BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 07:15 AM

Waitrose are getting cheaper, but again you have to know what to look for. They're also a very good employer, so their staff are well looked after, given a decent wage, decent conditions and a bloody big bonus at the end of each year, when the profits are shared out. John Lewis wanted his shops to work that way, and they still do, to this day.

In Sidmouth once, a young lad was beaming from ear to ear whilst filling up the bread, and when I asked him why he was grinning like a Cheshire Cat, he told me they'd all just heard that everyone was getting a £1,000 bonus in time for Christmas. THAT is why their staff are so helpful, so kind, so falling over themselves to create a good shopping experience, because it's in their interests, not just those at the top.

John Lewis was a good man.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Lizzie Cornish 1
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 07:12 AM

Many of the supermarkets at present are conning their customers even more than usual. ASDA was in the news recently for their 'Rollback' lie, on-line, where they actually raised the price of the item that was supposed to be cheap. Their thinking behind this is that most customers shopping on-line are in a hurry and wouldn't notice the cheap price was crossed out and the more expensive price was written in big numbers to attract the eye's attention.

Cool, huh?

Then there's the Eco-Friendly Co-Op of course, now promoting itself as the most saintly of supermarkets, doing all the goodlygodly deeds abroad for others....Well, they charge more than Tesco's at my local store. 75p for a can of Pedigree Chum, whilst next door in Tesco's it's 52/55p. They also change their prices every week, so some days that dog food will be 75p, then 66p, then back up to 75p again..same with the cat food they sell as well.

All the supermarkets price their stores according to the Postcode area, so you'll find items more expensive in one area than in another..and of course ALL the High Street Stores charge more than the bigger stores, because allegedly they have to pay more rates in the High Street, thus they pass the charge to the customer.

Oh..and by the way, in my local Marks & Spencers, a big store, I found a 6 pack of Pedigree Chum for £2.75, cheaper than anywhere else...so don't be fooled by stores regarded as 'Hey, We Love You POOR Folks!' ones, because they're all run by Corporate Bastards who know that most people can't add up any longer, can't be bothered to ask WHY one, or a thousand, items have gone up in price, or why they're so much more expensive locally.

It's all a con. YOU have to work your way through it, and complain to Les Bastards In Charge.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 06:11 AM

Thanks, Penny - I rarely go into M&S food halls and there isn't a Waitrose within range of me. I don't think they regard the ex-mining area of Northumberland as prime retail territory.

Yes, I did forget Aldi - best thing to do with it really IMHO, although friends tell me there are sometimes bargains to be had. I found the overall quality so poor that it wasn't worth the petrol to get there for the one or two discounts I might win on.

I missed the Co-op out too. Our village shop is one of those and it has some good stuff.

I got 20% chav too - I think on the sofa / settee and pudding / dessert thing, as well as a misspent youth (well it was the 60s!) and knowing a perfectly normal male person with an earring.

Paws

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Will Fly
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 06:05 AM

I think the word 'chav' almost certainly does have its origins in the Romany word for boy. In my own village in Sussex, which has one or two families from Romany/traveller stock as residents, 'chavvy' (boy) is used by many people. When my son was very small, I'd often be greeted in the High Street with the friendly words, "Hallo Will - how's the chavvy?" - and not just by the Romany family members.

Now, I can't think of any other word which could form the basis of the word 'chav' - acronyms such as C H A V are often wrongly attributed as origins, when they're really dubious backformations.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Silas
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 05:16 AM

Accoring to my kids, chav means 'Council House And Violent'

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Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: GUEST,Suibhne Astray
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 05:07 AM

Our local ASDA is rather quite cosmopolitan, though the two local ALDIs are invariably deserted, each staffed by one poor girl (I don't think it's the same one though it might be) who does the floors as well as the tills. For a treat we have BOOTHS, with branches throughout Lancashire (Clitheroe, Lytham, Blackpool, Garstang etc.) catering to a more affluent clientele with an aisle for 10 Items of Fewer (I kid ye not) which is one we invariable use if only because we only go in there for Greenhaulgh's bread, and rarely at that. We avoid LIDL altogether. Why? The chocolate's just too good to resist.

