A couple of years ago I would have agreed because I took it personally. I grew up on council estates. My family was the scruffy one. 1990s/2000s and we lived in absolute poverty despite my stepmother being disabled by depression and my dad driving a mobility car when he wasn'troaming the streets pissed up. No carpets, no clothes except school uniform, no food except school dinners sometimes. We had bin bags of rubbish all over the garden and my 'parents' drank all night, playing rubbish music from their jukebox (yep... they had a fruit machine in their living room too, which was financed in the finest unpaid hire purchase would buy). They kept us around long enough to keep claiming child benefit then chucked us out and presumably drank themselves to death. They weren't chavs in the sense that people think it's all Burberry and gold chains... just selfish alcoholics. I'm the eldest of 13 kids. My brother would beat me because he was my dad's punching bag and then go out and rob everyone's dust caps or siphon diesel for farmers. There was always drama. It was a horrible childhood, lots of domestic violence. Council house, alcoholic, violent - C H A V. So we were chavs and I disliked the word.
I spent years working hard and got myself out of poverty. Well, we are technically on the breadline but I'm breaking the cycle for my children. I know I'll never be rich or a high earner. I've been paying bills since I was 16, at a time when everyone at school was being given car keys and had a family home to stay in. I'm about 10years behind most people I know, financially. Due to working with older, more mature people and having to change the way I spoke and acted to "fit in", and doing well at school, college, uni, - I've always been surrounded by successful, better off people who would be horrified by the things that went on where I grew up. I just don't mention it. Not because they would judge me but I find it embarrassing. My "family" call me a snob and always bring some embarrassing drama to my door when we are in touch, like the police looking for them or taking out credit in my name. I'm happy to be called a snob to protect my family.
Chavs aren't salt of the earth sorts of people. They see people better off as their enemy. Not in a socialist/communist sort of way. Anyone who uses this site and has empathy or common decency would be eaten alive if you had to be around them.
After surrounding myself with "normal" people, owning my home, then renting privately, working, enjoying life... I started to think that I had been harsh and maybe a be snobby. I discovered socialism and started volunteering. I thought that maybe people who seemed rough around the edges were sort of "cheeky chappies" who had fallen on hard times. I too thought that chavs no longer existed.
However... I became disabled and when I couldn't get into my home I was given emergency housing in a council estate. I moved as soon as I could. I would rather die than go back there. It was a lawless cesspit. I was relentlessly harassed by my next door neighbours. A couple of drug users and their 4 adult children, none of them working and at home all day playing "gabber" music through their tinny phone speakers rested on the window sills. Drinking and smoking weed in the street like Shameless. Why do they all sit at the front of their house? I did my garden. They encouraged their ridiculous dogs to shit there and trampled it all. Threw cig ends and chewing gum everywhere. Footballs would hit my my house 100 times an evening until I stopped answering the door as I never knew if it was a person or a ball, or unsupervised kids playing knock a door run and I would get in my wheelchair for nothing. Instead I put a ring camera up. That's like a crime to these people. My nickname was then "the grass" as they couldn't use the side of my house to sell pills. They stole off me. Kids would climb over my back gate and just wander around my house like they knew me. Never put their bins out then would steal mine and not put those out either. They were all new builds with meter cupboard doors and letter boxes hanging off. Within a year it just looked like a bin. When I moved, kids were eating old freezer food from my skip while their mums [who were all single but had male sofa surfer friends for benefit purposes] would sit on their phones smoking on garden chairs and shouting across the street at everyone walking past. It was fucking awful. I am sorry to swear but while anyone is defending that kind of behaviour it makes me so angry. There were 22 houses on my street and 14 of them were on Homeswapper. All decent people desperate to move away.
Chav is the kindest word to use because I can think of A LOT worse. Would you want to live on an estate like that? Everyone thinks they're a kind, accepting people-person until the first night in your lovely new house the baghead next door slams her bedroom window 20 times and calls your 8yr old a c*nt for opening her curtains to look at the garden. I sued the housing association, won, and used the money to do up my new house. If you dont believe me about how bad it is then maybe join a social housing swap group and see how many put "no estates" on their ad.