Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
Heseltine wordsmithwas the real thing; it was Clarke that was the dilettante.
Clarkie’s old man was a legend, must have been so disappointed with his son.
God that was meant to say “”Clarke” not “Clarkie”. To clarify, Alan Clarke and I didn’t play Sunday league football together.
Maybe you did, with A(l)lan or his brothers Wayne, Kelvin, Derek and Frank. Likewise if you ever jammed with the Hollies, Alan Clarke was your lead singer. On the other hand if you are thinking of the world class swordsman, wordsmith and the son of "Civilisation" writer Kenneth, that would be Alan Clark.
I met a dog called Derek yesterday. He was a pug. He had a brother/friend/fellow pug called Gary. In common with the majority of pugs I have met, he was a yappy idiot. I also met a dog today called Patrick. He was much more pleasant.
There are so many dogs called Patrick, I keep hearing people talking about “Pat the dog”. It’s the Mohammed of Dogs’ names seemingly.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
Heseltine wordsmithwas the real thing; it was Clarke that was the dilettante.
Clarkie’s old man was a legend, must have been so disappointed with his son.
God that was meant to say “”Clarke” not “Clarkie”. To clarify, Alan Clarke and I didn’t play Sunday league football together.
Maybe you did, with A(l)lan or his brothers Wayne, Kelvin, Derek and Frank. Likewise if you ever jammed with the Hollies, Alan Clarke was your lead singer. On the other hand if you are thinking of the world class swordsman, wordsmith and the son of "Civilisation" writer Kenneth, that would be Alan Clark.
I met a dog called Derek yesterday. He was a pug. He had a brother/friend/fellow pug called Gary. In common with the majority of pugs I have met, he was a yappy idiot. I also met a dog today called Patrick. He was much more pleasant.
There are so many dogs called Patrick, I keep hearing people talking about “Pat the dog”. It’s the Mohammed of Dogs’ names seemingly.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
Not me, I hold all members of the working classes in incredibly low regard.
Have you ever considered standing for political office?
I have in the past but realised my sense of humour would get me into trouble.
But think about all those freebie suits and shoes you could get.
But the politics of envy would kick in.
I'd get criticised for turning up to parliament or a constituency surgery wearing £700 Louis Vuitton shoes, £500 Turnbull & Asser shirt, and £3,500 bespoke suit, and that's me slumming it.
Edit - And I haven't even mentioned the watches.
Norman StJohn Stevas would consider you underdressed and slovenly
I know, that's why I said that's me slumming it, wait until I go full formal.
Western media have been useless and fell for the Trump being tougher on Russia narrative .
The whole thing has been a charade arranged between the Kremlin and the WH .
All Putin needs for Trump to fold is a reminder of the video footage from that Moscow hotel room circa 2003. In the light of Epstein, how old was young Svetlana by the way? Kyiv will be a Russian city by elevensies.
This is the sort of absurdity world affairs hinge upon in the Trump era.
In a sense we are back to the possibility of Trump selling Ukraine down the river, as he attempted when he was trying to get his minerals deal and talking over Europe's head.
That one was headed off at the pass. How to do that again?
Trump wants a ceasefire along current Russian lines of occupation in Ukraine, which to be fair to the author of the Art of the Deal is the minimum Putin would accept and the maximum Zelensky would accept
I think the issue is what other strings are attached . So in terms of the Ukraine military, peace keeping forces ,EU , NATO membership . Looking at the leak today . I don’t think it’s just about what territory might have to be ceded .
Reported in the US, the Trump (ie Putin) proposal consists of a ceasefire first stage which has Ukraine withdrawing troops from the entire Donetsk region, and freezing the front lines.
The second stage consists of Putin and Trump agreeing on a final 'peace plan', which only then be put to Zelensky.
So effectively Ukraine is required to put itself at a further disadvantage before anything is agreed. And they are to be shut out of the subsequent negotiation.
That's plainly absurd, but it could have the full weight of the US behind it.
Not a full report, 'the White House is trying to sway European leaders towards accepting an agreement that would include Russia taking the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and keeping Crimea.
It would give up the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, which it partially occupies, as part of the proposed agreement, CBS reports.'
So Russia wouldn't even keep all the land it currently occupies. Realistically if Zelensky couldn't retake all the above in the last 3 years despite lots of military supplies from the US Biden regime as well as Europe, Canada and the rest of NATO plus sanctions on Moscow he certainly won't with less military aid from the Trump regime and relying only on European and Canadian support.
So he may as well accept a ceasefire on the above lines while Trump remains in office, save thousands of Ukranian lives and hope the next US President is a Democrat who might resume increased US military aid to Kyiv again https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cvgnpv1x3ygt
It won't save 'thousands of Ukrainian lives', as Putin will just try again in a few years, when he has rebuilt much of his military. 2014-2022 redux.
In which case even the Trump administration would push back as Putin would have broken the Trump brokered ceasefire which Trump would see as a personal slight
I think you have rather rose-tinted glasses on over what Trump would do. Trump does not care one bit about Ukraine or Ukrainians, and Putin's not dumb. Putin would give Trump an excuse to do no tangible actions, e.g. by making out that Ukraine broke the ceasefire first.
I think that is presumptious, after all Trump has just imposed sanctions on India for buying Russian oil.
The alternative is for Zelensky to reject the ceasefire, Trump to remove sanctions on Russia too, thousands more Ukranians to die and at best Ukraine holding onto the land it currently still has with European and Canadian support which it would still keep under the proposed ceasefire anyway.
And your view is all presumptions as well.
Trump rally wants a ceasefire. I doubt he wants this because he wants to help Ukraine, or even wants peace; he has other reasons. Perhaps the Nobel peace prize, perhaps something else. The increase in sanctions is a weapon to get that. Once he gets what he wants, why do you think he'd care?
Do you agree it is right for the agreement to be agreed between the USA and Russia without (at least) Ukrainian involvement?
Trump won the presidential election last year on a platform which included a ceasefire in Ukraine and no more US military aid for Zelensky.
You may not like that but he has a mandate from US voters for it, so as long as Trump remains in the Oval Office and a Democrat is not President there is zero chance of Zelensky winning the war and having enough military support without US backing to force the Russians from Ukraine.
Ukraine will obviously have to agree to its terms too but once Harris and the Democrats lost last year, Zelensky was always going to have to cut his losses or just have more of the meat grinder of dead Ukranians while at best only holding current Ukranian lines
Europe, including the UK needs to put more pressure on Russia, military if necessary. We need to be independent of the untrustworthy Americans until they come to their senses and get rid of Trump and all his acolytes. If Putin is allowed to get hold of even a small part of Ukraine, who will be next? Estonia? Finland?
Putin doesn't care what Europe threatens, our continent has shown time and time again we prefer spending on welfare and health and public services far more than we do spending on defence, only the US is willing to match Russia on defence spending.
Yes we may spend a bit more now but still our voters won't back public service cuts to send more missiles to Ukraine.
Estonia and Finland are in NATO unlike Ukraine, Putin wants a greater Russia but he still doesn't want a full war with NATO
The majority of the twentieth century would somewhat contradict this.....
The opposite, Germany was only defeated in WW1 once the US entered the War in 1917.
Western Europe was also only freed from the Nazis in WW2 after the US entered the War in 1941, only the UK holding firm free of Fascism before that.
