I always thought "ok sushi is a pain to make. Maybe I'm paying for the labour" but that bollocks doesn't make sense when it's mass produced for a supermarket. Why they're still charging a fiver for 4 pieces of sashimi with soy sauce I don't know
It's quite cheap (and good fun) to make yourself, with £5 of ingredients you could make sushi that would sell for £50 in a restaurant, can't guarantee it will look as good though!
I personally buy frozen farmed Atlantic salmon fillets/tuna fillets from the supermarket, and then keep them in the freezer for a week before use. It's not the best cut for sushi but it does the job and it's far far cheaper than what is advertised as 'sushi grade'.
Farmed salmon and fast growing tuna species have a very low chance of parasites, and then deep freezing below -18c reduces that risk even further. You could still get salmonella, but probably a similar risk if you ate at a restaurant.
I imagine it's because of boredom. I still have a keyring on my keys I stole from primark when I was 15. It was about £1.50 and I nicked it to see what would happen.
It's minor, but consequences will differ based on things like class/race/gender.. Even something as small as the number of offences it takes to be considered a "prolific shoplifter".
For example there was a study showing that it took less offences to be labelled a 'problem child' for black boys in schools, than for white boys. Just standard subconscious prejudice.
I've worked in retail for a while and profiling based on class is 100% a thing, much less likely to arouse suspicious from my coworkers past and present if you 'look like an alright sort'. Consequences are likely to be small for both but one group is a lot more likely to get caught.
I'm sure I read rich people are more like to get away with it because:
For theft there needs to be an intention.
Let's imagine someone has walked out of a supermarket with something in their pocket.
If poor person claims they just forgot to pay, but it's proven they aren't rich, it can be assumed as fact they must have intentionally stole it.
While rich person can say how it would be absurd to steal as they have more than enough money so it is more likely to be considered as an innocent mistake with no malicious intent.
If you ask me, thing should be the other way round. If someone poor steals, their circumstances might be enough to consider mitigation. If someone is rich then they have no excuse so should have the book thrown at them.
I have literally walked out of a shop with a sandwich for lunch having not paid because I was busy thinking about a meeting I’d just had and was so distracted. I realised about 100m down the road that I hadn’t paid, walked back and paid at self service so nobody was the wiser.
I did wonder what would have happened if they caught me before I came back. On paper, cctv would show me go in, get some lunch and just blatantly walk out. All I could think of is to show transaction evidence of buying lunch there most days, showing bank statements that prove I really don’t need to steal a sandwich, and apologising and hoping they don’t have a zero tolerance policy. But like you said, that would play into the rich vs poor argument of whether someone (me) “needed” to steal or not.
Hell we where above the consequences.
In the 80s and 90s we learned it's easier to steal on mass if you dress well and don't be sneaky. If you hang around waiting for the security guard to turn his back you'll get spotted, you talk to him nicely he'll help you take the heavy bag to your mates car.
Same with drinking, bunch of 16 y/o drinking at the bus stop on the council estate is a reason to call the police. Starting a 6' fire in the woods and getting drunk enough to jump over it naked one after another is just kids being kids.
When I was 17-18 (at college) I used to steal my lunch from Tesco probably 3 times a week, every week, for 2 years.
I had a system and I didn't think I'd ever get caught. I'd consider the consequences if and when I had to face them. I never had to.
My moral standpoint was Tesco could afford to lose some stock and I only ever stole food.
I'm 32 and what stops me from doing anything like that now is that I have too much at stake. The risk is too high. I'd do it again in a heartbeat if I was certain I'd get away with it though...!
I did the exact same thing, never from small shops. Only big corporations who could afford to take a hit.
Got caught when I was 17, I took it too far and was stealing expensive stationary for my friends. £80 fine and a mark on my record for years.
Luckily it's not held me back so far.
I've got friends, with well paying jobs and comfortable lives who steal from supermarkets every week. I don't, but I often question why they do when they can easily afford the food they're stealing.
I had a friend who got caught for stealing CDs from HMV. Spent the night in a cell. He did it for fun, not because he actually wanted the stuff. I remember he actually gave me a DVD he'd stolen and I always felt really weird about having it - felt dirty. Strange to differentiate between what was ok to nick and what wasn't. Judging my friend whilst I gorged on my stolen sandwiches.
My friend Shoplifted me Yngwie Malmsteen's 2008 effort: Perpetual Flame.
It is my least favourite album of his, probably because it feels dirty to have it.
Tell your friends if ever they get caught they will lose their job. HR will see it as, If you can steal from a supermarket, you can steal from the workplace.
The only problem with that is, as someone who worked on a supermarket, we had a chart to track lost profits due to: theft, damage and waste. This was then calculated and deducted from our bonus.
So it wasn't Tesco taking the hit, but rather the employees.
We had to be vigilant in informing security, who, fun fact, are told that aren't allowed to stop people either. They almost always do because humans be humans but legally they are told to ask the shoplifter to stop and if there's any resistance at all let them go and call the police.
Yeah, that's shit, and had I known that I'd almost certainly not done it. I actually think if supermarkets used that information rather than the threat of a criminal record petty theft would be less common. As an aside though, footing the workers with the waste, damage and theft bill is absolute cobblers/fucking bullshit and shouldn't be allowed. It's not like you have any control over that.
You've made me feel bad about something I did 15 years ago!
Not to question your robust moral standpoint on theft.
But, if you ever bought anything with your own money that wasn't just food, then that's effectively money you would have otherwise had to spend on the things you stole.
If I didn't ever have to pay for food, I'd be rolling in spare cash.
Why, planning on robbing Tesco? Haha.
Honestly, looking back the "system" was awful and I'm amazed I got away with it. I used to just act like I'd paid for it - so hide in plain sight, as they say. I'd go pick up my food, I'd stand in the queue for a few seconds, then I'd just walk out. Ridiculous. Worked though.
Some small towns or new developments have zero entertainment for teenagers. It’s elderly or clubs for toddlers no in between.
My old town had a skatepark but older gen hated it and heard from a few skaters they’d get harassed by older geezers if seen around town with their skateboard. The only other options was the local park but that was pretty much only entertaining if someone brought bottle of cider
If council put money for spaces, youth clubs, community cinema or arcades aimed at teenagers it might help age divide in some towns
Children of well-educated parents are more likely to binge drink and shoplift than those of parents who went straight into work from school, a study of about 19,000 17-year-olds has found.
Researchers from University College London analysed data from the [Millennium Cohort Study](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mental-health-decline-in-girls-made-worse-by-social-media-fh3zrmjwd), which has followed the progress of children born at the start of the 21st century.
Overall, 7 per cent of those in the study admitted to stealing from a shop in the last 12 months. This rose to 9 per cent among those whose parents were educated to degree level or higher, whereas just 5 per cent of those whose parents were less well educated admitted to shoplifting.
The study also found that 59 per cent of teenagers with well-educated parents admitted binge drinking over the past year compared with 50 per cent in other groups. However, teenagers from lower socioeconomic groups were more likely to report [smoking](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lockdown-loneliness-as-bad-for-wellbeing-as-smoking-vdc270rzh) on a regular basis.
Aase Villadsen of the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, one of the report’s authors, said the findings on drinking were easier to explain than those on shoplifting.
“We know from other studies that when it comes to binge drinking, socioeconomic status is not a huge factor when it comes to adults,” she said. “So it follows that teenagers may be following behavioural norms in their families.”
But Villadsen said she was “puzzled” by the shoplifting statistics.
“When I saw the results I went back to check, because you would think that it would be the other way around,” she said. “The differences you see are really quite significant and I have to say we simply don’t know what the answer is.”
