#oneaday, Day 92: M.C. Tinny Distortion

It's mid-morning. You're sitting on the waterfront, looking out over the water, the slight morning breeze wafting through your hair and sending a slight chill over your skin. Not uncomfortably so, just enough for you to feel the wind's caresses and appreciate the sunshine when it does hit you all the more.

You can hear the water sploshing against the wall down below as it sloshes back and forth, back and forth, never still, always moving. You don't look into it too deeply as it's almost opaque with green crap and the filth from a million motorboats passing through the area, but right now it doesn't matter because this is your moment. You are, for once, at peace.

Then, a sound from over yonder. You can't quite make out what it is. It's quite harsh, and tinny, and… sounds a bit like Dizzee Rascal.

It is Dizzee Rascal. But a version of Dizzee Rascal that appears to be completely devoid of bass, just masses and masses of treble, so much so that the sound of the whole track is lost in a wash of what sounds awfully like white noise with a babbling idiot on top of it.

You frown at the tracksuit-clad young gentleman as we wanders past you with a similarly-attired companion. The sound seems to be coming from his pocket, and the two are talking and smoking. You frown a little harder, willing a pair of psychic daggers to fly out of your eyes and embed themselves firmly in the two boys' colons. Sadly, the sharp implements do not manifest themselves so you are reduced to making a distinctly middle-class tutting noise.

One of the boys turns around and gives you a sneer that seems to say "fahk off mush, you is such a neek init lol". You counter with a raised eyebrow which seems to say "I'm sorry. I don't understand your illiterate juvenilia. Kindly return from whence you came. And throw that noise-making monstrosity into the Solent while you're about it, you bally young scamp!"

The moment passed, the two boys wander into the distance, muttering something about "fahkin' neeks". Your little mental haven of calm shattered, you reluctantly get up and head for the ice-cream parlour in an attempt to drown your sorrows in a wash of soft ice-cream and crumbly chocolate.

Then you go home and cry.

Oh, why do people persist in doing this? Other than to annoy people like me, of course. There is no reason on God's green Earth for mobile phone speakers to exist. With GPS technology being what it is now, if your phone detects that you are outside, you should not be allowed to use its speakers.

I'm not just saying this to be a miserable bastard, though that is of course a big part of it. I'm saying this to encourage people to give music the respect it deserves. I hate Dizzee Rascal, shitty hip-hop and whiney R&B singers, but those artists spend a lot of time and money producing their work, so to completely remove any degree of production from the track by playing it through a 0.5 watt speaker roughly the size of one of your pubes seems rather… disrespectful, somehow.

And have you noticed that no-one is ever playing good music through their phone speakers? I'd still feel the same if I heard someone blasting some Maiden through their phone – that shit need to be loud, yo – but it'd be nice to hear something that isn't just for pasty white tracksuit-wearers to pretend that they're badass black gangstas from the hood to.

The cream of this, of course, is when said pasty white tracksuit-wearers decide that it's time for them to start their own rapping career and feel that a mobile phone provides an appropriate amount of rhythmic "oomph" to put behind their sorry attempts at rocking some rhymes. Sorry, buster, but you just look like a twat babbling crap in front of your pyjama-clad friends.

#oneaday, Day 64: Act Your Age, Fanboys

Why does the phenomenon of fanboyism still exist? And more to the point, why does it exist amongst men (and it pretty much is always men) who are old enough to know better?

The simple and easy answer is, of course, that it's always been around. I remember growing up as an Atari-based family and all of the Atari magazines at the time belittling the competition with stupid names like Spectrash (Spectrum) and Crappydore (Commodore 64). Then came the schoolyard arguments – SEGA vs Nintendo. Sonic vs Mario. "We've got Street Fighter II! Hah! …Oh wait, now you have, too." It got pretty silly.

Once the Dreamcast came out, it was hard to justify fanboyism because, certainly once SEGA's wondermachine came out, it was so far ahead of its competition – the 64-bit Nintendo 64 and the 32-bit PlayStation – that half-hearted attempts to call it things like "Dreampants" always came across as more than a little desperate.

