Why do people hate chavs?

[belinda]

Don't quite get it myself as they are so easily recognisable and provide excellent joke fodder ............

1. What do you call a Chav in a box? Innit.

2. What do you call a Chav in a filing cabinet? Sorted

3. What do you call an Eskimo Chav? Innuinnit.

4. Why are Chavs like slinkies? They have no real use but it's great to
watch one fall down a flight of stairs.

5. What's the difference between a Chav and a coconut? One's thick
and hairy, the other's a coconut.

6. What's the first question at a Chav quiz night? "What you lookin'
at?"

7. How do you get 100 Chavs into a phone box? Paint three stripes on
it.

8. Two Chavs in a car without any music. Who's driving? The police

9. What do you call a chav with 9 GCSE's? A liar.

10. What do you call a 30 year old chavette? Granny.

11. Two chavs jump off beachy head, who wins? Society.

[Obskua]

Please can someone cure my lamentable ignorance, and tell me what a 'Chav' is ? The word does not appear in my Shorter Oxford (1937 edition - if it was good enough for my father it's good enough for me).

Many thanks.

[Seraphina]

You know those people that hang around your street corners at night, drinking buckfast, wearing tracksuits with stiletto heels, baseball caps, orange tans (for the lady chavs), tacky gold jewellery from Argos....you must have seen them! They speed around town in tarted up cars blaring techo music?

Well, those are the YOUNG chavs.....the older ones are also easy to identify though.

Up in GLasgow we call them Neds, and they're generally identifiable by all of the above, plus a specific adaptation for Glasgow Neds is the attractive wearing of the socks pulled up OVER the tracksuit bottoms.

In Belfast we call them Spides/Scallys.....they all wear Adidas bottoms.

Hope that helps Obskua, I don't know where you come from, possibly it's a nice place, but if you ever come to Glasgow they're impossible to miss!

Or I believe there's a fair few websites dedicated to The Chav!

In the 1937 edition you use they're probably under the definition 'young people today...'!!! ;)

[Cathy]

I have heard http://www.glasgowsurvival.co.uk/ is particularly good for introducing the concept... one of my colleagues claims to know the guy who set this up. Apparently it has games... but I can't check as I think it has sound and I'm at work! In Liverpool scallies also pull their socks over the tracky bottoms! At my high school they were also known as 'Kappa Slappers', and I also heard male chavs called 'trevors' and females 'sharons', I wonder is 'Chav' is an amalgamation of these names. Probably totally didn't spell that right.

[Seraphina]

You can all come to Aiya Napa with me, where I am 'Chief Chavette' (See Elfstar's post on Corrupted Wish Game thread!) in charge of all the Chavs/Neds/Spides/etc.. I can give you an induction to Chav Culture!! ;)

[Elfstar]

I had heard chav was from chavie a romany word meaning child! Burberry and aquascutum are fave brands along with the Luton(?) facelift where the (bleached blonde) hair is pulled back into a tight pony tail. I live near the Chav capital of the uk and I cant wait for them to go..........Ayia napa or wherever.

Dudley in the west midlands in case you are wondering.

[Cathy]

I hope chav hairstyles are the same where you guys are, this is a conversation someone I know overheard between two sharons:

'Why weren't you out last night Sharon?'
'I broke my fringe'

[Obskua]

Many thanks to one and all - I am now far better informed. Where I live, in deepest Norfolk, we don't seem to have them at all - all I ever see hanging round our lamp-post (yes, the village has one - which also carries telephone & power cables) is foxes celebrating their immunity from being slaughtered.

[Tess]

Seraphina - The fashion of socks over tracksuits has now reached the South Coast! Just yesterday I saw a chav sat outside the shop (where else!) wearing his trousers tucked into FOOTBALL socks and his friend had one blue and one red :eek:

What I want to know is how the first chav thought of it, he must have awoken from his White Lightening stupor and thought (or what must remotely resemble a thought in the head of a chav) "today like I'm gonna like you know, like init like, d'ya know want I mean, you know what I'm saying like tuck my trousers like into my socks, wicked!"

[excalibur]

Would this mean that cyclists or people taking treks in muddy countrysides qualify for 'chav' classification, such is each party's tendency to subscribe to the 'chav' way of living by tucking their socks into their trousers!? :confused: In that case, I certainly qualify as a 'chav', (albeit grudgingly). I am in a state of perpetual awe at the myriad eccentricities of chavkind and worry at the ramifications that might be wrought if I am indeed (shamelessly proclaimed as it is) a latterly unbenownst member of an elite, close-knit, 'chav' community. This brings to me to a well-observed quote from Oscar Wilde; "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that it has to be altered every six months." I can certainly draw parallels with that mentality. :rolleyes:

[Tess]

Do not worry excalibur, I believe the act of tucking in your trousers to prevent them being caught in the bike chain is a sensible thing to do and therefore is not chavlike behaviour!

[Seraphina]

Hee hee I've just been to the website mentioned by Romance Obsessed near the start of this thread (http://www.glasgowsurvival.co.uk/ ) and it's very funny!

Obskua, you should go to it, you can have your own virtual Ned (what CHavs are called in Glasgow) pet..the Nedagotchi! You feed him fags, buckfast and play rave music!! (not for the easily offended).