It was also US aid and arms spending which ultimately won the Cold War and saw the Soviet Union collapse
You really don't know much history do you. Go and read about the naval race and then we can talk.
Well the naval race didn't defeat Germany either did it
Ultimately, it did.
At Jutland, the prisoner assaulted the jailer. But the prisoner remained in prison.
The sane in WWII. The RN owned the surface. Which is how they enforced the blockade and eventually defeated the U Boats.
It was still only the arrival of US troops in 1917 that led to the Hundred Days Offensive in 1918 that pushed the Germans back far enough to effectively win the war.
The Americans did a small part of the fighting.
The panic they induced in the cowardly scumbags of the German High Command was a sight though. “Oh shit, now we need to run away and claim a Big Boy beat us up.”
To be fair, I used to mock the American fighting efforts in WW1 but this podcast fairly rebutted the efforts and involvement and sacrifice of the US in WW1. Their intervention on the Western front as fresh infantry, and how quickly they learned and tipped the balance is not appreciated but very important.
But fuck Lundedorf and Hindenburg. With a chainsaw up the arse. A blunt chainsaw. And turn it on slowly……
By 1917 there was no realistic path for the Central Powers to win the war, even allowing for the collapse of Russia.
But without American infantry and the promise of more to come, there was a reasonable chance that Germany could have held out long enough, and appeared strong enough, to force a genuinely negotiated settlement rather than essentially the conditional surrender they had to take in 1919.
Which would not have been what Germany wanted to start with but could possibly have been spun as a success if they had seized territory in Poland and Belgium.
I don’t think so.
Germany had run out of everything at that point. Men, food, equipment.
The Allies, without the Americans pushed back the Michael Offensive. After which it was a rotten door to be pushed in. The Hundred Days…
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
Not me, I hold all members of the working classes in incredibly low regard.
Have you ever considered standing for political office?
I have in the past but realised my sense of humour would get me into trouble.
But think about all those freebie suits and shoes you could get.
But the politics of envy would kick in.
I'd get criticised for turning up to parliament or a constituency surgery wearing £700 Louis Vuitton shoes, £500 Turnbull & Asser shirt, and £3,500 bespoke suit, and that's me slumming it.
'Evening pb. Just fulfilled a long held ambition: accompanied by my oldest daughter, I got the train to Penrith, then walked (yesterday) from Penrith to Troutbeck across High Street - staying last night at the Mortal Man - then today walked from Troutbeck over Wansfell Pike to Ambleside and then on to Windermere, getting the train back from Windermere. 50km in two days. Others have done more I'm sure but it's more than I've ever managed before (and the first day's 30km was more than I've ever managed in a day). Also fulfilled the side ambitions of seeing Haweswater (the one Lake District lake that has eluded me up until now), learning cribbage (daughter and I learned it last night) and using the Windermere-Oxenholme line (and wondering whether @Sunil_Prasannan had been on this line - but of course he has! - the latter was gratifyingly well-used). My feet are throbbing, but I feel elated.
The Washington Post @washingtonpost · 3h Exclusive: President Trump’s use of tariffs may have been more extensive than was publicly known.
Internal government documents obtained by The Post encompass an array of national security goals as well as the interests of individual companies. https://wapo.st/4my4bAL
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
Not me, I hold all members of the working classes in incredibly low regard.
Have you ever considered standing for political office?
I have in the past but realised my sense of humour would get me into trouble.
You could be a Cameroon populist who tells it like it is and who people would like to have a pint with.
I am not a populist, I am commendably/recklessly honest.
'His outfit costs more than my second home but he looks like a Nov 5th Guy in it' quipped backbencher Woolie
It's funny you mention that, main (of the many) reasons my father-in-law to be didn't like me was that I drove a vehicle that cost more than his house.
His view was that nobody normal needs to spend that much on a vehicle.
It was a mystery why a working class Scouse/Irish heritage guy didn't like me, this brash, privately educated Tory.
I wear Amazon Essentials jeans. I know nothing bout nothing
Being thinner, they put a greater emphasis on your pertly toned butt, and your bulging thighs.
Probably.
I mean they are cheap. I'm built like a child's drawing of a human so emphasis is not my friend
I hope you also live in a child’s drawing of a house.
I wish! The luxury of a central front door and two stories!
And a very neat tree off to the side.
And a bright yellow sun with big rays!
Obviously. Big old rays. Should be located in the top right of the world, just before its direct descent
What’s the perfect house? If you could design the most user-friendly living space, with plentiful space and a reasonable degree of style, what would it look like?
After an hour or so strolling around the museum at St Romain en Gal a couple of days ago I think it’s probably the Roman villa.
Generally horizontal, but with some upper floors. Internal and external spaces, all connected. Timeless design. Without the excesses of neoclassical kitsch because there wasn’t yet any neo. Southern, but transportable to more temperate environments. Plenty of garden space. Privacy and sociability.
IMO it's impossible to design a good house without thinking about its environment, starting with the surroundings, the views and the effect of the changing sun.
I'd go for an updated version of the design principles applied here - Turn End in Buckinghamshire. Self built by an architect and his spouse (and some students) in 1966; they who still live there.
If you ever have a chance to visit, it is REALLY worth it. He's 92, so you won't be able to talk to him for much longer. He has more listed buildings than any other living architect.
The most perfect house would be a large Victorian terrace. Only by building at that sort of density can we have enough population within walking distance to enable all of the pleasant things of civilisation - a good pub, a good butcher, a train station, a bakery - to operate viably and therefore exist on yoir doorstep. Quite energy efficient, too.
The Washington Post @washingtonpost · 3h Exclusive: President Trump’s use of tariffs may have been more extensive than was publicly known.
Internal government documents obtained by The Post encompass an array of national security goals as well as the interests of individual companies. https://wapo.st/4my4bAL
I saw glimpses of the Lammy/Vance love in and I thought, surely in a room with someone he respects, Vance could be shown and argued why Russia is so completely wrong. Surely, and Vance is a bright man regardless of his twattery, it could get through to him from people who are decent, that the US is so completely wrong.
Does Vance go to bed tonight, say his prayers and then lie there thinking, maybe we’ve got this wrong, the good guys think Russia is wrong and the bad guys, Russia and MAGA think they are right?
If Lammy managed to make a difference I would forgive this gov so much.
Private sector productivity grew massively from 1997 to 2008 - something like a cumulative 30%. It's been flat since then* - NHS productivity growth has actually been faster since the crash.
And you can parrot the low tax, low spending line as much as you want but there simply isn't any correlation with a country's tax burden or proportion of GDP that is government spending.
That's bollocks.
Here is an ECB paper analysing OECD panel data since 1965. If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, here is the abstract:
"This paper investigates the effects of changes in taxes on economic growth. Using annual data from 1965 to 2007 for a panel of twenty-six economies, the results show that the effect of an increase in taxes on real GDP per capita is negative and persistent: an increase in the total tax rate (measures as the total tax ratio to GDP) by 1% of GDP has a long-run effect on real GDP per capita of –0.5% to –1%."
"Our findings also imply that an increase in social security contributions ... has a larger negative effect on per capita output than an increase in the income tax"
And guess which this moronic government (and, in fairness, the last one) has done?
