to think everyone needs to read the book "chavs" by owen jones

[GaryShitpeas]

well.... everyone earning less than about 50k. ...or if you weren't born into money... if you identify as working class, if you live in social housing, if you don't own your home, if you are on any or have ever been on benefits...if any of those apply then you need to read this to see how much we are all getting screwed by those at the top.....It made me so angry ......i knew things were shit and getting shitter but my god it has opened my eyes even more....I couldn't put it down over the weekend and was sat ignoring everyone while reading it with my face like this --> and

it has also made me want to become properly politically active because the only way things will change is if "people like us" stand up and shout LOUD

I will NEVER use the word chav again

I've read Chav's and got more and more annoyed as the book continued.

It just turned into a bleeding heart, lefty rant about how so hard done by the working class are. It was so patronising. It's everyone else's fault why the working class do not achieve and excuse after excuse as to why we are all so down-trodden.

As someone who is working class, but has worked bloody hard to achieve, earn a good salary and own my own home, I do not identify with Owen Jones or his views. He is actually an embarrassment to working class people.

InterOuta if you want me to send you mine (disclaimer: my MIL bought it and foisted it upon me) just PM me with your address. You can have it for free.

Toffs refering to all working class people as chavs?

Nonsense

Owen Jones calls lesbians homophobes for pointing out his lack of analysis and hypocrisy. He's not the new Orwell but his views are Orwellian (and not in a good way).

Haven't read the book yet, have it in my to read pile but Owen Jones does live near me, unless he's moved within the last 6 months, and it's not a leafy suburb in the least. There are at least 5 council estates within a mile radius with largely unemployed inhabitants so he does live among those he writes about.

Will read the thread now.

Erm..........since when were the unemployed working class?
You've perfectly proved our points!!

I'll read it if I find a copy on a train or something. I'm certainly not paying for it, because it sounds rubbish.

"Since working-class wages can be very low, and because the state of unemployment is defined as a lack of independent means of generating an income and a lack wage-labour employment, the term working class also includes the lumpenproletariat, unemployed people who are extremely poor."

Source: Wikipedia

I've never read Orwell apart from 1984
What Orwell should I be reading?

I think I've read Chavs already (I didn't think it was amazingly written but it made good points in an easy to understand way).

I personally much prefer Orwell's journalism to his novels. I would recommend Homage To Catalonia, or a compilation of his writing.
Down and Out in Paris and London might be a good starting point too.
Of his novels, Animal Farm is his view of how the Russian Revolution deteriorated into Stalin's terror. That makes it sound like like hard going, but it isn't.

Maybe he's trying to be the left's Katie Hopkins...

That's Owen Jones, not Orwell.

You know, that's not too far off. Just as you can predict KH's every opinion before she speaks, you can predict OJ's tedious student posturing before you read the articles. It's all the usual knee jerk anti-Americanism, 'poor Muslims' stuff. Hitchens and Nick Cohen were very wrong about the Iraq war, but at least they had/have something interesting to say. They wouldn't have anything to do with a joker like Russell 'don't vote' Brand either.

Thanks UncertainSmile :)

Read Orwell's 'Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays' for an insight into his life and his views and to appreciate his brilliance and clarity of expression.

Orwell understood why poor people buy big tellies before tellies were even invented.

And he predicted all this rewriting the past as to who are our allies, and who are our enemies, stuff we have to put up with now. The government think we are idiots

Ah, Orwell and Robert Tressell. Life changing authors; you're never the same after you've read them. MNHQ are going to ban me if I mention Orwell again though.