Knacker is a strange word. I can be knackered(broken, tired etc) There’s the knackers yard and a traveller is a knacker(Dublin insult). I think knacker was changed by the Irish to mean traveller and then it became scumbag which is connected to the negative attitude to travellers.
It should be said however that in Dublin anyway that the word has changed to mean scumbag. Travellers are called knackers by the same kind of people who used to call black people niggers.
Tarantula was using it in the scumbag way but it’s still wrong to a degree like gypped etc.
As to the main point I’m a bleeding heart who feels sorry for these people. I walked by a ~14 year old girl with a blanket over her yesterday just across the road from Trinity College. She was dirty, smelly and sad. I gave her some money. Maybe it ended up in her belly maybe up her arm I dunno.
Some people are lazy fuckers but some have ended up on the street because of a myriad of reasons (abuse, metal illness, bad luck etc. ) Sweeping generalisations are always wrong.
You don’t know what got these people to this position and be thankful of that. If you don’t want to give them money don’t but coming here and IMO posting this just so you can show your superiority and indignation stinks.
You’ve got a job and sorted your life out. Bully for you. Unless these people actually do something to you rather than just break up a stroll through the city leave them the fuck alone. They’ve got enough problems without your self righteous shit.
I’ve got to go with ruadh on this. Ireland is ignoring these people. It’s a disgrace, especially after the money this country made over the last 10 years.
A fella came up to me during lunch the other day looking for spare change for “a cup of tea”. I had no small change on me, but I offered him the (unopened) sandwich I was carrying from the shop. He fucked me out of it and told me to shove my sandwich up my arse.
Pity for him, cos it was a nice sandwich too. This fella was also wearing enough jewellery to make Mr.T stare
The best panhandling I ever got was from two Scottish winos in Cardiff bus station.
“Excuse me mate. I’m pished. See mah mate over there though? He’s not pished at all. So can ye gi’ us a couple o’ quid so’s I can buy some cider for mah mate and he can get pished too?”
Needless to say I coughed up - you can’t buy that kind of honesty these days.
By the way, I am a little dubious about some Dublin beggars: with my own eyes I saw 5 or 6 beggars being dropped off in Dame Street from a minibus, each being handed a nicely folded blanket to put over their knees, and on a separate occasion I saw two ladies with identical blankets arguing over which pitch on Stephen’s Green they were going to cover.
And I don’t even want to go into the girl who was “living on the street with [her] two wee brothers” whom I offered to buy a sandwich once (she ended up taking me to the supermarket and filling a trolley with the best cuts of steak and bottles of freshly-squeezed orange juice. I declined to buy any of it for her).
I deal with my guilt/anger the easy way. I give money to street performers, but no one else. I figure, at least they’re out there performing a service to society - they’re TRYING to earn their money, and therefore deserve it (no matter how bad they are).
I don’t know how it is in Ireland, but in America, we have people who work parking lots or gas stations, begging for , then go around the corner and hop into their Benz and count their booty. Yes, there are many people who actually need the money, but I can't sort them out. So street performers get , and the occasional bum will get a food item (usually the bums who DON’T ask me for anything - random act of kindness and all that).
If I saw a homeless person walking down the street carrying a plastic bag and picking up trash, with a sign on their back asking for , I'd probably give it to them. Again, it's the whole performing a service to society/trying to earn it thing. But I have yet to see that. However, I live in a really awful part of Los Angeles, where you're either a student or dirt poor (okay, not a huge difference, but the students live better). There are people in my neighborhood who cruise past all the student buildings with shopping carts, picking aluminum cans out of the trash to recycle for . My roommate and I save our cans up, and bring them down en masse for these guys (or leave them to the side of the dumpster, where he’s sure to find it).
But people who walk up and ask? Nope.
People who look as if they’ve made an art out of looking pathetic? Nope.
People who stand at freeway offramps? Nope. Well, except for the dude with the clarinet - but even though he couldn’t play a note, laughing at that horn was enough entertainment to merit a few coins each time.
I’d rather save my $ for the people standing at offramps with oranges/strawberries/flowers.
Is this really, honestly, verifiably true? I’ve heard this kind of rumour for years and in lots of different countries, and I’ve never heard of it being proven.
Morigoon - I second that. I do give quite a bit to buskers and the like. Obviously more to the better ones, but still at least they are trying something. Everyone has some talent. Even if its that tit that paints himself blue and stands on a box on Grafton St… at least he’s trying. Failing, but trying.
Some of these descriptions I find a bit shocking - the beggars overloaded with jewelry or wearing Nike Air etc.
I live on the Isle of Man, and there ARE no homeless people. So when I went to live in Leamington Spa last year I was surprised at just how many people lived on the street and begged for money. I came across three types:
People who sold ‘The Big Issue’ (magazine about homelessness). I always bought a copy if there was a new one out. These guys are making an effort!