Things then kicked off again with Sony vs Microsoft, with Nintendo kind of relegated to "background observer" by this point. The PS2 and the original Xbox both had fiercely loyal supporters when, in fact, you'd have a far better experience if you bought both systems, played the relevant exclusives on their respective platforms and played multiplatform titles on the Xbox. That's what I did, and I never felt the need to slag off any of the systems.

And it still goes on today, despite each of the consoles arguably offering a more distinct and unique experience from each other than ever before. The Xbox 360 offers its legendary ease of online play, the PS3 is home to a variety of unusual and interesting games (like Flower, flOw, Linger in Shadows, the Pixeljunk games) and the Wii is the family-friendly bundle of fun.

Still the hating goes on, though.

But nowhere is it more apparent than in the world of smartphones, particularly between the owners of iPhones, BlackBerries (let's pluralise it properly, please) and Android-based phones. iPhone owners are either Apple fanboys who bang on about how great Apple is all the time or jailbreakers who bang on about which ludicrously-named hack they're installing this week – and, of course, which apps they could get for free rather than paying for them on the App Store. BlackBerry owners seem to be updating their OS every night. And Android owners seem to be particularly sore about the iPhone for some inexplicable reason.

The question is: why? When it came to the early console wars, slagging off the systems your friends had was just schoolyard banter. You didn't really think that the systems were inferior, otherwise you wouldn't have gone around to their houses and played those games with them. The fact that this juvenile banter has grown up with people who have been using gaming and other consumer electronics for years is utterly baffling. Even people who started gaming at the same time as me – or before – are still bitching and moaning about how much better their handset is that [x]'s handset, and blahblahblah open source, blahblahblah build quality, blahblahblah BlackBerry Messenger, blahblahblah… You get the picture.

Am I alone in thinking that all of this stuff, without exception, is seven degrees of awesome and we should appreciate the brilliant things we have? Yes, some of them have more features. Yes, some of them are objectively "better" in terms of capabilities, power and technical specifications. But is that really any reason to act like 5-year olds telling each other that their respective Mums smell of wee?

No, it's not. So why does it still go on?

#oneaday, Day 59: Social Mobility

So social games are here to stay. So say the people in the know, particularly the outspoken Brian Reynolds from Zynga who has commented on the subject at great length. Understandable, really, given that his company are behind some of the most successful social games in history.

I have to say, though, that I don't understand them. And it's not through lack of trying. I've played Mafia Wars. I've played Epic Pet Wars. I've fired up Farmville a couple of times. But the elephant in the room seems to be that these games are dull, uninspiring and boring. People used to joke that Championship Manager on the PC looked (and played) like a spreadsheet. Mafia Wars looks like an Access database – and plays like one too. I haven't done much with Farmville but from what I've seen (and heard from others) it's not much better, just a little more "visual".

These games market themselves on their "social" capabilities. They call themselves "MMORPGs" and they clog up the iTunes App Store RPG section something chronic with their various denominations of microtransaction space dollar bundles. But, from what I've seen, there is little to no socialising involved. You add people to your friends list to let them "be in your mafia" or "be your neighbour", but besides increasing your stats or occasionally sending you an item they can't use (not one that they don't want, it's always one that they can't use because it's set aside as a special "gift" item) there is no interaction with others. Sure, in Mafia Wars you can attack another player but there's no strategy or interaction there, either – whoever has the best stats wins.

Brian Reynolds commented to developers at the GamesBeat summit that "shame" is a powerful motivating factor for players. "No one wants to be caught letting their crops wither and die," he says. But does it really matter when you have four thousand people on your friends list, none of whom you've ever spoken to? That's not socialising, that's MySpace-style "friend" collecting. It doesn't help that anything even vaguely related to these games – iTunes reviews, Facebook reviews, Facebook groups, comment threads, blog posts – always degenerates into a swarm of several hundred people all going "ADD ME! 9932569!" with absolutely no conversation going on whatsoever. I would mind it less if the "social" aspect of these games was something more of a metagame, where people actually talked to each other and then added each other. But the amount of friend-whoring that goes on by people is just ridiculous, and it strikes me as completely against the spirit of what these games are supposedly trying to achieve – bring people together to play.

