The Snapper by Roddy Doyle (Penguin Books 1990)

Sharon sat down again. She whispered to Jimmy Sr.

- Me uterus is beginnin' to press into me bladder/ It's gettin' bigger.

Jimmy Sr turned to her.

- I don't want to hear those sort o' things, Sharon, he said. - It's not righ'.

He was blushing.

- Sorry, said Sharon.

- That's okay. Who's tha' fuckin' eejit, Darren?

- Can you not just say Eejit? said Veronica.

- That's wha' I did say! said Jimmy Sr.

Darren laughed.

Veronica gave up.

-Da, said Darren.

- No, yeh can't have a bike.

Darren got up and left the room in protest. That left Jimmy Sr and Veronica by themselves.

- There's Cliff Richard, said Jimmy Sr.

Veronica looked up.

- Yes.

- I'd never wear leather trousers, said Jimmy Sr.

Veronica laughed.

Jimmy Sr found the remote control. He'd been sitting on it.

- He's a Moonie or somethin', isn't he? he said as he stuck on the Sports Channel. - And an arse bandit.

- He's a Christian, said Veronica.

- We're all tha', Veronica, said Jimmy Sr. - Baseball! It's worse than fuckin' cricket.

He looked at it.

He looked at it.

- They're dressed up like tha' an' chewin' gum an' paint on their faces, so you're expectin' somethin' excitin', an' wha' do yeh get? Fuckin' cricket with American accents.

Jimmy Jr stuck his head round the door.

- Finished with the paper yet?

- No.

You're not even lookin' at it.

- It's my paper. I own it. Fuck off.

Jimmy Sr switched again; an ad for a gut-buster on Sky.

- Jesus!

- You've got the foulest mouth of anyone I ever knew, Veronica told hi. - Ever.

- Ah lay off, Veronica.

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle (Penguin Books 1987)

- We'll ask Jimmy, said Outspan. - Jimmy'll know.

Jimmy Rabbitte knew his music. He knew his stuff alright. You'd never see Jimmy coming home from town without a new album or a 12-inch or at least a 7-inch single. Jimmy ate Melody Maker and the NME every week and Hot Press every two weeks. He listened to Dave Fanning and John Peel. He even read his sisters' Jackie when there was no one looking. So Jimmy knew his stuff.

The last time Outspan had flicked through Jimmy's records he'd seen names like Microdisney, Eddie and the Hot Rods, Otis Redding, The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Scraping Foetus off the Wheel (- Foetus, said Outspan. - That's the little young fella inside the woman, isn't it?

- Yeah, said Jimmy.

- Aah, that's fuckin; horrible, tha' is.); groups Outspan had never heard of, never mind heard. Jimmy even had albums by Frank Sinatra and The Monkees.

So when Outspan and Derek decided, while Ray was out in the jacks, that their group needed a new direction they both thought of Jimmy. Jimmy knew what was what. Jimmy knew what was new, what was new but wouldn't be for long and what was going to be new. Jimmy had Relax before anyone had heard of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and he'd started slagging them months before anyone realized that they were no good. Jimmy knew his music.

The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin (St Martin's Press 1998)

Rebus knew his own criteria came cheaply: his flat, books, music and clapped-out car. And he realised that he had reduced his life to a mere shell in recognition that he had completely failed at the important things: love, relationships, family life. He'd been accused of being in thrall to his career, but that had never been the case. His work sustained him only because it was an easy option. He dealt every day with strangers, with people who didn't mean anything to him in the wider scheme. He could enter their lives, and leave again just as easily. He got to live other people's lives, or at least portions of them, experiencing things at one remove, which wasn't nearly as challenging as the real thing.

Knots & Crosses by Ian Rankin (Orion 1987)

'Fight Imperialism, fight Racism,'

A young girl wearing a mock-leather coat and little round glasses stood behind Rebus. He turned to her. She had a collecting tin in one hand and a pile of newspapers in the other.

'Fight Imperialism, fight Racism,'

'So you said,' Even now he could feel the alcohol working on his jaw muscles, freeing them of stiffness. 'Who are you from?'

'Workers Revolutionary Party. The only way to smash the Imperialist system is for the workers to unite and smash racism. Racism is the backbone of repression.'

