The amazing ongoing hideousness of Michael Howard (Part XXXIV)

[MikeH]

If we're being defended by an Australian the criticism must be really unfair.

[Drake Tungsten]

Celebrated army?

The navy I'll give you, but then again we all know navies are made up entirely of homosexuals. It's no wonder that the English had the world's largest...

[Pekka]

Drake, and who has the largest now?

[Adrian Hon]

It's not the size, but what you do with it Read a history book about the British Navy from 1500 onwards, it whips the Yanks' asses any day of the week.

Admiral Nelson

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sava
I'm not really anti-"traveler" (is that the PC term for them)... but as I understand it, these travelers are a source of crime. Personally, I agree with anti-squatting laws and such.

But my gut leans towards anti.

Yeah, pity your brain doesn't lean towards not letting you make statements such as 'these travellers are a source of crime'.


What, in the same way that say, residential dwellers AREN'T a supposed source of crime ?


Quick, let's ban people staying in permanent dwellings, I have a gut feeling those types are a source of crime, and their residences and workplaces simply breeding grounds for disorder and robbery and burglary and rape....

[Mr. Harley]

Racial or ethnic descent does not make people criminals.

True, and a confuser. The descent does not per so make you a criminal, but the culture can, especially by other standards.

Let me take an extreme case. "Kitchen Fires" in India, or killing/threatening to kill your spouse for extra money. The entire Dowry and caste system that developed in India makes this much more likely, and only recently has it been aggressively prosecuted. Police often just shrugged and ignored the crime, even though it has been illegal for decades (note, that means IT WAS NOT for some indeterminate period in the past). Does being a male Indian make you a spousal murderer. No. Does it, in the population demographics of India, make it more likely to happen. Substantially.

In the American South blacks were routinely lynched up until the 1920's. It was illegal. Do being a white southerner make is much more likely you were intolerant, and more likely to support such crimes, even considering them moral. Yes. Does that change the fact that individual whites died trying to stop the lynchings, including law enforcement officers? No.

Among the Roma, at least in Eastern Europe, I have read - I HAVE NOT experienced this - there is an attitude about fixed property that petty theft is not really a crime. Look above at the "Kitchen Fires" and lynchings if you do not believe substantially worse behavior can be societally condoned.

Add in the fact that small communities are often hostile to outsiders, and look for excuses to show how bad these outsiders are. Especially if the bored local adolescents/young adults find them sexually exotic, and have some liaisons to spice up there lives. Nothing gets a small community more riled up than Outsiders, especially racially different outsiders, having sex with their pure and unsullied girls.

I strongly suspect that local criminals will often commit crimes when the itinerants show up (they are not stupid, do it then and then blame it on those gypsies), and then the blaming dynamic gives the Roma ample excuse to want to strike back - the Gadge beat my brother so badly that he is brain damaged, so if I knife one of them they deserve it (see Pekka's experience) - justifications for wrong behavior can go in BOTH directions. Plus, Roma criminals will take advantage of the fact they are itinerants, and can probably engage in even worse crime sprees than local criminals because they don't have to worry as much about being caught - they aren't staying. Being of a criminal mindset, they will not care how their activities now provide justification for the Gadge to say "See, gypsies are criminals."

Then there is the term Gadge that I do not need to treat with the same standards I treat my own people with. I dislike those pejorative terms to begin with by any group, and when a minority, especially an itinerant minority, has an attitude that permits that kind of language, you have a tinderbox. Simply because if will give the larger society around them an even better set of excuses to persecute them, and the larger society always has one advantage when it comes to pissing matches – numbers and the law/military.

We have Irish Travellers here in the US, and just recently had a local murder, combined with beatings and frauds primarily of the elderly. They were prosecuted and the men of the band all put into prison – the evidence was very clearcut, by the way. The young men were being coerced, in some cases, by the ringleader, a very unpleasant individual in his 40’s if memory serves me correctly. Being aliens in this country they drew together, and sadly a monster took advantage of this. However, this proves nothing – except that this was a band of criminals.

The largest problem there is, and neither group here seems to want to discuss it, are the problems of population, i.e. statistical analysis, versus individuals. Low income housing increases the local crime rate. Period, statistically verifiable. It also tends to cause an overall deterioration in the local schools, as there will be an increase in class disruption, violence, and drugs.

However, and having been poor due to crippling family medical expenses as a child, those figures mean nothing with respect to any one poor individual. The problem is that a community is dealing with a population, and want to justifiably (I am not saying this is right) protect itself from these issues. On the other hand, it is wrong to brand a single individual with that broad brush. In most cases societies are refusing to discuss these issues, so you have discussions of people talking past each other, i.e. concerns about overall crime versus concerns about prejudice – applying group statistics to individuals, and only drawing on the negative implications of those statistics, i.e. stereotypes.