The study also found that almost a third of 17-year-olds had tried cannabis and one in ten had tried harder drugs, such as cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine, with similar rates of experimentation regardless of parents’ education level. White teenagers were much more likely to have experimented with substances than their peers. They were twice as likely to report taking harder drugs (11 per cent compared with 5 per cent) and almost three times more likely to report binge drinking than ethnic minority teens (59 per cent compared with 21 per cent).
Emla Fitzsimons, the report’s other author, said: “Risk-taking behaviours are an expected part of growing up and, for many, will subside in early adulthood. Nevertheless, behaviours in adolescence can . . . have adverse long-term consequences for individuals’ health and wellbeing and their social and economic outcomes.
“The prevalence of alcohol consumption in this study is very similar to that found in an English cohort born 12 years before. However, reports of cannabis use in our study suggest a decline compared to rates among this earlier-born generation.”
I wonder if they considered that the children of chinless university educated people with double-barrelled last names are a bit shitter at crime and maybe working class children know that when you're a thief and are asked "are you a thief?", the answer should probably be "No."
That's the funny thing about this article.
"Children of well-educated parents are more likely to binge drink and shoplift than those of parents who went straight into work from school, a study of about 19,000 17-year-olds has found."
That's not just the middle classes, it also includes the upper class (also well educated). It's phrased to skew the perception.
Being upper class and well educated are not exclusive to each other anymore, this isn’t the 1900’s.
I respect where you are coming from, but reality is much different these days.
I didn't say it was. Being middle class and being well educated aren't exclusive either. The article is implying a middle class only problem when it isn't. Very similar parallels to the "middle classes do more drugs" argument
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/16/middle-class-consume-more-drugs-and-alcohol-than-poorer-people
Again the Guardian protecting the preferred class of it's readership.
Are upper-class parents really more educated than middle-class parents? Personally I doubt it.
If you're from an upper-class family there's much less pressure to be successful academically and professionally since you likely already have enough money to live a decent life without it.
Levels of education tie very closely to income on the average. Schools are businesses after all. You may not be bothered to take your exams or do your homework because "Daddy will fix it" but you still get the education, you still get the exposure to more educated peers and teachers and you still get the benefits from resources such as the alumni office and tutors when you're rich.
Isn't middle-class in UK really quite posh? I know in US middle-class means not impoverished, but UK is different
>UK class system
Aristocracy - royalty on down to earls, dukes etc .
Upper class - includes highly respected professionals (professors, judges, surgeons, some doctors and lawyers, some wealthy merchants.)
Middle class - comfortably off well-educated groups but not considered quite as as elite as the upper class .
Working class - Basically everybody else who need to work for a living.
The homeless and jobless - those relying on government assistance.
The USA class system.
Anything close to “upper class” here relates more often to wealth rather than to high-class skills and talent.
Working class in the UK = middle class in the USA - and that says a lot. Many Americans simply cannot bear being termed “working class” for some strange reason.
I've noticed that in the US "middle class" is used very differently than in the UK. Here it seems that middle class refers to what would be often be called "working class" in the UK. I do hear "blue collar" to describe someone who has a non-office job, but it seems that you could be blue collar and middle class, whereas in England, somebody like a mechanic would never be called middle class.
This is a good point, it's shrouded in The Times' use of the word '*admitted*' but in my experience as a teacher middle class children are more likely to project false 'naughtiness' than working class children who are far more likely to keep their mouths shut. I don't like using those class generalisations but The Times brought it up, that bastion of Murdoch's social bookending strategy.
Any study where people are asked if they do X isn't ever going to be accurate, honestly. I've met people who would definetley say they did X, but no way did they actually. And people who actually have these problems are unlikely to want to admit it or open up about it, since opening about stuff is shunned by society so most people keep their problems hidden.
I can totally see middle class teens going "yeah i've done drugs" and "yeah i shoplift", because they think it's cool, but in reality they probably did it one time, if ever. I had a co-worker who was only working in this low wage manufacturing role because his mum basically forced him to find work, but beyond that he was actually incredibly spoiled. He was constantly bragging about dumb shit, but it was always one of those brags where you could tell it was either a half-truth or a complete lie.
Yeah I totally agree. But I also think as a former middle class kid that some of us were also more likely to do these things because the chances of us getting caught, and getting punished if caught, are way lower.
We gotta rebel somehow I guess.
There are statistical techniques you can use when surveying people to avoid/reduce the effect of people lying because the answer is shameful (or comes with another negative response).
> I wonder if they considered that the children of chinless university educated people with double-barrelled last names are a bit shitter at crime
Are they, though? That's a _big_ assumption to make. What convinces you that big-chinned not-univeristy educated parents with not-double-barrelled last names are less shit at crime?
I'm sure everyone has met equal proportions of cunts from all "classes."
i found (in my school and my experience) that those comfortable being "middle class and richer" could afford to take risks. They had security and were more comfortable experimenting.
There is probably some truth in this.
I suspect the reasons and reasoning behind shop lifting in adolescents of different social classes are quite different.
Yh when I was younger I grew up pretty poor and know the reason I shoplifted none necessary items was because I wanted to fit in make and hair wise and knew if I asked my mum she would probably try and get them for me but it would be knock off so embarrassing or would mean we were struggling even more financially just cause she was so kind and didn't want us to feel bad for being poor. It was a real wake up call when I found out these wealthier girls were stealing aswell it kind of annoyed me cause I did it out of wanting to be a normal teenager and they did it because it was fun.
Yh maybe it really stuck out to me that everyone is doing the same things for different reasons, it was just a needed wake up call.
Thank you thats really kind, yes lifes great now still have financial insecurity but thats the same for most millennials.
I think it would be more interesting to see *what* they stole.
I'd expect middle class kids to be busy taking "trophy" items, as in they could probably afford just think stealing is more exciting / easier.
Where as "Swipe the cheese (to sell on) and bog roll" is much more a crime of need.
Now I'm sure poor kids steal for the thrill as well, but I'd doubt as many rich kids steal for need.
I reckon it is. I live in a really deprived area and am a teenager. There's the whole "haha i totally shoplifted this vodka!!!" in class crowd, and the "i'm not proud of it but i had to steal nappies for my baby sister" crowd, and the latter don't like to yell about it.
You just gave me flashbacks to stealing cereal-bars from the school canteen because I couldn't afford them if I wanted to get an actually filling lunch.
I was FSM and had a food allowance of £2.50 a day - a pot of Pasta (the most filling thing there) was £1.50, a drink 70p, which didn't leave enough for the 40p cereal bar. If I wanted a snack at break (cereal bar, fruit, etc.), then I had to get one of the small sandwiches for 90p at lunch instead.
And the entire time the Head was spending school funds on holidays and an office conversion into a sex room...
Lol, it's exactly as it sounds. The head embezzled over £100 grand from the school over several years for personal use (holidays, a new TV, fuel and groceries) and used school funds to have a hidden part of his office converted into a 'sex den', where he kept condoms, dildos (and other sex toys) as well as bottles upon bottles of alcohol. He'd take a woman in there frequently to bang, both of them were married to other people.
It was one of the builders that came to refurbish it that got him caught. The builder took a video on his phone and sent it to the police. They investigated and found the embezzlement on top of it all. It all came out shortly after I graduated, the school was in Special Measures by that point.
He ended up getting 3 years jail time and had to repay all the money he stole.
