Pontins told to stop screening Irish names

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Type R Tom said:

What I find the hardest part to swallow is that when in a hotel I'm scared to drink a coffee in bed in case I spill it and get fine for cleaning. Yet we have an element here that can behave so badly and without repercussions that it has led to what Pontins have done.

These types of threads on social media always go the same way, half saying "they aren't all like it" and "I know some great ones" vs "they are all terrible". What I wish they would do is the good guys have a word with the others, as they are giving them a bad name!

Travellers; it's the 99% of rotten ones that give the rest a bad name.

[vonuber]

mrporsche said:

vonuber said:

The Romanians are probably the most racist towards the Roma out of anybody.

That would be because they live with them. They don’t buy into the mythical group of hard workers

I stand corrected.

[anonymoususer]

mrporsche said:

vonuber said:

The Romanians are probably the most racist towards the Roma out of anybody.

That would be because they live with them. They don’t buy into the mythical group of hard workers

Genuinely had a conversation with some Romanians who despised them.
I was quite surprised at their level of mistrust

[XCP]

Eric Mc said:

slow_poke said:

Not among the Irish nowadays, I'd imagine.

They are a perceptive race, to be sure.

Respectable Irish people would be as glad as anyone else if the scum are excluded I would have thought. None of the Irish people I know would be on that list of names.

[anonymous-user]

What ever you think of travellers, comercial vehicles etc etc, banning people with a certain name is stupid!

[Sophisticated Sarah]

Don’t agree with the policy as it discriminates against decent folk with the surname. However I can fully understand why they don’t want the loveable rogues of the travelling community there.

[SpeckledJim]

MonkeyMatt said:

What ever you think of travellers, comercial vehicles etc etc, banning people with a certain name is stupid!

Well, if you have developed a more sophisticated method of keeping them out, I bet a lucrative short-term consulting contract will be yours at Brean Sands!

And just about every other major hotelier in Europe.

[anonymous-user]

anonymoususer said:

mrporsche said:

vonuber said:

The Romanians are probably the most racist towards the Roma out of anybody.

That would be because they live with them. They don’t buy into the mythical group of hard workers

Genuinely had a conversation with some Romanians who despised them.
I was quite surprised at their level of mistrust

I'm not sure why Romanians are always mentioned at the same time as Roma, there only connection is that there are populations of Roma in Romania (as well as the rest of the world) and are heavily persecuted there. Roma are from indian origin nothing to do with Romania.

[Sheets Tabuer]

If I ever want to waste 30 minutes I just mention travellers to my Irish neighbour.

Sometimes you can walk off and still hear him while washing up, soft English bds, we don't put up with their st in our country you can hear wafting over the fence

[JagLover]

MonkeyMatt said:

I'm not sure why Romanians are always mentioned at the same time as Roma, there only connection is that there are populations of Roma in Romania (as well as the rest of the world) and are heavily persecuted there. Roma are from indian origin nothing to do with Romania.

Romania does have a substantial Roma population though and one that has tended to come west since the ascension of Romania into the EU. Hence it is often conflated. I.E. a newspaper might talk of "Romanian pick pocketers" when they mean Roma from Romania.

[Camoradi]

MonkeyMatt said:

What ever you think of travellers, comercial vehicles etc etc, banning people with a certain name is stupid!

I dunno. Our local pub has a sign saying "no Kuennsbergs admitted"

[vonuber]

MonkeyMatt said:

I'm not sure why Romanians are always mentioned at the same time as Roma, there only connection is that there are populations of Roma in Romania (as well as the rest of the world) and are heavily persecuted there. Roma are from indian origin nothing to do with Romania.

Because people are thick.

[AJL308]

Electro1980 said:

Type R Tom said:

Do pub licensing laws allow refusal of service due to any reason? I've been turned away from a bar due to age, sexual orientation, race and gender over the years. Not that I would stand and argue the Equalities Act with a bouncer but those points have been the sole reason to refuse service.

