I'm just an average gypsy AMA

[GypsyAMA]

I've noticed a lot of hatred towards gypsies on here so I thought I'd answer any questions anyone may have that could help you to understand my culture more. You might still disagree with many aspects, but at least you'll be coming from facts and not stereotypes.

Apparently this gypsy wanted to buy the baby out of the garden, family refused. Gypsy cursed the baby who then later died for no apparent reason. The baby’s name was considered cursed. Uncle then named his daughter the same name, grandmother horrified that the cursed name had been used. Uncle’s daughter died in a tragic car accident. The name was cursed, so no surprise there.

Except the baby just doesn’t exist!!

No wonder gypsies have a bad reputation with stories like that handed down the generations!!!

Thank you! I tried looking, but unfortunately I can’t find it! Would you be able to share the context of the post?

Never mind, I saw you posted the vid! Thanks

What's with theme parks on Easter Sunday?

Coming in with various opinions.
Yes, I live in an area where we get lots of travellers.
Growing up we were always told not to go near the fields when travellers were about.
My friends and I would both follow rules well. We ended up making friends with a couple of boys. They were so kind. The prejudice was awful. One boy gave me 50p and asked me to go to the shop for him as he was 'not allowed in cos the shopkeeper said he might steal and his hands were dirty so could spread germs' The judgement upset me so much.
No mess was ever left by this group.
There was another group 'stereotypical, messy, shouty group.
I can categorically say in my area there are more groups that are friendly and clean than the ones leaving human excrement.

We also have a few settled gypsies. Their gardens are a blinking mess! However their homes are something that could be in a catalogue! I would never let a gypsy into my home purely cos they would be judging me on my dust 😂

I do have a thought though. I know you do not speak for all gypsies. So in general, what would be the most common reaction if your unmarried daughter came home pregnant with no intention of staying with the father.
Or an underage pregnancy.
You pull kids out of education as you do not value it and also due to them learning about sex. I disagree with this completely but I am sure it makes sense to you and as long as kids are loved, fed and happy now and in their future nobody else has a say.
But yeah, if you can answer the above that would very great.

Thank you for thread OP

My great, great grandmother or something like that married a Romany man with the surname Lee in Essex. Aren't they like quite well known, the Lee family?

How would you know it was members from either of these groups and not gorgas?

You say that if women end up in bad marriages they can always return home. What if they were born into abusive households? How would a woman escape if she was raised with abuse and married into abuse?

Indeed.
I think there are a lot of such stories that were told by previous generations and after a while that shit surely seeps into people's heads and changes the way they see things.

What sort of work do you envisage young people being able to do without school education, and do you think a) there is enough demand for them to earn well doing that work and b) lack of academic skills could limit their ability to compete in those occupations?

Where i live there are two ways we experience gypsy communities:

1. a seasonal travelling group who stop here from time to time. They stop on public land and leave it damaged, leave human waste & rubbish, and there is a huge spike in car theft and reports of aggressive door to door selling targetting vulnerable people, every single time they are in the area.

2. a local settled population of gypsy heritage. They mainly seem to work as tradespeople but have a bad reputation for things like wanting cash in hand even when the job is thousands, refusing to give written quotes or receipts, refusing to say where materials are being sourced from, asking for more money half way through, leaving jobs incomplete, and targetting vulnerable elderly people and charging them crazy fees for work that doesn't need doing. We try to be open minded and asked for a quote from one but it was a nightmare, he wouldn't put anything on paper at all, I'm not sure he could read. You would send him a text and he would turn up at your house a couple hours later asking what you wanted. He had a very young lad (maybe about 12) working with him and we were not sure about the legality of that. We went with someone else.

From someone who left school before secondary education?

I'd just like to remind everyone that's posting about "leaving rubbish in parks" about the utter state of places like Clapham Common and Primrose Hill on the first sunny day after lockdown a couple of years ago.

and the mess left after festivals. After concerts. In the cinema. At football stadiums. Utterly disgusting and nothing to to with Gypsies.

Dirty disrespectful people exist in all walks of life, including middle class suburbia.

Blimey, you're going to run out of question marks in a minute.

Yes I did, because the OP had said it earlier so (if you read the thread and catch up) I was using her words.

Why do gypsy kids think it's funny to stamp on ducklings' heads while the mother ducks watch in anguish? I've seen in happen in two completely different parts of the country now, two completely different sets of kids at different times. Makes me physically sick.