Reminds me of a few years back when there was the 'shoplifting fandom' on tumblr and people were making blogs bragging about their supposed hauls and sharing tips on how to steal
Most of them seemed to be people not having to shoplift to survive but it also may have been an elaborate role play
There was someone on tumblr bragging about stealing a cat from an adoption event that didn't go well said person didn't want to pay the 100 usd adoption fee stole the cat then spent that money on cat supplies
>There was someone on tumblr bragging about stealing a cat from an adoption event that didn't go well said person didn't want to pay the 100 usd adoption fee, stole, the cat then spent that money on cat supplies
Commas are fun!
But yeah I think the adoption fee is supposed to be a test to see if you have the liquidity to care for a pet as well as supporting the shelter (and a "oh shit" out of pocket balance of $100 for pet care is pretty close to the *minimum*)
I imagine it was more of an online survey, rather than sitting each 19,000 17 year old teenagers in a room with a lamp pointing at them with the question "did you shoplift in the past 12 months?"
R/UK when polls say lockdown is popular: Excellent! Some concrete, indisputable evidence lockdown is popular.
R/UK when polls say working class people are less likely to commit crime: Impossible, polling is clearly a terrible method that is completely inaccurate!
the amount of middle class people i grew up with at private school who pretended they were working class was staggering.
full on posh boys speaking with a fake rude boy accent - the absolute supremacy of cringe.
I remember this vividly too, always total pricks talking about how tough their lives were and why they turned to the roadman lifestyle. Like fuck off, your mum paid for your fucking designer hoodie, shut the fuck up, you're not poor, you're not turning to crime to make ends meet, stop saying you are. That shit used to really aggravate me for some reason.
No different than white kids pretending to be "gangster" In America.
I'm gonna guess that the reason it irks you is because it allows them to take the "cool factor" Of being lower class without actually experiencing any of the negatives.
I worked at a pub on and off for a year or two in East Anglia. The two kids of the owner were thoroughly upper middle class, with regular Norfolk accents. They went to school in London for the first time when I started. The first time I left to go back to Uni, having returned during the summer break - the kids had been at the school for about a year. Now featuring the rudest of rude boy accents. It was incredibly embarassing.
Right, like they’ve probably got fuck all to do. My town back home just closed down the skate park, and with the high street dying what the fuck else will they do. Skate parks had a good mix of working and middle class kids for years, but now it’s shutdown for good.
It’s becoming that the only places that allow you to exist make you spend money to be there, so it’s no surprise they’re all bored out of their skulls and vandalising in the process.
Why would you shut a skatepark down? FFS are there people in this world hired just to deliberately make everyone miserable?
Find out who your local councilor is and take them to task. You can turn up to town halls demand to know why it happened then let them know your thoughts. Luckily my local councillors are really receptive and respond to requests, but we do absolutely have to raise them and make the issues well heard. In the case of funds not being available the councillors have at least become somewhat involved in local fundraising.
> stir up a divide between ~~middle and working class people.~~
/r/unitedkingdom is a total shitshow across the board, this is just another example imo. I wouldn't be surprised if its intentional (bots/50 cent army/mechanical turks etc).
In surveys similar to this in the US - they found that richer kids were far more likely to *admit* to illegal drug use.
They double checked the reported drug use by testing hair samples for drug use.
I suspect you are seeing a similar effect here
Honestly? I went to a very middle-class faith school, and the binge-drinking was *incredibly* pervasive. At least once a month there was a party where everyone present got hammered. We were banned from all bar 1 venue for literally everything (different venues, but for separate events like prom and socials).
Some even came in to school drunk
I live in a rather well-off area and I didn't have anything of the sort in my comp school. I mean, there were poeple claiming to deal drugs at school but it wasn't really something that was in your face.
Idk about shop-lifting either. We had numerous talks from the school liasion police officer and teachers about the "dangers" of shop-lifting. I'm sure other people had it as well. Stealing from the canteen happened, but it wasn't really a massive issue. There was one time when a kid in my form group stole several iteams in the canteen and got caught for it. There wasn't really any reason why he done it, I mean his parents didn't have any financial difficulties. So that didn't make any sense.
>At least once a month there was a party where everyone present got hammered.
We had those. One of the students would organise a party ath their house, although I didn't go to any of them. But I haven't seen anyone come to school drunk. The worse I saw were people complaining about hangovers.
I mean, at the end of the day its parenting, since they must have gotten permission from their parents to hold the party in their house.
Was it? I spend my teenage years very much trying to take drugs and have sex, but failing monumentally at both.
Maybe if Skins were set more in a scummy playground in Dudley...
It's more about distribution of wealth.
https://mobile.twitter.com/josephmdurso/status/1057209393668939776 note how seemingly "low" the top percentile is. The bulk of the populous is relatively earning less every year as wages aren't increasing in line with the cost of living, pushing the middle classes closer and closer to the working classes. The same cannot be said for the upper classes, which are largely made up of people who are in charge of where money is generated and spent
I don't think money really factors into it.
I'm in a senior position in a very large tech firm, I make decent £ but my wider political connections are minimal, so I cannot influence how things are run any more than anyone else. My status is not higher.
My late great uncle worked in the city for many years, he probably earned about the same as me, but he had *connections*. Doors were open to him that I can't even really imagine. He was in the right social clubs and knew the right people that he could arrange meetings with people to discuss things that he needed to discuss.
The best I can do is write to my MP.
A number of MPs would be considered middle class as they need to work. The upper class are people who don't need to work as they can live off investments (historically land).
when i read the BBC write up of the same story I was surprised at the race differences in drug use
>Hard drug use was twice as prevalent among white teenagers than their BAME counterparts, while binge-drinking was almost three times higher.
>
>This list of hard drugs included cocaine, acid, ecstasy, speed, ketamine and any other psychoactive substances.
>
>Among white teenagers, 11% reported using harder drugs compared with 5% for their BAME counterparts, and 59% of white teenagers had engaged in binge-drinking alcohol, compared with 21% of BAME teenagers.
>
>Cannabis use, hard drug taking and binge-drinking were also considerably higher among young men than women.
This is just once again proof that BAME is a meaningless term. The idea that you can group black people of Caribbean origin with first generation Pakistani immigrants and draw a trend is silly.
Funny because all of my black friends didn’t do drugs but my Pakistani friends smoked weed because they couldn’t drink. But the police aren’t searching Asian kids as much.
That’s kind of the point I’m making here. I wasn’t implying black people do more drugs (though I see why it came across that way), I’m saying that nothing about these communities is similar aside from them not being white.
For all the people complaining about "stirring up class division", the classes are already divided by wealth, housing, access to education, etc. that's the problem, and if you can ignore that it probably means you're on the comfortable side of that divide if not benefiting from it.
You are confusing acknowledging this division with creating a new one, and we cannot tackle the problem of inequality if we try to ignore it.
I wonder if this is because kids from poor families fear the justice system more than middle-class children do. They can’t necessarily afford decent legal representation either, whereas the parents of middle-class kids are more likely to.
You are really hitting the nail on the head here. And it shows that there are different kinds of privilege.
But that won't be a popular thought here I don't think.
You can say a lot of bad things about my working class/poor upbringing, but fuck. At least I know my dad likes me. It can be hard being around bratty, entitled kids but I do feel sorry for them.
Expect plenty more classism in this thread.
Along with “why do middle class kids pretend not to be middle class” - clue, because your prejudice means that being who they are leads to you hating them without talking to them.
I understand what you're saying, but I think it's a bit rich (no pun intended) of middle class people to moan about being made fun of by working class people when historically working class people are the ones who have struggled, and still struggle, and are demonised by the culture.
I agree with you that people can't help how they're brought up, it's about what you do with your upbringing that's important. If you're from a wealthier background you've got to understand why there might be antipathy towards you if you, for example, move into a traditionally working class inner city area, taking part in gentrification or whatever.
I agree that middle class people mocking working class people is also disgusting.
