This was a fascinating read, especially as an American who is not entirely familiar with some of the slang terms. I had to look a few things up, but it was worth the time.
Edit to say that I agree with your point that theft is theft.
I find it hard to believe !
An archer is £2000, the amount Conservative Party deputy chairman Jeffrey Archer was caught paying a prostitute to keep quiet about his allegedly being a client of hers.
I first heard this usage on The New Statesman (the Rick Mayall TV comedy), but it may have originated elsewhere.
It gives keen insight into the cultural mindset of victimization that produces the persistent underclass. From the overview: "Theodore Dalrymple, a British psychiatrist who treats the poor in a slum hospital and a prison in England, has seemingly seen it all. Yet in listening to and observing his patients, he is continually astonished by the latest twist of depravity that exceeds even his own considerable experience. Dalrymple's key insight in Life at the Bottom is that long-term poverty is caused not by economics but by a dysfunctional set of values, one that is continually reinforced by an elite culture searching for victims. This culture persuades those at the bottom that they have no responsibility for their actions and are not the molders of their own lives."
As Alain de Botton once put it, in England the poor are "unfortunates", in America they're losers.
In Dalrymple's world, elites have a duty to set the tone and the agenda; and they are instead shirking from making judgement calls and saying "good is good, bad is bad".I don't agree much (we have elites telling us how to think as it is), but he points in the general direction of something without hitting the bullseye.