I can't be bothered to do a full literature review (some I have seen on this subject run to 50 pages or more), but abundant other studies back this up.
Piroli & Pesschner (2023(Economics and Econometrics Research Institute, Brussels)) concluded from a panel data study of EU member states that increasing the overall tax burden has a negative impact on growth in the long-run Alinaghi & Reed, Taxes and Economic Growth in OECD Countries: A Meta-analysis, 2021 3.5-percentage-point increase in taxes ... is associated with decreased annual GDP growth of approximately −0.2 percent. Mertens & Olea, Marginal tax rates and income: new time series evidence, 2018 "A cut in the marginal tax rate also leads to a significant increase in real GDP per capita (top right panel) and a persistent and significant decline in the unemployment rate" Minford, L, Tax, regulation, incentives and growth: new modelling for the UK, 2016 Such a 10 percentage point reduction in the index of tax and regulation produces a ...higher growth rate over a thirty-year ‘growth episode’ following the cut of about 0.8 percentage points per annum (an ‘elasticity’ of 0.16) etc etc etc.
If those and many other similar studies don't show a correlation, what does? (It is of course possible to find studies that show limited or no effect, and how taxes are distributed is very important, with sales taxes harming economic growth much less than corporate or payroll taxes) but from my observations 80-90% of studies do show a negative correlation between tax rates/public spending and economic growth).
Empirical analysis backs up theory here - if you tax success and productivity, you'll get less of them. And if you subsidise inefficiency and idleness, you'll get more. There's no sensible theory I know that says that taxing people for doing something encourages them to do it - otherwise what are sin taxes or tariffs for?
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
And Clark's family was of course slightly noov, and deffo Trade
Clark's dad Kenneth on Wiki:
"Clark was born at 32 Grosvenor Square, London,[n 1] the only child of Kenneth Mackenzie Clark and his wife, (Margaret) Alice, daughter of James McArthur of Manchester.[2] The Clarks were a Scottish family who had grown rich in the textile trade. Clark's great-great-grandfather invented the cotton spool, and the Clark Thread Company of Paisley had grown into a substantial business.[1]"
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Being either foreign or in some way other is a wormhole in the class time continuum which allows you to travel across the galaxies in this way. Being Scottish or Welsh, for example, or being gay or born overseas. Your Channel Islands upbringing is another interesting case.
I am not “other” in any way so I have to fit into the rigid English class system like it or lump it.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Because you are engaged in snobbery and virtue signaling at the same time.
Busted on both.
Okay.
Tough gig here.
It truly is. Not as tough as the 29 hours a day, 12 days a week my father spent down the mines to afford to send me to school where they taught me to refer to him as “my father” rather than “old baastad” so eventually I could come on a website and virtue signal and be a snob at the same time. Hard times.
That got me thinking of the Andrew Gold song "Oh What A Lonely Boy". Always liked it.
Don't mind me. I watch people like a hawk but I'm harmless.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
Are you just sore because Topping pooh-poohed your interior deco ?
I understand that one should never ignore a pooh-pooh, but what's your beef with StillWaters ?
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Being either foreign or in some way other is a wormhole in the class time continuum which allows you to travel across the galaxies in this way. Being Scottish or Welsh, for example, or being gay or born overseas. Your Channel Islands upbringing is another interesting case.
I am not “other” in any way so I have to fit into the rigid English class system like it or lump it.
I think it’s different for the Scots. At school the Scots had been to certain preps, had certain titles, and sounded more English than the English so they were not “different”. If you were Channel Islands all sorts of weird calculations went on. You hadn’t been to the Dragon, or Papplewick or Pilgrims etc, so you were considered outsiders, then your parents’ names and backgrounds would re-balance it, then it was offset by the fact we went to beach parties and surfed with our girlfriends at home during summer not schlepping to Cornwall so a bit hard to judge, then we have money so we must be ok. I think it was easier for the chaps to judge the Hong Kongers or Malaysians or Germans as they were clearly different.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
Are you just sore because Topping pooh-poohed your interior deco ?
I understand that one should never ignore a pooh-pooh, but what's your beef with StillWaters ?
I think Topping is just miffed with everyone but always interesting. Never noticed StillWaters being particularly anti-Leon.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I thought people disliked you because you were unpleasantly racist and exploited sex workers, I didn't realise it was because you outranked us socially.
'Evening pb. Just fulfilled a long held ambition: accompanied by my oldest daughter, I got the train to Penrith, then walked (yesterday) from Penrith to Troutbeck across High Street - staying last night at the Mortal Man - then today walked from Troutbeck over Wansfell Pike to Ambleside and then on to Windermere, getting the train back from Windermere. 50km in two days. Others have done more I'm sure but it's more than I've ever managed before (and the first day's 30km was more than I've ever managed in a day). Also fulfilled the side ambitions of seeing Haweswater (the one Lake District lake that has eluded me up until now), learning cribbage (daughter and I learned it last night) and using the Windermere-Oxenholme line (and wondering whether @Sunil_Prasannan had been on this line - but of course he has! - the latter was gratifyingly well-used). My feet are throbbing, but I feel elated.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
Are you just sore because Topping pooh-poohed your interior deco ?
I understand that one should never ignore a pooh-pooh, but what's your beef with StillWaters ?
@StillWaters got really tetchy when I first pointed out this (genuine) phenomenon on PB: that I seem to weirdly unnerve "regular" posh English people (not just on PB). The people who get tetchy - and touchy - tend to be those who don't have much claim to any status in life APART from their poshness. So if they are outranked in a way they do not comprehend they act out. I wonder if it gives me some insight into being rich and Jewish
lol
Anyway the way @StillWaters reacted - exactly as I was saying of others - suggests to me he is not quite the average middle middle class dude he alleges. See also his "lunches with senior people in Hollywood"
I have no actual "beef" with @StillWaters - not at all. He is alway polite, affable, personable, articulate, and sometimes quite insightful. I like him (as a PB commenter)
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I thought people disliked you because you were unpleasantly racist and exploited sex workers, I didn't realise it was because you outranked us socially.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
But there it is from the other end of the social spectrum, nonsense from someone who seeks to box me so it makes them feel better
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
But there it is from the other end of the social spectrum, nonsense from someone who seeks to box me so it makes them feel better
I always read Kinabalu’s posts with an image of him in a nice Hampstead pub, placing his glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs down as he cackles and types a fake “man of the people” post whilst Jonty and Aemilia are shouting at him to get up and dance ironically to Come on Eileen with the ironic kids and then he places his Peaky Blinders cap on the table as he sashays over to the St Paul’s girls to give them a lecture on leftism, the politics first and if they aren’t interested in that then the album by leftfield. He is the perfect foil to you, me, all the righties here.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
The socially or nationally sui generis are more able to pull off being extremist. So there’s no contradiction.
Stalin was a Georgian. Hitler was an Austrian. Bin Laden was an aristocratic Saudi. Etc.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Being either foreign or in some way other is a wormhole in the class time continuum which allows you to travel across the galaxies in this way. Being Scottish or Welsh, for example, or being gay or born overseas. Your Channel Islands upbringing is another interesting case.
I am not “other” in any way so I have to fit into the rigid English class system like it or lump it.
That's better, Tim. That's not sophisticated conversationalism, it's very true. Having a big and special talent in sports arts music can also provide that wormhole.