Amused me for far too long... :rolleyes:

[Cathy]

... I saw a charming couple of neds at one of the Glasgow central train stations last night, at about 7pm, the nedette had a bottle of something blue and the ned was swigging out of a half-empty bottle of buckfast :p . Nice.

[Deinonychus]

Anyone else on here not so much 'hate' chavs, as find the culture - and the media's embarrassingly desperate adoption of it - just utterly boring?

[lucyb]

yuppies, dinkys, niamywihks, luvvies, chavs...there does seem to be this need to compartmentalise people. Probably makes it easier on the marketing.

[excalibur]

That reminds me of the time when Michael Parkinson was interviewing Stephen Fry on Saturday and his interviewee gave the whole ‘chav’ behavioural ideology the damnedest plug that could conceivably be imagined. He said; (I’m paraphrasing here of course) “A new kind of people are rising to the fore now, colleges and universities are producing our future parliamentary leaders in great, unheard of numbers,” #meaningfully observed pause# “They’re called chavs.” :eek: This almost brought Mr. Parkinson to the level of rapturous incontinence, perfecting that idiosyncrasy that he always observes upon being titillated by a guest…metamorphosing into a human beetroot. :D

[Dr. Strangelove]

They used to be called townies where I live (Greater London) And now it's dueenly being replaced with chav for some reason. My school is FULL of them in the towniest neighbourhood in the world. But there are a lot of rich kids and things who go here as well so it's an odd mix. They're so stupid casue they abuse you when you do nothing,, and use intimidation to get what they want. Bastards, s'cuse my french.

[Mad Dog and Glory]

Who? The rich kids or the townies?

[Cathy]

There are chavs in the countryside so I guess that's why 'townies' hasn't caught on nationally. It was 'charvers' when I was at high school, but saying that now sounds weird and posh with the 'ar' sound which is odd as I'm pretty northern. Charvers in the country hang round in bus shelters or benches, probably get involved in cow-tipping, burning things and drinking cider. :p

[belinda]

I'm starting to get confused now about chavs as I am told there are also a group called nikes. Are they chavs in training or different?

[Harriet]

Who? The rich kids or the townies?

I would say she means the townies ;)

[ChrisG]

Chavs sound like what are called 'rednecks' in the US. The men are all beer swilling in the honky-tonk bars just about every night and they all wear baseball caps (usually with the name of some tractor company like John Deere on them), boots and drive pickup trucks. The girls follow them all over town trying to catch them flirting with another girl and then get in a fight with the other girl. They all seem to dress like hookers. When I was in the South, there was a joke about rednecks that went:

How do you describe redneck foreplay? (see spoiler for punchline)

'Get in the truck, bitch!'

:D

[Dr. Strangelove]

Yeah but Redneck's don't wear all the nike stuff do they? I swear they just buy like cheap clothes from wal mart or something.

[Magwitch]

In my day we just used to call such people 'common'.

So encouraging to see that times have moved on and they have their very own name now.

*edit* Realised that's it a bit rude to jump in here with a smarta*se sarcastic comment....sorry. It's just that I get so tired of seeing this word bandied about all the time and the downright snobbery that's often associated with it (not implying that's the case here, hasten to add). For information: the word 'chav' is thought by many to derive from the Romani word 'chavi', meaning young man, and so it's roots as a prejudicial form of abuse may be well established.

[happyfriday]

‘Skanger’ is the term we would mostly use for ‘Chav’s’ in Dublin but ‘Chav is becoming the new preferred term of reference, there a funny bunch and have made Burberry a not so sought after fashion accessory!!! I wonder what there called in other countries!! :D

[Dr. Strangelove]

I used to call people commoners but my friend got all stressy cause his dad is a builder and he was like 'If you call townies common then you're calling me a townie'. That's why i stopped I guess.

[Cathy]

In France they say 'wesh wesh' (not how its spelled, btw!). Its sort of equivilent, means 'boy racer', was part of chav culture when I was at high school anyway.

[Harriet]

I've heard many variations, I just call them townies or chavs, I tried to stop calling them pikees when someone told me that pikees are actually gypsies, but every now and again I forget...so anyway here's the variations I've come across: chav, pikee, townie, sket, shazzer, commoner.....hmmm I'll probably think of a few more after I hit submit...

[Magwitch]

It's good to hear that you are trying hard not to use the work 'pikey', Harriet, because it really is a very offensive term for some people. It also reflects rather badly on the user as well. For example. from (Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikey)):


"Pikey is a pejorative slang term used in the United Kingdom. The term originally referred to a gypsy as a contraction of the word "turnpike", but in recent years the definition has become looser and it is sometimes used to refer to a wide section of the (generally urban) underclass of the country, particularly those on whom the lower middle classes look down. However, when used to refer to gypsies it clearly has racist connotations."

:)

[Deinonychus]

Okay, so where does one draw the line with all this stuff then? If it's offensive to use the expression 'pikey' because it demeans one faction of the community (or in this case, of its own community) then what about other expressions, eg 'chav' itself?

I was told 'chav' was an acronym of 'council house and violent' - which I have to say is so clumsy as not to convince me - but which, if the case, surely makes a generalisation about folk who live in council accommodation?

Just wonderin', like...