The cycle chat guide to being middle class

[Gravity Aided]

You don't. You live in a society where the divisions of class are far stronger and longer-lasting than they are over here, and are far more bound up with other, equally strong divisions of wealth, race, religion and education. There was a recent Freakonomics radio podcast on the subject which is worth listening to - "The American Dream" of social mobility being available for everyone (which is why the US thinks of itself as classless) is a fiction in the US and applies far more in Canada.

The traditional three-class system in the UK is a gross over-simplification imposed on a complex layered society by sociologists. It always has been, but that's particularly true now. It tries to wrap extremely complex and overlapping markers of birth, wealth, employment type, interest, educational attainment, attitude, political views, level of aspiration, views of other people and other things in a single label with two categories (since the upper classes are defined purely by birth). I don't know whether the over-simplification is because the people who perpetuate it aren't terribly bright or whether it's just very difficult to communicate the complexity.

And if you view increasing equality of opportunity and egalitarianism as a desirable outcome for society (I do) I think using crude discriminatory labels is unhelpful. Tell a bunch of people that they are the "white working class" and "left behind" and possibly "feckless" and they will start behaving like it.

It is all a fiction, and I hope that the scales fall from the eyes of the victims of this little mass delusion soon enough. Then, you may see change.

 

[Flick of the Elbow]

I believe it was Tony Blair who observed that we're all middle class now. He was wrong. Most of us aren't and never will be. Tony Blair himself certainly is, went to Fettes, the same school that Ian Fleming had Bond attending.

 

[Drago]

Tony Blair with his fake over enunciated accent, and his penchant for the odd fib.

The guy has no class.

 

[Haitch]

I think you will find it's "w'tea"

Only if you have a couple of slices of bread with it.

 

[swee'pea99]

Only if you have a couple of slices of bread with it.

"With or without dripping love?"

 

[PK99]

"With or without dripping love?"

and do the whippets get fed first?

 

[Flick of the Elbow]

and do the whippets get fed first?

Shouldn't all this be in the 'Cycle Chat guide to being a English northerner' thread ?