Maybe I'm missing the point somewhere. Maybe these social games really are the next big thing. It's true that some games get the whole thing absolutely right – PopCap's wonderful Bejeweled Blitz is a fine example – but for every little gem (no pun intended) there's a billion and one identikit Mafia Wars clones. And they're all devoid of any gameplay whatsoever.

Games for people who don't like games. I guess that's something – bringing the medium to the masses and all that. But is someone reared on Mafia Wars and Farmville ever really going to graduate to games that are actually, you know, good? I'm not so sure.

#oneaday, Day 58: Bullshit Bingo

The school I work at (until this coming Friday, fact fans) recently had its updated OfSTED report published. For the uninitiated (and/or American) amongst you, this is the report on how "good" (sarcastic air quotes mine, not theirs) the school is. At the last inspection, shortly before I arrived at the school in November, the school was judged to be "inadequate" and in need of "special measures" for various reasons that I won't bore you with now. The most recent report claimed that we were making "satisfactory" progress towards making the "required improvements" put forth in the "action plan".

The crowning glory of the report, though, was the phrase "stem the tide of falling underachievement", something which apparently we are doing. Now, I don't know quite how many negatives are in that statement but I'm sure there's the wrong number. Surely "falling underachievement" is a good thing, so you wouldn't want to "stem the tide" of it? Perhaps they meant "stem the tide of falling achievement", but that doesn't sound quite right either. And I'm pretty sure it's not "stem the tide of achievement", since that is how the school got into this mess in the first place, albeit not intentionally.

There's only one response to things like this: "BULLSHIT!"

It astonishes me quite how much people get away with peddling this nonsensical use of language under the pretence of it being "formal". Those of you who follow me on Twitter may remember what I did to the company that supposedly "manages" the estate of apartment blocks that I live on. I went through their letter and corrected it in red pen, then posted it back to them. The results are here, if you missed it first time:

I think I was quite generous with a D-.

Then, of course, you get anyone who talks about social media "professionally", or at least likes to think they do. They use words like "monetization strategy" and "leverage" to mean "how they are going to make money" and "use". What is wrong with "how they make money" and "use"? We've been using language like that for years. Why does the technological age suddenly have to bring in a bunch of new and meaningless jargon? And, while we're on, since when did the word "product" – without a trailing "s" – become a plural?

Politics are no better. Listen to our less-than-illustrious boring fart of a leader Gordon Brown speak and all you'll hear is string after string of meaningless waffle – so utterly devoid of actual content that by the time he reaches the end of his speech you've completely forgotten what the question was and you'll agree with him just to shut him up. The Tories aren't any better. Listen to Cameron in all his shiny-headed glory and all you get is repetitive catchphrases, empty promises and a slightly larger urge to slit your wrists than when you started. If I had to pick one of them to listen to, I'd pick Cameron, but it's a close-run thing, and with either of them I'd be chewing down on the cyanide capsules if I didn't have other things to distract me with.

I like plain speaking. The last few jobs I've applied for I've taken this approach and communicated with the potential employers or clients as an actual human being. I'm not "passionate" about things that I'm not really passionate about. I'm not "confident and enthusiastic". I'm not "a team player". I'm not… you know, all the other idiotic things that people only ever write when applying for a job and eventually get found out as being a liar. I'm Pete. I'm a human. I speak English. I don't speak jargon.

#oneaday, Day 55: Communi-what?

A while back, I wrote a post about communication online. If you're extra-good, I'll link to it tomorrow when I'm not typing this on my phone in bed because I forgot to earlier.

