who haven't experienced it in terms of what it actually means because it is so arbitrarily large, I would say that number is well before 16. I certainly know if the purpose was to knock the fight out of me, break me, institutionalise me and bring me back around that would come well before 16 years, are you the same person you were 16 years ago? Or even 8 years ago?
If the purpose of sentences is to appease mongs like you who like the biggerest numbers you would think 16 is plenty, but no, you heard the number could be bigger so why isn’t it? Well what would happen when an even worstest rotter comes along? Then they would have to raise the number past 24 to satisfy you, even though 24 should be plenty stupidly high enough.
Learn to manage your expectations and think about long of time periods we are talking about before you speak.
>>26730 I've never actually said once that I want them to have a longer sentence. All I've actually said is that I thought you'd get longer for killing a copper and you fucking clowns have had a massive knee-jerk reaction, read into it what you wanted to read into it and decided this means I must be part of the hang 'em, flog' em brigade because you strum yourselves off at the thought of putting someone you rail against in their place so want it to be true.
>>26737 As I said, I was surprised it wasn't longer. If you read the sentencing remarks you get the sense that Justice Edis was frustrated the guidelines meant he couldn't give a harsher sentence.
I just went to the chippy for my tea. I hadn't been for a while, so when I got my chips, I looked at them and said "this doesn't seem like a lot of chips for £2". The lady behind the counter said "Oh, I'm sorry - that's about the normal amount of chips we give for that price. Admittedly, it's not the maximum amount of chips we're able to give you, though - would you like extra?".
Obviously, being the reasonable, rational man I am, I said "OF COURSE NOT YOU STUPID WOMAN! I CLEARLY STATED THIS JUST 'SEEMED' LIKE NOT ENOUGH CHIPS - I NEVER SAID I ACTUALLY WANTED MORE CHIPS DID I?! I BET YOU FEEL STUPID NOW, FOR BEING SO PRESUMPTUOUS!"
Then they asked me to leave, which seemed like a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, really.
You're right. After I left there I went across the street to their competitor and ordered four pickled eggs, and when she gave me them I started complaining that two pickled eggs seemed like not enough pickled eggs for the money, as I angrily waved the four pickled eggs around in my hands.
Again, they seemed hell-bent on misconstruing my words and implied I was somehow dissatisfied with my quantity of pickled eggs. Some people just don't get it, eh?