Think Vicky Pollard from the TV comedy "Little Britain".

Just goes to show a little social stereotyping goes a long way; and that when it comes to insulting people, we do so in terms of their social class, body type or ethnicity. When it comes to praise of course, we single them out as individuals. Thing is though, once we look at people in terms of their individual uniqueness (rather than the generality to which most of us aspire even at our most idiosyncratic) then there wouldn't be a single one of us who wouldn't transcend that stereotype. Of course the older we get, the more churlish & generalised the view of our fellow humans becomes, as we forget our more youthful optimism and clamour for a simpler world in which we might delight in hurling such dismissive stereotypes around, or point at TV characters for examples that might never exist in reality.

Or do they? Thing is, we come across them all the time - these proud-to-be loud-mouthed lumpen grotesques (to enter into the spirit of these threads) whose viscious & ever-warring wives will offer to fight you for a space in the car park. This happened just yesterday actually. She actually used her (occupied) pushchair as an obstacle to us getting the space whilst loudly proclaiming the legitamacy of her claim despite the fact her cowering husband was a several hundred yards away waiting for another space. An attempt at reasoning revealed a far harsher soul than even I was willing to engage with, but how easy it would have been to dismiss the poor woman in terms of her chosen (or grace-of-God given?) stereotype without at least trying to understand why she was like that anyway. You see SHE is all you need; forget the fashion, the jewellery, the talismans, the decor, the hairstyle, the folklore, the tribal adornments, the ritual signifiers etc. because this was a human individual fighting her corner - as in the car park, so in life. And as my wife pointed out, we've had worse from Folkies - much worse - and the best of it (i.e. the thousands of decent people we deal with every week be they Chavs or whatever) just passes by as a welcome breeze as life continues on its cruise.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Penny S.
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 04:29 AM

And you forgot Aldi alongside Lidl.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Penny S.
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 04:28 AM

Waitrose is cheaper than M&S, depending on what you are buying - it price matches with Tesco, which has been price matching with Asda. there was a survey done a couple of years back which showed that on a standard shopping basket it was not extreme. Though it does have some very expensive stuff as well, in terms of ready meals and so on.

I had a post here, but somehow lost it. I came out as 20% chav, but on some very peculiar questions. i get most of my food out of my freezer, but it's food I made before it got in there, not ready meals from Iceland.

Some of the vocabulary is due to perfectly OK dialect variation, which some people have decided is not OK, and which have applied for some time and much more widely than chavdom. The people who find calling your grandmother Nan wrong came, originally, from the class where the word was seen as deriving from the nanny, a paid employee, rather than the affectionate Welsh name.

I don't know why the term settee is seen as derogatory. It is part of a group of words such as lounge/parlour/living room, toilet/lavatory (loo was introduced to remove this problem, but has obviously fallen foul of the class police), table napkin/serviette, and activities such as adding the milk to the cup before/after the tea, or using fish eaters. These are used by the upper class to distinguish them from everyone else, including the middle, and show up in Mitford's U, non-U book. Frankly, I find the sort of people who use such trivial distinctions to judge people as acceptable or not ultra non-U.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Wolfhound person
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 04:07 AM

Ebbie - I don't think you've got the food from M&S / Walmart comparison quite right.

We have Walmart over here ('cept it's called Asda) and it's nearly the opposite end of the supermarket price range from M&S. I can afford one, cos I have to, but not the other.
I don't know your more upmarket supermarkets, so can't help with the translation.

Others in UK may disagree, but in ascending order of likely prices the UK scene goes:
Netto / Lidl / Iceland
Asda
Morrisons
Tesco
Sainsburys
M&S
Waitrose
and after that you're on to London places like Fortnum & Mason or Jacksons of Piccadilly I suppose.

And for the really mean/poor amongst us, we have Costco, too - I just wish they'd sell American apple cider (=fruit juice in UK speak) in USA quantity. They're really good for bulk buy of stuff you'd pay more for elsewhere.

Paws (not a chav IMO, but with no money to spare)

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Musket
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 04:01 AM

The term chav certainly seems to be scattered like cowshit on a field...

