h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What was the difference between the two Taff?

tinkers were derided, because they were not real gypsies,(by older members of my family)

the usual old stereotypes that you could not possibly post here!!!!



i even had an uncle who was a tramp!!! every couple of years, he would show up, get clean(not in the narcotic sense) fed and watered, do a bit of this and that, tell a few stories, and then dissapear untill the whenever the next time was!!!

my mother's mother, my nana suddenly told everyone we were descended from Irish Gypsies, Tinkers.. she was also bipolar though. No-one else in the family knew what she was going on about.

Taff - Irish Travellers were fairly rare in the UK until 2002 when Ireland passed tough anti-Trespass laws. Up until then they were little different from the travellers (or tinkers) already here. After 2002, the numbers in the UK increased dramatically.

I've just yikesed posts 22, 23 and 27. Whether the Beeb will take the view that cleverness doesn't exclude racist language is another matter of course...

Ben

So Pi is to be a banned word?

Will the noohootoo also be banning pa, ni, da, wo, po?

It's all about context swl. As well you know, or you wouldn't have said that there.

(I am not assuming the posters are racist, btw, just that they are too damn clever by 0.5).

B

"We are the keepers of the sacred words: Ni, Peng and Neee-Wom."

I don't know what any of the 'clever' posts mean that are to do with those small words.

But as an issue I still think its an interesting thing to look at.

It's just a flippent Monty Python quote, HS. I was trying to disarm one of those tiresome debates about people who think that by simply avoiding the moderation filter thay can continue to post offensively.

Will there be a loud "plop" noise when this site finally disappears up it's own arse?

Icy

But I think its interesting to look at the whole concept of people who aren't settled down and owning land..and the way that they are seen as threatening.

I remember back in the 80s when there were things known as 'hippie convoys' that Thatcher disparaged and said she was going to sort out. They were people who had decided to adopt that lifestyle. And that's when Stonehenge had a big barbed wire fence put around it to prevent them getting there for the solstice.

>> Will there be a loud "plop" noise when this site finally disappears up it's own arse?

No, that noise will be a sort of schlshlschlooooooooopffff! noise. Or maybe a loud OUCH!

Plops are what come OUT of arses.

I don't really think there should be a need to be itinerant in this day and age. People should be encouraged to settle down, and the council should provide adequate sites for them to do so. Yes, petty crime took place on the Essex site and elsewhere, but surely the first step to accepting these people into our community is to offer them somewhere to stay.

Hopefully someone will post again about the actual issue at some point.

PS - I shouldn't have posted post 53 - The plops was just me trying to be funny. Funniness FAIL though. (Context again, everything's context. I'm unsubbing now, but you know where to find me).

What do you mean not be itinerant in this day and age?

For thousands of years that was the norm..and still is in many parts of the world. Its clearly something human beings feel comfortable with as a way of life. I could imagine being very happy to grow up in a culture like that.

But I don't suppose there's anyone on h2g2 who is part of such a culture to contribute to this discussion.

I'm asking whether that way of life is still relevant. Gypsies originally travelled around between horse fairs, selling clothes pegs, etc, didn't they? Essex has shown that they are happy to settle down and build houses when it suits.

If I may contribute thoughts, though they may be totally wrong ...

'Gypsies' were travellers, foot-loose and not beholding to anyone. They moved from unclaimed land to uncaimed land. To keep themselves stocked, they would stop and provide 'tinkerer' services or entertainment of many sorts. Sometimes thievery was a trademark, but not always. Guile and trickery such as as park, fair, midway or amusement park may have been part of the trade.

Not so much now, as I read of them in the news they move onto publicly owned and cared-for land. Taking and taking and never giving anything in return. Even in days of Yore (circa when?) wanderers contributed something back into society. Entertainment or skills if nothing else. Today's travellers contribute nothing, take resources of everyone else, and move on when forced to.

Corrections of my understandings welcome, please. (We don't seem to have many of them in Canada. While maybe 95% of the country is open and free, little has been tamed enough for folks to drop into except what tax-payers have created)

Yes but even if they choose to settle down..which actually I think is only a kind of temporary settling..they are still outside the normal system..so its in like 'reservations' for them or in places without the planning laws.

I would hope our society would celebrate a fundamental difference in attitude towards the idea of land ownership. Its not like there are teeming millions of them. its a very very tiny sub group.

I wonder where the ones turfed off will go to?

I expect we'll all end up living in a sea of blandness eventually though.