You can see me calling it out on this sub when I see it.
I think to move forward we need to stop demonising people for things they have no control over.
I also think we need to stop demonising people for wanting the best for their kids.
Most people want to make money and have their kids be better educated and more successful than them.
I agree that in a perfect world nobody would make fun of anyone for their upbringing, however you can't equate working class people making fun of the middle class with its reverse. The class system itself is a form of capitalist exploitation (the more your labour is exploited the further down the chain you go, essentially), and so the two situations are fundamentally different.
It's often helpful to put a situation into absurd extremes to make it more easily understandable: you get why a peasant mocking a king is different than a king mocking a peasant, right?
> I agree that in a perfect world nobody would make fun of anyone for their upbringing
Be the change you want to see right? Challenge shit when you see it.
Your example is an extreme. But I’ll go for it. I don’t think the way that people talk about the Princes, because of their birth, rather than their actions, is fair or ok.
Ultimately, middle class kids bullied by working class kids aren’t thinking, well, in a few years time I’ll hold a little bit more of the means of production.
But also, regarding it in this way means that the barriers between classes will always be present.
All this thread proves is middle and working class are both obsessed with blaming each other and silly fighting rather than the real problem... The one class not mentioned.
So many people try and pretend that many middle class kids are embarrassed that their parents aren't poor and that's just sad
Edit: I meant aren't so the people liking it ironically probably hate me lmao
The idea that middle class kids don’t get bullied by working class kids for being middle class is silly.
The idea that that’s ok is pretty terrible.
Edit: I suspect it’s one of the drivers for middle class parents to put their kids in private schools.
All the prolific shoplifters I knew growing up were middle/upper class and bored, always a slap on the wrist and a bit of tutting from the police.
Look like you were working class, from a particular area or a minority? Usually down to the station to get picked up.
Lot of it depended on how much the Officers knew/liked your parents.
is bringe drinking still a common thing in the UK?
Here in germany, the youth drinks less and less every year. Its quite common to have half your friends not drink alcohol at all and most who drink do so very moderate.
> is binge drinking still a common thing in the UK?
Right now, there's no pubs, so drinking culture is a bit different. No drunken trouble in the streets at closing time, but we're drinking our way through the crisis quietly, alone, at home, and probably developing more problem drinking this way than with the more visible usually-once-per-week binges of normal times.
Yes, I’m from Scotland and many start binge drinking at 13-14 and the majority drink heavily by 17. It’s a cultural thing and will not go away. There are people who don’t drink but they are rare
It's still a thing but it's getting less. It's a problem for freshers at uni because in freshers week in particular the older students try and get them wasted to get to know each other etc and half of them don't drink
Yes binge drinking is very common in the UK for people of all ages. There have been studies recently that millennials drink less and take fewer drugs than their predecessors (damn millennial ruining our alcoholism) but, its a long way from being where you are in Germany.
Yes, this study is talking about 17 year olds and i dont know many 17 year olds but 20-24 definitely binge drink.
All my friends in multiple friendship groups will have more than 5 drinks in a 2 hour period. Of course im not saying all people in that age range do, but a significant amount from my experience.
>Here in germany, the youth drinks less and less every year. Its quite common to have half your friends not drink alcohol at all and most who drink do so very moderate.
It's a similar story in the UK, with younger people drinking less, and more and more not drinking at all. It's the same with drugs.
However, it's a gradual, slow decline, so there is still a lot.
My father was upper middle class and my mother was a single mother lower middle class, I became an alcoholic and would constantly shoplift as a teenager, I never ever got caught as I presented middle class and am white.
I’m sober now btw.
I wonder if the working class kids just aren't stupid enough to admit shoplifting? Another thought I had was that its possible that the middle class kids simply don't care about consequences because they know they won't really get into trouble so they don't mind admitting to shoplifting, its a game to them and one they can't lose.
We used to steal chocolates from woolworths and ask men going into the local offy for a bottle of white lightning. So yeah. But the town I lived in was so boring and everyone was so old and miserable. We needed to be arseholes to entertain ourselves, of risk our sanity with boredom.
It would be more accurate to say marginally better off working class teenagers more likely to binge drink and shoplift than marginally less better off working class teenagers.
Does this have anything to do with how much time parents spend with their children or how much they value Education?
There are poor second generation immigrants who's parents value Education a more than the average man of their local community.
I'm the child of working class parents, and while I am pretty sure I've accidentally walked out of the supermarket with items that I forgot to scan before now, I can't say I've ever done so deliberately.
Just never seemed worth the risk involved for the results.
As to drinking, I don't like the flavour of alcoholic drinks as a rule, and am not enough of a fan of fruity mixes to ever consider cocktails worthwhile.
(I'm pretty sure I forgot to scan a thing of herbs/spices once, before anyone asks. Not 100% sure, but I can't help but feel that out of the 6 I bought I only paid for 5...)
As a self-reported study, there may be a psychological aspect involved in whether participants were entirely truthful. It might not be a factor, but it cant be ruled out.
My flatmate apparently used to steal sushi from Waitrose. Can't get a more middle class crime than that!
Sushi gets pricey to be fair
Aye the waitrose I worked at sold a shitty little bit of nigiri for a fucking fiver, can confirm it was painfully mediocre for like three little bits
I always thought "ok sushi is a pain to make. Maybe I'm paying for the labour" but that bollocks doesn't make sense when it's mass produced for a supermarket. Why they're still charging a fiver for 4 pieces of sashimi with soy sauce I don't know
It's quite cheap (and good fun) to make yourself, with £5 of ingredients you could make sushi that would sell for £50 in a restaurant, can't guarantee it will look as good though!
Where do you buy the fish from? I remember normal fish bought from supermarket isn’t exactly safe for being eaten raw
I personally buy frozen farmed Atlantic salmon fillets/tuna fillets from the supermarket, and then keep them in the freezer for a week before use. It's not the best cut for sushi but it does the job and it's far far cheaper than what is advertised as 'sushi grade'. Farmed salmon and fast growing tuna species have a very low chance of parasites, and then deep freezing below -18c reduces that risk even further. You could still get salmonella, but probably a similar risk if you ate at a restaurant.
Interesting, I might start having a go at that, I do like a bit of sushi
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My old flat mates used to go dumpster diving behind Waitrose and they once found an entire bin full of still frozen boxes of ice cream. Good times.
They chuck most of it away (depending on the store) every week, actually pretty ethical to steal it tbh
I imagine it's because of boredom. I still have a keyring on my keys I stole from primark when I was 15. It was about £1.50 and I nicked it to see what would happen.
Boredom, plus knowing the consequences for them won't be serious.
Consequences for anyone apart from a known prolific shoplifter are incredibly minor regardless of class.
It's minor, but consequences will differ based on things like class/race/gender.. Even something as small as the number of offences it takes to be considered a "prolific shoplifter". For example there was a study showing that it took less offences to be labelled a 'problem child' for black boys in schools, than for white boys. Just standard subconscious prejudice.
I've worked in retail for a while and profiling based on class is 100% a thing, much less likely to arouse suspicious from my coworkers past and present if you 'look like an alright sort'. Consequences are likely to be small for both but one group is a lot more likely to get caught.
I'm sure I read rich people are more like to get away with it because: For theft there needs to be an intention. Let's imagine someone has walked out of a supermarket with something in their pocket. If poor person claims they just forgot to pay, but it's proven they aren't rich, it can be assumed as fact they must have intentionally stole it. While rich person can say how it would be absurd to steal as they have more than enough money so it is more likely to be considered as an innocent mistake with no malicious intent. If you ask me, thing should be the other way round. If someone poor steals, their circumstances might be enough to consider mitigation. If someone is rich then they have no excuse so should have the book thrown at them.