Anyway. The gist of it was that I was rather pleased with how my then-early Twitter addiction was proceeding, with the service making it particularly easy for me to keep up with my numerous buddies from around the world. Prior to this, Facebook had fulfilled a similar function.

Here's where the paths of the two services diverge. While Twitter has remained relatively "pure", with little in the way of gimmicky new features, Facebook has taken the opposite route, adding more and more noise to the mix until it's almost unbearable.

Of course, there is the flipside to both services – Twitter has its spammers (bad) and Facebook has Facebook Connect (good) – but I know where I have most of my online conversations these days. Twitter may have its own noise, but it is WAY easier to avoid.

Facebook's problem is that it wants to be everything to everyone, so it added the applications, and the fan pages, and the various redesigns… and now I find myself wishing it was back the way it was when I first started using it. Simple. Clean. To the point.

It's certainly not that any more. Now, one's news feed is likely to be as full of notifications from applications and announcements that Bartlebas McFartington has become a fan of "Not Being Able To Sleep Because Your [sic] Thinking About Crap" (yes, that was real, and no, no-one knows how to use "your" any more) as actual things that people have written themselves.

The ironic thing is that all this sharing is taking away from the original point of the service – communicating. When people would rather copy and paste "Bob" into your comments box so he can "travel around Facebook" than actually write a message to you, one can't help but think that the point has been lost along the way somewhere, (While we're on, people who just say "First" in an attempt to get the first comment – without actually commenting – can go to hell and sit on a spike, too.)

So next time you hover over that "Like" button, why not take those extra few seconds to actually write a message? The recipient will probably appreciate it, and time isn't as precious as you think it is.

#oneaday, Day 50: Old Men Rant At The Hit Parade

Caution: YouTube frenzy ahead.

There's a lot of shit music around at the moment. One only has to look at this week's top 40 to see most of it. Let's explore it, shall we? Call it a cultural exchange.

Before I go any further, I would like to add that I don't hate black people, despite whatever you might interpret from my song choices which follow. I just hate shit music. And a lot of it happens to be by black artists. I can't think of any awards ceremony I would like to attend less than the MOBO's. Not that I particularly want to go to any awards ceremonies, ever. But I digress. Let's dig into the sewers of the UK music scene, shall we?

Hanging in there at number 40, we have Sidney Samson's Riverside. A song that starts in an atonal, idiotic place and then goes nowhere fast.

This is one of those songs that thinks that having a single hook of about four bars long is enough to build an entire song around. And to be fair, the philistines of the world don't appear to know any better, as this song has been lurking around the charts for quite some time. But it has no depth to it. There's no development. At all. The whole song is that irritating twangy synth line and some twat saying "Riverside, motherfucker" over the top of it. What does that even mean? Don't answer that, because I really don't give a shit.

Next up, number 30 sees Florence and the Machine performing You Got The Love.

Now, I have a lot of time for Florence, in that she can actually sing, has a distinctive voice and has a band with actual instruments in it. But this song? Ugh. It was already the most overplayed song in the world before she covered it, and with her and her machine being one of the most overplayed bands in the UK at the moment, you get an irritating song which is never more than five minutes away from when you turn the radio on.

One space below that, we have Iyaz and Replay, the first of many whiney black men in the charts today.

I find something profoundly irritating about this style of music. Perhaps it's the fact that one song in this style is virtually indistinguishable from another. Perhaps it's the gratuitous mentioning of iPods in the lyrics (I have a weird thing where I think that mentioning brand names or things/people that actually exist is somehow obnoxious. Don't ask me to explain why, because I can't.) Perhaps it's just the fact it's a shit song. Who knows?

Moving up the charts, we have Jay-Z ruining a perfectly good Alicia Keys song at number 28.

Alicia Keys can actually sing, so why she needs a douche like Jay-Z babbling his nonsense over the top of it is anyone's guess. To her credit, the infinitely superior version of the song, with no rapping and just Alicia singing, is currently at number 6, proving it is indeed possible to polish a turd.

At 26, we have the Helping Haiti record.

