Class - Is it still relevant?
Discussion
Class is like a club. Some people are let in, others are excluded. Those in the club make the decision as to the entry requirements. They put a figurative bouncer on the door.
The upper class keeps itself separate, the purpose of the club, by setting certain skills levels: knowing how to pronounce gone. There is a vocabulary, taught at home and in school. Certain public schools perpetuate class by teaching different subjects to state schools. They hold themselves above other public schools.
There is no particular intellectual requirement.
Then there are shared pastimes, such as the horsy set, hunting, being buggered when kids. Living in certain areas helps no end, as does big houses, holiday locations, a history. Then there are certain ranks, such as awards of knighthoods, lordships etc. These can be bought of course but the state plays its part by normally restricting the catchment group.
Then there is the behavioural requirements. Being criminal is no problem as long as it is not acquisitive.
Inside the club there are different rankings. Nothing is more class riven than a specific class. At the top you have those whom everyone thinks should be there. At the bottom, those whom no one wants in the club but thee is no way they can be excluded.
It is not a simple case of the more points you have the higher up you come. There are some in the upper echelons who have committed offences against children that would exclude them from working class, yet there they are, somewhere near the top.
It is difficult to leave a class. Tony Benn, for all his socialist beliefs, was always upper class as he behaved that way all his life.
Whether it is relevant or not is difficult to say. There are, it would appear, many who want it to stay. Those of the middle class seem to want to be separate from the hoi poloi working class. The WC seem happy with their positions, so it would seem relevant to many.
If the real question is whether it exists or not, then the answer is most assuredly it does. The rules change of course. Trainers might soon be acceptable.
The differentiations are important, vital, to those who think they are important.
There is no such thing as a classless society. What there might be is an end to the upper/middle/lower classes with new positions replacing them.
Money is a very crude way of deciding which class people fall into.
Is lord Sugar upper class? I would suggest it is no more likely than Tindall being so. Class is not just who you marry or if you invent the second best satellite dish. Out of the two, Tindall stands a better chance.
Me, I’m upper lower middle class and proud of it until such time as I work my way up to lower middle middle class. Then I can happily despise those I left behind.
The upper class keeps itself separate, the purpose of the club, by setting certain skills levels: knowing how to pronounce gone. There is a vocabulary, taught at home and in school. Certain public schools perpetuate class by teaching different subjects to state schools. They hold themselves above other public schools.
There is no particular intellectual requirement.
Then there are shared pastimes, such as the horsy set, hunting, being buggered when kids. Living in certain areas helps no end, as does big houses, holiday locations, a history. Then there are certain ranks, such as awards of knighthoods, lordships etc. These can be bought of course but the state plays its part by normally restricting the catchment group.
Then there is the behavioural requirements. Being criminal is no problem as long as it is not acquisitive.
Inside the club there are different rankings. Nothing is more class riven than a specific class. At the top you have those whom everyone thinks should be there. At the bottom, those whom no one wants in the club but thee is no way they can be excluded.
It is not a simple case of the more points you have the higher up you come. There are some in the upper echelons who have committed offences against children that would exclude them from working class, yet there they are, somewhere near the top.
It is difficult to leave a class. Tony Benn, for all his socialist beliefs, was always upper class as he behaved that way all his life.
Whether it is relevant or not is difficult to say. There are, it would appear, many who want it to stay. Those of the middle class seem to want to be separate from the hoi poloi working class. The WC seem happy with their positions, so it would seem relevant to many.
If the real question is whether it exists or not, then the answer is most assuredly it does. The rules change of course. Trainers might soon be acceptable.
The differentiations are important, vital, to those who think they are important.
There is no such thing as a classless society. What there might be is an end to the upper/middle/lower classes with new positions replacing them.
Money is a very crude way of deciding which class people fall into.
Is lord Sugar upper class? I would suggest it is no more likely than Tindall being so. Class is not just who you marry or if you invent the second best satellite dish. Out of the two, Tindall stands a better chance.
Me, I’m upper lower middle class and proud of it until such time as I work my way up to lower middle middle class. Then I can happily despise those I left behind.
Digga said:
Guybrush said:
like private school kids some of whom can be apt to denigrate state school kids purely on the basis of where their parents sent them to school. Surely a weak foundation for such misplaced arrogance? I went to public school and we did not behave like that at all, but sadly I see this more now in the young privately-educated - maybe a different class has the money now?
O/T Went as a +1 with a mate to his college friend's 18th. Me and my made went to the same state school (actually a pretty good one as it happens, in an ordinary middle class area) up to A levels and this friend he'd met at college previously went to Sedburgh School.Long story short, one of the Sedburgh lads spent the whole evening calling us (the state schoolers) "Kevins" and generally being unpleasant. There was a lot of free booze in the place. There was a room where we were all going to doss-down in sleping bags, post-party and this mouthy git gibbed out early, clearly unable to take his drink. He'd really pissed me off and, although I shouldn't perhaps have done it, I decided to wake him up by putting the CO2 fire extinguisher hose down his sleeping bag. I;ve never seen a passed-out drunk person wake up and get out of bed into a sprint before or since!
Hell how long ago was that. I left Sedbergh in 1987, and then there was a complex language all of its own.
Interestingly Kevin was one of them, although locals were more often called Botters, or Yoks, the latter often spoken with a gutteral frog like sound from the throat.
I was a Yok, on account of being relatively local, with local relatives. I was teased at State School for being Posh, and teased with far greater imagination, and cruelty for being a yokal at Public school.
In my experience class is just a domesticated version of tribalism.
jdw1234 said:
otolith said:
Class is the mechanism by which those who are descended from successful people maintain the delusion that they are superior to those who have achieved success for themselves. When the landowner can no longer sneer at the merchant's lack of wealth, he needs to find a new reason to despise him.
Really?I find the upperclass and lower class don't care (and are the most fun).
It is the nasty middle that worry about it.
Upper and working classes know how to party and have loads of fun. Most of them are not very intellectual.
Intellectuals seem the least able to 'enjoy' life as they spend a inordinate amount of time thinking about it!
Olf said:
My take on this is that class has largely been eliminated as a discriminator in the work place. Possible exceptions are the armed forces and 'city' type work, high finance, insurance, etc, and finally land management.
Elsewhere the work place is pretty (class) egalitarian.
In private life (weekends, socials, holidays etc), it's a different world. The old divides still very much exist.
Elsewhere the work place is pretty (class) egalitarian.
In private life (weekends, socials, holidays etc), it's a different world. The old divides still very much exist.
How true... especially the last comment.Gassing Station | News, Politics & Economics | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff