A Touch of Class

After blogging about such a deep and hard hitting subject last week, this week I've decided to tackle the comparatively benign subject of the class system in the UK. I know, I know, I've gone soft. But it's something that plays on my mind quite a lot due to its ridiculously dated state.

I couldn't really be more middle class if I tried I'm slightly ashamed to admit. Both my parents pull in a good wage, but not so much that I've got a double barrelled surname and 30 acres of land which we use purely for polo and generally toffery. I went to a state school, but a state school that had rugby union as its main sport and award winning teachers (yes they do exist)

I sometimes appeal to 'working class' people because I'm pretty well spoken, and can therefor be classed as 'that nice posh bloke', as well as appealing to the 'upper class' people because they feel like they're slumming it with an oik a la Kate Winslett and Leo Di Caprio in Titanic. I'm sometimes hated by 'working class' people because I have a posh voice and therefore must have gone to Eaton and did a bit of sodomy with my bunkmate. And sometimes by the 'upper class' because I am an oik who isn't really fit to breath the same air as them as the air that they breath was imported from the Seychelles and it's only for them and their friend Biffer. I got one question, where's the love?

The former of the people I mentioned are great, whatever their motives, and, in my generation at least, they are the majority. They're good, tolerant people who are worthy of everybody's time. The latter people are the problem and it makes me ponder where this hatred stems from.

There's the obvious focus on the past. Like in the 'golden age', pre-world wars when the rich were literally inbred, elitist fuckheads and the poor were about as clever as Blackpool pleasure beach. Post world wars it went back to normal after the unity of the conflicts. In the 80's Thatcher obviously made things even worse by ostracised the working classes in favour of the rich. But that was 20 years ago, surely things are better now? Perhaps its the Vietnam syndrome. People just can't let it go

That leads us on to the nurturing side of it. Either end of the spectrum children are bought up being told their place. A friend of mine used to work on the tills at the Waitrose in Marlborough. One day a college kid, aged 13 or 14, gave my friend a pound for a packet of crisps. When my friend went to count out his change the college kid asked 'do you need help counting that' with general concern and sympathy etched on his grotesque little face. That's right! This poor little deluded little Shitbird had been bought up to think that people who worked in supermarkets couldn't fucking count! On the other side another friend of mine, who was bought up in a not so nice area of north London, hates rugby union for the pure fact that he thinks everyone who plays it went to private school and is a little toffee nosed wanker.

Theirs the money factor as well, the obvious one. But I still don't think it's a big enough excuse for the division. Some carpenters I know pull in anything up to £1500 a week, yet they're still considered by the upper class to be lower class. Granted some carpenters I know spend all their money on beemers with 7 foot high spoilers and trips to Thailand to witness the world famous ping pong ball trick. But still a hell of a wage, and its the same with most 'lower class' trades.

I'm not going to pretend that I know how to fix it because I don't. I'm about as useful as a midget in the NBA when it comes to ideas of how to mend a broken society. But the reason why I write this is because I don't know why it can't fix itself.

I had a job signing people up for free sim cards last year. Glamorous I know. There was one gloriously sunny day that really sticks in my head. Me and a colleague were walking round a packed park. We signed up some college kids up who were unbelievably posh, but none the less absolutely lovely people. The common perception of these kids would be that they'd run to there fucking beach house in Malibu at the sight of us coming to talk to them with clipboards. But they didn't. They signed up, had a joke,and we moved on. We then signed up a group of kids who were on the other end of the spectrum, drinking white lightning and massaging pregnant bellies and what not. Once again though these people were lovely. Slightly dense but none the less good people. A couple of minutes later one of the latter group went to take a piss in a bush. The posh kids make some snide comment and suddenly all hell is kicking off. But these two groups of people were both extremely friendly to us, why did they see each other as enemies?

Its certainly for much cleverer and less shabby people then myself to figure out how to fix. All I can say is 'where's the love?'