I have nothing against charity records. But I fucking hate this song. And every charity song there has been in the last few years has been of this ilk – slow, boring, dirge-like and filled with "celebrities" trying to outdo each other vocally. Ignore this drivel and just donate directly to the charities if you feel that strongly about it.

At 22, we have another whining black man, this time accompanied by a shouting black man and Sean Paul, who sadly isn't dead. It's Jay Sean, Sean Paul and Lil Jon with Do You Remember.

This is just awful. And on a side note, compare Jay Sean's singing with Iyaz's. I defy you to tell them apart. The only thing which sets this record apart is Lil Jon's incoherent shouting and Sean Paul's incoherent burbling. At least it isn't a full-on Sean Paul record. I thought we had got rid of him for good. Sadly, he's still about, but at least it's only in a "Ft." role.

I, of course, couldn't let Glee slide. They're at number 20.

Golden rule: Leave Journey alone. Golden rule number two: If you must cover Journey, don't turn it into a wet fart of a song. This song breaks both of those rules.

This next song is unforgivable purely for the fact it uses the Flintstone-based chat-up line. It's Young Money with Bed Rock, at number 18. I am sure you can guess the line which is used.

In other news… it's some rappers "singing" about fucking. In their video they wear lots of gold. Stereotype much?

At number 12, Gramophonedzie do their best to destroy everyone's favourite memories of Jessica Rabbit.

This song brings back unpleasant memories of Audio Bullys [sic] molesting Nancy Sinatra's Bang Bang a year or two back. So, to make it all better, here's a far superior version.

Mmm… Jessica Rabbit. Err, where was I?

Oh, right. Number 5. Does this one, by any chance, sound familiar?

That's right. The most overplayed song in the world by the most overplayed band in the UK now has the most overrated babbling twat spouting chavvy nonsense over the top of it. I don't think anything else needs to be said.

Just time to stop off at number 3, and Jason Derulo's In My Head, whiney black man number 3.

Pro tip for Mr Derulo: Singing your own name at the start of a song wasn't cool when Craig David did it. It still isn't now. Plus, your song is shit and sounds like every other whiney black man out there. Shut up.

And finally – I've saved the best for last – it's the current UK number 1, the appallingly spelled Tinie Tempah and Pass Out.

I'm going to say nothing about this song… but I am going to share the lyrics with you after the jump (if you're on the front page, click this post's title or the "Read More" link below to read the full thing in all its… err… "glory"), and you can make your own mind up. Bear in mind this is the current number 1 in the charts. Once you've listened to it and read the lyrics you might understand why I mourn the UK music scene's sorry state. So without further ado, I leave you with Tinie Tempah. The twat.

Continue reading "#oneaday, Day 50: Old Men Rant At The Hit Parade" →

One A Day, Day 45: The Golden Snitch

Read this, including listening to the audio clip of the complete twat.

I heard this on the news the other day and I was actually a little bit shocked that it was even being discussed. One sound bite from someone with a similarly obnoxious accent as "Adam" came out with the golden line "well, like, you just don't do it, innit?"

Sorry, rewind a little there. Since when has it been not okay to talk to the police about… what's that thing they deal with again? Oh, right. Crime. Since when has it been something you "just don't do, innit" to inform the police about knife or gun violence?

The growing gang culture in the UK is something I find rather troubling. While in some ways it is amusing and pathetic that these groups of tracksuit-clad white English teenagers put on that ridiculous accent to try and sound like a tracksuit-clad black English teenager putting on an accent (do keep up) and acting like they're "in the hood", in other senses the culture of "casual crime" is an unpleasant blight on our society.

I realise I sound rather Daily Mail about all this – but I've seen it happening. Fortunately I've never been the victim of a crime myself, though some friends and I were chased down the street and into a shop by the "Bassett Boys" once for no reason other than we were walking on what was evidently their "turf". And, remember, I've worked in schools, where I've seen a number of kids slowly descending into that kind of culture because they're "bored, innit". And in my last job we were regularly confronted with hoodie-wearing, attitude-giving morons who think that 50 Cent is God.