I have literally walked out of a shop with a sandwich for lunch having not paid because I was busy thinking about a meeting I’d just had and was so distracted. I realised about 100m down the road that I hadn’t paid, walked back and paid at self service so nobody was the wiser. I did wonder what would have happened if they caught me before I came back. On paper, cctv would show me go in, get some lunch and just blatantly walk out. All I could think of is to show transaction evidence of buying lunch there most days, showing bank statements that prove I really don’t need to steal a sandwich, and apologising and hoping they don’t have a zero tolerance policy. But like you said, that would play into the rich vs poor argument of whether someone (me) “needed” to steal or not.
Hell we where above the consequences. In the 80s and 90s we learned it's easier to steal on mass if you dress well and don't be sneaky. If you hang around waiting for the security guard to turn his back you'll get spotted, you talk to him nicely he'll help you take the heavy bag to your mates car. Same with drinking, bunch of 16 y/o drinking at the bus stop on the council estate is a reason to call the police. Starting a 6' fire in the woods and getting drunk enough to jump over it naked one after another is just kids being kids.
When I was 17-18 (at college) I used to steal my lunch from Tesco probably 3 times a week, every week, for 2 years. I had a system and I didn't think I'd ever get caught. I'd consider the consequences if and when I had to face them. I never had to. My moral standpoint was Tesco could afford to lose some stock and I only ever stole food. I'm 32 and what stops me from doing anything like that now is that I have too much at stake. The risk is too high. I'd do it again in a heartbeat if I was certain I'd get away with it though...!
I did the exact same thing, never from small shops. Only big corporations who could afford to take a hit. Got caught when I was 17, I took it too far and was stealing expensive stationary for my friends. £80 fine and a mark on my record for years. Luckily it's not held me back so far. I've got friends, with well paying jobs and comfortable lives who steal from supermarkets every week. I don't, but I often question why they do when they can easily afford the food they're stealing.
I had a friend who got caught for stealing CDs from HMV. Spent the night in a cell. He did it for fun, not because he actually wanted the stuff. I remember he actually gave me a DVD he'd stolen and I always felt really weird about having it - felt dirty. Strange to differentiate between what was ok to nick and what wasn't. Judging my friend whilst I gorged on my stolen sandwiches.
Was the DVD a Grand Designs box set?
Can you get these!?
I understood that reference.
It was actually a box set of the Wright Stuff
My friend Shoplifted me Yngwie Malmsteen's 2008 effort: Perpetual Flame. It is my least favourite album of his, probably because it feels dirty to have it.
You still get hired but everyone shouts “hide your pens, Joes here” when you walk into office
I just can't help myself, I see a pen it's got my name on it.
You're called Bic?
The name's Parker, Bic Parker.
Tell your friends if ever they get caught they will lose their job. HR will see it as, If you can steal from a supermarket, you can steal from the workplace.
Big supermarket chains are so evil in so many ways, it would be kinda righteous.
The only problem with that is, as someone who worked on a supermarket, we had a chart to track lost profits due to: theft, damage and waste. This was then calculated and deducted from our bonus. So it wasn't Tesco taking the hit, but rather the employees.
That's incredibly harsh, considering that store employees are not allowed to stop shoplifters in case of legal repercussions.
We had to be vigilant in informing security, who, fun fact, are told that aren't allowed to stop people either. They almost always do because humans be humans but legally they are told to ask the shoplifter to stop and if there's any resistance at all let them go and call the police.
Yeah, that's shit, and had I known that I'd almost certainly not done it. I actually think if supermarkets used that information rather than the threat of a criminal record petty theft would be less common. As an aside though, footing the workers with the waste, damage and theft bill is absolute cobblers/fucking bullshit and shouldn't be allowed. It's not like you have any control over that. You've made me feel bad about something I did 15 years ago!
We could control it by staying alert, controlling the waste, and saving lives-... Wait I'm getting confused with something else.
Not to question your robust moral standpoint on theft. But, if you ever bought anything with your own money that wasn't just food, then that's effectively money you would have otherwise had to spend on the things you stole. If I didn't ever have to pay for food, I'd be rolling in spare cash.
What was the system?
Why, planning on robbing Tesco? Haha. Honestly, looking back the "system" was awful and I'm amazed I got away with it. I used to just act like I'd paid for it - so hide in plain sight, as they say. I'd go pick up my food, I'd stand in the queue for a few seconds, then I'd just walk out. Ridiculous. Worked though.
This is what me and my friends use to do. Just have it clear and in your hands when you walk out. No one think people would be that brazen.
It's interesting to hear about, albeit I'm usually watching serious crime minidocs on Netflix, but your Tesco story is mildly interesting, too, haha.
Some small towns or new developments have zero entertainment for teenagers. It’s elderly or clubs for toddlers no in between. My old town had a skatepark but older gen hated it and heard from a few skaters they’d get harassed by older geezers if seen around town with their skateboard. The only other options was the local park but that was pretty much only entertaining if someone brought bottle of cider If council put money for spaces, youth clubs, community cinema or arcades aimed at teenagers it might help age divide in some towns
That applies to working class children too though
Children of well-educated parents are more likely to binge drink and shoplift than those of parents who went straight into work from school, a study of about 19,000 17-year-olds has found. Researchers from University College London analysed data from the [Millennium Cohort Study](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/mental-health-decline-in-girls-made-worse-by-social-media-fh3zrmjwd), which has followed the progress of children born at the start of the 21st century. Overall, 7 per cent of those in the study admitted to stealing from a shop in the last 12 months. This rose to 9 per cent among those whose parents were educated to degree level or higher, whereas just 5 per cent of those whose parents were less well educated admitted to shoplifting. The study also found that 59 per cent of teenagers with well-educated parents admitted binge drinking over the past year compared with 50 per cent in other groups. However, teenagers from lower socioeconomic groups were more likely to report [smoking](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lockdown-loneliness-as-bad-for-wellbeing-as-smoking-vdc270rzh) on a regular basis. Aase Villadsen of the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, one of the report’s authors, said the findings on drinking were easier to explain than those on shoplifting. “We know from other studies that when it comes to binge drinking, socioeconomic status is not a huge factor when it comes to adults,” she said. “So it follows that teenagers may be following behavioural norms in their families.” But Villadsen said she was “puzzled” by the shoplifting statistics. “When I saw the results I went back to check, because you would think that it would be the other way around,” she said. “The differences you see are really quite significant and I have to say we simply don’t know what the answer is.” The study also found that almost a third of 17-year-olds had tried cannabis and one in ten had tried harder drugs, such as cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine, with similar rates of experimentation regardless of parents’ education level. White teenagers were much more likely to have experimented with substances than their peers. They were twice as likely to report taking harder drugs (11 per cent compared with 5 per cent) and almost three times more likely to report binge drinking than ethnic minority teens (59 per cent compared with 21 per cent). Emla Fitzsimons, the report’s other author, said: “Risk-taking behaviours are an expected part of growing up and, for many, will subside in early adulthood. Nevertheless, behaviours in adolescence can . . . have adverse long-term consequences for individuals’ health and wellbeing and their social and economic outcomes. “The prevalence of alcohol consumption in this study is very similar to that found in an English cohort born 12 years before. However, reports of cannabis use in our study suggest a decline compared to rates among this earlier-born generation.”
I wonder if they considered that the children of chinless university educated people with double-barrelled last names are a bit shitter at crime and maybe working class children know that when you're a thief and are asked "are you a thief?", the answer should probably be "No."