No one is allowed to discriminate for any of those reasons unless there is an objective justification (for example baring under 18s when it is part of the licensing conditions).

All of those, with the possible exception of age, would likely be illegal.

Discriminating against a group of people because their lifestyle is violent, criminalistic and highly anti-social seems like entirely acceptable objective justification as far as I can see.

Pontin's, and the people who are criticising them, are approaching this from the wrong angle; Pontin's, in reality, is NOT discriminating against these people due to their ethnicity. They are doing so for the reasons I have given above. Ultimately they are discriminating against them because their illegal and anti-social behaviour is damaging to their business. The fact that they constitute part of an ethnic minority is beside the point - it is not the reason they are being discriminated against. It is their lifestyle that is being discriminated against, not their ethnicity.

The precedent exists in the case of the gay wedding cake; ultimately the bakers who refused the order were found not to have discriminated against the customer because of his sexual orientation. They refused to make it on the grounds that it was to carry a political slogan that they disagreed with. If a business wishes to exclude Irish Travellers because the people who make up that sector are known to be criminals who like fighting and stealing and causing damage then that is not discrimination on grounds of race. It's discrimination on grounds that they are bunch of s. A business should not be forced to trade with s.

[anonymous-user]

There is a major difference and perhaps some need to educate themselves a bit better? Here's a taster:

Romania is a country......Roma are a group of people that are believed to originate from India, live all over Europe and have been persecuted for 100's of years... Prior to the Second World War just under a million lived across Europe and whilst Jews were the main target for the Nazis to eradicate, it is thought up 500,000 Roma were murdered during the holocaust as part of Himmler's and Heydrich's decrees.

eta a links for those interested in finding out a bit more about the holocaust including the Roma:

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/life-in-nazi...

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/...

Edited by anonymous-user on Thursday 4th March 14:05

Edited by anonymous-user on Thursday 4th March 14:33

[anonymous-user]

AJL308 said:

Discriminating against a group of people because their lifestyle is violent, criminalistic and highly anti-social seems like entirely acceptable objective justification as far as I can see.

Pontin's, and the people who are criticising them, are approaching this from the wrong angle; Pontin's, in reality, is NOT discriminating against these people due to their ethnicity. They are doing so for the reasons I have given above. Ultimately they are discriminating against them because their illegal and anti-social behaviour is damaging to their business. The fact that they constitute part of an ethnic minority is beside the point - it is not the reason they are being discriminated against. It is their lifestyle that is being discriminated against, not their ethnicity.

The precedent exists in the case of the gay wedding cake; ultimately the bakers who refused the order were found not to have discriminated against the customer because of his sexual orientation. They refused to make it on the grounds that it was to carry a political slogan that they disagreed with. If a business wishes to exclude Irish Travellers because the people who make up that sector are known to be criminals who like fighting and stealing and causing damage then that is not discrimination on grounds of race. It's discrimination on grounds that they are bunch of s. A business should not be forced to trade with s.

problem is they weren't discriminating against Irish travellers, they were discriminating against people with a certain name, many people with those names are not Irish travellers and many Irish travellers don't have those names. It was the wrong way to target the group of undesirables they wished to prevent from booking. I'm not saying they shouldn't stop those particular people booking, just don't agree with their method (I'm not a traveller, I don't have one of the blacklisted names and wouldn't dream of booking pontins)

[AJL308]

Electro1980 said:

SpeckledJim said:

Electro1980 said:

Type R Tom said:

Electro1980 said:

Type R Tom said:

Do pub licensing laws allow refusal of service due to any reason? I've been turned away from a bar due to age, sexual orientation, race and gender over the years. Not that I would stand and argue the Equalities Act with a bouncer but those points have been the sole reason to refuse service.

No one is allowed to discriminate for any of those reasons unless there is an objective justification (for example baring under 18s when it is part of the licensing conditions).

All of those, with the possible exception of age, would likely be illegal.

