Series: Countdown To 2012

Series: The 12 Week Countdown
Every week for 12 weeks until the dawn of the Year 2012, I am blogging about things to look forward to and things to dread about the coming year. Today there are...

...10 Weeks To 2012: The Chav Revolution

I anticipate that the history books of our future grandchildren and great-grandchildren will cite the year 2012 as an iconic period in Britain's history - because it was the year that saw the start of the Chav's Revolution.

I say Chav's Revolution because, as this government, its supporters and the increasingly right-leaning media like to encourage citizens of this country to believe, an overwhelming number of us are indeed chavs. There is an underclass who live among us, festering in dark little holes like something out of an H.G. Wells novel, and these creatures are workshy, tax-evading, burberry-wearing, McDonalds-eating chav bastards who steal or kill people at their leisure; the economic and societal problems of Great Britain fall almost entirely on their shoulders, and must be stopped at all costs.

But this portrayal surely can't hold up forever, and soon public backlash will be so vast that it will be the ConDem government we'll be trying to stop at all costs. Already in 2011 we have seen protests and riots galore, and it's only been a little over year since the ConDems began their reign. How much vilification can certain hard-hit groups of society stand before they lash out, with the support of other members of society - graduates and school-leavers, pensioners and those facing redundancy - who until recently were free from stigma, but who now have the same mindless, generalised arguments thrown at them time and time again?

It is the vilification of these working class-turned-respectable-turned-chav groups that will be the ultimate downfall of the Conservatives' scam. New Labour did the Tories a huge favour in 1997 when Tony Blair came to power and banged on about "Education, education, education": they began a period of divide and rule. Blair took working class people, told them they could be middle-class and sent them off to university; as a result, working-class came to mean underclass, or chav, and chavs came to be the biggest scapegoat of this country's problems. Never mind pointing the finger at bankers and massive corporations with overseas accounts who manage to get out of paying billions of pounds in taxes - let's all blame the idle underclass who loot from Poundland for fun and who can't get a job, and let's not question why they can't get a job, but just assume that they don't want one and would rather sit around watching like-minded people on Jeremy Kyle all day long.

Where it has gone wrong for the Conservative is the downfall of the divide and rule era. Working class-turned-respectable barely exists anymore; a working-class person might be able to go to university if they're prepared to get themself into huge amounts of debt, but when they leave university, it's not prosperous careers in the inner city that await them - it's retail work. They're not moving into luxurious studio appartments with a view overlooking the Thames - they're still living with their parents, and even the option of signing up for a council property is not open to them as it was once open to their parents. The aspirational working class is unable to fulfil middle-class aspirations, and it is here that they will face criticism from those who, frankly, don't have a fucking clue; it is here that they will join Team Chav, and here that the 'Chav', as we have all come to know it, will become an unstoppable force.

So what will be the trigger? I'm not sure we can really pin it all on one event, rather an accumulation of shittiness will take its toll, and it will probably all kick off with something really small - like David Cameron dropping a Starbucks cup in the street. The hypocrisy, the blind disregard for the 'chav' profession of street cleaner and the mere fact that Mr Cameron routinely has a Starbucks whilst those such as myself see it as a little treat every six months, will result in mass protesting. But this time, we won't just be marching up and down the streets of Westminster, waving banners and surrendering our legs to varicose veins; we'll be throwing toilet paper over Big Ben, storming 10 Downing Street and stealing the Prime Minister's sugar (this is the Big Society, after all - he should be happy to help!) and setting John Prescott on anyone who wears a blue tie.*

So is The Chav Revolution something to look forward to? Hell yeah. Let's boot David Cameron out of Downing Street and see him signing on every two weeks.

*Avoid wearing blue ties next year if you're not a Tory bastard.