Author Topic: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding  (Read 28579 times)

Charlotte

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Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #50 on: 26 January, 2011, 01:49:52 pm »
Some people just don't deserve what the rest of us are entitled to, you mean?
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Clandy

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #51 on: 26 January, 2011, 01:51:32 pm »
Some people just don't deserve what the rest of us are entitled to, you mean?

Please do not put words in my mouth. If that is the level of your argument then I'm done with you.

Did the programme show any of that?
When Dale Farm was shown, how many traveller men were filmed?

citoyen

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Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #52 on: 26 January, 2011, 01:55:27 pm »
politically correct Grauniad reader

KLAXON!
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Charlotte

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Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #53 on: 26 January, 2011, 02:02:37 pm »
Some people just don't deserve what the rest of us are entitled to, you mean?

Please do not put words in my mouth.

Heaven forbid. I'm sure that some of the chaps living on these sites are quite frightful.

But you do seem terribly keen on tarring an entire community of people with exactly the same brush and I can't help but wonder whether you'd rather be chucking feathers on afterwards and running them out of town on a pole.

People have got to live somewhere.  Where do you think they were going to go after they got evicted?

Or doesn't that matter as long it's "not here"?
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her_welshness

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Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #54 on: 26 January, 2011, 02:03:41 pm »
at people whose only crime is just to want to be different.

That is a matter of experience. For the politically correct Grauniad reader who has never had to live next door to an illegally built encampment of over a thousand on greenbelt land, 'wanting to be different' might be their only crime. For the local population whose lives have been blighted, their shops ruined, their property stolen or vandalised or fly-tipped on, their families threatened with violence or worse, things are very different indeed.

Here's another question about the programme.
When Dale Farm was shown, how many traveller men were filmed? The fathers of the children, the husbands of the women?  I'll bet my Moulton that the answer to that is 'none', because all the traveller women on Dale Farm claim to be single mothers, and claim the relevant benefits. Meanwhile the men spend the majority of their time in Europe buying cheap, dangerous furniture, tobacco, alcohol etc. to import illegally into the country. One has been convicted of raping a wheelchair bound woman in her home, another imprisoned for drug smuggling, another for stealing forty or fifty manhole covers (how sympathetic would you be if you or your child had cycled into one of those?).
I suggest you look up 'Rathkeale travellers'.

So the actions of just a percentage of these people is a reason for us to write off an entire community and force them further down a path of social exclusion?

They exclude themselves. They refuse to send their children to the school provided, they refuse to abide by the laws the rest of us abide by. And you still have not answered my questions.
Did the programme show any of that?
When Dale Farm was shown, how many traveller men were filmed?

None, and thats what freaked me out tbh.

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #55 on: 26 January, 2011, 02:07:23 pm »
Clandy, if it's any consolation, most viewers will be getting a pretty damning impression of these people from their own words and actions.  By their own admission, children are forced to leave school at the age of 12.  At every stage young girls from the age of 6 are shown gyrating like pole dancers and posing like porn stars, (something the editor seems particularly keen on including which makes for pretty disturbing viewing).

They, and their loony supporters, are digging their own hole.  I'm not sure that input from "concerned outsiders" would make much difference.
The sound of one pannier flapping

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #56 on: 26 January, 2011, 02:10:39 pm »
Some people just don't deserve what the rest of us are entitled to, you mean?

Please do not put words in my mouth.

Heaven forbid. I'm sure that some of the chaps living on these sites are quite frightful.

But you do seem terribly keen on tarring an entire community of people with exactly the same brush and I can't help but wonder whether you'd rather be chucking feathers on afterwards and running them out of town on a pole.

People have got to live somewhere.  Where do you think they were going to go after they got evicted?

Or doesn't that matter as long it's "not here"?

It's an interesting problem though. Letting them stay would would make a precedent. Then if someone wanted to open a caravan site or build bungalows without planning permission how would you stop them ? It's supposed to be the same law for everyone. Having a different law based on someone's perceived heritage or race  is a slippery slope. What if I decide I want to live on a caravan in a field I own, should I be prevented without some kind of affidavit or DNA test that proves I am a traveller of some kind ? What about new ages travellers - does the length of time your antecedents have been travellers have a bearing on the law ?
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Mr Larrington

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Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #57 on: 26 January, 2011, 02:19:03 pm »
What about new ages travellers - does the length of time your antecedents have been travellers have a bearing on the law ?

