Let children be children.

So if expense, bullying, mugging, theft, and the risk of death and/or destruction doesn’t stop these practices, why would a visit from a social worker do it?

[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
I think that’s moving into an entirely different area, where you’ll find far less disagreement.

How long ago are you taking us back here, to the magical time when one’s appearance did not matter to one’s peers?
[/QUOTE]

Quite honestly **GorillaMan ** I was born in 1954(Yes I know that I’m an incredibly old bastard)went to school on a not so good council estate,passed the 11 plus and went to Grammar school)

My ex missus did her B.Ed. and I got to know the other women on her course(I even wrote some of her essays,not because it was difficult but because of the sheer workload,Behaviourism and Pavlov,corny now but not so much back then,AND I got a bloody good grade,er that is she did.

An off and on girlfriend whos in her mid twenties is a teacher in England from Ireland as is a mate of mine and my best mates wife is a "Super teacher"in what used to be a grammar school but isn’t now so I’m not entirely out of touch.
But back to the plot,in junior and infants school we wore kids clothing and I can honestly swear on my dead mums soul that there wasn’t any jockeying for status by what we wore,it literally never ocurred to us.

And when I went to Grammar school because I came from an incredibly,by Brit standards,poor family,my mum received clothing vouchers which could ONLY be used for School Uniform I ironically had a much more posher uniform then my schoolmates.

But it was Buckfuck to all of us because it was a uniform and we honestly couldn’t care less so there wasn’t any airs or graces because we just didn’t care.

We were kids at school,not aspiring socialites.
I feel sorry for kids today,we spoil them rotten and then we throw them into the deepend without so much as a bodyfloat.

[QUOTE=WhyNot]
So if expense, bullying, mugging, theft, and the risk of death and/or destruction doesn’t stop these practices, why would a visit from a social worker do it?
[/QUOTE]

Maybe perchance because they are backed up by the power of the Police?

[QUOTE=Lust4Life]
I was born working class on a very rough,crime ridden Council estate in England and although I earn a reasonable wage despite the rapacity of the Inland Revenue,am still working class,living in a working class area,indeed,some of my best friends are working class

(That was a JOKE before anyone jumps in) and have found that chav,ned and pikey (dont know charver)are terms used mostly by working class people and in the DEROGOTARY sense though some of my mates actually describe themselves as neds or townies.

So I wouldn’t worry about defending us poor old British working class from having our feelings hurt by those nasty middle class bullies.

We can actually look after ourselves and the chavs,neds and pikeys,leastways the ones I come into contact with wont have their feelings hurt because literacy not being their strong point(which would have to have involved some sort of effort while they were at school) they probably wouldn’t be able to actually read those words that you consider insulting and are PROUD of being known as chavs.(Dont know about Pikeys)

Cant vouch for the opinions on the other side of the Irish sea which guessing from your name is where you are/come from.
[/QUOTE]

Eh well, I was trying to define the word pikey for Villa. It originally referred to Irish travellers in Britain but now has a broader meaning, as I explained. The reason I referred to middle-class snobs is because those terms have gained wider currency through print and television media lampooning of that subculture.

We sort of get into the territory of “they call each other nigga so it’s ok for me to call them that too” when bandying about words like pikey, knacker, etc.