But this recent news about the stigma attached to actually informing the police about extremely serious crimes – violence and murder in some cases – is possibly the most troubling. Supposedly, the police are there to protect us, so why should people feel threatened? I certainly wouldn't have any qualms about phoning the police if I happened to witness something going on – and, in fact, have on a number of occasions. Fortunately, none of them have been that serious (although the guy trying to kick down our neighbours' door was a bit scary) but I just find it bizarre to think that so many young people find the idea of talking to the police to be a complete no-go area.

The report is probably skewed somewhat in its perspective (it is on the 1Xtra page, after all), but the fact remains – the police (and indeed, other authority figures) are supposed to be there to provide a sense of security to everyone, and help make things safer. What sort of culture are we living in if you can't report a bloody crime?

One A Day, Day 38: False Start

I got it the right way around.

Normally, teachers surviving until half-term will immediately collapse upon finishing a big block of time at school, then be struck down with some mystery unpleasant illness, rendering them incapable of enjoying their holiday due to any combination of snot, sneezing, coughing, puking, diarrhoeaing, headaching or good old-fashioned exhaustion. I managed to get through most of the holiday without feeling too bad, with only what I thought to be a "stress cough" showing itself in the last few days, before developing into full-blown unpleasantness on the Monday I returned to work. Found myself burning up, sore-throated, coughing, clumsy and generally a complete mess. So I've had the last couple of days off sick.

Being off sick is always a strange experience. When you're off sick from a teaching post, the feeling of guilt is enormous, even if you know you genuinely are sick. Of course, there are people everywhere who take the piss with sick days, but that's no reason that the rest of us should feel guilty at taking some time off to recover. Fortunately, the one good thing I can say about the school I currently work at is that they're pleasantly understanding about illness and don't even demand a day's worth of cover work to be sent through, unlike a previous place I worked. Yes, that's right – one previous school I worked at actually expected you, however sick you were, to send in some cover work for the day. That didn't help with the guilt.

Still. I will be back in tomorrow, worse luck. Not looking forward to it. The first day back wasn't fun, though that was probably mostly the "not feeling well" talking. Going back again after the class having had a couple of days of supply teachers isn't going to be any more pleasant. And the knowledge that the inspectors are coming back soon, along with a whole host of "monitoring" activities, is not making me feel any more positive about the whole thing – but at least there's not that long to go. In fact, there are only three and a half weeks to go. By now, I don't give a shit about the outcome of the aforementioned "monitoring" or the inspection, but that doesn't mean I can just switch off from the whole unpleasant experience. Unfortunately, there's no way of me "opting out", despite the fact that my negligible contribution to the school will soon be a distant memory.

Oh well. I guess all I can do is keep my fingers crossed that the inspectors decide to show up after I've left. It could happen. But, with my track record of "luck", it probably won't…

One A Day, Day 36: An Open Letter

Dear Universe,

I write with regard to the recent delivery you made to my person – specifically, the bumper package of coughing fits, temperatures and shaky hands.

I do not remember ordering these items, nor do I wish to keep them. As such, I must humbly request that you dispatch a courier posthaste to come and pick them up. Technically the items have been "opened" and "used" since they are coursing through my body as we speak, but since I did not order them and they appear to have been delivered in the dead of night directly to my person rather than appropriately packaged at a more sociable hour, I do not feel that the premature opening and usage of said items is my responsibility.

I am of the mind that this delivery was perhaps intended for someone else. If this is the case, would you kindly furnish me with the details of the intended recipient and I will do my best to forward on the items as soon as possible. I would not wish the items' rightful owner to miss out on the experience of coughing so forcefully it creates a side-effect of unintentional flatulence.

If, on the other hand, the items are an unnanounced "gift" from someone (which is possible, seeing as there did not appear to be a receipt with the items) then I request, with respect, that you provide me with their name and address so I may return the favour, perhaps through the medium of Uzbekistani sledgehammer dancing – a dangerous yet beautiful artform which frequently places bystanders' testicles in mortal peril.

