UK Decay

[blinkpoker]

chavscum,what a great site i honestly didn.t think people actually refered to themselves as chavs, i just thought it was a media thing..the message board on there is brilliant,from reading the messages the schools must have dropped teaching english grammar as a subject and replaced it with texting...at the end of the day all a chav is ,is a 21st century townie nothings changed...

[bonzi]

i hate chavs, like many people do, shame white kids try and be black.
i was at tenerife airport and saw a whole family of chavs. its everywhere. hope they all get bird flu.
_________________
hello.

[Nuzz]

Go to myspace Armitage Shanks and check out their track 'Chav Scum',its a classic. From their 'Smash The Cistern E.P' I shit you not.

[dahei]

why is it that english people always seem to spend so much time ridiculing thier own working class ?
what in hell is a chav , someone who doesn't fit the middle class journalists view as to what they should be .!!
the idea that poor white people imitate poor black people is erroneous .
both share common backgrounds , council estates e.t.c.
isn't it natural that they should all mix culturally and both end up with a little of the other ??

[D]

I don't think most English people do ridicule the working class - the media just makes it seem that way.

But also, do Chavs really reflect what it is to be working class? Or is it some sort of characature of what it is to be working class?

There's nothing special about being thick, vulgar, egotistical, shallow and all the rest of it. Some people live up to these tags (parhaps as a way of "rebelling" without actualling doing anything particularly rebellious) but I don't think they're particularly representative of the working class as a whole, just a small section of it which will be ignored once the media get bored and find another angle.

One of the things about how punk moved on and the Goth thing was that working class people weren't confined to the stereotypes, that there was a lot of creativity and breaking out of the working class ghetto. Being working class is forced upon us for economic reasons; it's not something you choose (as many middle class idiot has found to his/her cost). Being a Chav isn't about celebrating being working class but about despising it.

I think our rulers like the idea that all working class people are Chavs. They would argue, why bother funding comprehensive education or creating nice looking towns, having public libraries and funding the arts, etc, if we're all so incapable of appreciating it.

The other thing that strikes me about this Chav thing is that it seems very British (and probably very British media). Are there Chavs in Malaysia, Peru, Kenya and France? What about the USA Dahei?

Of course, any of the above could just be me talking rubbish (again).

[Nuzz]

'CHAVS' - The children and grandchildren of Margaret Thatcher, and the society she fucked.

[D]

But she didn't get away with it - she had to crawl away crying and humiliated because the same "children of Thatcher" fought the Poll Tax.

2m of the same "children/grandchildren of Thatcher" potested in London against the war in Iraq - as opposed to about only 2000 "children of Wilson/Callaghan" protesting against Falklands/Malvinas or tiny numbers against the war in Ireland.

She did some pretty serious damage (also with the collaboration of the opposition and union leaders) but she hasn't stopped people fighting back.

And her party still can't get back in (despite Blair) because people still remember her and despise her.

The Chav thing will pass and it won't even get "1977 Year of Punk" style books about it.

[Nuzz]

True enough D, but lets not forget who's kids and grand kids the 'Punks' were. Wilson and Callaghans maybe. Yea the numbers protesting may have changed, but without the 2000 there would never have been the 2m, that on top of the media, image driven 24 hour information at the touch of a button society has enabled the growth of civil disobidience. Who needs the torries when we've got Blair. Lets just hope only a small minority of Thatchers kids'n'grandkids go down the far right road when it comes to voting against Blairs inability or inactivity to deal with issues that effect 'the working class' Any way "we're all just chavs to the leaders of this land"

[D]

Even if the BNP picks up a larger vote, it doesn't necessarily mean that most of those voting for nazis are nazis themselves IYSWIM - voting is just about putting a cross next to a name not taking on a whole "ideology". A lot of these people will be making some sort of protest without thinking too much about the details. It's one thing to repeat what racist newspapers say and put an X on a ballot paper, but most of the people doing that would be appalled by what the BNP really stand for, if they did something "active" like go to one of their meetings or rallies. Still, it's best not to be complacent.

[dahei]

i agree with you d alot of votes for the far right are 'protest ' votes , more to do with deluded people thinking they will have an impact on the body politic then hoping that fascist clowns actually get power .
there is an amount of poor people that feel left behind when poor minorities are spoken about .
that seems to be the problem of dividing people by ethnicity and not class .
something that middle class politicos tragically ignore .
though i doubt that there will ever be a strong far right movement in england , aside from all the statistical and political factors it just isn't an english game .....the english seem to prefer semi fascist smooth talkers ie the tory paty ,,,, to rabid fascist lunatics such as griffen or tryndal
i hope that comment isn't taken offensively by my english friends , it's meant as a twisted kind of compliment !!!
it was after all your [and some of my ] grandparents that stood strong against the rise of european fascism , many of that generation losing thier lives to give us the freedom to discuss today [may god bless all of them ]