[bitta bovva] the chavs and the happy-slappers

I s’pose I can’t talk.

I was roaming London in the days of Splodginessabounds’ Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps Please, lived next door to the genesis of some record label I can’t remember [Virgin? Island?], drank in ‘ammersmith and Stamford Bridge, wore smoking jacket, bowler and Stranglers teashirt and generally made a prat of myself.

You all remember Bad Manners, the Beat, the Specials, the Selecter and so on? That was my era and there’s always been a bit of an underculture in Britain.

Fast forward twenty five years and I’m right out of it. What is this chav culture? Something about Burberry and Prada and Rooney – seems like it’s just a metamorphosis of the old thing which was always going on. Violence? London was always violent. Doug ‘n Dinsdale wouldn’t tell me why but they assured me it was so.

So is there anything actually … wrong with it … other than a bit of high spirits? Utterpants says:

"Short of enforced sterilisation, these shameless sluts will continue to breed like sex-crazed rabbits—smoking, drinking, fighting and fornicating their way into every corner of the land."

"Sterilisation?" we asked. "Isn't that a bit drastic?"

"It's simply no good pussy-footing around with bans on the sale of Burberry baseball caps and designer tracksuits to teenage Chavs," he replied, as he sucked on a curiously shaped glass pipe and blew a cloud of pungent smelling tobacco in our direction …"

Uh-huh. Still doesn’t seem all that bad. Sad that the young have turned into mindless excuses for humans, strangling the language in the process but still, we can’t change the world, right? Then I saw this Guardian article. Wiki put it more in context:

England, 18 June 2005: Police arrested three 14-year-old boys for the suspected rape of an 11-year-old girl who attended their school in Stoke Newington, London. Authorities were alerted when school staff saw footage from the students' mobile phones.

Nice stuff. Have we finally reached this stage?