hedgehog
Non-Aligned
Enter your message here...
Posts: 6,826
|
Post by hedgehog on Sept 13, 2016 23:05:25 GMT
People who self identify as either Gypsy or travellers number around 1 million in the UK, although only around 1/3 maintain their nomadic lifestyle.
Statistics banded about suggest that only around 10% of the community vote, as part of the boundary review how about considering allocating a proportional number of seats to these communities.
This could be away to engage the travelling community in the democratic process and a way of getting their voices heard.
|
|
carlton43
Non-Aligned
Posts: 48,275
Member is Online
|
Post by carlton43 on Sept 13, 2016 23:49:26 GMT
A deeply offensive, undemocratic, unfair, disruptive and extremely patronising idea. Every other possible set of minorities would then clamour for similar treatment. The rules are simple. You become a resident citizen with an address. You register. You exercise your vote. Or you don't fulfil this and you don't get a vote.
I am entirely unconcerned about whether they vote or are able to do so. But I am concerned at the way they evade income tax, VAT, local taxes, vehicle licences, vehicle insurance and much of what makes civic society work. Park in lay-byes without prosecution whilst others are prosecuted. Park on verges, waste ground, private land, in parks on playing fields. Cause an untold amount off mess which locals clear up and pay for. Cause a deal of damage to gates, fences and other property. Let us attend to all of that first please.
|
|
hedgehog
Non-Aligned
Enter your message here...
Posts: 6,826
|
Post by hedgehog on Sept 14, 2016 0:38:56 GMT
A deeply offensive, undemocratic, unfair, disruptive and extremely patronising idea. Every other possible set of minorities would then clamour for similar treatment. The rules are simple. You become a resident citizen with an address. You register. You exercise your vote. Or you don't fulfil this and you don't get a vote. I am entirely unconcerned about whether they vote or are able to do so. But I am concerned at the way they evade income tax, VAT, local taxes, vehicle licences, vehicle insurance and much of what makes civic society work. Park in lay-byes without prosecution whilst others are prosecuted. Park on verges, waste ground, private land, in parks on playing fields. Cause an untold amount off mess which locals clear up and pay for. Cause a deal of damage to gates, fences and other property. Let us attend to all of that first please. Maybe if they felt they had a voice they would show more respect to the rest of the nations citizens. The travelling community, those who still travel are more or less excluded from our democratic process at present, and would not identify to a geographical constituency, the boundary review is about creating equal sized constituencies to portray the image of a democratic electoral system while functionally excluding a huge number of its citizens.
|
|
Richard Allen
Banned
Four time loser in VUKPOTY finals
Posts: 19,052
|
Post by Richard Allen on Sept 14, 2016 0:49:54 GMT
An utterly repugnant idea. What other gangs of criminal scum should we give special democratic privileges to? Burglars? Rapists? Murderers?
|
|
mondialito
Labour
Everything is horribly, brutally possible.
Posts: 4,924
|
Post by mondialito on Sept 14, 2016 1:08:36 GMT
While calling an entire group of people 'criminal scum' isn't helpful, this idea wouldn't work. If there were to be reserved seats for Travellers, turnout would still be low.
The lack of democratic engagement isn't a question of them being disenfranchised by an oppresive state, but a lack of engagement with the state on their part in a number of areas, not least education.
|
|
hedgehog
Non-Aligned
Enter your message here...
Posts: 6,826
|
Post by hedgehog on Sept 14, 2016 1:21:47 GMT
While calling an entire group of people 'criminal scum' isn't helpful, this idea wouldn't work. If there were to be reserved seats for Travellers, turnout would still be low. The lack of democratic engagement isn't a question of them being disenfranchised by an oppresive state, but a lack of engagement with the state on their part in a number of areas, not least education. A lack of engagement with the state, you could also say a lack of engagement and understanding from the state and the general community to travellers. There is no understanding or willingness to understand the various travellers lifestyles, they live outside excepted norms, so are to be feared and demonised.
|
|
mondialito
Labour
Everything is horribly, brutally possible.
