One thing you can guarantee in this life is that, if you hang around long enough, you will meet some absolute nutters.
The internet just makes it easier for them to find you.

And now whenever I go over to Ireland I am treated like an idiot - perhaps because the Irish, who are the most logical people I have ever encountered, can recognise an "eejit" at a hundred paces.

And I am only 28 years of age to boot - so perhaps it's time someone gave him a good boot.

As for "Tinkers". I don't believe that the tinkers ever had any ancestry in common with the romany folk. They were itinerant workers who mended pots and kettles, who used similar transport. Certainly these days (and I am being deliberately incendiary, so don't get up in arms about the comment, please!) Irish Tinkers are the people who park their caravans on waste ground near factories and steal all the iron railings. They are the people who turn up on your doorstep pretending to have "left over tarmac" from a motorway construction job and "we'll do your drive cheap". If that's the proud race he wants to belong to, he's wecome to it.
Quack!
GtD.