When I worked down the pit, I bought a new house on an estate that was mainly reps, managers and others with company cars. My battered old Marina didn't quite cut the mustard. We all have aspirations and one way for me to tell myself I had done what I set out to do was to own a new Jaguar car.

May sound a little self centred, and it doesn't quite have the same panache as setting out to achieve world peace or Sheffield Wednesday to go all the way to the Champions League Final, but it was part of my "get off your arse and get there" strategy.

I love my car. If this is materialism, then it ain't such a bad thing. Mind you, small minds think alike. A friend who is also a folk singing ex miner bought one at the same time. Didn't know till he turned up to give me a lift to the match in it. Jaguar sold 200,000 cars that year. That's a lot of ex pit moggies with one finger in their ear.

Anyway, I turned up at a party in mine. Another mate took one look and said "It's a bit chavvish isn't it?"

Best not mention the Oakley sunglasses then.......

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 04:00 AM

In Ireland : skanger

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 03:58 AM

Majorca - a popular vacation resort for 14-30 year olds to drink until they are sick and beyond, and go to dicos where they release foam and dance to Iberian disco classics.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 03:40 AM

Well. I had a look and a good deal of it does not compute to an USian, so I filled in my own questionaire. Not sure about some of the connotations of some of the questions, of course, but I may be close enough for a cigar.

Question: What is the significance of Question #8, Majorica/Minorca?
Comment: See Question #33.

(I may post a Buddy thread later.)

1. Do you ever refer to any of your friends as "bro"?
Yes No
2. Do you have any preference over plaid or check?
Yes No
3. Does your Christmas dinner come from Bullwinkle's Pizza?
Yes No
4. Have you ever hung a pine fresh tree shaped air freshener on your rear view mirror?
Yes No
5. Is your mobile phone on a 'pay as you go' tariff?
Yes No
6. Do you know anyone that smokes Benson and Hedges Silver?
Yes No
7. Can you MC?
Yes No
8. Have you ever been to Majorca/Minorca?
Yes No
9. Have you ever worn jewelry from Fred Meyer's?
Yes No
10. Have you ever looked into The Gay Blade for a suit?
Yes No
11. Have you ever eaten a pot sticker?
Yes No
12. Do you call your Grandmother your 'Nan'?
Yes No
13. Have you ever bought fresh cut flowers from a grocery as a present?
Yes No
14. Have you ever not paid for a ticket on public transport?
Yes No
15. Have you ever knowingly bought off-brand cola?
Yes No
16. Do you think Walmart's food is too expensive?
Yes No
17. Have you ever been to Kenny's to buy booze?
Yes No
18. Have you anything in your wardrobe which is at least 50% polyester?
Yes No
19. Do you dream of souping up your car and getting a spoiler?
Yes No
20. Have you ever owned a pair of white Reebok Classic trainers?
Yes No
21. Would you eat off-brand baked beans?
Yes No
22. Do you drink Ripple?
Yes No
23. Have you ever referred to a sofa as a 'settee'?
Yes No
24. Does anyone in your family own a van?
Yes No
25. Have you ever stolen something from a shop?
Yes No
26. Have you ever smoked hash?
Yes No
27. Have you ever been in a stolen car?
Yes No
28. Have you ever taken a piss in the street?
Yes No
29. Have you ever referred to pudding as 'dessert' or 'sweet'?
Yes No
31. Have you ever removed chewing gum and saved it for later?
Yes No
32. Do you know anyone that has been on The Price is Right?
Yes No
33. Have you ever referred to a toilet as a 'loo'?
Yes No
34. Do you ever wear sports clothes while not playing sport?
Yes No
35. Do you own any gnome-like garden ornaments?
Yes No
36. Can you name any characters from South Park?
Yes No
37. Have you ever erected a flashing snowman or fairy lights outside your house at Christmas?
Yes No
38. Have you ever bought your lunch from Foodland?
Yes No
39. Do you have more than three buttons on any of your suits?

