Post by: Chocolate Button on January 07, 2005, 01:03:34 pm
Post by: smurfboy on January 07, 2005, 01:07:51 pm
Post by: aveit101 on January 07, 2005, 02:27:44 pm
Post by: chocolate chick on January 07, 2005, 02:33:42 pm
Post by: Chocolate Button on January 07, 2005, 02:55:07 pm
Forgive me for my ignorance but what is a Chav?
Post by: Chocolate Button on January 07, 2005, 03:00:37 pm
I've searched for it and come up with this...
http://www.chavscum.co.uk/howto.php quite amusing
Post by: on January 07, 2005, 03:58:42 pm
Post by: oldspice on January 07, 2005, 05:42:47 pm
I saw wife swap. I was horrified by the posh couple. They were totally weird. The bolshy woman was also a bit extreme. I find this programme very interesting. It is fascinating to study people's values and lifestyles and how they react when put into a contrasting value system.
I live such an ordinary life - my house is quite clean and tidy but not excessively so. My husband and I do what we are best at, which means quite a traditional division of labour but we get along well.
We have a balanced attitude towards the kids and they behave in a mature and responsible way. I think anyone looking at us would think us quite boring and I wouldn't want to swop with anyone. Anyway, I can't see anyone wanting to take on some of the teenage classes I have to teach!!
Post by: on January 08, 2005, 03:17:13 pm
However of course being a member of the working class doesn't mean you are slow or illiterate, simply that you are happy with a hand to mouth existence, go to McDonalds and watch Coronation St.
That's done it.
Post by: oldspice on January 08, 2005, 05:51:45 pm
It's absolute rubbish to say the working class shun education by definition. My father was a milkman. He left school at 14 and started to earn his living right away. This was in the 1920s during the depression and he had to help support his younger siblings. His own father left school at ten years old and worked on the fishing boats out of Dunwich until he went off to war in 1918. Both my father and grandfather, despite their short time in school, were well-read, articulate men who played chess at championship level.
My father urged myself and my older brother and sister to make the most of our opportunities and work hard at school. Education was valued in our home and in the home of my friends. Most of our fathers had skilled or semi-skilled jobs rather than professions, and most of our mothers stayed at home.
I did not become a fully-qualified teacher until I was forty years old and despite having the benefit of a longer education than my parents, I could not go to university until I was in my thirties. This is because both of my parents died during my last two years at primary school and I could not expect the various carers who raised me following this to support me through university.
I don't think you have a full understanding of the historical meaning of working-class. Certainly, there seems to be a layer of society who do not value education, and I suppose a case can be made for them being regarded as working class but not in the true sense of the term. They are in no way part of the proud class of men and women who build this country and created its wealth and fought for the benefits and opportunities enjoyed today. I include in that great fight many worthy middle and upper-class folks too of course.
Post by: on January 08, 2005, 07:56:23 pm
I have always wondered why some call them "working class" when, let's face it, that is the last thing they do.
Bounty, I think you are confusing the term with work-shy chavs (Neds in Scotland) like Robbie.
Post by: chocolate chick on January 10, 2005, 09:31:25 am
Post by: smurfboy on January 10, 2005, 10:06:05 am
Post by: on January 10, 2005, 10:11:09 am
Post by: chocolate chick on January 10, 2005, 10:51:11 am
Post by: on January 10, 2005, 11:00:11 am
To me many of the people whose parents were working class are now in a mobile situation between the working class and the natural middle class. There was a time when the working class was a proud, no nonsense, relatively educated section of society but I think those days are gone.
The definition of working class to mean a 'worker' is misleading. Barristers and surgeons are workers but they are not working class. Likewise having plenty of money doesn't stop you from being working class. Your social class is more to do with aspiration and life style.
Post by: smurfboy on January 10, 2005, 12:04:11 pm
Post by: oldspice on January 10, 2005, 02:13:59 pm
Yes, social class is to do with aspiration and lifestyle. And many of the values you attribute to the middle class are actually working class values but the middle classes have them too!