If, for example, in a normal small, middle class British community the number of local people who engage in petty theft is one tenth of a percent, i.e. 0.1% and the number of Roma who engage in petty theft is 0.5%, that is five times higher. Add in the fact the locals will increase their theft – you now have Roma to blame – and that the Roma petty thieves are more active because they are itinerants- and you will, if you live locally, see a substantial increase in petty theft. Yet you have in this case 49 out of 50 (a vast majoritty) Roma who don’t engage in theft. Is it right to penalize them? And when you do, you can be rest assured they will resent it, especially when they know that your own local criminals are in part responsible for the crime spree blamed on them. Thus they become less likely to cooperate when local law enforcement, i.e. Gaijin, want to prosecute on of their own.

I do not know the ins-and-outs of various Roma populations, plus the Nazis guaranteed that the only large populations of them left are in the areas they did not conquer, i.e. the Britsh Isles as one example. They killed a higher percentage of Roma than Jews relatively to their respective populations, from my understanding. None of that changes the issues here, and that in general having an intelligent discussion about them usually starts with name calling, it doesn’t even get a chance to degenerate to that.


edited - correted Gadje for Gaijen, I always transpose due to similarity.

[Drake Tungsten]

Drake, and who has the largest now?

Even with the evidence staring them right in the face, people still doubt the power of the gay mafia in America...

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Celebrated army?

The navy I'll give you, but then again we all know navies are made up entirely of homosexuals. It's no wonder that the English had the world's largest...

Our army's still much better than yours. If only we had your equipment.

[Drake Tungsten]

You probably could have our equipment, but I doubt you can afford it. I'm surprised you guys have enough money in your defence budget to hire Scots and Gurkhas to do the real fighting for you...

[Adrian Hon]

Meh, the Scots and the Gurkhas are cheap to hire. You guys just wish you could hire the Gurkhas, but you have crappy laws preventing that.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by child of Thor
sounds a little like what happened in the USA elections(preying on peoples fears etc)? Anyway its cheap, and i dont think it will help the tories win over here.

Thats exactly what is happening.

Having said that, I would n't want the smelly, thieving pikey b@stards living anywhere near me!

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
You probably could have our equipment, but I doubt you can afford it. I'm surprised you guys have enough money in your defence budget to hire Scots and Gurkhas to do the real fighting for you...

They're cheap, that's why we have them.

And Irish, don't forget the Irish.

[Zulu Elephant]

The bottom line is that the Tories are thrashing around against this Recent polls. They dont have a hope in hell even if they get all the (to quote the West Wing) "right-wing reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun Leave it to Beaver trip back to the 50s" vote they're still going to lose.

Since their inception, New Labour have represented what the SDP/Lib Dems set out to do - provide a party where the center and moderate left wingers can come together. This country has had a centre-left majority for years with nowhere to go. The centre didn't have any love for the Tories, but the 'nationalise everything,' disarm and 'tax until the pips squeak' attitude of old Labour scared them more. The Conservatives outmanouvered and destroyed the Liberal Party in the 1920s with the single vision of winning power in the future simply on the basis of being the non-socialist party and it worked for 70 years. Now Labour have squared the circle and the Tories will hopefully be out of power forever.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
You probably could have our equipment, but I doubt you can afford it. I'm surprised you guys have enough money in your defence budget to hire Scots and Gurkhas to do the real fighting for you...

You need cheap, disposable troops when you go into war allied with the Americans.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Originally posted by C0ckney


now why are people unhappy about this? well if someone puts up a garden shed or a minor extension to his house, then the council may refuse them permission, and if they have already built it, they can force them (through the courts if necessary) to remove it. however if travellers set up a ****-off huge illegal camp, trash the area, and cause problems for residents then the council or the police can't touch them. now what this boils down to (and for some reason this doesn't appear anywhere in laz's post...)

It doesn't appear in my post because it's inflammatory, bigoted, flawed on more than one point of law, and unsubstantiated. I'm not prepared to drop my posting standards that low.

the tories want to make planning laws apply to everyone equally, what a bunch of bastards eh...

When a law clearly affects one sector of the community to a far more adverse exten tham others, it clearly does not apply equally. That's why we've had the principle of equity in law for the past few centuries. I'm in full agreement about them being bastards, however.

a couple of interesting facts

- the government recently spent £30 million (on top of a huge number of lottery grants) on sprucing up legal camp sites

...which are disappearing steadily, and have been over the past decade.

- there are currently over 4000 illegal gypsy camps in the UK
- cleaning up after travellers at a site in nazeing (essex) has cost taxpayers an estimated £450,000

Hence the need to provide the established camps the Gypsies want, and provide them with the waste-disposal facilities us house-dwellers take for granted.