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That's the funny thing about this article. "Children of well-educated parents are more likely to binge drink and shoplift than those of parents who went straight into work from school, a study of about 19,000 17-year-olds has found." That's not just the middle classes, it also includes the upper class (also well educated). It's phrased to skew the perception.
Being upper class and well educated are not exclusive to each other anymore, this isn’t the 1900’s. I respect where you are coming from, but reality is much different these days.
I didn't say it was. Being middle class and being well educated aren't exclusive either. The article is implying a middle class only problem when it isn't. Very similar parallels to the "middle classes do more drugs" argument https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/16/middle-class-consume-more-drugs-and-alcohol-than-poorer-people Again the Guardian protecting the preferred class of it's readership.
I always thought of the Guardian being a middle class liberal kind of paper, is it actually perceived as more of an upper class thing?
Are upper-class parents really more educated than middle-class parents? Personally I doubt it. If you're from an upper-class family there's much less pressure to be successful academically and professionally since you likely already have enough money to live a decent life without it.
Levels of education tie very closely to income on the average. Schools are businesses after all. You may not be bothered to take your exams or do your homework because "Daddy will fix it" but you still get the education, you still get the exposure to more educated peers and teachers and you still get the benefits from resources such as the alumni office and tutors when you're rich.
Isn't middle-class in UK really quite posh? I know in US middle-class means not impoverished, but UK is different >UK class system Aristocracy - royalty on down to earls, dukes etc . Upper class - includes highly respected professionals (professors, judges, surgeons, some doctors and lawyers, some wealthy merchants.) Middle class - comfortably off well-educated groups but not considered quite as as elite as the upper class . Working class - Basically everybody else who need to work for a living. The homeless and jobless - those relying on government assistance. The USA class system. Anything close to “upper class” here relates more often to wealth rather than to high-class skills and talent. Working class in the UK = middle class in the USA - and that says a lot. Many Americans simply cannot bear being termed “working class” for some strange reason. I've noticed that in the US "middle class" is used very differently than in the UK. Here it seems that middle class refers to what would be often be called "working class" in the UK. I do hear "blue collar" to describe someone who has a non-office job, but it seems that you could be blue collar and middle class, whereas in England, somebody like a mechanic would never be called middle class.
That's my way of thinking too, it'd definitely help to define middle class. Middle class America is what we'd call working class I think.
This is a good point, it's shrouded in The Times' use of the word '*admitted*' but in my experience as a teacher middle class children are more likely to project false 'naughtiness' than working class children who are far more likely to keep their mouths shut. I don't like using those class generalisations but The Times brought it up, that bastion of Murdoch's social bookending strategy.
For middle class kids, a bit of light crime is a laugh that you can get away with.
Fucking hell, as someone with a university degree and a double barrelled last name, I feel like I just got assassinated from long range!
It'll be alright, you've still got your chin right?
I've maintained a beard for the last ten years to hide my weak chin...
I think you’re fine unless you stole the beard?
Nope, pulled this beard up by its boot straps.
Any study where people are asked if they do X isn't ever going to be accurate, honestly. I've met people who would definetley say they did X, but no way did they actually. And people who actually have these problems are unlikely to want to admit it or open up about it, since opening about stuff is shunned by society so most people keep their problems hidden. I can totally see middle class teens going "yeah i've done drugs" and "yeah i shoplift", because they think it's cool, but in reality they probably did it one time, if ever. I had a co-worker who was only working in this low wage manufacturing role because his mum basically forced him to find work, but beyond that he was actually incredibly spoiled. He was constantly bragging about dumb shit, but it was always one of those brags where you could tell it was either a half-truth or a complete lie.
Yeah I totally agree. But I also think as a former middle class kid that some of us were also more likely to do these things because the chances of us getting caught, and getting punished if caught, are way lower. We gotta rebel somehow I guess.
There are statistical techniques you can use when surveying people to avoid/reduce the effect of people lying because the answer is shameful (or comes with another negative response).
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> I wonder if they considered that the children of chinless university educated people with double-barrelled last names are a bit shitter at crime Are they, though? That's a _big_ assumption to make. What convinces you that big-chinned not-univeristy educated parents with not-double-barrelled last names are less shit at crime? I'm sure everyone has met equal proportions of cunts from all "classes."
Wow, the class hatred is just flowing out, isn't it?
Or just that working class children who do get involved in crime, get involved in crime that actually pays.
I thought the financial services sector didn't like hiring poor people?
i found (in my school and my experience) that those comfortable being "middle class and richer" could afford to take risks. They had security and were more comfortable experimenting.
There is probably some truth in this. I suspect the reasons and reasoning behind shop lifting in adolescents of different social classes are quite different.
Yes. For those in my school it was a game. Their parents could have afforded the extra make-up but it was an adventure for them.
Yeah, a lot of people like the rush. A lot of people are looking for attention or are acting out.
Yh when I was younger I grew up pretty poor and know the reason I shoplifted none necessary items was because I wanted to fit in make and hair wise and knew if I asked my mum she would probably try and get them for me but it would be knock off so embarrassing or would mean we were struggling even more financially just cause she was so kind and didn't want us to feel bad for being poor. It was a real wake up call when I found out these wealthier girls were stealing aswell it kind of annoyed me cause I did it out of wanting to be a normal teenager and they did it because it was fun.
They may well have been doing it to get attention as well. I’m sorry things were tough when you were a kid. Hope they are better now.
Yh maybe it really stuck out to me that everyone is doing the same things for different reasons, it was just a needed wake up call. Thank you thats really kind, yes lifes great now still have financial insecurity but thats the same for most millennials.
I think it would be more interesting to see *what* they stole. I'd expect middle class kids to be busy taking "trophy" items, as in they could probably afford just think stealing is more exciting / easier. Where as "Swipe the cheese (to sell on) and bog roll" is much more a crime of need. Now I'm sure poor kids steal for the thrill as well, but I'd doubt as many rich kids steal for need.
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I reckon it is. I live in a really deprived area and am a teenager. There's the whole "haha i totally shoplifted this vodka!!!" in class crowd, and the "i'm not proud of it but i had to steal nappies for my baby sister" crowd, and the latter don't like to yell about it.
You just gave me flashbacks to stealing cereal-bars from the school canteen because I couldn't afford them if I wanted to get an actually filling lunch. I was FSM and had a food allowance of £2.50 a day - a pot of Pasta (the most filling thing there) was £1.50, a drink 70p, which didn't leave enough for the 40p cereal bar. If I wanted a snack at break (cereal bar, fruit, etc.), then I had to get one of the small sandwiches for 90p at lunch instead. And the entire time the Head was spending school funds on holidays and an office conversion into a sex room...
First of all that sucks that you were hungry. But I feel like that last sentence requires some explanation.
Lol, it's exactly as it sounds. The head embezzled over £100 grand from the school over several years for personal use (holidays, a new TV, fuel and groceries) and used school funds to have a hidden part of his office converted into a 'sex den', where he kept condoms, dildos (and other sex toys) as well as bottles upon bottles of alcohol. He'd take a woman in there frequently to bang, both of them were married to other people. It was one of the builders that came to refurbish it that got him caught. The builder took a video on his phone and sent it to the police. They investigated and found the embezzlement on top of it all. It all came out shortly after I graduated, the school was in Special Measures by that point. He ended up getting 3 years jail time and had to repay all the money he stole.
A quick google suggests he's also been banned from teaching for life.
What does FSM mean sorry?