I don't agree with it, but they don't do it 24/7 and they don't trespass, and if nothing else at least they pay council tax to contribute to the clean up, or they're in places where cleaners and hired to clean. I agree this country is disgusting though, it's third world when it comes to litter and filth.

I suspect she's discouraged by the closed-mindedness being shown by some pps on this thread.

@Garlicked you see, I don’t think it’s coming across that the OP isn’t educated. She seems more educated that all the posters making dogmatic, black and white comments about gypsies. You must surely know that the education system is about churning out workers. It doesn’t teach many useful life skills, it doesn’t focus on philosophy and at secondary school it doesn’t seem to teach basic politics. Correct me if I’m wrong on that, but most people don’t seem to know the ideologies of the two main political parties, so I assume it’s the case.

I perhaps look at this from a different perspective to most mumsnetters. I don’t think women’s lives have improved much (and in many ways they’re far worse) and I live more on the fringes of society than most. The OP seems very happy and she’s got a community and security although I recognise that to maintain this security she has to conform. I’d be ostracised for standing by homosexual family members.

You say you speak English but use about 50% Roma vocabulary as well.

Would those words be intelligible/used by Romany gypsies from other countries?

For example, any Roma coming from Eastern Europe - would you share the same language and traditions, despite presumably not having mixed for a couple of hundred years at least? Do you mix with them or just with Romany gypsies who’ve lived in Britain for generations?

I read somewhere that Roma people originated in India, and spread westwards into Europe hundreds of years ago. Are there stories and traditions from that time?

Oh well, it must obviously be a gypsy thing if you've seen it twice, then, and no non-gypsy kids would ever do a terrible thing like that. 🙄

Do you think you have about the right level of integration with non-Roma society? I honestly don’t mean this offensively, but is it weird when you interact with doctors, accountants, teachers, etc knowing that it’s very unlikely you’d ever have a gypsy in those roles because of the level of formal education required? Is it hard to find accountants who’ll work with your community for example? I admit I find it a bit odd that you’d “use” services like that from outside your community but also worry about teenagers mixing with non-gypsies and having hardly any non-gypsy friends yourself? Does it feel strange to you or just how life is?

Are most people in settled gypsy communities self employed or do they do other jobs? Presumably the boys find it hard without any GCSEs to do anything other than work self-employed or for other gypsies?

@AmethystSparkles the standard school education system is not perfect by any means, doesn’t suit everyone, and doesn’t provide a fully comprehensive education (as you say, lack of life skills etc). But traditional education leads to qualifications which open doors. That’s what it’s all about.
I want my kids to have as many opportunities as possible. I don’t want doors to close to them until it’s absolutely necessary. There’s nothing wrong with being a SAHM, nothing at all. But if you’ve got the brain, get the qualifications first, so you have choices. Don’t opt out at age 12, so that your life is pretty much mapped out before you’ve even hit puberty.

I doubt it because her answers were vague before the bigots came along.

Thanks for this, it’s really enlightening. I have an issue with your stance on vaccination. Vaccination works by providing herd immunity, which means a certain percentage of the population need to be vaccinated. This then protects the vulnerable who can’t be vaccinated. In not vaccinating your children, you are relying on the rest of us to vaccinate our children, to protect your children. This is very selfish.

You claim to have researched vaccination, do you not know about this aspect?

Thanks for the AMA, very interesting. I would love to know, what's the norms around pregnancy and child birth? How are births, birthdays and other festivals celebrated? Are you close to your own family and in laws?

All the Roma people round where I live have arrived from Romania and speak Romanian. The men dress like any ordinary man in this country, the women always wear wedge shoes/sandals and full length skirts. The women have long hair, often plaited or worn loose and from what I can observe I think they wear headscarves once they are married. They have been in the area for less than 10 years and they do make a real mess, the ones near me chuck rubbish out onto the street including nappies. There will often be about 10 of them crammed into small terraced houses, I can only think that they have come from far worse conditions so living like this is an improvement. There is misogyny in their community, one of my friends (female) is a community worker and she had a role to explain to them the basics of life here, such as bin day, how to register with a GP, how to enrol your child in school and they refused to engage with her because of her gender. I think that respect for people's culture should be a two way street, I am very much in favour of people preserving their way of life but you do need to abide by the rules of the country you are making your home in.