I'm from So-Cal and that was not a nice thing to say! :stare:

















:P

:laugh: When I was in England ("glamorous" SE London) for nine months people I'd meet would ask me where in the States I was from. After telling them California I would usually get "What the hell are you doing here?!". I'd explain how much I like England and how interesting and beautiful a lot of it was. It was usually met with a shrug and "I'd rather have nice weather like you have".

I love how you seem to imagine that working class people spend their free time wearing flat caps and stuffing ferrets down their trousers.
(Actually, everyone I know whether rich or poor seems to have the same two hobbies: going to the pub, and playing video games.)

I don't actually know of any genuine, real-world benefits that come from being "posh", other than being more accepted by other posh people. Since "common" people tend not to like "posh" people so much, that wouldn't be seen as much of a benefit to either.

In terms of middle class pasttimes, well, I'm trying to think of some. You've already told me that everyone who has to work is working class, so that makes everybody I know working class. Every person I know likes going to the cinema, so that's obviously a working-class pasttime. By your definition, I'm practically rolling around in the muck, yet I've been known to attend the odd classical concert and particularly enjoy visiting museums and looking at paintings, so those must be working-class pasttimes, too. I suppose bowling is quite a working-class hobby, but the last time I went I was on a team with a finance administrator, an IT manager, and a renowned academic, so I suppose even you would agree that the last two are "middle class", even though they need to work to pay the mortgages on their five-bedroom townhouses.

Every person I know changes their voice depending on who they're talking to, so accent alone wouldn't give the game away. I spot regional colloquialisms in even my most well-bred friends. The ones who swear the most are almost without exception the ones with the most education.


:lmao:

I read something that people who speak with an RP accent in Britain are starting to use an Estuary accent in the business world to be more accepted. They feel a "posh" accent can be a handicap in certain situations.

Well, more what's happening is that everyone is developing the same sort of accent which is somewhere between RP and Estuary - think: how Tony Blair speaks. It's not quite one or the other. I speak like that, as do most people I know, toning it up or down depending on who I'm talking to.

Of course, you get regional accents too, but people either emphasise or de-emphasise the accent, depending on the person they're talking to. It's all about putting the other person at their ease.

Well, that time period had quite a lot of Irish discrimination in the USA, with the No Irish Need Apply signs and whatever.

I make jokes about the Irish stereotypes all the time because my best friend from work descended from Irish immigrants a long time ago, and I feel like giving him crap when he wears his irish pride shirt.

That's a reason for ridicule regardless of the actual nationality, I would say. Darn plastics.

Hey this is still going.

Today I had Doritos for breakfast, I think im more white trash than Irish...

No offence Crash.. but isn't that what a 'pikey' is?

I only ask because all I know is what I saw Bradd Pitt portray in the movie Snatch.

Aren't they basically the Irish white trailer trash?

Pehaps things are less stratified down in the south, but this is the way it is up here. Cinemas have always been the haunt of working class people, but now as in 1930, many among the white collar working class are wont to take part in gallery viewings and museum visits, in order to maintain their illusion that they are of higher birth than the blue collars who do not. Bowling is the hobby of Americans, imported here and played largely by those who have money to burn. Its prohibitive cost puts it out of the league of more disadvantaged blue collar workers.

My father is an IT manager, and he would laugh at you if you said his was a middle class profession.

No, pikeys are Gypsies. In England at least, I've never heard anyone refer to Irish Travellers as pikeys.

Correct.But this variety only exists in Ireland and the U.K.They tend to be aggressive and see the rest of us as "soft boys".Im not stereotyping, just going with my experience.

Bradd Pitt actually nailed the pikey accent and behavior pretty well. :rofl:

Indeed. Living in the southwest, one can't really grow up without meeting some. Might be different in Leinster, don't know. ^_^

They're gypsies. So yeah, the Irish equivalent of trash.

Edit weird, some auto-censor on my computer censors the word trash, preceded by the word white. That's the only word it's even done that with, didn't even know I had one. . .

I would say everyone comes across them at some stage.

For me it was a certain job I had, it was located near four different halting sites and settled traveler housing estates.Pikeys of all ages came to our establishment...it was pretty intimidating, with the theft, fighting and general scumbaggery going on.

I am not usually one to generalize, but when you have no identity on paper, and can get away with murder(literally) and just blend back in somewhere else....

Yeah, I've seen the gypsies of Ireland, not people I'd want to be around at all. And certainly not charming in the least, like in Snatch.

So *that* is where all the mean travellers went. My Pa once complained that most lost their bite, or that the ones who did not went somewhere else because rural south-west is just too friendly.
All that was left were those that fit right in, artists, musicians, some slightly insane, some not. ^_^

The sad truth is that they have no chance to change.

The kids are taught how to steal at a very young age by the parents.
Inbreeding is causing lots of serious medical problems.
Most do not get any education.
The girls need to have kids when very young themselves to receive the state benefits they need.
The boys have to learn to fight as a primary skill.

As society continues to grow and improve, these people are getting further behind.Something needs to be done, but current directives are doing no good.Every time one of these people walks into a room, tension skyrockets and everyone is a little(or a lot) afraid.

@RedViv... Wow...I never heard of a pikey musician before!

Well, that's what this derogatory term is for - you wouldn't really call someone something bad if they are not bad, thus people tend to ignore that they are just pikeys who managed to stay nice. Granted, there were some bad folks near my hometown, too, but that was a minority. An aunt of mine had nearly all of the work on redecorating her house done by travellers, paid drastically below what "real" decorators would have taken, but immensely more cheerful - and they could live at least two months from what they got paid, while the decorators would only have gotten a fraction of their monthly income out of it. One of those instances that really left an impression on me, that everything has at least two sides, even a group of people with a generally nasty reputation.

Ah, now I remembered. That French movie, Chocolat, had some similar folks. Johnny Depp among the ones playing them. ^_^

I suppose it'd be hard to civilise the pikeys, with most of the population of Ireland living in county Dublin, they are pretty free to roam around in the middle.

Of course, I sympathise with them a little, they're remnants of a time past, one of the few things more or less unaffected by time. Or maybe they're just a bunch of punks who need to be brought to justice, who knows!

Wouldn't those be chavs?

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, as usual. ^_^

Well they are basically "free people on the land" which is something not many of us can claim these days.My birth cert is really my government employee contract.I am a "MR." which is a legal fiction, or a strawman as they say.

If the travelers could grasp how the system worked I could see why they would want no part in it.RedViv has opened my eyes a little, it seems the city is where the roughest travelers hang out.


Very different to chavs in my opinion.

i adore irish
i love the irish
i wish i were irish

next trip ill head to Ireland!

Ahhhhh!

Leave the longships at home this time friend.

OK, well, we're up to 200 posts, but I think it's best if we give it a rest at this point, since some genuinely offensive terms and stereotypes are being bandied about.