'Oh? Aren't you confusing two entirely different arguments there, love?'

She bristled, but was ready to argue. They always were.

'The two are inextricable. Capitalism was built on slave labour and is maintained by slave labour.'

'You don't sound much like a slave, dear. Where did you get that accent? Cheltenham?'

'My father was a slave to capitalist ideolgy. He didn't know what he was doing.'

'You mean you went to an expensive school?'

She was bristling now all right. Rebus lit a cigarette. He offered her one, but she shook her head. A capitalist product, he supposed, the leaves picked by slaves in South America. She was quite pretty though. Eighteen, nineteen. Funny Victorian shoes on, tight pointed little things. A long, straight black shirt. Black, the colour of dissent. He was all for dissent.

'You're a student, I suppose?'

'That's right,' she said, shuffling uncomfortably. She knew a buyer when she saw one. This was not a buyer.

'Edinburgh University?'

'Yes.'

'Studying what?'

'English and politics.'

'English? Have you heard of a guy called Eiser? He teaches there.'

She nodded.

'He's an old fascist,' she said. 'His theory of reading is a piece of right-wing propaganda to pull the wool over the eyes of the proletariat.'

Rebus nodded.

'What was your party again?'

'Workers Revolutionary.'

'But you're a student, eh? Not a worker, not one of the proletariat either by the sound of you.' Her face was red, her eyes burning fire. Come the revolution, Rebus would be the first against the wall. But he had not yet played his trump card. 'So really, you're contravening the Trades Description Act, aren't you? Do you have a licence from the proper authority to collect money in that tin?'

The tin was old, its old job-description torn from it. It was a plain, red cylinder, the kind used on poppy-day. But this was no poppy-day.

'Are you a cop?'

'Got it in one, love. Have you got a licence? I may have to pull you in otherwise.'

'Fucking pig!'

Feeling this was a fitting exit line, she turned from Rebus and walked to the door. Rebus, chuckling, finished his whisky. Poor girl. She would change. The idealism would vanish once she saw how hypocritical the whole games was, and what luxuries lay outside university. When she left, she'd want it all: the executive job in London, the flat, car, salary, wine-bar. She would chuck it all in for a slice of pie. But she wouldn't that just now. Now was for the reaction against upbringing. That was what university was about. They all thought they could change the world once they got away from their parents. Rebus had thought that too. He had thought to return home from the Army with a row of medals and a list of commendations, just to show them. It had not been that way, though . . .

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (Harbrace Paperbound Library 1933)

You can have cartoons about any of the parties, but you mustn't put anything in favour of Socialism, because the police won't stand it. Once I did a cartoon of a boa constrictor marked Capital swallowing a rabbit marked Labour. The copper came along and saw it, and he says, “You rub that out, and look sharp about it,” he says. I had to rub it out. The copper's got the right to move you on for loitering, and it's no good giving them a back answer.’

. . .

Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised? — for they are despised, universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except ‘Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it’? Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modern people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

Resurrection Men by Ian Rankin (Little Brown 2002)

- "Where will you be working from?"

- "I thought we might find a spare office at St Leonard's . . . "

- Siobhan's eyes widened. "You think Gill's going to go for that?"

- "I hadn't really thought about it," he lied. "But I can't see a problem . . . can you?"

- "Do the words 'tea,' 'mug' and 'lob' mean anything to you?"

- "Tea mug lob? Is that a Cocteau Twins track?" He won a smile from her. "So you really were just driving around?"

- She nodded. "It's something I do when I can't sleep. Why are you shaking your head?"

- "It's just that I do the same thing. Or I used to. I'm that bit older and lazier these days."

Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin (1994)

Wild Davey Soutar. He and his kind detested the Festival. It took away from them their Edinburgh and propped something else in its place, a facade of culture which they didn't need and couldn't understand. There was no underclass in Edinburgh, they'd all been pushed out into schemes on the city boundaries. Isolated, exiled, they had every right to resent the city centre with its tourist traps and temporary playtime.
not that that's why Soutar was doing it. Rebus thought Soutar had some simpler reasons. He was showing off, he was showing even his elders in The Shield that they couldn't control him, that he was the boss. He was, in fact, quite mad.