lawrenson wrote: Kind of like Rednecks?

The term "Redneck" can be used as an insult in America but it is not generally considered to be offensive.  

It is an American regional culture that is both a joke and a badge of pride within that group.

FormCritic wrote:
In America, we do not have the concept of "working class."  

We think of working people as "middle class," although we may divide them into "upper middle class" and "lower middle class."  The designation includes laborers, professionals and executives within a given income range.  Most Americans think of themselves as middle class.

We have the concept of the "working poor" to distinguish those in the lower class who still mainly support themselves by labor...which is actually the majority of that class.

Although levels of education can be typical of lower, middle or upper class, education does not determine class.  A college degree in America can buy you a Big Gulp at 7-11, if you also have 99 cents to add to it.

Dialect in America is usually regional and racial, rather than class-related.

Probably where the difference between the US & UK lies perhaps. Working class, middle class and upper class are very much evident in the majority of the country, I'd say. Locally to me, I'd call the majority working class, those living in 'Surrey' where the husband works in London and the wife lunches all day as middle class and those living in Ascot and Windsor as upper class, as they may have been educated at Eton.

A university degree in the UK shows that you have the aptitude to study for a length of time, but rarely now does the degree get used in their working life.

I guess language here is regional but I'd say mainly class based, as I live in the same town as people who talk very differently to me and that is class (or possibly age thinking about it   ), not region.  

FormCritic wrote:It is also an enlightening look at the English social services system as someone from the UK sees it.?

I think it really is  

If you want to read a similar satirical approach, but about the other end of the spectrum, I would recommend the novel, The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford.  Very funny (but not as laugh-out-loud funny), but it I imagine illuminating to people outside the UK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Mitford

FormCritic wrote:In America, we do not have the concept of "working class."

*pfft* semantics. Or an appropriate assessment for Detroit, as the case may be?

FormCritic wrote:Dialect in America is usually regional and racial, rather than education or class-related.  People with higher level education still use the idiom of their race or region when speaking to other members of their group.  The use of idiom and satire by an outsider, like it is used in the Ebay listing, would be considered offensive because it would be a racial or cultural insult.

Mhmm... we're catching that plague, too, sad to say. We would've imposed protective tariffs on such memetic imports but free trade arrangements would not permit those. :/

red_bus wrote:Bloody EU  

Yeah... I'd happily shine a light on those practices for our friends in the colonies but it's darned impossible to find a bright-enough fluorescent bulb to do so...

For our US brothers, here's a little cultural comparison.

Council Housing is like the Projects. Cheap sh!t housing full of scum and trash. The type of place you can smell when you drive into it with their cute archane tags on the buildings in 'the hood'. We also have something called Ex-Council Housing which is cheap housing stock in poor areas that a previous Prime Minister sold to the working classes to encourage them to vote for a Middle Class party. It worked because they are not very bright.

The men who live in council housing are mostly thin and imaciated looking, very pale skinned and with disproportionately longer arms and hands than you'd expect on a normally fed human. They walk like they are carrying bowling balls and wear generic brand baggy sports clothing, mostly stolen from Asda WalMart. The women are unnecessarily ugly verging on offensively so. Most don't shave or exfoliate and most are obesce. As a result they tend to be pungent and attract insects. They do not spend money on toothpaste as they believe cigarettes do the same job. You can see them on The Jeremy Kyle Show every day of the week.

The UK Welfare system is how we tell the difference between our criminal fraternity and the mentally defficient, and the rest of our society. In general terms they are those people with IQs below 60, and those who's parents taught them to swear and steal because they themselves were not able to teach them to write or count to ten. If someone is on Welfare they have no standing in society and no self-respect, and only the current trend towards political correctness prevents people from throwing vegetables at them. Generally they congregate outside benefit offices, court houses, and Asda WalMart stores where they swear, smoke and punch their children; no doubt for good reason.

In general, this constitutes some 14-18% of our society, and they consume a disproportionate quantity of all of society's resources; to the point that 1 in 5 of all working people in the UK are now employed to fulfill to the needs of the scum underclasses. Between the scum and those needed to look after them, you account for 40% of all the UK population. Thankfully the government has thought to run government institutions where they try to encourage this type of person to work by offering them simple menial labour that is not challenging or difficult in return for disproportionately generous pay and benefits. These jobs help them learn to work for an employer and we even now have a law that makes banks give them bank accounts.

Such jobs include the Royal Mail which is the first step out of the gutter for most, but also accounts for why we have the most inefficient postal service in the world, and the highest level of mail theft in Europe. Other jobs include refuse collection and disposal, hospital maintenance, road maintenance and subsidies for rail and bus companies to employ white trash. The goverment has tried educating them but they are unable to learn.

Having briefly taken the 'wrong bus' between a shopping mall and I-drive in Orlando, I can imagine the US has the same issues, only you house them in wooden shacks, give them land so they can collect their own landfill, and let them build their own little wooden churches every few blocks. You also have a racial split in your society which on the whole is not present in the UK. Yes we have poor black, hespanic and asian populations, but our parasitic underclass is definately white.

Does anyone care to comment on their knowledge/feasibility of Anthony Morrison's Advertising Profits from Home?

I wish something interesting would turn up on eBay I could get all fired up about.

Dave,

Glad to see you have had a good response for the charity.

You can do 22 miles a day for four days.  Take care of your feet.  Use duct tape (I think you Brits call it silver tape) on the areas of your feet that might rub against the shoes.  Shoot Killjoy an email asking for specific advice as he does 30, 40 miles a day sometimes.

Martin