We actually didn’t intend, this week, to discuss travellers on the podcast at all. Yet, when we got into the conversation about what we might call the great gurrier crisis of 2026, it became clear that no honest conversation can be held without doing so.
Ireland has spent untold fortunes over the past several decades on promoting and defending traveller culture. The country went so far as to recognise them as their own distinct ethnic group. NGOs like Pavee Point are lavishly funded to defend Travellers against discrimination, and aggressively denounce critics of Traveller culture.
Yet how do many of us actually experience that culture? Crime. Rudeness. Feuding. Call-Out videos. Hassle. There is, whether it is polite to say it or not, a good reason why so many venues would prefer not to host a Traveller wedding or funeral.
And how do Travellers themselves experience it? High rates of incarceration. Cousin Marriage. Teenage Pregnancies. Blood feuds. Poverty. Illiteracy.
The kid-glove approach, in other words, has not worked. It’s time, we thought, to say it.
Also this week: The UK’s ludicrous, Monty Python-esque scheme to ask Migrants very nicely not to rape the womenfolk. Fine Gael advisor John Kelly tells us all what he thinks of us (a bunch of racialists), and over in America, the young women appear to have gone cray-cray again, this time defending a woman who murdered her own children.
It is a fun hour, and we’re glad you could spend it with us.