Wiltshire police demonstrated graphically that new-age travellers are illegal in 1985.  Needless to say, it was all Thatcher's fault.
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Cudzoziemiec

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Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #58 on: 26 January, 2011, 02:19:40 pm »
I looked for this on iplayer - and then realised it's a Channel 4 programme!

So I'm commenting without having seen the programme, but it does sound from comments on this thread that whatever community it was actually showing - I presume it was Roma - has a rather different culture to the Polish Roma groups (of which there are four main ones - and they don't even have a language in common). The attitude to girls' education sounds similar, but certainly not the pole dancing etc.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #59 on: 26 January, 2011, 03:10:19 pm »
The mother of the non-traveller girl was a seriously scary piece of work. That lipstick!  :o

I dunno. I'm pretty bleeding-heart liberal, but I'm afraid any dealings I've had with Irish travellers haven't been pleasant, ever since they moved into my primary school playground for months and shouted abuse and threw stuff like hammers at us (little kids), to the time I made the mistake of selling my clapped-out car to some for buttons (you can guess what kind of problems I had after that - it was a right PITA), to the time I was scammed by one as a teenager (I was a fairly soft touch).

Obviously they shouldn't be tarred with the same brush; heck, there's enough of that goes on and I'm generally of the 'live and let live' persuasion. But my (purely anecdotal) experiences mean I really do struggle with this one.  :-[ Quite possibly the reason I've had no 'good' experiences is because the 'good' ones keep themselves to themselves, who knows.

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #60 on: 26 January, 2011, 03:20:03 pm »
I agree with what Pcolbeck said re. planning permission. What that programme did not make clear was that there is no planning permission for permanent structures at the place. Quite clearly there were walls and sheds which had been built. The entire place was not being cleared  - only certain plots where a 28 days notice had been given to clear the structures. As Pcolbeck says, there is one law for us all - if you're given a notice to clear something you have to do it, not just ignore it.

Re. the first communion dresses, when a boy or a girl has first communion it is treated as a special family occasion, and the boy or girl has a smart outfit. When I was young, the girls usually wore a white dress and a lace veil. From what I could see, the traveller community have extrapolated this to volume 11.


citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #61 on: 26 January, 2011, 03:20:33 pm »
It's supposed to be the same law for everyone. Having a different law based on someone's perceived heritage or race  is a slippery slope.

Quite. They glossed over this in the programme, preferring to show emotive pictures of caravans being bulldozed and poor downtrodden women being forcibly evicted by nasty big men, but basically there had been no effort by the community to comply with the law. If they want to move into a particular area, they should adapt to local custom. I feel no compulsion to tolerate antisocial behaviour (which includes riding roughshod over the niceties of planning law) simply because it is de facto part of their culture. They need to provide a better justification than that.

But I don't think any of this is strictly relevant to the programme in any case, because its coverage of the "issues" was glib and superficial. If they wanted to make a sensitive documentary about traveller culture and traditions, they went about it wholly the wrong way.

[edit: crossposted with sotr]

d.
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tiermat

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Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #62 on: 26 January, 2011, 03:21:09 pm »
The mother of the bride was A Man In A Dress tm, I swear.  No woman could be that scary, could they?
I feel like Captain Kirk, on a brand new planet every day, a little like King Kong on top of the Empire State

Clandy

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #63 on: 26 January, 2011, 03:37:32 pm »
Some people just don't deserve what the rest of us are entitled to, you mean?

Please do not put words in my mouth.

Heaven forbid. I'm sure that some of the chaps living on these sites are quite frightful.

But you do seem terribly keen on tarring an entire community of people with exactly the same brush and I can't help but wonder whether you'd rather be chucking feathers on afterwards and running them out of town on a pole.

People have got to live somewhere.  Where do you think they were going to go after they got evicted?

Or doesn't that matter as long it's "not here"?

If you are so keen, I'm sure they'll be happy to hear from you offering up your own property for them to stay on.