Posts: 4,924
|
Post by mondialito on Sept 14, 2016 1:33:11 GMT
While calling an entire group of people 'criminal scum' isn't helpful, this idea wouldn't work. If there were to be reserved seats for Travellers, turnout would still be low. The lack of democratic engagement isn't a question of them being disenfranchised by an oppresive state, but a lack of engagement with the state on their part in a number of areas, not least education. A lack of engagement with the state, you could also say a lack of engagement and understanding from the state and the general community to travellers. There is no understanding or willingness to understand the various travellers lifestyles, they live outside excepted norms, so are to be feared and demonised. That is also true, a better effort must be made all round. I don't think your suggestion would acheive that though.
|
|
hedgehog
Non-Aligned
Enter your message here...
Posts: 6,826
|
Post by hedgehog on Sept 14, 2016 1:35:23 GMT
While calling an entire group of people 'criminal scum' isn't helpful, this idea wouldn't work. If there were to be reserved seats for Travellers, turnout would still be low. The lack of democratic engagement isn't a question of them being disenfranchised by an oppresive state, but a lack of engagement with the state on their part in a number of areas, not least education. A lack of engagement with the state, you could also say a lack of engagement and understanding from the state and the general community to travellers. There is no understanding or willingness to understand the various travellers lifestyles, they live outside excepted norms, so are to be feared and demonised. It would be interesting to know if the Mauri electorates in New Zealand are considered to be a success, I would see a restricted traveller vote system here akin to the Mauri system.
|
|
hedgehog
Non-Aligned
Enter your message here...
Posts: 6,826
|
Post by hedgehog on Sept 14, 2016 2:00:22 GMT
A lack of engagement with the state, you could also say a lack of engagement and understanding from the state and the general community to travellers. There is no understanding or willingness to understand the various travellers lifestyles, they live outside excepted norms, so are to be feared and demonised. That is also true, a better effort must be made all round. I don't think your suggestion would acheive that though. I think there is a strong argument to say that at present the traveller communities, Romany, Irish and new age are ill served by the democratic process, do we even know what proportion are registered to vote ?, the boundary commision seems to be ignoring this whole community, I don't know if traveller seats would work or not, but based on numbers of travellers, we should have at least 10-15 MP's from those communities, we have none and I can't recall there ever being an MP from the traveller tradition. As a country we are quite happy to ignore these people, Labour and the Greens are very good at talking about positive discrimination for disadvantaged groups, but we hear very little about giving travellers a voice.
|
|
carlton43
Non-Aligned
Posts: 48,275
Member is Online
|
Post by carlton43 on Sept 14, 2016 2:04:50 GMT
That is also true, a better effort must be made all round. I don't think your suggestion would acheive that though. I think there is a strong argument to say that at present the traveller communities, Romany, Irish and new age are ill served by the democratic process, do we even know what proportion are registered to vote ?, the boundary commision seems to be ignoring this whole community, I don't know if traveller seats would work or not, but based on numbers of travellers, we should have at least 10-15 MP's from those communities, we have none and I can't recall there ever being an MP from the traveller tradition. As a country we are quite happy to ignore these people, Labour and the Greens are very good at talking about positive discrimination for disadvantaged groups, but we hear very little about giving travellers a voice. That would be a spectacularly unpopular policy for an absolutely undeserving useless rabble that we should be discouraging from being here at all.
|
|
|
Post by uhurasmazda on Sept 14, 2016 3:35:17 GMT
A lack of engagement with the state, you could also say a lack of engagement and understanding from the state and the general community to travellers. There is no understanding or willingness to understand the various travellers lifestyles, they live outside excepted norms, so are to be feared and demonised. It would be interesting to know if the Mauri electorates in New Zealand are considered to be a success, I would see a restricted traveller vote system here akin to the Mauri system. Mā ori, fyi. By and large, the Maori electorates have been successful in ensuring Maori representation - Māori representing general electorates have been few and far between until recent decades, and between 1934 and 1976 there were no Māori Ministers at all. If we didn't have Maori electorates during that time, I doubt whether we'd have had any Maori MPs in the House. Although that said, the decades when all of the Maori seats were controlled by one family of cult leaders was a bit of a low point. But the difference here is that the Māori are the indigenous people, and their status is enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840. You can't really have a New Zealand without specific representation and relative autonomy for the Māori as a kind of separate but equal thing. The same isn't true of a United Kingdom without Roma.
|
|
|
Post by East Anglian Lefty on Sept 14, 2016 5:39:08 GMT
There's no particular difficulty for gypsies and travellers in registering to vote (even those who do move regularly usually over-winter in the same place every year), the issue is that most of them don't particularly want to. Partly because most people aren't that bothered about voting either, and traveller culture is not that different in most manifestations than British or Irish culture; mostly because the democratic process isn't that bothered about engaging with them.
|
|
|
Post by johnhemming on Sept 14, 2016 6:10:03 GMT
|
|
|
Post by Adam in Stroud on Sept 14, 2016 6:59:12 GMT
And travellers are only a relatively recent Irish grouping. I think it was the 16th century IRC. Some of us clearly have differing opinions as to what constitutes "recently".
