David Starkey is an idiot. How stupid do you have to be to go on the BBC and argue with two leftists? He will suffer for it. But nevertheless, in his own blundering way, he is right. The statement that "the chavs have become black", in my view, is absolutely on the money.
I've had my (near fatal) brushes with Jamaican gangsters over the years. I know what they look like, I know what they sound like. They are people who for whom everyone is a potential source of income they can raid whenever they feel like it. They do it with breathtaking brazenness. The sub-culture is all about machismo and what you can take. And as one of the MTV generation I can recall video after video of misogynistic talentless displays, flashing jewelry, gold, pimped out cars and sexually subservient women. Simply having money is the mark of success, not the means by which it is obtained.
And when I go to the London clubs and hear the kids talking, they have more in common culturally and linguistically with the Jamaican underground than a working class Englishman. The culture that has absorbed these kids is a black sub-culture. If that is not so, why is Ali G (pictured) one of the most successful and internationally recognised comedy stereotypes of the last ten years?
And which intellectual pygmy did they pit against Starkey? Owen Jones, author of "Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class". Has it occurred to Jones that these people are not working class? They do not work, never will and their parents are probably of similar uselessness. They are not working class. They are the welfare underclass. And for all the twittering about demonising them, I find that more palatable than patronising them. They are the legacy of leftist policies in welfare and education. People like Owen and the other token black leftist (stand-in for Diane Abbott) are the very people who keep them where they are.
But what does this have to do with the riots I hear you ask? Well, nothing at all actually. You could make a reasonably sound case that the lack of certain civic constructs in Jamaica has created a generation of people who do not live up to their responsibilities as parents and as citizens, but I think we did a pretty good job of engendering that for ourselves without any outside help. Don't you?
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