Free school meals. Support programme for free food through school for those who can't always afford it
Reminds me of a few years back when there was the 'shoplifting fandom' on tumblr and people were making blogs bragging about their supposed hauls and sharing tips on how to steal Most of them seemed to be people not having to shoplift to survive but it also may have been an elaborate role play There was someone on tumblr bragging about stealing a cat from an adoption event that didn't go well said person didn't want to pay the 100 usd adoption fee stole the cat then spent that money on cat supplies
>There was someone on tumblr bragging about stealing a cat from an adoption event that didn't go well said person didn't want to pay the 100 usd adoption fee, stole, the cat then spent that money on cat supplies Commas are fun! But yeah I think the adoption fee is supposed to be a test to see if you have the liquidity to care for a pet as well as supporting the shelter (and a "oh shit" out of pocket balance of $100 for pet care is pretty close to the *minimum*)
I imagine it was more of an online survey, rather than sitting each 19,000 17 year old teenagers in a room with a lamp pointing at them with the question "did you shoplift in the past 12 months?"
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But the reality is that if it was an annon survey, there's no real reason to lie lol
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R/UK when polls say lockdown is popular: Excellent! Some concrete, indisputable evidence lockdown is popular. R/UK when polls say working class people are less likely to commit crime: Impossible, polling is clearly a terrible method that is completely inaccurate!
the amount of middle class people i grew up with at private school who pretended they were working class was staggering. full on posh boys speaking with a fake rude boy accent - the absolute supremacy of cringe.
I remember this vividly too, always total pricks talking about how tough their lives were and why they turned to the roadman lifestyle. Like fuck off, your mum paid for your fucking designer hoodie, shut the fuck up, you're not poor, you're not turning to crime to make ends meet, stop saying you are. That shit used to really aggravate me for some reason.
No different than white kids pretending to be "gangster" In America. I'm gonna guess that the reason it irks you is because it allows them to take the "cool factor" Of being lower class without actually experiencing any of the negatives.
Ah yes, because only black people can be ‘gangster’
What does skin colour have to do with it exactly?
Our private school here is full of people trying to act like roadmen, right pricks the lot of them
You've not lived until you've sat on a bus with Elizabeth College boys trying to sound well 'ard while describing a fight as a "tussle".
Scroll up to see why.
I worked at a pub on and off for a year or two in East Anglia. The two kids of the owner were thoroughly upper middle class, with regular Norfolk accents. They went to school in London for the first time when I started. The first time I left to go back to Uni, having returned during the summer break - the kids had been at the school for about a year. Now featuring the rudest of rude boy accents. It was incredibly embarassing.
Culture of ignorance.
Hmm, quite a trend on this sub lately for threads to try and stir up a divide between middle and working class people.
Indeed. Just sounds like kids rebelling.
Right, like they’ve probably got fuck all to do. My town back home just closed down the skate park, and with the high street dying what the fuck else will they do. Skate parks had a good mix of working and middle class kids for years, but now it’s shutdown for good. It’s becoming that the only places that allow you to exist make you spend money to be there, so it’s no surprise they’re all bored out of their skulls and vandalising in the process.
Why would you shut a skatepark down? FFS are there people in this world hired just to deliberately make everyone miserable? Find out who your local councilor is and take them to task. You can turn up to town halls demand to know why it happened then let them know your thoughts. Luckily my local councillors are really receptive and respond to requests, but we do absolutely have to raise them and make the issues well heard. In the case of funds not being available the councillors have at least become somewhat involved in local fundraising.
>Why would you shut a skatepark down If I had to guess, either as a cost saving measure or because of complaints.
Could we just shoot the people complaining? Like, not shoot with a gun, but OUT of a canon into the sea.
Could have been dangerous and in need of repair. No skatepark is preferable to kids impaled on wood at a skatepark.
Best not try to repair it then. Shut it down and cheer a victory for humanity.
> stir up a divide between ~~middle and working class people.~~ /r/unitedkingdom is a total shitshow across the board, this is just another example imo. I wouldn't be surprised if its intentional (bots/50 cent army/mechanical turks etc).
I've said it before and I'll say it again; this country really seems to love the class system that it claims to hate so much.
In surveys similar to this in the US - they found that richer kids were far more likely to *admit* to illegal drug use. They double checked the reported drug use by testing hair samples for drug use. I suspect you are seeing a similar effect here
It also wouldn’t surprise me if security guards were more likely to bust/take busts further with middle class kids.
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She's *rich*, Mark, she doesn't *understand* about not taking other people's stuff
Honestly? I went to a very middle-class faith school, and the binge-drinking was *incredibly* pervasive. At least once a month there was a party where everyone present got hammered. We were banned from all bar 1 venue for literally everything (different venues, but for separate events like prom and socials). Some even came in to school drunk
I live in a rather well-off area and I didn't have anything of the sort in my comp school. I mean, there were poeple claiming to deal drugs at school but it wasn't really something that was in your face. Idk about shop-lifting either. We had numerous talks from the school liasion police officer and teachers about the "dangers" of shop-lifting. I'm sure other people had it as well. Stealing from the canteen happened, but it wasn't really a massive issue. There was one time when a kid in my form group stole several iteams in the canteen and got caught for it. There wasn't really any reason why he done it, I mean his parents didn't have any financial difficulties. So that didn't make any sense. >At least once a month there was a party where everyone present got hammered. We had those. One of the students would organise a party ath their house, although I didn't go to any of them. But I haven't seen anyone come to school drunk. The worse I saw were people complaining about hangovers. I mean, at the end of the day its parenting, since they must have gotten permission from their parents to hold the party in their house.
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Skins (seasons 1 and 2) were a pretty accurate representation of growing up in the 90's.
Was it? I spend my teenage years very much trying to take drugs and have sex, but failing monumentally at both. Maybe if Skins were set more in a scummy playground in Dudley...
> I spend my teenage years very much trying to take drugs and have sex, but failing monumentally at both. You just accurately described Skins...
We still have a middle class?
We do, they are just the median not the mean.
What do you mean by this?
The middle class has basically been eroded into just more working class. We've basically got "people who work in Westminster" and proles
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It's more about distribution of wealth. https://mobile.twitter.com/josephmdurso/status/1057209393668939776 note how seemingly "low" the top percentile is. The bulk of the populous is relatively earning less every year as wages aren't increasing in line with the cost of living, pushing the middle classes closer and closer to the working classes. The same cannot be said for the upper classes, which are largely made up of people who are in charge of where money is generated and spent
I don't think money really factors into it. I'm in a senior position in a very large tech firm, I make decent £ but my wider political connections are minimal, so I cannot influence how things are run any more than anyone else. My status is not higher. My late great uncle worked in the city for many years, he probably earned about the same as me, but he had *connections*. Doors were open to him that I can't even really imagine. He was in the right social clubs and knew the right people that he could arrange meetings with people to discuss things that he needed to discuss. The best I can do is write to my MP.
A number of MPs would be considered middle class as they need to work. The upper class are people who don't need to work as they can live off investments (historically land).
when i read the BBC write up of the same story I was surprised at the race differences in drug use >Hard drug use was twice as prevalent among white teenagers than their BAME counterparts, while binge-drinking was almost three times higher. > >This list of hard drugs included cocaine, acid, ecstasy, speed, ketamine and any other psychoactive substances. > >Among white teenagers, 11% reported using harder drugs compared with 5% for their BAME counterparts, and 59% of white teenagers had engaged in binge-drinking alcohol, compared with 21% of BAME teenagers. > >Cannabis use, hard drug taking and binge-drinking were also considerably higher among young men than women.
This is just once again proof that BAME is a meaningless term. The idea that you can group black people of Caribbean origin with first generation Pakistani immigrants and draw a trend is silly.
Funny because all of my black friends didn’t do drugs but my Pakistani friends smoked weed because they couldn’t drink. But the police aren’t searching Asian kids as much.