I thank you in advance for your co-operation in this matter, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours sincerely,

Pete Davison

One A Day, Day 30: On Chavs

The "chav" is a curious phenomenon. Those of you reading from across the pond will have heard me use it as a term of derision frequently. Perhaps you're already familiar with the sort of person I'm talking about.

It's difficult to pin down exactly when they appeared as a distinct subculture. There were pain in the arse kids who always got into trouble while I was at school, but I don't think any of them were actually involved in "gangs". I have a vivid memory of hearing the word for the first time, however, seated on the top deck of a bus with my friend Cat. There were some kids sitting a few seats ahead of us who were using language that would make a trucker blush (including the memorable out-of-context phrase "fuckin' pancakes" that we overheard, much to our amusement) and Cat referred to them as "chavs". I'd not heard the word prior to that point, but it quickly became apparent that this was an established word to refer to this distinct group of people – tracksuit-clad, baseball cap-wearing, mobile phone-toting (nowadays, with shit R&B music by their idols N-Dubz blasting out of their tiny speakers) zit-faced teens with greasy hair and a predilection towards underage drinking and smoking along with abuse of strangers.

The reason I feel like talking about them right now is the fact I caught a bunch of them outside my living room window tonight. I say "caught" – "heard" is more accurate. Outside our window was a group of three guys in hoodies making a hell of a racket. At first I thought they were arguing about something, but looking out of the window revealed the ugly truth: they were "rapping". I could tell by the stupid arm movements the lead chav was making, and the fact that his two cronies were standing around with mobile phones – one playing music from its tinny speakers as a "backing track", the other filming the whole debacle.

The result of this sort of thing generally looks something like this:

The weird thing is how seriously these idiots take it, despite looking like absolute morons. There are gangs all over Southampton who use the social networking site Bebo to promote themselves and hurl abuse at other gangs, with the sort of spelling, punctuation and grammar that would make Lynne Truss fall down dead immediately.

I'm in two minds about this sort of thing – neither of these opinions are particularly good things. In one sense, I find their efforts to be like "genuine" gangs from, say, New York to be extremely pathetic and childish. I'm no fan of the criminal lifestyle anyway, even in films and other media (though I have played me plenty of GTA in the past), so to try and emulate it just seems dumb.

Secondly, and ironically given what I've just said about them being laughable and pathetic, I find groups like that rather intimidating. Being a rather mild-mannered gentleman myself (at least when I don't have a keyboard in front of me), I don't like confrontation, and I certainly don't like having abuse hurled at me by people I've never met. A lot of these kids seem to thrive on both of these things. Having worked in schools where these kids are starting to develop these traits, I can say that it's not a pretty sight. I realise that by saying this I am allowing them to "win", achieving exactly what they want to achieve – intimidation of those who are not "in" on the… whatever it is. A joke? But the fact remains – these are not people you'd choose to hang around.

Part of this is probably the media biasing us against them, of course, but I don't think the depiction of them in the media is particularly unfair, having had one experience some years back of being chased into a shop by the "Bassett Boyz" accompanied by a couple of friends. Our offence? We were walking down the same street as them. We hadn't said anything or done anything – we were simply on their "patch", which made us targets. Luckily we managed to get away unscathed and with nothing stolen, but the staff in the shop were obviously well-used to intimidation from these children – and they are children, worryingly – and did nothing, not even calling the police. Thanks a lot.

In some senses, chavs are the antithesis to the British stereotype of being reserved, polite and speaking with perfect enunciation. Perhaps they are a sign of a rebellion against the "status quo". But they're certainly not a change for the better.

Still need some convincing? Go pay the St Mary's Mandela Boys (who claim to "rule" Southampton) a visit, and check out the comments, posted by kids who are still at schools in the area. To sound like an old man for a moment (which I frequently do anyway) – is this really where we want youth culture going?