Addendum

Even more disorienting for me is a piece in today's Guardian in which Chris Grayling correctly identifies a group of males in society who "lack social skills and a sense of responsibility. They hang around on street corners, and get sucked into crime and anti-social behaviour. They struggle to find worthwhile work, if they are looking for work at all."
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/11/conservatives.television ).
It's woth pointing out that there is nothing new in groups of white working class males who are generally unskilled & have had either a poor education record or a family background whose culture was inimical to educational achievement. Once upon a time, however, such men could be relied upon to do the most basic of manual jobs. Not any more. Most of those jobs died out through a combination of technology & the Thatcher years.
Therefore the males in question are left to their own devices.