yopper

YOP +‎ -er

yopper (plural yoppers)

1. (informal) A person employed under the Youth Opportunities Programme in Britain in the 1980s.
   • 1981, Report of the Annual Conference of the Labour Party‎, page 72:

     There must be a real drive in the trade union movement and the Labour movement to recruit Yoppers and the unemployed.

   • 2011, Susan Boyle, The Woman I was Born to be‎, page 120:

     When we came back to Blackburn I went on the Youth Opportunities Scheme and became a Yopper, which was the worst thing you could call a teenager in those days.

   • 2013 April 10, David Morris, “Tributes to Baroness Thatcher”, in parliamentary debates (House of Commons), volume 560, column 1697:

     I started my first business as a Manpower allowance recipient, and, indeed, I entered my first job as a “yopper”.

   • 2021 October 18, Neil MacPhail, “Teenage taste of school cooking experience led to 36-year career for Heather Matheson who has retired from Resolis Primary School”, in Ross-shire Journal‎:

     Mrs Matheson […] owes her first taste of work after Fortrose Academy to the old Youth Opportunity Scheme […] Mrs Matheson said: "I was a Yopper first with the school cooking class and then at Tulloch Castle and the Education Centre, both in Dingwall."

• popery, pyrope