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- Arkady 5356
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Caravans in the Park.
Looks like a big group of travellers have landed in the Park near the New River Gate, there are a lot of them. Doesn't look like film crew to me.
I don't know if we are allowed to say gypsies?
I don't know if we are allowed to say gypsies?
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I thought there were film vans there this morning. Plenty of scrap metal availability then.
@krappyrubsnif no you're not allowed to use tired cliches that denigrate a group of people
@cmo I suggest you might be less of a snowflake if you lived next to a bunch of people of the wrong type living in caravans.
If they lived on the same site for years are we even allowed to say Travellers? If they don't travel surely it's just a trailer park?
Roma, just like Romany, is an ethnic term and so hardly applies to every community of travelling people.
They should just give them all parking tickets every day.
If you want confirmation that 'the wrong sort of person' is no asset to this area go and talk to any of the pub managers around here. Not so long ago the Stapleton had to shut early because of the anti-social behaviour of some 'travellers', the manager of the White Lion had to do sentry duty on his front door, the pubs were calling each other and the police were blue-lighting it up and down SG Road - I know because I was there.
I have no reason to think that the people in the park are anti-social. I hope not. But *some* travellers are. Get over it. And by the way, my only comment was a lame joke about old iron - I cant believe you can get so mightily offended.
Anyway, as I said, this forum has lost its sparkle and is becoming far too PC. It is quite boring now. I have better things to do, so I think I'll take myself elsewhere for a while. Enjoy your safe space.
@Arkady, please tell me how I can delete my account.
Well, anyway, I’ll miss his comments, as he’s been one of the more interesting and prolific posters here.
I'll bet that many of the brigade who take offence at a light-hearted line like that would never raise such an issue with someone who made a gammon joke or shouted 'Tory Scum'.
Stereotyping ethnicity is something that the civilised should surely avoid. If you wouldn't do it about black people or Jewish people I'm not sure why it would be OK to do it about Irish Travellers or Romani.
Krappy didn't mention ethnicity in the post that sparked the controversy.
And I didn't mention it in mine either.
Someone's ethnicity is not defined by whether they live in a caravan or not, those people in the park could have any kind of heritage.
I could see how because of the 'gammon' mention you could relate it, but my point was about the modern-day offense-taking brigade and double standards.
(I'm also defending a long-standing reasonable and rational member of this forum who I think has been jumped out of proportion.)
Things I have learned following this discussion - not all Travellers are Irish, Gypsies is a perfectly acceptable word used in conjunction with Romany and no one says Romani.
So actually we are all wrong on some points, including the easily offended. Can we just get over ourselves and go back to gossiping about what is going to happen next? Any word from the rozzers?
Mmm.
It's admirable of you to want to defend a good man. He's a friend, and I sympathise.
However, the *original* post started with the assumption that the travellers in question were 'gypsies' of one kind or another. To immediately follow that post with a quip about ironmongery strikes me as crass, for what little that's worth, and I'm far from surprised that some people felt the need to point that out.
Again, if the original post had identified a different ethnicity, and someone else followed up with cliched quip about that ethnicity, would it be acceptable? I suggest not.
I'm not sure that defending yourself by using alt-right terms like 'snowflake' does anyone any favours either, particularly while being conspicuously thin-skinned - which is the only double standard I'm seeing here too, incidentally.
As Oscar Wilde (that terrible snowflake) said, a gentleman never offends unintentionally, and this strikes me as an easily avoidable accident.
I don't take offence to any of this, but nor do I care whether you or anyone else thinks questioning the language applied to a particular group or community is PC nonsense (which is just a blanket phrase used by people who can't—or can't be bothered to—"reasonably" or "rationally" support what they say), and I will cheerfully jump in every time. It seems to me that the people who take offence are the ones who refer negatively to PC as if doing so constitutes a genuine argument.
On not being bothered, I accept it can be boring when we start nit-picking and arguing about a phrase said in jest (personally, I find it interesting, thought-provoking, and sometimes revealing), but when something is in writing it's more likely to be taken to task, so even in a casual place like this, just a little caution might help.
This is a generally friendly community, so let's accept that friends on either side of an argument can exasperate one and other from time to time.
I agree with @miss annie — let's stop this and hear some news about what's going on in the park.
("Rozzers"! I haven't heard that since the days when they would bend their knees and announce themselves saying, "'Ello, 'ello, 'ello! What's going on 'ere then?", and cuff small boys across the back of the head.)
At what point did I suggest anything was PC nonsense?
I wasn't quoting you, @Papa , but I can see how it seems I was, the sense of which I happily retract. I was associating the term with your own words (in quotes) to refer to the general tenor of one side of this discussion.
The tinker type that were around when I was a kid are mostly housed in council property now in places like Thurrock.
I work with all kinds of travellers and squatters and for landowners they can be a nightmare.
So I don't know why people thought travellers had moved there.
As for the comments on bigoted language - it's simple. Demonising the whole traveller community based on the actions of a fraction of that community is bigotry and a shitshow of being a decent person.
If wanting people to be treated with dignity and respect is being a snowflake, then fair enough.