The Owenisation of the Shirking Classes

We had a good thing going, once we’d worked it all out proper, like. See, since at least the Seventies there’s been a general decline in the heavy, dirty jobs that us plebs are good at – the unions didn’t really help, if we’re honest. At the same time we had the cold war and the rise of the weedy, speccy socialist intellectual. Teachers who had never fought in the real war and well-to-do, arty types on the telly started telling us we deserved better and all that, you know, like education and stuff? At first we fell for it and tried harder to get qualifications but, man, that was well-harsh, you know?

But at the same time we noticed that even though the country was broke, nobody let you starve. In fact, if you’d got kids you were sometimes better off on the Old King Cole than in a crappy job. Of course, there was the stigma of being a loafer and all that, not pulling your weight, but the Labour boffins had a plan for that as well. Soon, it was considered socially acceptable – even, you know, normal, to make a living just by having kids. Okay, you had to duck and dive a bit, you know, make sure you didn’t get cornered into a paternity test and everything, but on the whole it was okay. 

I mean, we’re not stupid, innit? You do the sums: do you work hard at school, so you can work hard at life so you can buy a house and then worry about paying the mortgage and the school fees and higher rate taxes and all that, or do you just sprog up, get a council house for life, sit back and cruise. I see ‘em, the clever kids I was at school with – they’re just as fat and unhealthy as me, but man, the stress on their faces, you know? 

Okay, so they started calling us Chavs. Fair enough, we know what we are; we’re a legitimate social class now – there’s people got PhDs on the back of studying the likes of us, like they was that David Attenborough or Dian Fossey or whatever. They’re happy, we’re happy – everybody’s happy and the bennies keep on coming... 

Then along comes Owen fucking Jones. 

At first we thought he was on his paper round, but then he keeps asking all these questions, right? Turns out he was writing a book, egged on by his mum I expect. Probably after a doctorate or summit, we thought, but no. He’s only gone and blown the whole shebang. “Chavs”, he called it, “The Demonisation of the Working Class”. Is he having a laff? We int worked since before he was bloody born and damned proud of it we are an’ all. 

But no, like the Mother Teresa of Manchester he starts meddling where he’s not wanted. He’s not one of us – he thinks he is, but he’s not – and he starts getting all high and mighty about it all, blabbing to the New Statesman and The Guardian and The Independent and wotnot and he’s on that BBC Question time every fringing other week, shooting his mouth off about how we’re maligned and bloody ‘demonised’. That word is doing my head in – every fucker uses it now about fucking everything. 

Oh he means well – he thinks he’s a bloody crusader but, honestly, all he’s done is alerted yer actual working class and got them all wound up and angry. But it’s too late now isn’t it, Owen? Because not content with writing books about us and turning us into hate figures your lot only went and stirred up the grafters who paid for it all as well; letting in anybody who wanted to work for fuck-all and keeping the wages down. Why did you do that? 

So now, thanks to you and your bloody mum – that Tolly Poynbee bird – and all your Labour mates, nobody can manage without bennies, even if they are working. And they’ve just sussed out that bennies have been going up for the last five years, while working wages have been going down. I tell you it don’t take a sociologist to see it’s going to end in tears. We weren’t fucking ‘vulnerable’ until you started banging on about it. We were doing fine. 

Equalitee - Labour Stylee!

So cheers, bloody lefties; thanks a bunch. With the cost of living going up and up, bedroom tax coming in, workfare projects... the writing’s on the wall. If it gets any worse for us, we might have to up sticks and take our benefits to Bulgaria.

Straighten up and buy right

Twice in the last 24 hours I've seen somebody having a pop at the policy of selling off council houses and it’s telling that the use of the word ‘Thatcherite’ automatically implies criticism. Boo, hiss, nasty, etc, although isn't it curious that nobody called the Conservatives of Mrs Thatcher’s day The Nasty Party (That was down to TheresaMay – cheers, Tess.)

Anyway, to hear some talk, the heinous selling of homes to their long-term tenants at very generous discounts is directly responsible for the current ‘housing crisis’, causing the return of Rackman-style landlords to raid the public coffers of housing benefit. What utter cod. Predictably the red-to-its-roots Daily Mirror leads the rallying cry against ‘toffs’ and ‘cronies’ as if every single social housing entrepreneur is directly related to the Iron Lady and her evil plot to help ordinary people achieve a lifetime ambition.

Actually, the Labour Party itself, in its manifesto of 1959, proposed to introduce the right of tenants to buy the homes they lived in. It was a laudable aim, a very British aspiration and it offered for the first time the possibility that an ordinary working class family could accumulate some bricks and mortar; a castle of their own to pass on to their children. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the idea... except for the profligacy of weak and venal humans.

Throughout the eighties council tenants exercised their right to buy, effectively capping their accommodation costs, acquiring a little bit of England for themselves and starting to feel a little bit middle class. Living through real austerity in the post-war years and true to their working class values a good many lived within their means and eventually paid off their small mortgages to live rent-free for ever more. Plenty of ordinary pensioners owe their relatively comfortable old age to Mrs Thatcher.

But it was also the age of consumerism and among the younger and more reckless a more dangerous game of Keeping Up With Every Single One Of The Joneses was played out. The race was on; some sold as soon as they could, took the profit and moved up and out. Others discovered the money-for-nothing world of the remortgage. After all, the price of houses had only ever gone up, hadn’t it? And the banks in their turn were duped and continued to lend, ever more optimistically, fuelled by exactly the same greedy instincts as their mortgagees.

The warning signs were there from the start – cars worth more than the original price of the houses standing alongside the settee in the garden. Too-expensive new show kitchens and bathrooms and giant televisions and foreign holidays. This was not the fault of any government - New Labour even rejoiced at the notion of ordinary people living way beyond their means – this was simple human avarice. Former secure council tenants wilfully placed themselves in jeopardy and rode the boom until the inevitable sorry bust.

Buy-to-let mortgages allowed ordinary people with a bit of vision to acquire a property portfolio and as former owners became renters once more it was a viable enterprise. Now they are pariahs because what, because they rent to welfare recipients? Despite what Owen Jones thinks there are few predatory landlords out there. Most are bumping along the bottom just like their tenants.

Renting in the welfare sector is a gamble and without any capital gains many social landlords are currently making a loss. If Housing Benefit is cut they can’t rely on tenants to make up the difference so they suck it up; they have little choice, yet according to the merry little Chavmeister they are all evil millionaires exploiting the weak.

Talking of chavs, self-styled King of the Chavs, Michael Carroll blew the best part of £10million and freely admits he couldn’t handle it. He is an extreme example, but one recognised by every law-abiding neighbour of one of his kind.

A poverty-stricken council house tenant. 

Don't give him money - he'll only lose it.

Is there a moral here? Not really, just a truth - in life there are winners and losers at all levels. It doesn’t matter how much social engineering is applied, money will always leave those incapable of understanding it; plenty have proved they fit that profile. And of course it is the naivety of Socialism once again... not understanding money or people is a real problem in a world that is run by people. With money.