Yes No
40. Have you ever eaten crab sticks?
Yes No
41. Have you ever cut out and used money off coupons from magazines?
Yes No
42. Do the majority of your meals come from the freezer?
Yes No
43. Are the toes on your shoes square?
Yes No
44. Do you know any straight men who wear earings?
Yes No
45. Has your mobile phone ring-tone ever been a Top 40 hit?
Yes No
46. Were you ever excluded/expelled from school?
Yes No

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 03:38 AM

I believe Cheryl Cole is soon to be a visitor to your shores. Wait for Cheryl's media profile to emerge and you'll soon get the hang of the chav thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Ann N
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 03:34 AM

As Eliza said, someone can be very well off financially and still be disgustingly 'chavvy'. It's about a person's standards of behaviour ,or lack of them, not their social class or how much they have in the bank.

My Gran used to say " It's manners that make a gentleman, not money"

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Penny S.
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 03:30 AM

Eliza's definition would have an area of overlap with the sort of people found in the Bullingdon Club, apart from the accents, the money and the "class".

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 02:46 AM

The etymology of "chav" is debated. IMHO it probably does not derive from the Romany "chavi".

The usage also varies.

Amidst the musically minded young it denotes followers of mainstream pop music rather than any of the "alternative" (yes, I know that that has specific overtones but it is a useful catch-all) musics, who as well as dressing with execrable taste threaten and assault followers of minority musics. There it probably has less attachment to education or intelligence (or lack thereof).

In the mainstream indicators would be - label driven clothing, bling, threatening behaviour, poor vocabulary speech and manners, loitering in groups on street corners or in bus shelters, drinking strong chemical cider to nausea, casual theft and violence, distaste for effort or self improvement or education or proper speech. Think Vicky Pollard from the TV comedy "Little Britain".

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Mick Woods
Date: 18 Apr 11 - 02:38 AM

This is a quite good Chav Test to see how much of a chav you really are!

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 10:46 PM

I prefer to say that they simply didn't have the proper raisin' up.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Janie
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 10:16 PM

What Q said, Ebbie. Lovely song.

Tell more about Buddy Tabor when you post it up top also!

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 09:52 PM

You have chavs in America.

I remember one episode of Roseanne where her daughter wanted a tattoo. Her daughter said, my friend Michelle - her mother let Michelle have a tattoo.

Yes, but her mother is a slut!

You may not have the word, but you have the mindset.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 09:09 PM

I think trailer trash is a phrase that should not be used by civilized people, and of course isn't. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 07:28 PM

Thanks for the remarks on Buddy's song. He writes great songs - about a dozen CDs and three anthologies worth - and I have many favorites. 'Cowboy in a Wheelchair', a crippled boy's fantasy about a swift, coal-black stallion, is one of them.

We are grateful he is in this town; we tell him that when he dies he is going to be famous. :) I hesitate to post 'Father's Grave' in a Lyrics Added thread because it is not a song that anyone here knows. Or has asked about!

'Trailer Trash' evidently is used a good deal like 'chav.' If so, however, chav is not a term I would like to see come into use here.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 06:15 PM

A chav can be extremely well-off financially, I consider the Beckhams to be a bit chavvy. It's partly being vulgar and having execrable taste. Also being unrestrained and ill-mannered in public. Lacking good manners, being unnecessarily aggressive, and demonstrating a general ignorance are also factors.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 06:03 PM

Not if they use the term with the same scatter-gun accuracy as many English people do, Richard.
....................................

The most likely origin of "chav" is from the Romany word for boy.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: michaelr
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 05:56 PM

So, UK catters, please explain to a murrican exactly whence "chav" derives and what it means.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 05:53 PM

Well, McGrath, maybe that depends on the way that such people (and "rednecks" behave.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: GUEST,Rapparee
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 05:51 PM

SALT WATER FARM
Words and Music by Tom Rowe

He was well into his sixties when I first heard Grampa's dream;
A farmhouse by the sea and some roots in the land,
He never got the farm, what he got was a machine,
In a factory at the edge of town and broken, calloused hands.
It stole away his years and the music from his ears;
And left him so he couldn't even hear the factory horn.
Still he said someday he knew he'd get his way,
And end up his days on a salt water farm.