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2016 7:04:37 GMT
If there's one thing large sections of the 'travelling community' really hate, it's being lumped together.
|
|
|
Post by Adam in Stroud on Sept 14, 2016 7:10:33 GMT
An utterly repugnant idea. What other gangs of criminal scum should we give special democratic privileges to? Burglars? Rapists? Murderers? Hang on. I've definitely had my issues with the traveller "community" in the past, I feel there are endemic issues of anti-social behaviour (including environmental damage) and crime. I think it is going a bit far to characterise them all as criminal scum. Some people are born into families with that lifestyle and I don't imagine it is easy to simply re-define yourself. In principle it is not a precedent for other communities claiming equal treatment - it's a specific issue of people without fixed addresses in an electoral system which theoretically allows everyone who isn't in jail a vote but ties it to a fixed address. In practice mondialito is right, most of them wouldn't vote and it would provide a political niche at public expense for professional identity-issue idiots. I also just think that travelling is not a lifestyle that should be encouraged - it causes problems for the wider community and the fact that it doesn't fit in with the electoral system is just one of numerous ways in which it is not compatible with modern society. I'm all for tolerating other lifestyles, including those who want to opt out of society totally if they aren't doing any harm to others, but travelling does cause problems for others and just because it has been going on for a long time doesn't mean it should be tolerated - persecuting witches was a part of our culture for a long time and still is in some African communes but ti doesn't mean it should be allowed, let alone encouraged..
|
|
middyman
Conservative
"The problem with socialism is that, sooner or later, you run out of other people's money."
Posts: 8,050
|
Post by middyman on Sept 14, 2016 7:15:42 GMT
When some travellers/gypsies/whatever moved onto some building land hereabouts the developer removed them within 24 hours - he simply stood by the entrance to their camp photographing everything going in and out. The last thing they wanted was any form of record of their activities.
|
|
|
Post by uhurasmazda on Sept 14, 2016 7:18:41 GMT
Mā ori, fyi. By and large, the Maori electorates have been successful in ensuring Maori representation - Māori representing general electorates have been few and far between until recent decades, and between 1934 and 1976 there were no Māori Ministers at all. If we didn't have Maori electorates during that time, I doubt whether we'd have had any Maori MPs in the House. Although that said, the decades when all of the Maori seats were controlled by one family of cult leaders was a bit of a low point. But the difference here is that the Māori are the indigenous people, and their status is enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840. You can't really have a New Zealand without specific representation and relative autonomy for the Māori as a kind of separate but equal thing. The same isn't true of a United Kingdom without Roma. And travellers are only a relatively recent Irish grouping. I think it was the 16th century IRC. Well, you didn't get there first, is the point. *Kicks dirt over Moriori skeleton* If Ireland was, at its heart, a legal compromise between incoming GB colonisers and the travelling community who were respected as the indigenous population entering into free association with these said colonisers, I'd be right with you, but that is not the case. Replace "travelling community" in the previous sentence with "Irish Catholics", and you basically have Northern Ireland, which likewise has a bi-racial partnership enforced by constitutional law. That's fair. Serbian minority representation in Bosnia is fair. Specific representation for a population which comes here and does not respect the system enough to register to vote in the normal way is not.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2016 7:59:37 GMT
This whole thread is bizarre on so many levels, with most of the posts displaying ignorance, either well-meaning or malicious,either of numbers or understanding of Romany/Traveller/Roma history or lifestyle. I suggest it be removed as it serves no real purpose beyond giving some people a chance to spout vile and ignorant abuse about a community they no little of, although that doesn't prevent a need to express themselves. As it happens,no serious study suggests anywhere near a million people of GTR background. The most agreed figure based on best analysis is around 300,000 (0.5%), though that might be a little high. I have worked with the Gypsy and Traveller communities for 22 years.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2016 8:22:17 GMT
One of the best historical dramas - or, indeed, films of any kind - that I have seen in recent years is "Aferim!" by Radu Jude, about Roma slavery in Wallachia in the 1830s. It's meticulously researched and often very funny, though the ending is ghastly.