Julian

  • samoture
Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #64 on: 26 January, 2011, 03:39:49 pm »
If you like it so much why don't you let them come live there dot com? 

:D

Clandy

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #65 on: 26 January, 2011, 04:10:31 pm »
The mother of the non-traveller girl was a seriously scary piece of work. That lipstick!  :o

<snip>

Obviously they shouldn't be tarred with the same brush

*Having now watched this piece of blatant propaganda on 4od…* Especially not the tar brush that mother was hit with...

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #66 on: 26 January, 2011, 04:41:13 pm »
And very-strange-colour-lady wasn't even a traveller...

I don't think it was all propaganda though, even though some of it was sympathetic. As has been said upthread, they were given enough rope to hang themselves, even without all the other stuff you mention.

For example, there was plenty of scope for the watcher to think 'and how did he pay to hire that £250,000 monster truck and pay for the 14-stone wedding dress/fairytale carriage, hmm?' And then there was the little kid's dress giving her sores etc...and the boys thinking it's perfectly okay to grab girls they want to kiss etc (mind you, some men in clubs think that's okay, too). Yes, they didn't pass comment on it, but they didn't need to.

redshift

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Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #67 on: 26 January, 2011, 04:51:07 pm »
Channel 4's Duty Log would make interesting reading.
L
:)
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Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #68 on: 26 January, 2011, 04:52:36 pm »

For example, there was plenty of scope for the watcher to think 'and how did he pay to hire that £250,000 monster truck and pay for the 14-stone wedding dress/fairytale carriage, hmm?'

Chappie was a "tree surgeon".

Clandy

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #69 on: 26 January, 2011, 04:58:07 pm »
And very-strange-colour-lady wasn't even a traveller...

I don't think it was all propaganda though, even though some of it was sympathetic. As has been said upthread, they were given enough rope to hang themselves, even without all the other stuff you mention.

For example, there was plenty of scope for the watcher to think 'and how did he pay to hire that £250,000 monster truck and pay for the 14-stone wedding dress/fairytale carriage, hmm?' And then there was the little kid's dress giving her sores etc...and the boys thinking it's perfectly okay to grab girls they want to kiss etc (mind you, some men in clubs think that's okay, too). Yes, they didn't pass comment on it, but they didn't need to.

Those costs are barely the tip of the iceberg.


Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #70 on: 26 January, 2011, 05:08:11 pm »

For example, there was plenty of scope for the watcher to think 'and how did he pay to hire that £250,000 monster truck and pay for the 14-stone wedding dress/fairytale carriage, hmm?'

Chappie was a "tree surgeon".


Exactly.

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #71 on: 26 January, 2011, 05:17:22 pm »
Chappie was a "tree surgeon".


Erm, he was lopping bits off a tree from a ladder without any safety gear.  Straight off Rogue Traders - the traditional way the menfolk earn a bob.
The sound of one pannier flapping

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #72 on: 26 January, 2011, 05:18:11 pm »
Chappie was a "tree surgeon".


Erm, he was lopping bits off a tree from a ladder without any safety gear.  Straight off Rogue Traders - the traditional way the menfolk earn a bob.

...and probably dumping the cuttings in a farm gateway up some quiet street at night...

Clandy

Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #73 on: 26 January, 2011, 05:30:22 pm »


and force them further down a path of social exclusion?

Almost in the first minute of the programme:

"They don't like anybody knowing anything about them at all…"

"With the outside world intruding…."

"The traveller community is fighting to keep their way of life free from outside influence…"


They go out of their way to exclude themselves. If they refuse to integrate, if they refuse to obey, or respect, the laws of this country, then any problems they come up against are entirely of their own making. The makers of this piece of propaganda have failed to address this. It is entirely one-sided, showing poor, hard done by 'travellers' homes being bulldozed, little or no mention of the complete absence of planning permission. It was so one-sided I was waiting for a shot of a teddy bear in the rubble.  ::-) Also note it was only Irish 'travellers' homes being demolished, Diddakoi and Romany do not build on greenbelt without planning permission.




Re: Big Fat Gypsy Wedding
« Reply #74 on: 26 January, 2011, 05:47:34 pm »
Toontra, that's kinda what I meant...