Roma
What to do about the Roma? Does anything need to be done? France thinks so. English villagers are turning out in force to block the vans. Unwanted, do the Roma have the right to descend on villages or roam about this way? Should they all go back to Romania? Is it a case of having the right but not on my patch please … ? Why must they be sedentary and not nomadic? Should all local councils provide areas for travellers or is the rise of crime in the local community too great a danger? Should there be a new Porajmos? Is the Decade of Inclusion another example of Them in action, designed to provoke violence in and to further fracture communities? Should we all learn to love the Roma? Should we forced to by the government? Is there a demonization of difference?
Filed under: Society & human issues
Them don’t like wanderers – hard to pin down, tax, bully.
Porrajmos? Only if you are a fourth Reicher
There just seems to be something a bit childish about “travellers”. The truth is that most of the world is too populated to allow for a nomadic lifestyle alongside the rooted population and it would be easier to tolerate if they didn’t depend quite so parasitically on the fruits of the rooted population. Such as schools, hospitals, infrastructure and material wealth. These things require taxes and responsibilities – not for opting out of the bits you don’t like.
I have no problem with them leading a nomadic lifestyle; libertarian principles support it completely.
What I do have a problem with, is the filth, crime, and violence these people spread wherever they go, and the fact that they expect to ignore the law whenever it suits them. And most of all the fact that politically-correct numbskulls in the Local Authorities and the Legislature allow this to happen.
Obey they rules; respect others; and you can be as nomadic as you like.
By some strange coincidence (Perhaps re your post above?) I have an incomplete post on the subject of ‘gypsies’ waiting at Pox. I’ve been researching the issue and looking at YouTube etc, and I have been acquainted with various sorts of traveller over the years. My opinion of them and what should be done with them remains unchanged and is probably actionable in the current social and political climate so I’ll say nowt except to echo Andrew Duffin.
Gypsies are said to have arrived in England in 1505 (no source given) and it seems that they were a nuisance from then on, since a law was passed in 1530 expelling them from the kingdom. In about 1564 it was made an offence punishable by death to be a foreign gypsy in England (an early form of immigration control perhaps), which suggests that they were seen as a serious nuisance.
The attitudes and opinions of the great Br*tish public to gypsies and other forms of ‘traveller’ (viz vagrant) are based on long experience not ‘prejudice’ and it is reprehensible to describe those who complain about them as ignorant, intolerant or ill-informed.
Couldn’t agree more with the above, encapsulated by Andrew.
A child was killed in what appears to have been an arson attack on a Roma camp outside Rome in the early hours of Friday. Interior Minister Maroni has said Italy is going to be even tougher than France on the Roma, a term which is often used to mean “Romanians” here.
That’s indeed bad, Welshcakes and shows the depth of feeling. As Andrew says, it is what they bring with them, rather than the nomadic lifestyle, which is the issue.
It is not a lifestyle, James, it is a life, a language, a nation. It is vain to speak of inclusion on their behalf when all their customs are deliberately arranged against that.
School is not permitted, literacy is not permitted, different associations are not permitted, movement is seasonal and constant, assimilation is made impossible. So is law enforcement. That is not a coincidence.
Marriage is arranged by age twelve. Roles are defined. Our role is to be their marks.
I’ve known a few gypsies half out of the life. One was a truly great violinist, classical, jazz, everything. He and his family lived outside the life, but Kalman, for all his greatness, was quite illiterate.
Only by avoiding assimilation could they have lasted a thousand years, but that does not mean that people are not well within their rights in avoiding what they bring.
“Should they all go back to Romania? ”
Why Romania?
Though the fact that these ‘Roma’ are ‘Romanian” nationals can be a bit confusing, in actuality there is no connection between Romanians and Roma – it is merely a semantic coincidence. Roma (formerly referred to as gypsies, though this term is now considered politically incorrect) are an ethnic group believed to originally have come from Northern India that have lived a nomadic, seperate lifestyle in Europe for almost a thousand years. They speak a separate language of Indo-Aryan origin. Today they are mostly located in Eastern Europe, though there are some in Western Europe including 400,000 Roma who are French nationals. But there are many Roma who have come to France from Eastern Europe in recent years since those countries joined the EU (incidentally, French Roma and Eastern European Roma speak two different Roma languages that are not mutually comprehensible). French Roma rights groups estimate that about 12,000 Roma have come to France from Romania and Bulgaria.
The word ‘Roma’ comes from the common word for ‘man’ in all the various gypsy languages across Europe. The name ‘Romania’ was developed because the population speaks a Romance language descended from Roman inhabitants.
So, why Romania and not the countries they were originated?
I suspect that someone wants to transform Romania in a gypsy camp!