The offer is now that Ukraine withdraws from its fortified positions, and abandons several hundred thousand citizens in Donetsk, merely in exchange for a ceasefire. https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1954222900187164935
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
But there it is from the other end of the social spectrum, nonsense from someone who seeks to box me so it makes them feel better
I always read Kinabalu’s posts with an image of him in a nice Hampstead pub, placing his glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs down as he cackles and types a fake “man of the people” post whilst Jonty and Aemilia are shouting at him to get up and dance ironically to Come on Eileen with the ironic kids and then he places his Peaky Blinders cap on the table as he sashays over to the St Paul’s girls to give them a lecture on leftism, the politics first and if they aren’t interested in that then the album by leftfield. He is the perfect foil to you, me, all the righties here.
The offer is now that Ukraine withdraws from its fortified positions, and abandons several hundred thousand citizens in Donetsk, merely in exchange for a ceasefire. https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1954222900187164935
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
The offer is now that Ukraine withdraws from its fortified positions, and abandons several hundred thousand citizens in Donetsk, merely in exchange for a ceasefire. https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1954222900187164935
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
But there it is from the other end of the social spectrum, nonsense from someone who seeks to box me so it makes them feel better
I always read Kinabalu’s posts with an image of him in a nice Hampstead pub, placing his glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs down as he cackles and types a fake “man of the people” post whilst Jonty and Aemilia are shouting at him to get up and dance ironically to Come on Eileen with the ironic kids and then he places his Peaky Blinders cap on the table as he sashays over to the St Paul’s girls to give them a lecture on leftism, the politics first and if they aren’t interested in that then the album by leftfield. He is the perfect foil to you, me, all the righties here.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
Not me. Perhaps it is my Australian roots or my time in America, or more likely my politics. I don't look up or down on anyone because of their social class, or whether they have no money, new money or old money.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
Not me, I hold all members of the working classes in incredibly low regard.
Have you ever considered standing for political office?
I have in the past but realised my sense of humour would get me into trouble.
But think about all those freebie suits and shoes you could get.
But the politics of envy would kick in.
I'd get criticised for turning up to parliament or a constituency surgery wearing £700 Louis Vuitton shoes, £500 Turnbull & Asser shirt, and £3,500 bespoke suit, and that's me slumming it.
Edit - And I haven't even mentioned the watches.
How the heck are you spending £500 on T&A? My shirts are only £165 from Hilditch & Key and that’s a far better brand
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
It takes a special kind of talent to make the people who naturally support your party and vote for it (not me for a long time but you I think) loathe them within 12 months of being elected. I can’t quite believe how terrible they are at politics.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
But there it is from the other end of the social spectrum, nonsense from someone who seeks to box me so it makes them feel better
I always read Kinabalu’s posts with an image of him in a nice Hampstead pub, placing his glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs down as he cackles and types a fake “man of the people” post whilst Jonty and Aemilia are shouting at him to get up and dance ironically to Come on Eileen with the ironic kids and then he places his Peaky Blinders cap on the table as he sashays over to the St Paul’s girls to give them a lecture on leftism, the politics first and if they aren’t interested in that then the album by leftfield. He is the perfect foil to you, me, all the righties here.
Spookily accurate. It's like you have me under surveillance.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
Not me, I hold all members of the working classes in incredibly low regard.
Have you ever considered standing for political office?
I have in the past but realised my sense of humour would get me into trouble.
But think about all those freebie suits and shoes you could get.
But the politics of envy would kick in.
I'd get criticised for turning up to parliament or a constituency surgery wearing £700 Louis Vuitton shoes, £500 Turnbull & Asser shirt, and £3,500 bespoke suit, and that's me slumming it.
Edit - And I haven't even mentioned the watches.
How the heck are you spending £500 on T&A? My shirts are only £165 from Hilditch & Key and that’s a far better brand
Mine are Ben Sherman, and the sale at that.
It reminds me of the joke about 2 Russian oligarchs:
Oligarch one: Hey, Boris, get a load of my new jacket, it cost $2000
Oligarch two: That's nothing Vanya, I know where you can get the exact same jacket for $5000.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
But there it is from the other end of the social spectrum, nonsense from someone who seeks to box me so it makes them feel better
I always read Kinabalu’s posts with an image of him in a nice Hampstead pub, placing his glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs down as he cackles and types a fake “man of the people” post whilst Jonty and Aemilia are shouting at him to get up and dance ironically to Come on Eileen with the ironic kids and then he places his Peaky Blinders cap on the table as he sashays over to the St Paul’s girls to give them a lecture on leftism, the politics first and if they aren’t interested in that then the album by leftfield. He is the perfect foil to you, me, all the righties here.
Spookily accurate. It's like you have me under surveillance.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
AIUI they damaged military hardware, to a quite considerable amount. If were were attacked tomorrow (not likely, I know) would that hardware be available for use? If not then it’s terrorism or treason- take your pick.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
The whole point of the protest is to waste police time, and highlight the authoritarian nature of this law.
I expect that the CPS will decide that prosecuting these cases is "not in the public interest" and they get dismissed.
There’s nothing more English than discussing the granular intricacies of the English class system while making out that one is a special case who has slipped the surly bonds of class.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
But there it is from the other end of the social spectrum, nonsense from someone who seeks to box me so it makes them feel better
I always read Kinabalu’s posts with an image of him in a nice Hampstead pub, placing his glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs down as he cackles and types a fake “man of the people” post whilst Jonty and Aemilia are shouting at him to get up and dance ironically to Come on Eileen with the ironic kids and then he places his Peaky Blinders cap on the table as he sashays over to the St Paul’s girls to give them a lecture on leftism, the politics first and if they aren’t interested in that then the album by leftfield. He is the perfect foil to you, me, all the righties here.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
But there it is from the other end of the social spectrum, nonsense from someone who seeks to box me so it makes them feel better
I always read Kinabalu’s posts with an image of him in a nice Hampstead pub, placing his glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs down as he cackles and types a fake “man of the people” post whilst Jonty and Aemilia are shouting at him to get up and dance ironically to Come on Eileen with the ironic kids and then he places his Peaky Blinders cap on the table as he sashays over to the St Paul’s girls to give them a lecture on leftism, the politics first and if they aren’t interested in that then the album by leftfield. He is the perfect foil to you, me, all the righties here.
Get a room, boys.
Suite, darling, suite.
I suggest the Hemingway suite at the Gritti. Where I had THIS view
There’s nothing more English than discussing the granular intricacies of the English class system while making out that one is a special case who has slipped the surly bonds of class.
There’s nothing more Scottish than grumbling about English people having a conversation about Englishness. So it’s all good fun.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
Not me, I hold all members of the working classes in incredibly low regard.
Have you ever considered standing for political office?
I have in the past but realised my sense of humour would get me into trouble.
But think about all those freebie suits and shoes you could get.
But the politics of envy would kick in.
I'd get criticised for turning up to parliament or a constituency surgery wearing £700 Louis Vuitton shoes, £500 Turnbull & Asser shirt, and £3,500 bespoke suit, and that's me slumming it.
Edit - And I haven't even mentioned the watches.