People sat on street corners, in shop doorways etc just repeating the same old ‘spare change’ litany. These guys weren’t wearing jewelry that’s for sure! After thinking about it for a while I decided that what they needed more than anything was a friend - so rather than money I’d buy a couple of hot chocolates and sit and drink it with them. I got to know a couple of them quite well and they came across as decent people who’d just had a really shitty sequence of events in their life that’d put them beyond hope of getting back up. Addiction, violence, depression etc. Strangely enough, a couple of these people used to just say hi to me as I went past (didn’t bother asking for money) and others never remembered me even after spending a little time with them. My Uncle once took this to an extreme and befriended one guy and really tried to help him back up onto his feet.
Con artists. People who make up a bog sob story to get a few quid out of you - I got caught out once (I’m a soft hearted gullible fella) and felt so cross - honesty would have probably worked too, but they insist on trying to con money out of people. Fuckers.
I’m with Morrigoon on just paying performers, etc. At least they’re doing SOMETHING. I was struck in Jamaica by how much begging there was, but not one of them asked for money without offering something in return, be it hair-braiding, tour guiding, reefer, or musical performance. Here (DC area), you get some wino shaking a cup in your face asking for change, then when you decline, you get an earful of drunken Tourette’s spew…
I see a woman begging on the off ramp from the 101 freeway in North Hollywood most days. She’s holding a sign and hoping people will hand her whatever spare change they can. She’s always dirty and AFAIC tell, she has no teeth, and she’s dressed in rags. Who’s to say how she got that way? And does it matter anymore? I give her what I can when I can. Which is never very much.
Fuck, to me it’s just change in my ashtray.
Yeah, some of these folks are lazy slackers. For others, they’re just trying to get through another day. We all need a little help every now and then.
I agree with jjimm, that even though you cannot stand “these people”, you shouldn’t refer to them as “knackers”.
I wonder if “Tinker” is an acceptable term, since they used to go around with horse and cart, and make tin (hence the name) pots and pans, and sharpen knives and scissors for housewifes.
I don’t think it’s derogatory.
On the other hand, I would like to know how these people, with no steady salaray or income, can afford to have the biggest, newest caravans and cars?
Everytime i pass by one of their settlements, usually along the motorway (which, I agree, is no place for anyone to live, but experience has shown us they also do not necessarily leave their camping spots in pristine conditions), I note that the majority of them drive or inhabit mentioned cars/caravans.
I’ve also been told they don’t pay any tax. At all. I don’t know whether this is true or not? Could someone clear that up for me?
In short: something needs to be done, but the onus is not just on the government. The Travelling community needs to make an effort, too. Something, I have the impression, they’re not willing to do.
Knacker is indeed a racial slur here. If the beggar was an Itinerant (which might not be the pc term either - I don’t know) then I can’t say I am surprised that Tarantula had a problem with him or her. There is a seriously racist knee jerk reaction to the Travellers here and it is pretty nasty.
I am not saying that Tarantulais a knee jerker, I am saying it is a pretty common thing to see.
I am just glad that the person in question was skinny, because if he or she had been…(whisper it) …fat, rather than “skinny” then this thread would have been inordinately long by now with the fat bashers and the fat basher bashers.
The point is whether or not the OP meant knacker = scumbag, or knacker = Traveller, there are some words which, when used in a rant on the SDMB only result in a diversion from the issue at hand. If you don’t like a particular beggar because you think he or she is on the make, don’t give him or her any money.
If you think they really are stricken, then do.
It ain’t hard because it is your choice.
ruadh is right, the last x governments in this country have done nothing to alleviate the poverty and misery; and these have been the boom years.
What is likely to happen when the lean times come?
Maybe some of us on this very board will be out there begging, because the Irish government isn’t likely to do anything terribly constructive to help any one of us any more than it is helping the people who need to beg today.
I can’t answer for Ireland but, from working in the field, I can tell you what a beggar can reasonably make in London:
Big issue Seller: About £25 a day if they have a good pitch and put the hours in (used to be more, but there’s too many of them)
Straight “spare change guv?” beggar; about a tenner. They can make more but they aren’t really interested as they are only aiming for the next tin/wrap/rock, and once they have enough they buy that and stop begging and get wankered.
Add to that £55 from the rock n roll, plus free food and accommodation, and it means that a five day week gives a possible £125 purely disposable income.
But it is a truly shitty existence with a great deal of abuse and violence (“taxing”) involved, and/or sexual predation and exploitation.
I don’t give money to them as i think it reinforces the shitty part of their lives by not giving any incentive to change.
Also, what’s with the fuckers that sit by the cashpoints? Do they think I’m going to peel of a tenner?
Ruadh, or jjimm - I’m sure one of you has seen that fucker sitting by the ATM at the Dunnes Stores on Georges St. ? He asked me for a tenner last saturday week. A tenner ! In all fairness, what was he thinking. I actually laughed - not something I would ever do to someone less fortunate than me, but I couldn’t help it.
My husband and I watched two men park a Cadillac in a hotel lot, take tattered looking bedrolls out of the the trunk, and head for the freeway ramp that lead to the hotel. Granted, I don’t know for sure that they weren’t living in that car, but it didn’t look like a vehicle that served as a home. The trunk wasn’t overloaded with stuff, nor was the back seat. So, yeah, in this case, I’d say the guys were scammers.