It's rare to see a film where people of the past are allowed to speak for themselves, rather than being modern characters in fancy dress.
EDIT: I have dug out a review I wrote after attending one of the launch events.
10/10/2015
To the Hackney Picturehouse today, for a showing of "Aferim!" a Romanian film written and directed by Radu Jude, who was present and answered questions at the end.
"Aferim!" (which ironically means something like "Bravo!" in Turkish) is set in the Principality of Wallachia, then still a vassal state of the moribund Ottoman Empire, in 1835. The main characters are a rough local constable, Costandin, and his naive teenage son. They have been ordered by Iordache, a boyar (nobleman), to find Carfin, a Gypsy slave who had fled after the discovery of his illicit encounter with the boyar's wife, the Lady Sultana.
The plot concerns the search for the man, who they eventually track down and capture, along with another runaway, a young Gypsy boy. Costandin and his son develop a degree of sympathy with the two on the long journey back, as they hear their stories. The boy dreads being returned to his violent master, who he says has already killed his brother. Costandin responds by illegally selling him to a boyar at a market for 4 piastres. It's true he can't keep the boy, but is this an act of charity to give him at least the chance of a better life with a new master? Or is it about the money? This episode well illustrates the ambiguity of many of Costandin's actions throughout the story: he sometimes displays a degree of empathy and concern, but his actions suggest an idiosyncratic and generally self-serving approach to morality.
Meanwhile, other Gypsies at the market try to sell themselves into slavery in order to save themselves from starvation, but the passers-by are too innured to their misery to take any notice of them.
In the case of Carfin, the constable agrees to intercede with Iordache to mitigate his punishment: "Don't worry, you'll get off with a good whipping. It won't be pleasant, but it will pass". Nobody really believes this: not Costandin, not the slave, nor the audience. So, once again, what are Costandin's motives? Is the purpose of his reassuring words to give the strong and potentially troublesome young man some hope to keep him quiet and manageable? Or is Costandin trying to salve his own conscience about selling a man's life for a reward? Probably both.
Costandin does like to think of himself as an honourable man, however. So, when Carfin is returned to his master, he keeps his word, appealing to the boyar to be merciful, even to the point of provoking his anger. Beforehand he meets Sultana privately and persuades her to admit her own primary responsibility for what happened between her and Carfin. To no avail, however: the film has a predictably ghastly ending, rendered all the more stark by the comedy of much that has gone before. For example, just before the terrible denoument, the cuckolded boyar laments of Carfin: "He has made me a laughing stock in my own village - even chickens and babies are laughing at me!". Moments later, he ensures that nobody will ever laugh at him again.
"Aferim!" is a rare work of genius. Filmed in black and white deliberately to distance the audience from the vanished world it portrays, it creates a very believable evocation of life and attitudes in a brutal, feudal society. Carefully researched from archive sources, it doesn't preach: it allows its characters to be themselves and of their time. We, from outside, see the various characters, and the situations they find themselves in, as alternately tragic, shocking, picturesque and hilariously funny. They do not: their small world of lords and slaves, poverty and ignorance, tradition and prejudice, hated Turks and brutal Russians, is simply their reality. Nobody explicitly questions or challenges the state of things - even the wretched, abused Gypsies (referred throughout by everyone as "crows" because of their dark skin).
One can't imagine Hollywood or the BBC making such a film - period dramas are nearly always populated by modern people, parading their modern preoccupations in fancy dress. Worldviews which challenge current orthodoxies are either censored or challenged, generally successfully. The writer and director of "Aferim!", by contrast, eschews scene-setting, or moralising, plunging the viewers straight into his vision of 1830s Wallachia and leaving them to sink or swim. Characters refer to matters outside the main story, such as the recent Russian occupation, or the activities of Hajduks, but do so naturally in conversation, without explaining them. I am sure that someone well-versed in Romanian history would have picked up much more than I did. As for the possible contemporary resonances of some of his themes, that too is left for the audience to ponder for themselves.
|
|