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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Ill manners is another matter. ;)
I don't disagree with your argument, BTW.
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.
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_
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.
we need to re-examine this. i am certainly pleased you've brought attention to the issue. keep up the good work.
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.
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.
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.