I note that there are a variety of people, that are prepared to destroy or cause distress, often in very cowardly manners, just to prove that they’ve got some sort of power.

Such people aren’t necessarily chavs, and I’d be interested to see if these atitudes are internally generated (E.G. by a personality defect, jealousy, etc) or supported by memes as you suggest in your article.

Returning to you analysis; In my view a significant stage, an “event horizon” if you will, is the point at which the social punishment of an individual isn’t taken as a sign of failure. Depressingly there are groups out there who see it as only a matter of time, not guilt, before they are put on trial or in prison.

While ASBOs and even custodial sentences have no stigma attached to them by the target community, society must find other ways of dealing with these memeplex.

A significant part of your argument is that vertical transmission makes the chav memplex essentially self-sustaining and expansive. (Provided that some other party is prepard to supply the food and other resources.)

While I baulk at the idea of Capital punishment or mandatory contraception, how many other ways are there to disrupt vertical transmission?

Additional ethical training beyond what the children receive from theor own parents can only go so far, and many state teachers are already very jaded. However much you try to do in school, it can quickly be undone by an evening on the street or a night at home.

To directly inhibit vertical transmission would lead to options bordering on the holocaust. Such as Gender segregated work houses, or immediately taking children into care, as their parent’s couldn’t realistically give them a useful upbringing. Both of these would fly in the face of conventions on Human Rights!

By this note however, your entire article (with the exception of the half-arsed ’solution’ in the final paragraph) is inappropriate. As if there isn’t already enough class-hate fodder (’Chavs’ being part of our underclass) on the internet pandering to the bigotry of individuals such those commenting above. As for your solution to further ‘educate’ the underclass by “encouraging free thought”, I will say just this. The point is not just to educate the underclass about their social condition- it is to change it.

You use the term ‘chav genes/ memes’ in your comment as if I had implied that the two are equivalent. I didn’t. Read it again. You’ve completely missed the point.

I would be more offended by your accusation of racism if I didn’t think it was so pathetic. You’ve clearly willfully misunderstood my post from the point of view of someone desperate to accuse others of prejudice in order to somehow prove his own lack thereof.

I’ll just put it this way: you might (quite rightly) accuse me of bigotry if I made the point that black people are criminals (which, I’ll reiterate, I didn’t).

However, no-one in their right mind would argue with the fact that black people are black, and white people are white, and they are so because of their genes. In the same way, criminals are criminals because of their memes. Those memes are just as capable of infecting any race, sex, or class. However, certain groups of people are more likely to be exposed to certain groups of memes, and are therefore more likely to be infected by them. This isn’t anything to do with prejudice, racism or classism, it’s a simple fact.

Incidentally, I’m quite amused by your re-classification of antisocial behaviour as “anti-bourgeois” behaviour, as if only the upper classes could possibly be offended by it. Do you really believe that the way someone’s behaviour is perceived is relativistic? If so, are rape and murder simply wrong from “someone’s point of view”?

Morality evolves, generally speaking, in the direction of improvement. This is what Richard Dawkins calls the “shifting moral zeitgeist.” Antisocial behaviour - random violent criminal acts - are not just offensive to one class, or one race. They are offensive to the human condition. It’s sad that you have to resort to petty insults in an attempt to justify your disagreement with this.

As opposed to your class-based, social-darwinist perception of Britain’s underclass. Social conditions are the cause of ‘anti-social’ behaviour (or should I call it anti-bourgeois behaviour). Your views on ‘chav genes/ memes’ are essentially one step away from eugenicism. A higher ratio of crimes are reported of African-carribean people, than with whites. So next I suppose you will be discussing how they are inherently evil?

Perhaps commentators could examine their own “nasty little prejudices” before posting.

Chavs are a product of extreme poverty coexisting with images of wealth and a selfish, free-market culture with little social control over behaviour.

The thing to do is start some kind of compulsory contraception scheme at a very young age, combined with better public education for all, and far longer jail sentences for violent, anti-social criminals.

The contraception scheme is the crux of the matter. It can be done with implants which lasts for several years at a time. This will be cheap, humane and effective, basically it will isolate the virus of Chavism and cause the species to die out.

Educating our children to a higher standard and stamping out all the nasty little prejudices that exist as well as celebrating difference and encouraging non-conformity and creativity is another avenue of attack, while severe punishment and zero tolerance of anti-social violence and bullying would deal with the existing offenders. This will cost money but be worth it.

I don’t want to be alarmist or extreme, but capital punishment may have to be considered in the future, as chavs seem to have no qualms about taking people’s lives and definitely fit into the category of repeat offenders. But the contraception, education and prison schemes will have to be tried before anything else.

FANTASTIC ARTICLE btw!

The point of this article was to provide a new way of thinking about the problem in the hope that this may help to find a long-term solution. I don’t claim to know the answer, but I don’t believe that stricter punishments alone will work.