February 03, 2004

• Irony: the Google text ads for Glasgow hotels ("Great Savings in Glasgow, Scotland. Low Rates Guaranteed. Book Today!") on the Ned encounter survival game. [Flash]
• Actually, I think there're just you and me when we were really young. In my day, the guys looked very dangerous in dark blue levis (which they were forbidden to wash until they could stand up on their own) and red windbreakers after James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. Girls wore poodle skirts and those really uncomfortable stiff net half slips - it was rumored that the really dedicated ones starched them with a sugar solution. When my daughter was young, she alternated among death rocker, whore and Rocky Horror kitsch. She got over it,too. On the whole, I think we both looked much worse than the ones who dress up like tractor drivers today. Some of them recover and some will drive tractors. The more it changes...
• chavs are stoners? or rednecks? Which breakfast club cast member are they closest to, estevez or nelson?
• Chavs are bogans. Rissoles. Westies. They resemble Stanley Kubrick more than they do Jean Cocteau, but I guess it's all a question of method.
• I didn't know you had Westies in Australia, Wolof. Thought that applied solely to west Aucklanders - motorbikes, old Holden V8s, leather jackets, straggly hair, permanent cigarette attached to bottom lip.
• There are Westies living in the Western Suburbs (snork, "ironic caps"!) in Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne. Unsure about Brisbane. (C-Dave?) Hobart and Darwin are unknown to me. Any Perthies out there? Because you are all so West.
• The Independent comments on the chavspotting trend.
• Serious gripe: yet another damned tiny weeny text site. Pfui and fie on any URL which won't let the viewer alter text size.
  
• I don't think chavs/townies/charvers are the equivalent of rednecks. Rednecks have a culture of their own (I understand). One of the key elements of townies is the vast cultural void they inhabit - their signifying marks being from either a sort of pidgin version of appropriated cultures, or high-street sports-store anonymity. And, as the article says, they can be of any ethnic background. And age, too; it's not just kids, you can get chavs up to their mid-forties, from my observations. No, it's an attitude thing more than anything else. That's why I can't feel much of the guilt about this being "snobbery" that the guy from the Independent troubles himself with. Just being poor in no way qualifies you as a chav; there's an alternately aggressive and whiny, wilfully ignorant and determinedly small-minded streak that's the main entry criteria. Nothing will ever change in chav-land; utter conformity to the non-culture is rigidly enforced. Occasionally there will be a communitarian spasm of activity, and they'll form a 'pressure group' with the intention of lynching an Albanian or a paedophile. But it will not last long, and soon they will return to screeching at each other from windows, or driving around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around and around the market square with extremely loud music playing until they've scared away anybody who is in any way different to them and their girlfriends will finally agree to give them a blowjob. I reckon Eminem's little brother would be a pretty good type-specimen, for international readers, if it weren't for the fact that he's probably a bit more wealthy than yer average chav. Imagine him if his brother didn't exist. And, if any chavs are reading this; no, the simple fact of my existence does not entitle you to claim cigarettes from me. This is not your right, and my refusal to liberally dispense tobacco to you is not a sign that I am either 'tight', nor a 'ponce', nor a 'fucker', as you hypothesized last night. (Was it me you were referring to during the 'stabbing' debate, by the way? I couldn't quite tell. I seriously doubt you had a knife on you, in all honesty, and to forestall your next question; no, you can't fucking borrow one from me.) That is all. Which breakfast club cast member are they closest to, estevez or nelson? I... I... I don't know! [runs away crying]
• As well as this, it's my experience that scallies (as they are known round my way) exist in all classes of society. Certainly, many of them do come from poorer backgrounds but there's an awful lot of upper-class chavs out there who are equally as frustrating and violent as their council estate counterparts.
• Yeah, well me an' me boys, right, we were hangin' out last night, right, and this tight ponce fucker what we should have stabbed, right, he wouldn't give us no cigarette, right, so ... Uh-oh. **leaves thread very quickly**
• Val's Halal
• I live in the North of England and have never heard the term "chav". I think it must be a London / Essex thing. But what really puzzles me is this term "pikey". A few months ago we were being told that it was a violent incitement to racial hatred. Now all of a sudden it has turned into a mildly derogatory term for the lower working class. Bizarrely, one supermarket manager seems to believe that pikeys are people who shop at Sainsburys. So what does it mean?
• I live in Essex, and I've never heard the word chav. Pikey is used quite often, though (and, considering I live in a town with a large gyspy/traveller population, it was almost certainly meant as pretty much barely disguised racial hatred).
• I'd never heard 'chav' either before this link, although I was pretty familiar with its Newcastle equivalent 'charver' from my Geordie friends, and 'townies' seem pretty common right across the country (though particularly in any place with a clear divide between wealthy suburbs and poor, or alternatively in a university town). Scallies, of course, we all know about. Pikey I hear quite a bit in the South - and yeah, I think its level of offense depends on if you're telling a friend that buying Safeway Economy Orange Juice is "a bit pikey" or if you're burning effigies of a minority group. But I'm not terribly comfortable with its general use, sensitive liberal that I am. Strange thing is, I don't actually know what the specific London term is for chav/charver/scally/townie is. Possibly just 'council', but that may only be a recent bit of popbitchery. Perhaps we're just too damn multicultural to have one all-encompassing term, yah? /london-centric twat
• Chavs, Neds, Townies, Kevs, Charvers, Steeks, Spides, Bazzas, Yarcos, Ratboys, Kappa Slappers, Skangers, Janners, Stigs, Scallies, whatever you know them as, this site is about them, Britains peasant underclass that are taking over our towns and cities! That lists of names reminds me of the current - and hilariously rubbish, as usual - government anti drug campaign (realaudio link): Marijuana, ashes, African, bazooka, blonde, blue sage, bud, broccoli, brown, Buddha, bullyon, cheeba, Colombian, Don Juan, hash, J, jive stick, jolly green, kiff, killer, Panama gold, parsley, roach, straw, wheat, Texas T, locoweed. Call it what you like, just don't call it legal. ...not least because half the names on each list appear to be made up entirely...
• Cake! Cake! Cake! Shatner's Bassoon!
• This helpful website confirms what I suspected: everyone knows what a pikey is, but no two definitions are the same. England: where you can't say "Paki" but you can say "pikey". On "townie" and the town/gown divide: I recommend this brilliant piece of social observation.
• Nice post verstegan. I like the Geordie - I couldn't understand half of the first one.
• The Premier League Chav XI.
• Damn. Actual Link.
• Some good-looking chavs.
• King of Chavs a royal pain.
• That's a shame, although I doubt he will turn himself around before he burns through his money. Chavs are an interesting subculture; I wonder if they are a uniquely UK kind of thing. And what is an Asbo, some kind of electronic monitoring device?
• I want to know more about this banger racing. I'm picturing wee breakfast sausages on a racetrack somewhere.