Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass

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a b c Davies, Barbara (1 December 2004). "The Young Ones Have Grown Old. So It's Time for Rik and I to Split". Daily Mirror. Archived from the original on 29 July 2020 . Retrieved 26 September 2022. For a clearer-eyed view of the problems of urban poverty and the sorts of actions needed, see Separate and Unequal: The Kerner Commission and the Unraveling of American Liberalism, Steven M. Gillon. Different country and race only: same issues.

Sadly, this is only one of many horrifying and depressing incidents recounted in Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass by Anthony Malcolm Daniels (writing under the nom de plume of Theodore Dalrymple). Daniels is a psychiatrist who worked at a British hospital as well as a prison. Through his work, Daniels interacted with thousands of people from Britain’s lower class. The portrait that emerges from these interactions is a life steeped in violence, drug and alcohol addiction, vandalism, theft, suicide, illiteracy, boredom, fear, and despair.When Richie is gallivanting around the stage with Monica, the inflatable doll falls awkwardly and the head lands in his crotch. An unintended, but amusing, moment which Rik Mayall laps up. Theodore Dalrymple is a physician and psychiatrist. As a young doctor he practiced medicine in Africa and the Pacific islands. Then he returned to England and practiced in the East End of London and inner-city Birmingham while volunteering in a nearby prison. He's observed, treated, and talked to thousands of London's poor. He's noticed a few things. The author notes that we no longer define poverty in terms of hunger or need. "Poverty has been redefined in industrial countries, so that anyone at the lower end of the income distribution is poor by virtue of having less than the rich. Entertainment, absorbed passively, informs them, through television and films, of a materially more abundant and more glamorous way of life and thus feeds resentment... [T]hey are deprived of any reasonable standards of comparison by which to judge their woes. They believe themselves deprived, because the only people with whom they can compare themselves are those who appear in advertisements or on television." Lily Linneker: Hello, gentlemen, sorry to have kept you waiting. Which one of you is Mr. Hitler? Eddie: Oh, that’ll be me. Lily Linneker: Any relation? Eddie: [puzzled] Well, I’ve got a mother. Lily Linneker: No, no no no, I meant Adolf Hitler. Eddie: Yes, that’s her! After accidentally beating up the Gas Man, Richie and Eddie must remove an illegal gas pipe without disturbing their violent neighbour.

The main argument represented in the collection is that, rather than economics and wealth, modern-style poverty is described by a "wildly dysfunctional set of values." [8] A number of chapters discuss the "ferocious young egoist" that is meant to represent male youths who are violent and obsessive toward their significant others. Dalrymple also writes about his views on the "destruction of...family ties," arguing that without family ties it is nearly impossible to rise out of the underclass. [13] These issues, among others, are described as resulting from the "intellectual foundation...[which] makes a permanent underclass possible." This is meant to be directed against intellectuals and liberals that form the many ideas absorbed into the mentality of the underclass. [14] Bottom ended after three series in February 1995. Edmondson said that one of the reasons for stopping the show was the struggle to come up with new ideas as "we'd already hit each other with everything in the flat". [19] Mayall supported this view, saying they took the show as far as it could on television while continuing the franchise with stage tours and home video releases, preferring to retain full creative control over the characters. [20] In 2000, he said that Richie and Eddie had become "bigger than we are". [19] Filming [ edit ]

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Alun Palmer (27 January 2012) [1 September 2010]. "Adrian Edmondson 'unlikely' to work with Bottom partner Rik Mayall again after quitting comedy". Daily Express. " I've had last laugh says Adrian" at Express.co.uk. Theodore Dalrymple, a retired British psychiatrist, who has spent years working with the underclass is a very keen observer of human nature, as is evidenced by this book. His dealings with thousands of these people at close quarters gave him much of the fodder for his thesis which is, I’m sure that some will disagree, that a lot of poverty is caused by dysfunctional values, values that those in power exploit and make worse by creating a culture of victims. Most of these stories and anecdotes are from Dalrymple’s time working in British slums and prisons. Spoken) In the opinion of this court, this child is depraved on account he ain't had a normal home.