How the heck are you spending £500 on T&A? My shirts are only £165 from Hilditch & Key and that’s a far better brand
The offer is now that Ukraine withdraws from its fortified positions, and abandons several hundred thousand citizens in Donetsk, merely in exchange for a ceasefire. https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1954222900187164935
Whenever I see Witkoff I inwardly cringe. He looks like credulity personified.
God only knows what a cynical old pro like Lavrov thinks. He must have suffered a hernia trying to suppress his laughter. Especially after Putin handed over the picture of Trump, and told him he'd prayed for him.
The offer is now that Ukraine withdraws from its fortified positions, and abandons several hundred thousand citizens in Donetsk, merely in exchange for a ceasefire. https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1954222900187164935
Whenever I see Witkoff I inwardly cringe. He looks like credulity personified.
God only knows what a cynical old pro like Lavrov thinks. He must have suffered a hernia trying to suppress his laughter. Especially after Putin handed over the picture of Trump, and told him he'd prayed for him.
It’s all a bit sending the branch manager of a NatWest to discuss a merger with Goldmans.
There’s nothing more English than discussing the granular intricacies of the English class system while making out that one is a special case who has slipped the surly bonds of class.
There’s nothing more Scottish than grumbling about English people having a conversation about Englishness. So it’s all good fun.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
The whole point of the protest is to waste police time, and highlight the authoritarian nature of this law.
I expect that the CPS will decide that prosecuting these cases is "not in the public interest" and they get dismissed.
If that’s the case then why are they complaining at being arrested?
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
But beneath all this self-romancing clobber you're a cliched reactionary old geezer muttering over his lamb chops and Daily Telegraph.
But there it is from the other end of the social spectrum, nonsense from someone who seeks to box me so it makes them feel better
I always read Kinabalu’s posts with an image of him in a nice Hampstead pub, placing his glass of Ruinart Blanc de Blancs down as he cackles and types a fake “man of the people” post whilst Jonty and Aemilia are shouting at him to get up and dance ironically to Come on Eileen with the ironic kids and then he places his Peaky Blinders cap on the table as he sashays over to the St Paul’s girls to give them a lecture on leftism, the politics first and if they aren’t interested in that then the album by leftfield. He is the perfect foil to you, me, all the righties here.
Get a room, boys.
Suite, darling, suite.
I suggest the Hemingway suite at the Gritti. Where I had THIS view
I have the world's greatest anecdote about hotel suites. But it deserves a larger audience than is available on PB at 11pm on a Saturday night. So I am just going to put out this ridiculous self-indulgent teaser
There’s nothing more English than discussing the granular intricacies of the English class system while making out that one is a special case who has slipped the surly bonds of class.
There’s nothing more Scottish than grumbling about English people having a conversation about Englishness. So it’s all good fun.
No grumbling, hard cut crystal analysis there.
Isn’t it better we fight amongst ourselves rather than turning our attention North?
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
The vast majority of the public will not see that as terrorism . And strangely questions as to why they were even able to get that close to the military planes seems to have been ignored . What sort of poxy security was in place ?
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
The whole point of the protest is to waste police time, and highlight the authoritarian nature of this law.
I expect that the CPS will decide that prosecuting these cases is "not in the public interest" and they get dismissed.
If that’s the case then why are they complaining at being arrested?
Because the law, like taxes, is supposed to be applied against other people, not them.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
Not me, I hold all members of the working classes in incredibly low regard.
Have you ever considered standing for political office?
I have in the past but realised my sense of humour would get me into trouble.
But think about all those freebie suits and shoes you could get.
But the politics of envy would kick in.
I'd get criticised for turning up to parliament or a constituency surgery wearing £700 Louis Vuitton shoes, £500 Turnbull & Asser shirt, and £3,500 bespoke suit, and that's me slumming it.
Edit - And I haven't even mentioned the watches.
How the heck are you spending £500 on T&A? My shirts are only £165 from Hilditch & Key and that’s a far better brand
Sorry, T&A is better than H&K, not 300% better, but better.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
The vast majority of the public will not see that as terrorism . And strangely questions as to why they were even able to get that close to the military planes seems to have been ignored . What sort of poxy security was in place ?
Then the vast majority of people can vote to change the law.
Under the law passed by Tony Blair a quarter of a century ago, it is terrorism.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
The vast majority of the public will not see that as terrorism . And strangely questions as to why they were even able to get that close to the military planes seems to have been ignored . What sort of poxy security was in place ?
I think if you asked the majority of the public “do you think attacking British military equipment in the name of a foreign war and actors is a terrorist act?” The. They might say yes.
Why should the tax payer have to shell out millions in repairs for their protest as well?
But on the security front, I’m quite happy that anyone who breaks into an airbase to commit damage to defence kit in future gets shot first and questioned later as would likely be the case in most of the world.
So if the proxy security is amplified now will you be ok with that?
Just an edit, when I was in my teens I was a Royal Marine Cadet and we had an annual competition called Pringle Trophy based at Oakhampton Camp on Datmoor. It was made very clear to us that if we were to twat about running around the camp at night we would likely be shot at rather than spoken to kindly as it was when the IRA were still active. Military bases should be fiercely protected because there are still plenty of bad actors around now.
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
And you wonder, with many that do, how few generations of ancestors before them they had white working class people who worked hard to get subsequent generations “up” in the world to the point the current ones are in a financial/professional/social position to feel that they can look down on them.
On the contrary such people tend to exalt their working class roots. My right on friend (a professor of Gender Studies at a major university no less) self-identifies as working class because her grandparents were Welsh miners.
Looking down on Reform voters doesn't equate to looking down on the WWC, no matter how much people like Lee Andrrson tries to equate the two.
I have met far too many people who are seriously rude about the “white working class” who are second generation “money”, and usually not much to shout about. They are desperate to pull on the supposed behaviours and attitudes of upper middle and upper classes to an almost comedic effect and their theatrical dislike of hoi polloi is grim. I know a chap, have done since we were 5, whose grandfather was from a Birmingham slum, sharp as fuck and made millions in arms deals, starting with buying excess British army boots and selling them for double the cost to the Middle East. If you met this chap you would think he was a grotesque character of a rude duke but his manners are all book learned. He’s an uneducated buffoon who is rude to waiting staff and the like. He’s one example of so many people like him who want people to think they aren’t anything to do with the WWF.
I have had, since university, idiots ask me why I’m such good friends with x and y because they are, you know, a bit common/rough, uneducated. Honestly it would be funny if it wasn’t so sad that people whose parents and grandparents worked their way “up” suddenly feel they have to mock or hate the WWC to make themselves feel better.
There is a subset who do, as you say, embrace their “real” roots to give them cred but many more are utter shits who knock others in an attempt to elevate themselves.
Ah, so you look down on the nouveau riche. How very upper-middle class of you.
No, I don’t like people who are rude to people and look down on others for shitty reasons, in my experience there is usually a pattern to their backgrounds and it’s not cool. I don’t give a damn where anyone comes from, their accents, earnings, education but I’ve had the misfortune to have known too many who do. So instead of trying to find something to hit me with maybe you might agree that the sentiment is correct?
So you think that I should look down on them too?
Oh god, yes, look down on, or alternatively disapprove of, people who are shits to people because of some misplaced belief they have that they are superior and because their superiority is built in such fragile foundations they have to put down people in a worse position to bolster their own fragility and insecurity. It’s not controversial.