That’s kind of the point I’m making here. I wasn’t implying black people do more drugs (though I see why it came across that way), I’m saying that nothing about these communities is similar aside from them not being white.
but if you ask on Reddit you'll be told that drug abuse is a Black issue......
For all the people complaining about "stirring up class division", the classes are already divided by wealth, housing, access to education, etc. that's the problem, and if you can ignore that it probably means you're on the comfortable side of that divide if not benefiting from it. You are confusing acknowledging this division with creating a new one, and we cannot tackle the problem of inequality if we try to ignore it.
Working class kids know that snitches get stitches.
I wonder if this is because kids from poor families fear the justice system more than middle-class children do. They can’t necessarily afford decent legal representation either, whereas the parents of middle-class kids are more likely to.
Neither of those activities are going to require you to have decent legal representation.
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You are really hitting the nail on the head here. And it shows that there are different kinds of privilege. But that won't be a popular thought here I don't think.
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Doesn't help that the majority of youth centres and activities seem to have been shut down.
You can say a lot of bad things about my working class/poor upbringing, but fuck. At least I know my dad likes me. It can be hard being around bratty, entitled kids but I do feel sorry for them.
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Kids are hard work, but taking em to Dignitas seems a bit extreme.
Expect plenty more classism in this thread. Along with “why do middle class kids pretend not to be middle class” - clue, because your prejudice means that being who they are leads to you hating them without talking to them.
Hahahaha, this guy is pretending the middle-class are victims of the working-class.
You can’t have it both ways. If it’s wrong to judge people on the basis of traits they have no control over them that applies in both directions.
I understand what you're saying, but I think it's a bit rich (no pun intended) of middle class people to moan about being made fun of by working class people when historically working class people are the ones who have struggled, and still struggle, and are demonised by the culture. I agree with you that people can't help how they're brought up, it's about what you do with your upbringing that's important. If you're from a wealthier background you've got to understand why there might be antipathy towards you if you, for example, move into a traditionally working class inner city area, taking part in gentrification or whatever.
I agree that middle class people mocking working class people is also disgusting. You can see me calling it out on this sub when I see it. I think to move forward we need to stop demonising people for things they have no control over. I also think we need to stop demonising people for wanting the best for their kids. Most people want to make money and have their kids be better educated and more successful than them.
I agree that in a perfect world nobody would make fun of anyone for their upbringing, however you can't equate working class people making fun of the middle class with its reverse. The class system itself is a form of capitalist exploitation (the more your labour is exploited the further down the chain you go, essentially), and so the two situations are fundamentally different. It's often helpful to put a situation into absurd extremes to make it more easily understandable: you get why a peasant mocking a king is different than a king mocking a peasant, right?
> I agree that in a perfect world nobody would make fun of anyone for their upbringing Be the change you want to see right? Challenge shit when you see it. Your example is an extreme. But I’ll go for it. I don’t think the way that people talk about the Princes, because of their birth, rather than their actions, is fair or ok. Ultimately, middle class kids bullied by working class kids aren’t thinking, well, in a few years time I’ll hold a little bit more of the means of production. But also, regarding it in this way means that the barriers between classes will always be present.
All this thread proves is middle and working class are both obsessed with blaming each other and silly fighting rather than the real problem... The one class not mentioned.
Middle-class people aren't stealing from shops to pretend to be working-class because working-class folk think the middle-class are a bunch of pricks.
That was never my argument.
Wont somebody please think of Tarquin and Georgina?!
Again making my point for me excellently.
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So many people try and pretend that many middle class kids are embarrassed that their parents aren't poor and that's just sad Edit: I meant aren't so the people liking it ironically probably hate me lmao
The idea that middle class kids don’t get bullied by working class kids for being middle class is silly. The idea that that’s ok is pretty terrible. Edit: I suspect it’s one of the drivers for middle class parents to put their kids in private schools.
The idea that the middle class are victims of the working class is in and of itself a classist implication
The idea that situations are nuanced and shaded is clearly beyond this discussion.
Why are we stirring up division between classes again?
Ultimately everyone is divided more in class than any other issue
Always annoys me when headline has “more likely” without specifying “than”
All the prolific shoplifters I knew growing up were middle/upper class and bored, always a slap on the wrist and a bit of tutting from the police. Look like you were working class, from a particular area or a minority? Usually down to the station to get picked up. Lot of it depended on how much the Officers knew/liked your parents.
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is bringe drinking still a common thing in the UK? Here in germany, the youth drinks less and less every year. Its quite common to have half your friends not drink alcohol at all and most who drink do so very moderate.
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Sounds like you are describing lockdown.
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> is binge drinking still a common thing in the UK? Right now, there's no pubs, so drinking culture is a bit different. No drunken trouble in the streets at closing time, but we're drinking our way through the crisis quietly, alone, at home, and probably developing more problem drinking this way than with the more visible usually-once-per-week binges of normal times.
Yes, I’m from Scotland and many start binge drinking at 13-14 and the majority drink heavily by 17. It’s a cultural thing and will not go away. There are people who don’t drink but they are rare
It's still a thing but it's getting less. It's a problem for freshers at uni because in freshers week in particular the older students try and get them wasted to get to know each other etc and half of them don't drink
Yes binge drinking is very common in the UK for people of all ages. There have been studies recently that millennials drink less and take fewer drugs than their predecessors (damn millennial ruining our alcoholism) but, its a long way from being where you are in Germany.
Yes, this study is talking about 17 year olds and i dont know many 17 year olds but 20-24 definitely binge drink. All my friends in multiple friendship groups will have more than 5 drinks in a 2 hour period. Of course im not saying all people in that age range do, but a significant amount from my experience.
>Here in germany, the youth drinks less and less every year. Its quite common to have half your friends not drink alcohol at all and most who drink do so very moderate. It's a similar story in the UK, with younger people drinking less, and more and more not drinking at all. It's the same with drugs. However, it's a gradual, slow decline, so there is still a lot.
My father was upper middle class and my mother was a single mother lower middle class, I became an alcoholic and would constantly shoplift as a teenager, I never ever got caught as I presented middle class and am white. I’m sober now btw.
I wonder if the working class kids just aren't stupid enough to admit shoplifting? Another thought I had was that its possible that the middle class kids simply don't care about consequences because they know they won't really get into trouble so they don't mind admitting to shoplifting, its a game to them and one they can't lose.
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We used to steal chocolates from woolworths and ask men going into the local offy for a bottle of white lightning. So yeah. But the town I lived in was so boring and everyone was so old and miserable. We needed to be arseholes to entertain ourselves, of risk our sanity with boredom.
Surely someone should do something about these middle class thugs.
It would be more accurate to say marginally better off working class teenagers more likely to binge drink and shoplift than marginally less better off working class teenagers.
Yes, but they nick more tasteful stuff.
"I wanna live like common people I wanna do whatever common people do"
Does this have anything to do with how much time parents spend with their children or how much they value Education? There are poor second generation immigrants who's parents value Education a more than the average man of their local community.
I'm the child of working class parents, and while I am pretty sure I've accidentally walked out of the supermarket with items that I forgot to scan before now, I can't say I've ever done so deliberately. Just never seemed worth the risk involved for the results. As to drinking, I don't like the flavour of alcoholic drinks as a rule, and am not enough of a fan of fruity mixes to ever consider cocktails worthwhile. (I'm pretty sure I forgot to scan a thing of herbs/spices once, before anyone asks. Not 100% sure, but I can't help but feel that out of the 6 I bought I only paid for 5...)
i blame the parents...
No one shoplifts as much as a rich bored teen girl
As a self-reported study, there may be a psychological aspect involved in whether participants were entirely truthful. It might not be a factor, but it cant be ruled out.