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Our Manors are ill - And it Needs to Be Discussed

Posted: 15/03/2012 23:00

The world, and this country especially, is full of contradictions. With my new track and accompanying video, ill Manors, I'm just highlighting them, I'm not condoning anything. I aired my feelings about the riots very publicly when they happened and I still feel the same way.

What happened in Tottenham in some ways I can understand, but what happened everywhere else in the country was opportunism. I won't justify it because I don't agree with it. In fact it upset me so much I want to change it, so I wrote this song to bring the issue back to the forefront of public conversation. I feel it has been swept under the carpet and forgotten about, and it still needs to be properly addressed.

Since the riots happened I haven't heard enough people within the public sector asking the two most important questions; "why did it happen and how can we prevent it from happening again?" I do have a theory as to why and how but first I need to make my point. And I've chosen satire to do so.

The point being made in my song ill Manors is that society needs to take some responsibility for the cause of these riots. Why are there so many kids in this country that don't feel they have a future, or care about having a criminal record?

I think one of the reasons is that there is a very public prejudice in this country towards the underclass. These kids are ridiculed in the press as they aren't as educated as others, because they talk and dress in a certain way... but they're not as stupid as people think.

They are aware of the ill feelings towards them and that makes them feel alienated. I know because I felt it myself growing up. These kids have been beaten into apathy. They don't care about society because society has made it very clear that it doesn't care about them.

An example of this is the word 'chav' that means council housed and violent, a derogatory phrase that is openly used by certain sectors of middle England to label and define people from poor backgrounds. It's a derogatory phrase no different in my opinion to the ones concerning race or sex. The difference is that the papers use it publicly. If they did the same with racial or sexist derogatory terms it would be deemed, and rightly so, as offensive and politically incorrect.

That in my opinion is hypocrisy.

If you're born into a family that's has enough money to educate you properly, you are privileged. You're not better than anyone else, you're just lucky. Certain sectors of middle England, not all of them, but the ignorant ones need to wake up and realise that... and stop ridiculing the poor and less fortunate. That is what this song is about.

 

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The world, and this country especially, is full of contradictions. With my new track and accompanying video, ill Manors, I'm just highlighting them, I'm not condoning anything. I aired my feelings abo...
The world, and this country especially, is full of contradictions. With my new track and accompanying video, ill Manors, I'm just highlighting them, I'm not condoning anything. I aired my feelings abo...
 
 
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03:13 PM on 03/18/2012
Manners not Manors. At least get the spelling right or was that done on purpose.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
azbenahmed
01:51 PM on 03/19/2012
on purpose
02:17 PM on 03/19/2012
Thank you. xx
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Catriona
Wha daur meddle wi me?
12:39 AM on 03/18/2012
For Ill Manors, I suggest you join the National Trust.

Ill manners is another matter. ;)

I don't disagree with your argument, BTW.
Kraptonfactor
They're coming to take me away ha ha, hee hee, ho
11:40 AM on 03/18/2012
Catriona, he refers to 'Manors' in the sense of places, areas where people live, not manor houses.
I agree with what he said, we do have a nation of disaffected young people who have no hope, no aspirations and no chance of finding a decent job. That kind of anger was bound to spill over eventually.
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Catriona
Wha daur meddle wi me?
10:54 PM on 03/18/2012
Council houses.
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HUFFPOST BLOGGER
Shreen Ayob
10:58 AM on 03/17/2012
As someone who grew up on a tower block in a rough part of London it's hard for me to say this, but even I was making unfair judgements about the working class after I fell into the trappings of middle class comfort.

I used the word chav too. The little girl who spat on me in London. The drunk who threw a bottle at my head when I was walking home. Those were chavs to me. I didn't realise that a lot of people were actually using chav to mean anyone wearing tracksuit bottoms.

But some "naughty" young people are simply good souls led astray. I'm not making excuses for criminal behaviour but saying that root causes are being ignored. Behind a lot of troubled youngsters are backgrounds of abuse, drug misuse and insufficient care. All these are overwhelmingly associated with poverty.

Also, we're always going to struggle to empathise with the underclass if we're so hell bent on materialistic success. If we own/earn/have less, we are literally *worth* less.

I was so surprised by the reaction to the riots and my own inbuilt classism that I wrote the following (also on Huffington Post):

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/shreen-ayob/why-politicians-and-youth_b_1339846.html

Also, there's an awesome article out about working-class women being marginalised in mainstream feminism. A lot of what the author wrote applies to the discussion here:

