brits1

Lol my MIL flew in on hers (broom) along with the her two daughters.....reminds me of a "fairytale" I read when I was younger

brits1

The underclasses for the main part have just been given a too easy ride..ie..."dole" money is too easy handed out, young girls having children and expecting their own accommodation and then exact not to work their are to many young people also older people and have been on social payments that they have become conditioned to not working for their livelihoods, I was told by a volunteer that a local mother was feared because (and all the services given were not paid for by the mother) if the certain help groups put a foot wrong she use to sue them for the most ridiculous reasons, one of the groups had to "fold" because after fighting the case against the mother and won they were left without any money.....I was in a supermarket a while ago and a young mum was there with her young daughter (who was running around like a .......whirlwind...being polite there) and the young daughter bumped into a shelf and a tin opener fell off (missed everyone) but the mother frog marched the daughter to customer service and started to put in a complaint form and was going mad....she honestly went off saying compensation to her friend.....mad...just mad....I then stepped forward and told the staff exactly what happened, I just felt it was so wrong what she was trying to do and gain.

J.J

First, good for you for stepping forward to the store staff.

I have seen this social rot take place in a branch of my Dh family.
Dh's grandfather's brother & wife were decent hard working folks.
Their daughter, my MIL's cousin (V) was a decent person, hardworking but somehow lost control of her daughter (S).
This daughter (S) has grown up without personal responsibility, not working, on benefits with multi-partners (to be kind) with multi kids. One of those kids (J) has now adopted the same sponging lifestyle, multi-partners for multi-kids.
Efforts were made by MIL and the errant cousin to get things back on track, even reporting the daughter (S) to the police for various misdemeanors but to no change in behavior.

So one derailment 2 generations back has switched a previous good responsible family to a life of sponging. Yet all the other branches of family have turned out as regular working folk maintaining a decent lifestyle.

Once these spongers found the easy life they see it as the only way to live. They don't care that they are relatively poor, they don't care they are spongers, they simply don't care at all. While they continue to get benefits and housing, have enough money for beer and tobacco and a trip to the seaside then the extent of their ambition is to make more children to get more benefit.

June

bandrui

Yes. These are my thoughts. Though I also am happy to see these people rounded up and punished, when you step back, you see that there is a bigger problem here. As the ex-chav street workers interviewed on tv this morning said, there are probably a couple of hundred reasons that this happened.

What I would add is that there is no "us" and "them". We have all participated in creating this society where the focus is definitely on consumerism and having the latest gadgets but then again, that's only one of the 200+ reasons.

bandrui

Long term prison sentences are not a solution for many reasons. They go in, play the tough guy to survive, come out having learnt a lot more "skills", jump on the recidivism merry-go-round and it's all on the tax payers tab. Of course, they have to be punished. I would really like to see them revive some heavy duty community service. Unpaid work might just be a deterrent for these folks!

sallysimmons

I would guess one of those 200 reasons is the class system that still thrives in the UK and that makes it perfectly OK to use the word 'chav' to describe a human being. As though once categorized, he or she is no longer worth any further thought or discussion.

The word 'chav' didn't exist in my day - but back then my mother called people 'common' in an equally superior and dismissive way. I always thought people did it to elevate themselves in the class system.

robin1234

I definitely agree with this, but as a side note would add that chav is a word with a respectable and interesting pedigree going back a hundred or more years.

Unfortunately in England there is a persistent history of violent rioting and looting that crops up at regular intervals, going back many hundreds of years. Look at the Gordon riots for instance. And during the Blitz damaged buildings were regularly looted..

To blame the Welfare State is an unconvincing ploy of the usual suspects to denigrate social advances in the UK over the last sixty or more years.

BristolUK

I'd say you were my long lost sister. But I never had one.

chris955

I really don't see this class system nowadays, no doubt it exists as it does anywhere in one form or another. It doesn't seem any different to calling someone here a bogan, it isn't a class thing.

the troubadour

Question being surely is why would anyone expect the underclasses to behave in any other way when the elite has so systematically compromised itself over recent years?
From expense account scandals to financial insitution tax funded bankruptcy.
Meanwhile the rest are being mugged by both quarters.

the troubadour

Difference being the growth of a further class the under class has expanded greatly and gives every indication of continuing to do so.

There are few jobs for these folk with a lot of what they would have done likely gone to East Europeans.

In Hackney i recall the stats as being one job for every 50+ seekers.

sallysimmons

I think it's much stronger in the UK. In Yorkshire where I'm from, for example, there are degrees of accent that instantly identify you as lower, lower middle, middle, upper middle or 'posh.'

I used to work with a guy who spoke with a royal family like accent. One day a co-worker told us we both sounded very posh because of our accents. He said 'oh but we sound very different.' Co-worker shrugged and said 'you sound the same to me.'

As we left the meeting, the posh guy turned to me and said 'I can't believe it. My parents paid a fortune for this accent." It made me laugh, but when we both return to Blighty, he will instantly take his place back on the ladder - significantly higher up than me. It doesn't bother me, but it's a fact of life all the same.

dunroving

This is a misleading statistic used by the media to sensationalise the data.

In fact, the statistic is 50 applicants for each job, not 1 job for every 50 jobseekers.

However, this doesn't mean that for every job, there are 50 unemployed people. A lot of those applicants are also applying for other jobs. If they are all applying for 50 jobs, in fact the job:unemployed person ratio is 1:1.

Lothianlad

English art historian Brian Sewell......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBt0E...15F2789687007F

BristolUK

Or, in North America, referring to someone as being born the wrong side of the tracks. Or Preppy.