The fact that these people aspire to be something and in doing so feel they need to mock others is not something that should be free from mockery and dislike. If you had a doctor start with you, where you know, because you had seen their application that they had been the first of their family to university and done well becoming a doctor then started slagging off patients for being less educated, less worldly I would hope you would pull them up.
My point was that I found found, and yes it’s anecdotal, that there is a spcertain section of society that are worse for knocking the WWC and they are usually less removed from the WWC and it’s not ok. I’m not sure why you think this is a reason to attack and not agree unless you have been so insultaped that you have never come across this phenomenon, considering your education, global exposure and life I can’t believe you haven’t.
Every tier in society looks down most aggressively on the tier just a tiny bit below it.
“An arriviste, certainly, who can't shoot straight and in Jopling's damning phrase 'bought all his own furniture', but who at any rate seeks the cachet. All the nouves in the party think he is the real thing” (Alan Clarke on Heseltine).
That is just 'sophisticated conversationalism' though. It's not actually true.
Alan Clarke’s quote is sophisticated conversationalism, or the idea that every tier looks down on the one directly below?
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
I object! It is much subtler than that. I went to a comprehensive, and my paternal grandfather was a chippy in a tinmine, and my Mum was very working class, and my maternal grandmother was slave labour - a bal maiden, age 10 - almost below working class
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
I understand this thought process, when I was at school I was from a set a lot of my peers couldn’t get their heads around. I hadn’t been to one of the traditional feeder prep schools to school (all of us Jersey chaps were eyed with suspicion), wasn’t from the UK but also wasn’t “foreign”. I had more money than a huge chunk of them, but had a different outlook. I was at a co-Ed prep school so had girl friends at neighbouring girls boarding school from prep school whereas girls were a mystery to most, my parents backgrounds were confusing as they didn’t understand why they hadn’t just done what their parents were doing with their backgrounds and living where they “should”. There is nothing as confusing to English people as people who don’t fit into a box. But then I consider myself culturally and proudly English even though I’m not on many measures.
Yes exactly
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
Don't your friends ever get annoyed with your weird obsession with trying to rank yourself against them? You sound like a total trip.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
The vast majority of the public will not see that as terrorism . And strangely questions as to why they were even able to get that close to the military planes seems to have been ignored . What sort of poxy security was in place ?
Then the vast majority of people can vote to change the law.
Under the law passed by Tony Blair a quarter of a century ago, it is terrorism.
Should the rule of law not apply here?
You seem very happy to want the rule of law applied in the UK but seem to ignore it when it comes to international law .
Some people hold white working class people in incredibly low regard. Almost as if they're a different species.
Not me, I hold all members of the working classes in incredibly low regard.
Have you ever considered standing for political office?
I have in the past but realised my sense of humour would get me into trouble.
But think about all those freebie suits and shoes you could get.
But the politics of envy would kick in.
I'd get criticised for turning up to parliament or a constituency surgery wearing £700 Louis Vuitton shoes, £500 Turnbull & Asser shirt, and £3,500 bespoke suit, and that's me slumming it.
Edit - And I haven't even mentioned the watches.
How the heck are you spending £500 on T&A? My shirts are only £165 from Hilditch & Key and that’s a far better brand
Sorry, T&A is better than H&K, not 300% better, but better.
They're spelt C&A and H&M, but C&A closed down already.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
The vast majority of the public will not see that as terrorism . And strangely questions as to why they were even able to get that close to the military planes seems to have been ignored . What sort of poxy security was in place ?
I think if you asked the majority of the public “do you think attacking British military equipment in the name of a foreign war and actors is a terrorist act?” The. They might say yes.
Why should the tax payer have to shell out millions in repairs for their protest as well?
But on the security front, I’m quite happy that anyone who breaks into an airbase to commit damage to defence kit in future gets shot first and questioned later as would likely be the case in most of the world.
So if the proxy security is amplified now will you be ok with that?
Yes, exactly
A sane country would shoot them on sight as they break into a nationally important and militarily pivotal airfield
THAT is where the law is falling down, the law should barely be involved
It's the same as the dinghies. Arrest people on sight that clearly and illegally cross the Channel without papers. No ifs no buts. Arrest them, convict them, jail them, deport them
We need secure borders, reinforced with aggressive police, and we need secure military sites, reinforced with guns. ENOUGH
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
The vast majority of the public will not see that as terrorism . And strangely questions as to why they were even able to get that close to the military planes seems to have been ignored . What sort of poxy security was in place ?
Then the vast majority of people can vote to change the law.
Under the law passed by Tony Blair a quarter of a century ago, it is terrorism.
Should the rule of law not apply here?
You seem very happy to want the rule of law applied in the UK but seem to ignore it when it comes to international law .
International law is the pirate code, more what we call guidelines than actual rules.
Domestic law, as voted for by Parliament, is far more important.
That's what we call democracy. If you don't like the law, you vote to change it - and if that change goes against international law, then democracy has to take priority.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
The vast majority of the public will not see that as terrorism . And strangely questions as to why they were even able to get that close to the military planes seems to have been ignored . What sort of poxy security was in place ?
I think if you asked the majority of the public “do you think attacking British military equipment in the name of a foreign war and actors is a terrorist act?” The. They might say yes.
Why should the tax payer have to shell out millions in repairs for their protest as well?
But on the security front, I’m quite happy that anyone who breaks into an airbase to commit damage to defence kit in future gets shot first and questioned later as would likely be the case in most of the world.
So if the proxy security is amplified now will you be ok with that?
I never said that they didn’t commit an offence and they should never have been able to get that close to the aircraft . They should have been apprehended well before a need for them to be shot !
Statement by President Macron, Prime Minister Meloni, Chancellor Merz, Prime Minister Tusk, Prime Minister Starmer, President von der Leyen and President Stubb on Peace for Ukraine ahead of President Trump’s planned meeting with President Putin
We welcome President Trump’s work to stop the killing in Ukraine, end the Russian Federation’s war of aggression, and achieve just and lasting peace and security for Ukraine. We are convinced that only an approach that combines active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war can succeed. We stand ready to support this work diplomatically as well as by upholding our substantive military and financial support to Ukraine, including through the work of the Coalition of the Willing, and by upholding and imposing restrictive measures against the Russian Federation. We share the conviction that a diplomatic solution must protect Ukraine’s and Europe’s vital security interests. We agree that these vital interests include the need for robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Ukraine has the freedom of choice over its own destiny. Meaningful negotiations can only take place in the context of a ceasefire or reduction of hostilities. The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine. We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force. The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations. We reiterate that Russia’s unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine is a flagrant violation of the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, the Budapest Memorandum, and successive Russian commitments. We underline our unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. We continue to stand firmly by the side of Ukraine. We are united as Europeans and determined to jointly promote our interests. And we will continue to cooperate closely with President Trump and with the United States of America, and with President Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine, for a peace in Ukraine that protects our vital security interests.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
The vast majority of the public will not see that as terrorism . And strangely questions as to why they were even able to get that close to the military planes seems to have been ignored . What sort of poxy security was in place ?
Then the vast majority of people can vote to change the law.
Under the law passed by Tony Blair a quarter of a century ago, it is terrorism.
Should the rule of law not apply here?