That was kind of my point, I bet companies make "business" decisions all the time that are probably illegal, 99% probably get away with it. I guess if you are going to discriminate, you better make sure you have a water tight back up for when someone complains.

People and companies brake the law all the time. That doesn’t make it right.

It seems Pontins can demonstrate that there are twenty-ish surnames who, on average, cause a disproportionate amount of damage, theft, and assaults in their hotels.

Banning those surnames is very sensible, from the point of view of trying to run a business, isn't it?

And if, behind that data, those 20 surnames happen to all be prevalent Irish traveller names, then that's just the most gigantic fluke, isn't it, because we know that travellers behave as well as everyone else. We know it is every bit as likely that the Patels and the Fujikawas and the Fortescue-Smythes would be raising hell at Pontins as the O'Donaghs.

The hotelier isn't going to come up with this very embarrassing and illegal policy for any other reason than they're absolutely desperate to keep certain people out of their hotels. Hoteliers don't generally try this hard, breaking the law, to keep people OUT of their hotels, so what can be motivating them?

Is it to be mean and nasty racists for no reason? Or is it just to try to stay in business?

It’s discrimination however you put it. It might shift it from direct to indirect discrimination, but either way it’s illegal.

You may not like it but treating people differently because of their race is racist, no matter the reason. It is no different to the days of “no blacks no Irish” or a shop owner refusing to be wheelchair accessible.

Ultimately they aren't though. They are discriminating against them for perfectly sensible business reasons. It is entirely natural not to want criminality and anti-social behaviour in your premises. If a particular group or collective of people can be shown to the cause of an unusually high amount of that sort of stuff then why is it wrong to discriminate against them? They happen to share an ethnic basis but that is beside the point. Their ethnicity is not the cause of their lifestyle choices and even if it were it is not justifiable to require everyone else to have to accept it.

[AJL308]

mrporsche said:

Isn’t the bigger question why the government doesn’t step in to address the traveller issue?

Here we have a U.K. holiday company who to keep their guests safe and their business profitable feel the need to ban an entire “ethnic” group.

Something is wrong with the system whereby a criminal underclass can rely on the concept of discrimination to get away with being a criminal underclass.

Exactly. There is precedent for Parliament acting; a few years back legislation was passed giving councils powers to deal with fly grazing of horses. That was enacted entirely as a result of Travellers and Gypos dumping unwanted horses anywhere they liked. They were pretty 100% of the problem and the legislation was aimed squarely at them and it only affected their ethnic minority. It was clearly discrimination - only it wasn't it was a crime control measure which happed to address crime/behaviour which is only carried out by a particular ethnic type.

Pontin's banning travellers is no different at all.

[Electro1980]

It’s not all though is it? That’s the point. Not every traveller is a criminal or violent, not every traveller has one of the surnames listed and not every person with one of those surnames and an Irish accent is a traveller, not every Irish traveller is part of the traveler community.

Treating a group of people different because of their ethnicity is racist. If treat a person differently because of a perception of the ethnic group they are from, that is racist. What’s so had to understand about that?

[SpeckledJim]

Electro1980 said:

It’s not all though is it? That’s the point. Not every traveller is a criminal or violent, not every traveller has one of the surnames listed and not every person with one of those surnames and an Irish accent is a traveller, not every Irish traveller is part of the traveler community.

Treating a group of people different because of their ethnicity is racist. If treat a person differently because of a perception of the ethnic group they are from, that is racist. What’s so had to understand about that?

This policy treats white guys from Dublin called Boyle, travellers from Rathkeale called Boyle, Indian guys from Sydney called Boyle and African Americans from Chicago called Boyle exactly the same.

Just as a test of the principle, if the name 'Smith' had been on the list, would that have been racist?

[Type R Tom]

Electro1980 said:

Treating a group of people different because of their ethnicity is racist. If treat a person differently because of a perception of the ethnic group they are from, that is racist. What’s so had to understand about that?

Understand what you are saying but what can they do to protect themselves? Or have Pontins just got to suck it up?