About time this had its own thread. First up: the Mail continues to gloat over the criminal nature of the chavvy Matthews family:

Downfall of a decent clan: What the Shannon family tree reveals about the social breakdown of Britain

mail readers are fond of banging on about "chavs" and "yobs". presumably because "the great unwashed" and similar phrases are no longer PC (another victory for the omnipresent brigade). it's ... quite repulsive.

yes daily mail, the state of one family really tells you about the state of the whole country, doesn't it?

Is there any proof that this 'social breakdown' is actually happening (outside the fevered brain of Melanie Philips)? It seems to be just be taken as read, but as far as I can see things are remaining pretty civilised, if not more so, and I live - as I may have mentioned before - in Catford, not Tunbridge Wells, so I feel I am allowed to comment.

It's quite amusing to see the Daily Mail feels it necessary to print, under family names and dates of birth, their job title or occupation. Never happens on any other family tree, they just wanted to slip in there how many of them are listed as unemployed.

Soaring debts weighing down middle-class families struggling on working-class pay
By BECKY BARROW

Mail readers bite their balls off.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1770

What's working class pay....5.10

That's actually quite interesting.

During NL's reign mail readers (ie - the aspirational working class) have never had it so good, they've been able to get the aforementioned 'aspired to' lifestyle by taking advantage of cheap credit, correlating with the rise of the now dominant 'perception politics' (ie - fuck facts, it's what most people 'reckon' that matters). Now that's all coming to an end, it turns out the people with new extensions, conservatories and vauxhall zafira's are not middle class as they liked to pretend, they were on working class wages the whole time, however the mail says "fear not, you might be upto your tits and on less than £20k a year, but you're still middle class" knowing it'd be a disaster for the mail if it ever dawns on these people that they've been squarely done.

Now that's all coming to an end, it turns out the people with new extensions, conservatories and vauxhall zafira's are not middle class as they liked to pretend.[/quote]

You're forgetting all those with BMW 318d's with cloth seats, hubcaps and a stereo you tune with your fillings. That is really aspirational middle class.

It's not class "bashing" as such, more class hypocracy I suppose...

Two-year-old girl survives falling into pool after learning to swim from just eight weeks

So the story is basically "child who can swim didn't die when falling into pool". Now, these people have their own pool so I assume they're middle class people. As such, glowing praise from the commentors







So where are the comments about her mother leaving the child unattended and not doing anything to prevent the child falling into the pool? Am I alone in thinking if this was a working class family she'd be being pilloried for this..?

Didn't (most) papers originally start of doing this with the Madeline case??

As a side note I don't know many middle class people who have home pools (some have those blow up rubber ones though ) , so they would of been at the top end of being middle class for sure, dosen't alter the story in any real way but I think it would have a pretty subtle effect on how people perceive the wealth of the parents and tied in with this the subsequent level of care for children (even if a case like this shows it may of briefly lacked).



Indeed.

Absolutely not a nanny state measure, then. And paid for by someone other than hard-working, hard-taxed Mail readers presumably.

As I'm sure Daul Pacre (the poster) will confirm, most people who seem overly preoccupied with chavs tend to be middle class proto-fascists who believe we're all going to hell in a handcart.

We were both on a forum where moaning about chavs was its raison d'etre, and the move from "they're all scrounging scum" to "lets sterlize them" to "lets cleanse the council estates of their presence" was very short and quick.

And unsurprisingly, their proof the UK was worse than Baghdad (sadly, this was said, seriously)? The Daily Mail and Scum, of course.

I have a pool and I have just been in it.

What Mr Cain said is, sadly, all true.