Is “Chav” a derogatory term of abuse? Yes, quite often. But it can also be something of a badge of honour, rather like an ASBO.

Es un libro estupendo para ponerse de muy mala leche, sobre todo porque uno ve los paralelismos (la traición de la socialdemocracia, aquí el PSOE, allí los laboristas), la estúpida pretensión de que para ser más competitivos en industria lo que hay que hacer es destruir la industria, y ver que el aznarato y ahora el gobierno de Rajoy son más de las políticas que se aplicaron 20 años antes en Reino Unido con unos resultados desastrosos. There is an increasingly strong case for compulsory sterilisation of all those who have had a second child—or third, or whatever—while living off state benefits” I am not an economist. My knowledge of economics and politics weren't spectacular and pretty mediocre, however reading this superb, excellently written book really was an eye opener. Not only does Owen Jones write eloquently and fluently, he links ideas perfectly in a way almost anyone can understand. His balanced, consistent and thorough use of statistics as well as expanding ideologies and digging into them, unearthing the roots provides brilliant reading as well as inciting attitude change, you'll find it challenging to argue with his structure and logic. Few first time authors have been able to spark as much debate about a subject as Owen Jones has with his new book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. A glance at the search results for chavs on Google, only a few days after the book’s release, shows how much Jones has dominated the conversation on the controversial word, and its wider political connotations. Chavs strives to make sense of the bitter process that has seen the working class turned from 'salt of the earth' to 'scum of the earth': it's a story of recession, and devastated industry, of whole communities dumped on the dole and abandoned, of concerted political strategies designed to subordinate the British economy -- and society -- to the desires of the City. Above all, it's an exploration of a bitter hatred of working class collective identity, of their cultural institutions, of their trade unions, of their very collective strength, (all of which might counterbalance the excesses of the aristo-oligarch-financial matrix that today so dominates our society) -- and the concerted effort to smash them into the dust.Jones, Owen [@owenjones84] (13 January 2018). "Devastated that my beloved dad, Rob, died surrounded by his family this morning. Pinochet shared one of the main aims of his ideological soulmates in Britain: to erase the working class as a concept. His goal, he declared, was to ‘make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of entrepreneurs’.”

Owen Jones". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 11 December 2016 . Retrieved 12 December 2016. De acuerdo con la Fundación para una Nueva Economía (NEF, 2009), el valor social de diferentes trabajos se puede calcular. Una limpiadora de hospital cobra a menudo el salario mínimo. Sin embargo, generan más de 10 libras de valor social por libra pagada de salario. Un basurero o persona que trabaje en reciclado genera 12 libras por libra de salario.Jones digs beneath this foul new orthodoxy to reiterate the facts of increasing inequality, which has led British society to become ever more segregated by class, income and neighbourhood. In such circumstances, miscommunication has deepened between the classes; the Conservatives' demeaning of trade unions has helped to strip the working classes of what public voice they had, so that the middle class has effectively become the new decision-making class. Aitken, Vivienne (21 July 2015). "Cancer patients miss out on vital drug due to staff shortage". Daily Record. Archived from the original on 30 December 2015 . Retrieved 10 March 2021.

Evans, RichardJ. (2019). Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History. New York: Oxford University Press. p.642. ISBN 9780190459642.Owen Jones". David Higham Literary, Film and TV Agents. Archived from the original on 1 December 2011 . Retrieved 15 September 2011. The notes for the play suggested that the writer wanted it to encourage people to think about the nature of class differences in Australia – but really, you can’t achieve critical reflections upon the basis of a series of clichés and stereotypes. Stereotypes reinforce prejudice and stop people thinking. That’s literally their point, to allow us to not have to think about (or know how to respond to) people we press into the stereotype.

Brady, Phelim (8 February 2013). "Interview: Owen Jones". Varsity.co.uk. Archived from the original on 28 September 2013 . Retrieved 26 September 2013. There are two elements of the book I think work particularly well. One is a story that is not told enough, where ‘Broken Britain’, a term so favoured by David Cameron, is re-presented as the post-industrialised shattered communities devastated by repeated government policies that killed off mining and industrial communities (Jones tell this story through a Northumberland ex-mining village, and the effects on Longbridge near Birmingham of the closure of the Rover car plant). It is an impressive piece of work and chilling. The other is a story told regularly on the left but overlooked by many others – the effective community organisation the drove the neo-fascist British National Party (BNP) from its political foothold in Barking and Dagenham in Essex. The Barking and Dagenham story then becomes an effective way to hammer home the point that much of the right’s tactics, especially its focus on immigration as a social and political issue, divides working people and continues to allow the plutocrats in whose interests neo-liberalism works and who caused the current economic crises to keep on acting as they have for the last couple of decades. In this groundbreaking investigation, Owen Jones explores how the working class has gone from “salt of the earth” to “scum of the earth.” Exposing the ignorance and prejudice at the heart of the chav caricature, one based on the media’s inexhaustible obsession with an indigent white underclass, he portrays a far more complex reality. Moving through Westminster’s lobbies and working-class communities from Dagenham to Dewsbury Moor, Jones reveals the increasing poverty and desperation of communities made precarious by wrenching social and industrial change, and all but abandoned by the aspirational, society-fragmenting policies of Thatcherism and New Labour. The chav stereotype, he argues, is used by governments as a convenient figleaf to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems, and to justify widening inequality. Jones, a twenty-something year old former trade union lobbyist and self-proclaimed ‘lefty’, presents his argument through contrived facts, figures and twisted examples. To give him credit, he does make some interesting, relevant and insightful comments. It is here where my problem arises: his use of unrelated examples frustratingly distract the reader from the essentially valid points. In his attempt to cover a lot of ground, Jones loses sight of what is relevant and what is not. The problem is that she has written a play that is meant to be ‘funny’ – and so it is a kind of string of clichés and stereotypes of working and middle class identities hardly tied together. By far the people who come off the worst in this are the working class characters. Basically, the middle class in the play (it was called Australian Realness, by the way) are not only drunken and angry, they are also basically seeking to tear down Western civilization. The middle class are merely gormless, the working class are too stupid to know the damage they are causing.

Retailers:

The Royal Television Society Lecture 2013 – 'Totally Shameless: How TV Portrays the Working Class' ". BBC. 24 November 2013. Archived from the original on 21 February 2014 . Retrieved 27 August 2014. Britain's indigenous working classes are put last in line for employment, council housing, health care, education and bank loans in favour of the exotic Third world immigrants (especially Muslims) favoured by the pc left elites. Ash Sarkar: Since Chavs was released, a lot has happened. There’s Brexit, Corbyn, the pandemic, and we’re now looking down the barrel of a generationally catastrophic cost of living crisis. Do you have any sense of how class consciousness, or our cultural idea of class, might be changing again? Owen Jones". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 19 March 2013 . Retrieved 2 March 2013. Being born into a prosperous middle-class family typically endows you with a safety net for life. If you are not naturally very bright, you are still likely to go far and, at the very least, will never experience poverty as an adult. A good education compounded by your parents' 'cultural capital', financial support and networks will always see you through. If you are a bright child born into a working-class family, you do not have any of these things. The odds are that you will not be better off than your parents.”