http://www.thefword.org.uk/features/2012/03/feminism_still_
08:48 PM on 03/16/2012
you smashed it. will it solve our problems?. No. but when the masses don't have a voice what do they have? you offered that. living and working in my own concrete jungle I have seen my fair share of these problems, and it's not an easy process to try and not let your children get sucked in. education has to start at home because, the minute you hope for the powers that be to help, your road will be a long one. my son is 14 on a council estate he does well at school and he spits every minute of every day, his writing is incredible and he often writes about council estate living and wonders what the older generations think of youth of today. when osama bin laden was killed he wrote lyrics that was so powerful and to the point I got it straight away better than any politician try to explain it. this is a gift that isn't even recognized in school (an inner city school who clearly hear there pupils spit and rap at any given opportunity). our society are not moving with the times quickly enough! start with the generation before the generation of current problems, don't try and tell a child how to live when they only see one way of living.
Kraptonfactor
They're coming to take me away ha ha, hee hee, ho
11:53 AM on 03/18/2012
Ursula, what does 'spit' mean, I assume it's a form of music or some such thing. I'm an old bird so haven't heard it before.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
azbenahmed
01:56 PM on 03/19/2012
spitting is rapping...
06:25 PM on 03/16/2012
My son has been to university, he's done well, battled with adhd and dispraxia and did well, We are working class and now because of this, he can't get a good job. The jobs are all going to the old boys network. Now he's looking forward to working in call centres and checkouts.
Kraptonfactor
They're coming to take me away ha ha, hee hee, ho
11:55 AM on 03/18/2012
fwwrighties, that must be so frustrating for him and you, that after all that studying and having to overcome all those problems, he can't find employment in his chosen field. I do hope something turns up for him soon.
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HUFFPOST SUPER USER
Ben Wilson
12:50 PM on 03/16/2012
Can't disagree with a single word! They can't even dangle a carrot in front of a 'chav' without hitting them with the stick. How we group these people into such terms is a very nice way to place all blame on them and absolve yourselves of any responsibility. In my area stuck working in a shop Ive seen many dramas involving kids who hang around outside shops and adults who choose to give them what for. It's amazing how a camp guy like me has no trouble with them and I can always get them to move on with no grief and yet these wise +40 adults create a whole drama and the police normally get called out. I've always been the nice lad everyone wishes was their son and I chose to dress like a chav to gague the reaction, and the results were amazing. People stopped saying hello back to me, some walked onto the other side of the street and OMG did I get plenty of rudeness, and the reaction when if I got a word in was amazing. Their heads almost exploded when the voice didn't match the clothes. I get asked why do I dress silly....It's just a black and red Nike tracksuit FFS!
lastpost
see biography
11:06 AM on 03/16/2012
"why did it happen and how can we prevent it from happening again?"
Obviously, it was a cry for release from the punitive 50% tax rate. Scrap the 50% tax rate.

"ill Manors"
as opposed to oily manners?

“We've had it with you politicians”
You’ve never had it so good.
We’ve twigged that this isn’t democracy.
If that worries you, perhaps it should.
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librarianesque
The Right was Wrong, the Left was Right.
02:41 AM on 03/16/2012
well stated. as a long time british resident who hails from across the pond, i simply can't understand the classist and sometimes racist, vitriol reserved for "the underclasses," as you say. it seems as though there are significant restraints and barriers to mobility in the UK, and when one does beat the odds, the hard work is not celebrated or praised. sometimes i think that luck (i.e. being born into a privilege) is favored over hard work and true grit. and maybe, the barriers are in place to ensure that things remain the same--in the form of limited opportunities for social and educational and economic mobility.

we need to re-examine this. i am certainly pleased you've brought attention to the issue. keep up the good work.
10:07 AM on 03/16/2012
The whole thing is a massive problem, communities are clearly not what they were and for a reason. The old school working class used to have a community around them a support network if you like, and for that reason social mobility was more common. Small business in these areas have died or are struggling and with manufacturing mostly gone, it's harder for people to get out of that situation. We need proper apprentaships like the YTS used to be etc (which i was on btw). Why should we have so many East European builders etc when there are kids really needing skills here? It's just crazy, the whole thing... How did it get to this point? Ok Thatcher started selling everything and i blame her for the start of all this, but 15 years of Labour did nothing to turn it around, useless. Need to have a major think about this.

By the way, well off people get called chavs too. Dunno what the original meaning of it is but it's also used to describe the Towie types and wags, people with working class family roots who have a few quid but have a certain way of spending it. It's still the upper middle classes having a laugh at people 'below' them though, but not only aimed the 'benefit chavs'.... Just class snobbery.
Kraptonfactor
They're coming to take me away ha ha, hee hee, ho
12:30 PM on 03/18/2012
I agree with you, Lillywhite London. Tony Blair made so much about education and yet we have children leaving school who are unable to read and write or do basic maths. What chance do they have in life?
The rot set in when the comprehensive style of education was introduced. If we had secondary modern schools still then maybe more emphasis would be put on learning a trade rather than everyone feeling under pressure to attend university. Not eveyone is academically minded but are still shoehorned into this one size fits all educational system.
Add to that the mass immigration of Eastern Europeans who have probably had a better education than our own kids and the whole problem is compounded. As they are also willing to take a lower wage for most jobs (as it would still be considered good pay compared to what they would earn in their homeland), employers are keen to take them on over people who already live over here.
The whole educational system needs a complete overhaul. Nobody should be allowed to leave school unless they are able to read and write and do maths, however long that takes.
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06:11 PM on 03/16/2012
I think an awful lot of cr#p is talked about all this. I think the riots were just criminals cynically jumping on the back of something extremely dubious that they didn't care about, but used as *an excuse* to go on a looting spree. It gathered momentum via the media and the WWW and snowballed out of all proportion.
I went to a rough school and *made a choice* to work hard to try to pass exams. I suffered a lot of derision from the kids who *made a choice* to take advantage of the conspicuous lack of discipline and have a big 7 year party, showing off, messing around, disrupting anything academic, and doing whatever they could get away with. This made life hell for the teachers and anyone trying to, god forbid, learn at school. So after school they're faced with new choices - between educating themselves later, low paid jobs, unemployment or crime. No doubt they whine about how they had no opportunities. I think this phenomenon has been rife throughout UK schools for the longest time and is passed from one year to the next like a cancer. Until it's eliminated, innocent poor kids' chances of a decent education will be very slim indeed, and there will always be this self-imposed "underclass" who resort to crime and riots.
I'm talking specifically about the rioters here, but there are other issues in the UK surrounding the capitalist class sytem, distribution of wealth, privatisation, immigration etc etc etc.
Kraptonfactor
They're coming to take me away ha ha, hee hee, ho
01:27 PM on 03/18/2012
You are right, timbukthree, teaching is more about crowd control than education these days. Fair play to you for making the right choices in spite of all that.