Post by: on January 10, 2005, 03:07:02 pm
Post by: oldspice on January 10, 2005, 06:02:59 pm
If you wish to consider yourself middle class you are welcome to. Being a tailor can put you into several categories. It's a very skilled job - but history shows us that many tailors scraped a living by the trade in the late 19th century and they would have been very much working class. However, they would have been hard workers with decent values. They would have been willing to work day and night to earn a better standard of living for their children and grand-children. Their children and grandchildren may have been a little better off, thus being able to get a little more education and do a little better than their parents. The wealth of the family thus grows and so, generation by generation, they drift towards middle classness by virtue of their income and their education. THE WORKING CLASS VALUES MOVE WITH THEM. This is where the idea that education and hard work are middle class values comes from.
As I have stated, my father was a milkman. He was working class. I am working class. My children, who have had the benefit of well-educated parents and a reasonable income, will be middle-class but the values they inherited from me are working class in their origins.
It's very hard to explain. But if you tell me I am middle-class because my values appear to be middle class you are wrong. If I am living a middle class life because of my education and income put me in that bracket, it is working class values that have got me there and working class values I will be taking with me.
Post by: goldencup on January 10, 2005, 06:37:49 pm
Post by: robbie on January 10, 2005, 09:16:52 pm
Bounty, you are obviously working class.
You live in a council house and earn a reasonably low salary. How could you consider yourself anything else?
Post by: oldspice on January 11, 2005, 07:42:14 am
Post by: on January 11, 2005, 08:55:21 am
Post by: chocolate chick on January 11, 2005, 10:13:29 am
Post by: on January 11, 2005, 03:40:10 pm
Post by: oldspice on January 11, 2005, 05:32:33 pm
Post by: on January 12, 2005, 08:18:26 am
Post by: loulou on January 15, 2005, 12:22:00 am
Post by: oldspice on January 15, 2005, 11:44:29 am
BOUNTY!! I'VE GOT THE ANSWER!!
Today, on the bus coming back from town, I met a friend who lives locally. We are about the same age, our children go to the same school, and we get along well. I consider us to be the same class - but suddenly, from out of her bag, she produced an OK magazine and started to chat about Brad and Jennifer's split up - there was loads of pictures and gossip about them in the magazine. Then it hit me - I consider myself working class but it's true that I do recoil at some apparently working class past times such as bingo, visiting Skegness (our local seaside town) and reading magazines like OK - so I decided -
I AM A SNOB!!!!
So - that may be the answer Bounty. if you think you're working class with middle class values - you're probably like me - working class with working class values - but - culturally - A SNOB!!
Post by: on January 15, 2005, 12:14:16 pm
Post by: oldspice on January 15, 2005, 12:56:37 pm
Oh dear! I had a McDonald's breakfast in town this morning!! But I have been to Pierre Victoire too! We had a branch in Peterborough and I've been there for a working lunch.
Clothes I'm less snobby about but in a reverse snobbery sort of way. I would never wear Burberry or any very popular brand but would happily sport a charity shop bargain as long as it suited me.
Post by: loulou on January 15, 2005, 02:50:31 pm
Post by: oldspice on January 15, 2005, 03:53:44 pm
Post by: goldencup on January 15, 2005, 05:27:19 pm
Post by: on January 16, 2005, 12:15:06 pm
Post by: oldspice on January 16, 2005, 12:33:31 pm
Post by: on January 16, 2005, 12:38:08 pm
Post by: oldspice on January 16, 2005, 12:39:25 pm
Post by: on January 16, 2005, 12:42:57 pm
Post by: loulou on January 16, 2005, 01:12:24 pm
Scrabble? Oh dear me. Is that what you play bounty.
I thought you were more of a strip poker man.
Post by: goldencup on January 16, 2005, 05:14:15 pm
Post by: on January 16, 2005, 06:01:11 pm
Post by: goldencup on January 16, 2005, 06:27:19 pm
Post by: on January 16, 2005, 06:34:56 pm
Otherwise the rules are the same.
It's best played between two people who know each other very well.
Post by: oldspice on January 17, 2005, 07:04:14 am
Post by: on January 17, 2005, 08:56:26 am
Post by: loulou on January 17, 2005, 09:53:13 pm
Post by: on January 17, 2005, 10:01:06 pm
Post by: chocolate chick on January 18, 2005, 09:14:30 am