Salt water farm, salt water farm,
A little bit of heaven, just a house and a barn.
Mornins we'd go fishin', work the fields in the afternoon;
And as the evening tide rolls in there'd be songs beneath the moon
And later I would take you in my arms,
And listen to the sounds of our salt water farm.

He said he'd have a cow, some chickens and a hog;
A barn filled up with hay and a boat down in the cove.
Later in the fall he'd go hunting with the dog.
Winter nights he'd sit around and read beside the stove.
Well he was always kind of poor and he could have dreamed for more,
Than a place where he would still have to work with his hands.
But that never was his way and I can still hear him say,
"Son, a man is at his best between the sea and the land."

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 05:46 PM

My impression is that Americans tend to use the term "trailer trash" with the same kind of random contempt as the English are liable to use "chav".

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: GUEST,Shimrod
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 05:30 PM

I suppose that the most important thing about that song ( I would like to hear it sung) is that the man from West Virginia did the best that he could for his family. There's absolutely no shame in that!

I suppose that our family was poor(ish) as well - but it never occurred to me either. My Dad cycled over the same railway bridge, to the factory where he worked, every weekday (and many weekends) for 50 years. My Mum was a housewife, mainly in the days before 'mod cons', and brought up three sons. They didn't have it easy but were careful with money - a habit which they passed on to me.

In the UK we appear to have an obsession with social class, but with the collapse of many of our manufacturing industries the class landscape has changed and is different from the landscape which existed in my parents' day. Unfortunately, I suspect that the contemporary UK political landscape is still based on the old class divides and I don't think that that does our country much good.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 05:09 PM

That man, and that family, were not chavs.

Subject: RE: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 05:08 PM

Ebbie, put that song in a Lyr. Add. thread, and post above the belt, so it won't get lost.\It is a lot more than BS.

Subject: BS: Not 'Chavs' but Poor
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Apr 11 - 04:36 PM

Mudcatter MadPolly started an interesting thread about 'chavs'- a term I had never heard before; I'm not quite sure what the US equivalent would be.

The thread has engendered some heated posts but it is fairly venom-free. However, it got me thinking about growing up poor. In my case, I think our family qualified as poor (certainly during and for some time after the Great Depression) but I don't recall my parents ever mentioning money, as such. We were taught to be frugal and to pay cash, rather than on credit and never to be wasteful, but I think I just accepted it as something that grownups do.

I know that from time to time the subject of how we all were reared has come up but here I'd like to address our perceptions.

Here is a song that Juneau's Buddy Tabor wrote about growing up poor. I would guess that his perceptions as a kid is quite common, although I think it comes through that as he grew older he resented the bitter inequities of life for those he loved.

(I posted this in the BS section since it is not about music.)

Father's Grave
                         Buddy Tabor, Juneau, Alaska

My father was born in the hills of West Virginia
Rode the coal cars through the train yards, Went to work at seventeen
He married Mama late in life, they gave birth to five children
You know hard times was all they ever seen
That old car he drove made him ashamed but to us it was a limousine
Took the kids out a-riding right after Sunday School
Buy a watermelon and stop somewhere and eat it in those picnic chairs
Spit the seeds out at each other, spit the seeds up in the air

We did not know that we was poor, to us kids it did not matter
But to him it broke his heart, cracked in pieces as it shattered
Catch the lightning bugs in mason jars as it got dark in our back yard
In the house that we grew up in that our father never owned

Late at night when the wind would blow and rattle on the window
In this rundown house he paid the rent for 40 some odd years
And though he worked hard all his life and he never drank or gambled
He never owned that home that he dreamed through silver tears

We did not know that we was poor, to us kids it did not matter
But to him it broke his heart, cracked in pieces as it shattered
Catch the lightning bugs in mason jars as it got dark in our back yard
In the house that we grew up in that our father never owned

When the old man died he didn't have a nickel to his name
All the kids pitched in to pay for his funeral
Mama's sister donated a little plot of land
To lay his body down to rest in peaceful sleep
And it was six feet deep and four feet wide and we covered it with flowers
And thanked our father there for all he'd done
For at last he had a piece of land he could call his own
And no one to collect the rent on his bleached out tired old bones
Tired old bones, tired old bones
And at least he had a piece of land he could call his own