You seem very happy to want the rule of law applied in the UK but seem to ignore it when it comes to international law .
International law is the pirate code, more what we call guidelines than actual rules.
Domestic law, as voted for by Parliament, is far more important.
That's what we call democracy. If you don't like the law, you vote to change it - and if that change goes against international law, then democracy has to take priority.
You mean like the Duma where politicians rubber stamped “ the special military operation “. Or those that voted the Nazis in under the guise of democracy . Your argument is that regardless of the consequences international law should just be ignored and no effort made to even enforce it .
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
The whole point of the protest is to waste police time, and highlight the authoritarian nature of this law.
I expect that the CPS will decide that prosecuting these cases is "not in the public interest" and they get dismissed.
If that’s the case then why are they complaining at being arrested?
Because causing trouble to the police is the point!
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
Yvette Cooper is the one wasting police time . A hysterical over reaction to what was criminal damage not terrorism .
Under the law passed by Tony Blair inflicting serious criminal damage in an attempt to force political changes you can't get via the ballot box is terrorism.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
The vast majority of the public will not see that as terrorism . And strangely questions as to why they were even able to get that close to the military planes seems to have been ignored . What sort of poxy security was in place ?
I think if you asked the majority of the public “do you think attacking British military equipment in the name of a foreign war and actors is a terrorist act?” The. They might say yes.
Why should the tax payer have to shell out millions in repairs for their protest as well?
But on the security front, I’m quite happy that anyone who breaks into an airbase to commit damage to defence kit in future gets shot first and questioned later as would likely be the case in most of the world.
So if the proxy security is amplified now will you be ok with that?
I never said that they didn’t commit an offence and they should never have been able to get that close to the aircraft . They should have been apprehended well before a need for them to be shot !
You cannot have guards every fifty yards in an area the size of a military base so people can always cut wire and get in. The sites are huge. However if you know that if you are seen sprinting across a runway or similar you will be shot then that reduces the problem with not being able to build Hadrian’s wall around each camp.
Seriously nobody should have a problem with their country’s military bases being defended to the highest level possible and so shoot on sight should be the rule. No other country that is remotely sensible would accept people breaking in and damaging kit, because it might be paint or might be a bomb.
Labour and three of its MPs accepted more than £40,000 of election campaign donations from a convicted criminal the party expelled as a member three years ago.
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
An alternative view is that these people are deliberately wasting police time when the police could be doing something else. There are many legal ways to protest about what is happening in Gaza. You can also legally protest about the heavy handed application of terrorism laws in this specific case. They know exactly what they are doing.
The police don’t have to waste time arresting Gaza protesters. They could be gainfully employed stopping shoplifters. However, that’s more difficult and risky than arresting 89 year olds, so protesters will get their attention.
Comments
I’d say the latter is absolutely the case. As is the reverse: every tier in society most ardently resents the tier directly above them.
For an example of looking down, take the instructive case of the upper-upper-middle Topping decrying the interior decor of the mid-upper-middle Leon yesterday. The perfectly chosen words “it’s not even Elephant’s breath”. For an example of proximate upwards resentment listen to any Tory moaning about smashed avocado and latte supping.
In both cases there is the perfect mixture of class warfare and class betrayal.
Further, noblesse oblige and its modern exemplar (affected upper-middle concern for the WWC) only operates with a gap of several tiers. You don’t see Sainsburys shoppers expressing sympathy for the more gamey opinions of Tesco shoppers.
Here is Jane
Here is Pat
The Dog
I regularly wear a morning suit.
Germany had run out of everything at that point. Men, food, equipment.
The Allies, without the Americans pushed back the Michael Offensive. After which it was a rotten door to be pushed in. The Hundred Days…
I think it was one of these:
https://www.saltwoodcastle.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/castle_walls.jpg
They were just fine inviting my parents (university lecturer and school teacher) to tea.
One suspects this upset Alan Clark.
Anyone who bangs on about how hard/posh/cool they are… isn’t.
Rupert Lowe MP
@RupertLowe10
·
30m
Starmer has to go.
https://x.com/RupertLowe10/status/1954268949303919022
*Failing* to steal land like that is a bit crap….
@washingtonpost
·
3h
Exclusive: President Trump’s use of tariffs may have been more extensive than was publicly known.
Internal government documents obtained by The Post encompass an array of national security goals as well as the interests of individual companies. https://wapo.st/4my4bAL
https://x.com/washingtonpost/status/1954218668058943954
Does Vance go to bed tonight, say his prayers and then lie there thinking, maybe we’ve got this wrong, the good guys think Russia is wrong and the bad guys, Russia and MAGA think they are right?
If Lammy managed to make a difference I would forgive this gov so much.
Might even forget his mastermind effort.
Here is an ECB paper analysing OECD panel data since 1965. If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, here is the abstract:
"This paper investigates the effects of changes in taxes on economic growth. Using annual data from 1965 to 2007 for a panel of twenty-six economies, the results show that the effect of an increase in taxes on real GDP per capita is negative and persistent: an increase in the total tax rate (measures as the total tax ratio to GDP) by 1% of GDP has a long-run effect on real GDP per capita of –0.5% to –1%."
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/events/pdf/conferences/ws_pubfinance/paper_Furceri.pdf
They also note:
"Our findings also imply that an increase in social security contributions ... has a larger negative effect on per capita output than an increase in the income tax"
And guess which this moronic government (and, in fairness, the last one) has done?
I can't be bothered to do a full literature review (some I have seen on this subject run to 50 pages or more), but abundant other studies back this up.
Piroli & Pesschner (2023(Economics and Econometrics Research Institute, Brussels)) concluded from a panel data study of EU member states that increasing the overall tax burden has a negative impact on growth in the long-run
Alinaghi & Reed, Taxes and Economic Growth in OECD Countries: A Meta-analysis, 2021 3.5-percentage-point increase in taxes ... is associated with decreased annual GDP growth of approximately −0.2 percent.
Mertens & Olea, Marginal tax rates and income: new time series evidence, 2018 "A cut in the marginal tax rate also leads to a significant increase in real GDP per capita (top right panel) and a persistent and significant decline in the unemployment rate"
Minford, L, Tax, regulation, incentives and growth: new modelling for the UK, 2016 Such a 10 percentage point reduction in the index of tax and regulation produces a ...higher growth rate over a thirty-year ‘growth episode’ following the cut of about 0.8 percentage points per annum (an ‘elasticity’ of 0.16)
etc etc etc.
If those and many other similar studies don't show a correlation, what does? (It is of course possible to find studies that show limited or no effect, and how taxes are distributed is very important, with sales taxes harming economic growth much less than corporate or payroll taxes) but from my observations 80-90% of studies do show a negative correlation between tax rates/public spending and economic growth).
Empirical analysis backs up theory here - if you tax success and productivity, you'll get less of them. And if you subsidise inefficiency and idleness, you'll get more. There's no sensible theory I know that says that taxing people for doing something encourages them to do it - otherwise what are sin taxes or tariffs for?
Tax and waste is always bad for our wealth.
