Posted on 04/04/2005 1:35:36 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Islington , in North London , used to be a very nice place to live back in the late 70's and early 80's when I used to hand out around there quite a bit ( had an English girlfriend who lived there doncha know ) ...Looks like things have changed , and for the worse ...
Travellers are not Rom Gypsies. They're white. And you know ... the tape of the Traveller woman beating her kid ... now, I lived smack-dab in the middle of a clan of some 25 families Scottish Travelers for six months at a pop for three years. Watched them socializes, congregate, even spied on them at night with binoculars and a tape recorder (which did no good, because they have their own language). I also lived near some Irish Travellers for a couple of years, got to know one "reformed" Irish Traveler rather well (and became very fond of her -- you may remember her as the Traveller who was part of the million dollar lawsuit scam at Walt Disney world, staging her own faux-rape and beating). I also became pretty close to about half a dozen law enforcment people who had made the pursuit and prosecution of Travellers their life's work, and were pretty much experts on these mysterious criminals.
I spoke with one of those guys shortly after that incident at WalMart, and told him what I was thinking: that no Travelers I ever saw were at all prone to beating their kids or at all tolerating it in any other Travleler. He agreed, and we talked about it, how pretty much everybody "in the know" about Travelers figured that the beating was most likely fake and more theatrics than physical contact (if you remember, when examined the child exhibited no bruising or wounds, as I figured would be exactly the case). Barring that, the woman was either not a genuine Traveler, or was in for even bigger trouble from the clan than from the law.
In their society, their kids are EVERYTHING. Certainly they abuse their children by my lights in that they never let the kids go to college, take them out of school usually after third or fourth grade, arrange marriages for them, and literally NEVER butt out of their lives; a person born into a Traveler family is always under someone's thumb; an unmarried Traveler female must always live with relatives, and God help the divorced Traveler female, as she's got it even worse. Alcoholism and drug abuse are big in Traveler societies, so wife- and husband-beating are relatively common. But understand, a Traveler child belongs to EVERY Traveler, and if one was being beaten, that parent would be ostracized and that child would immediately be in the care of grandparents, uncles, or aunts.
I can't tell you how glad I am to hear that! They all have very similar, and often identical, first, middle, and last names, so it's hard to keep a paper trail on them. What I wonder is, what do banks do when the check is legit, gotten by intimidation out of an eldery person for a roofing or paving "services" done by the Travelers who are demanding immediate payment? Their MO is (or was, at least) to cash the check within an hour or so of receiving it.
Anyone who breaks into my home will definetly meet an abrupt ending of their existence.
Me? I got my phone on 911 speed dial! I'll just cower in fear until the police come or until the robbers kill me, whichever comes first. < /Sarcasm >
Not much. They would call in the police, but if the check were obviously written by the authorized writer for the amount shown, and a stop payment was not issued in time, there would be little chance to recover the money. If the check was stolen or kited, the bank would be out the money. This last explains why banks put out warnings about these thieves. Obviously the travellers are mostly effective in stealing money from people, or they would change their M.O.
I wouldn't know, never been to Jolly Old, I'm talking about Michigan.
That sounds about right. They're horrible people, nearly always about seven steps ahead of law enforcement -- through no fault of law enforcement, by the way! Travelers know and take advantage of the juridictions of state and local officials. They live or take lodging in a neighboring county or state, and drive from there a hundred miles or more to where they work the day's scams, then go back across a state or county line where law enforcement of the area where they work the scams can't touch them without jumping through jurisdictional hoops. That is, providing the law enforcement discovers them. Usually, their victims either never know they've been victimized, or are so embarassed by it that they don't report it. When they do report it, the Travelers are long gone -- or if they're back in town for a second or third day of scamming, it's a slightly different crew, so identification of individuals is nearly impossible. These people have had, literally, four or five generations of practice in the U.S. at perfecting their techniques, and constantly evolve them to outwit any change in laws meant to catch them. RICO statues are about the only way they can really get Travelers.
"Travellers" are petty thieves, drifters and con-artists who live a nomadic lifestyle but are not ethnically Roma. They are Gypsy wannabees.
Exactly! But considering the fact that a typical Scottish Traveler scams about $300,000 a year from his victims and lives a plush lifestyle ... perhaps "wannabee" is a sentiment more aptly attributed to the Roms! ;^)
Guess not much has changed in Britain since 1971. Punks and criminals still have free reign. Liberals - including socialites, intellectuals, hippies, yuppies, libertines, ineffectual police, and elected leaders - all create a system that enables murderous thugs to rule, motivated by nothing other than immaturity.
travellers = pikies (see the Guy Ritchie movie "Snatch")
a bit of the old Ultra-Violence yeah???
"The pair, both travellers, were caught on camera and traced to a campsite. They now face jail."
Kill them. Zero recividism.
As for the websites that led me astray, here are a few of 'em:
http://forums.sterlingtimes.org/tool/post/sterlingtimes/vpost?id=3687
http://www.tangled.info/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t33700.html
The poster "Callisto" seems very well informed, except when (s)he gets to the part about Gypsy culture being based on being "very kind" and generous to others. I had to laugh when I read that. In my limited experience, they seem more like cutthroats than anything else, so I took Callisto with a grain of salt.
http://www.thisislancashire.co.uk/lancashire/archive/1996/04/11/NEWS5-2VQ.html
Part of my confusion stems from the word "travellers" (lower case 't') being applied to Gypsies, and I was too careless to notice that "Travellers" (upper case) refers to the other group. Anyway, thanks again for setting me straight on this! :-)
oostig
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