Compare the costs to HS2
Labour really wants to get cleaned out there lol
Matt Goodwin
@GoodwinMJ
·
1h
🚨NEW🚨
Keir Starmer’s approval rating crashes to MINUS 41
Totally adrift from the country
Opinium, tonight
My proximate origins are very proletarian, and yet I have - to be frank - the life experiences and outlook of someone exceptionally uppper class, and not British at all. This is what annoys classic PB Anglo poshos like @StillWaters and @TOPPING
In some obscure way they cannot quite place, I outrank them. They can't understand it, and they dislike it
I've encountered this elsewhere, FWIW, not just on PB
The Tennessee Holler
@TheTNHoller
UPDATE: However awkward you thought Stephen Miller’s wife’s new podcast would be, it’s worse
If you’re into Softball Questions to JD Vance about ice cream and bad jokes, this is the propaganda podcast for you
https://x.com/TheTNHoller/status/1954227310791414133
Clark's dad Kenneth on Wiki:
"Clark was born at 32 Grosvenor Square, London,[n 1] the only child of Kenneth Mackenzie Clark and his wife, (Margaret) Alice, daughter of James McArthur of Manchester.[2] The Clarks were a Scottish family who had grown rich in the textile trade. Clark's great-great-grandfather invented the cotton spool, and the Clark Thread Company of Paisley had grown into a substantial business.[1]"
https://x.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1944109756311810162?t=FI2EZ_D-FZSyuVUmq4DeqQ&s=19
I am not “other” in any way so I have to fit into the rigid English class system like it or lump it.
I've met absurdly posh people in my time (and worldwide, as well as the UK). Roughly half my best friends are now centi-millionaires, with one billionaire blah blah blah
About ten years ago I noticed that when I explained my life, and experiences, to normal bog-standad posh English people - the Toppings and StillWaters of this world - they would get quite agitated, in a weird way. Then I realised that they couldn't put me in a "social class" box which made them feel superior. "What, you've never done a proper day's work in your life?" "You literally travel the world in luxury for free?" "And you bought your house by writing a book?"
They would often revert - if insecure - to remarks about clothing, or schooling, or whatever (cf Topping on interior decoration). It was a search for a way to feel better when in truth they felt a tiny bit inadequate. Like seeking a toe-hold on a slippery cliff. When most of their self-identity was embodied in their self-perceived poshness, here I was challenging all that and perhaps making them feel the looming drop beneath
If it's any consolation to these flannelled fools, I feel the same if I meet an artist who has made it spectacularly in wealth AND esteem. I search for a reason why I am still better than them, I usually revert to my extravagant sex life and multiple near death experiences
Don't mind me. I watch people like a hawk but I'm harmless.
I understand that one should never ignore a pooh-pooh, but what's your beef with StillWaters ?
lol
Anyway the way @StillWaters reacted - exactly as I was saying of others - suggests to me he is not quite the average middle middle class dude he alleges. See also his "lunches with senior people in Hollywood"
I have no actual "beef" with @StillWaters - not at all. He is alway polite, affable, personable, articulate, and sometimes quite insightful. I like him (as a PB commenter)
So that's good
To see an 89 year old arrested for holding a banner . At a time when the justice system is close to collapse we have a spectacle where the police are rounding up hundreds of people including a blind man in a wheelchair .
This country has lost its mind .
Stalin was a Georgian. Hitler was an Austrian. Bin Laden was an aristocratic Saudi. Etc.
The offer is now that Ukraine withdraws from its fortified positions, and abandons several hundred thousand citizens in Donetsk, merely in exchange for a ceasefire.
https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1954222900187164935
I genuinely believe we are all equals.
I can’t quite believe how terrible they are at politics.
It reminds me of the joke about 2 Russian oligarchs:
Oligarch one: Hey, Boris, get a load of my new jacket, it cost $2000
Oligarch two: That's nothing Vanya, I know where you can get the exact same jacket for $5000.
I expect that the CPS will decide that prosecuting these cases is "not in the public interest" and they get dismissed.
Like many laws passed by that authoritarian awful leader I'd love to see it repealed, but your upset that the rule of law is being upheld on these terrorists is amusing.
If you want political change then seek it via the ballot box, or non-violent protest. PAs violent actions absolutely were terrorism under our laws.
God only knows what a cynical old pro like Lavrov thinks. He must have suffered a hernia trying to suppress his laughter. Especially after Putin handed over the picture of Trump, and told him he'd prayed for him.
Under the law passed by Tony Blair a quarter of a century ago, it is terrorism.
Should the rule of law not apply here?
Why should the tax payer have to shell out millions in repairs for their protest as well?
But on the security front, I’m quite happy that anyone who breaks into an airbase to commit damage to defence kit in future gets shot first and questioned later as would likely be the case in most of the world.
So if the proxy security is amplified now will you be ok with that?
Just an edit, when I was in my teens I was a Royal Marine Cadet and we had an annual competition called Pringle Trophy based at Oakhampton Camp on Datmoor. It was made very clear to us that if we were to twat about running around the camp at night we would likely be shot at rather than spoken to kindly as it was when the IRA were still active. Military bases should be fiercely protected because there are still plenty of bad actors around now.
A sane country would shoot them on sight as they break into a nationally important and militarily pivotal airfield
THAT is where the law is falling down, the law should barely be involved
It's the same as the dinghies. Arrest people on sight that clearly and illegally cross the Channel without papers. No ifs no buts. Arrest them, convict them, jail them, deport them
We need secure borders, reinforced with aggressive police, and we need secure military sites, reinforced with guns. ENOUGH
Domestic law, as voted for by Parliament, is far more important.
That's what we call democracy. If you don't like the law, you vote to change it - and if that change goes against international law, then democracy has to take priority.
BREAKING 🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇮🇹 🇵🇱 🇪🇺 🇫🇮 🇩🇪
Statement by President Macron, Prime Minister Meloni, Chancellor Merz, Prime Minister Tusk, Prime Minister Starmer, President von der Leyen and President Stubb on Peace for Ukraine ahead of President Trump’s planned meeting with President Putin
We welcome President Trump’s work to stop the killing in Ukraine, end the Russian Federation’s war of aggression, and achieve just and lasting peace and security for Ukraine.
We are convinced that only an approach that combines active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war can succeed.
We stand ready to support this work diplomatically as well as by upholding our substantive military and financial support to Ukraine, including through the work of the Coalition of the Willing, and by upholding and imposing restrictive measures against the Russian Federation.
We share the conviction that a diplomatic solution must protect Ukraine’s and Europe’s vital security interests.
We agree that these vital interests include the need for robust and credible security guarantees that enable Ukraine to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Ukraine has the freedom of choice over its own destiny. Meaningful negotiations can only take place in the context of a ceasefire or reduction of hostilities. The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine. We remain committed to the principle that international borders must not be changed by force. The current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations.
We reiterate that Russia’s unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine is a flagrant violation of the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, the Budapest Memorandum, and successive Russian commitments. We underline our unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.
We continue to stand firmly by the side of Ukraine. We are united as Europeans and determined to jointly promote our interests. And we will continue to cooperate closely with President Trump and with the United States of America, and with President Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine, for a peace in Ukraine that protects our vital security interests.
ENDS
Seriously nobody should have a problem with their country’s military bases being defended to the highest level possible and so shoot on sight should be the rule. No other country that is remotely sensible would accept people breaking in and damaging kit, because it might be paint or might be a bomb.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/labour-accepted-donations-convicted-criminal-fvfq05sd6
Americans.