Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?
In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.
On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?
I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).
How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.
It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).
But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.
Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.
The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.
Grr.
So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).
As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.
If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.
Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?
When did the UK ever have a true left wing government?
Wilson, Callaghan Atlee....although the last admittedly would only be remembered by the over 75's. Or do you claim they weren't left wing?
Well I remember Wilson Callaghan and did not regard them as particularly left wing, I saw Wilson as a visionary opening up the universities with his white hot technical revolution.
People cannot even consistently agree on what left and right wing mean, theres no hope of agreeing the 3 or 7 or whatever classes we now have.
I would like to see the ONS take a lead on this. Create some new measures with distinct and clearly definited terms, not using the word "class" at all, one based on background and education, another on wealth, another on employment status. Standardise and promote awareness of them so this discussion isnt repeated with chaotic personal definitions of class in 20 years time.
I believe there are now seven social classes. You can even find out which one you are part of here:
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?
In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.
On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?
I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).
How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.
It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).
But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.
Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.
The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.
Grr.
So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).
As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.
If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.
Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?
When did the UK ever have a true left wing government?
Wilson, Callaghan Atlee....although the last admittedly would only be remembered by the over 75's. Or do you claim they weren't left wing?
Well I remember Wilson Callaghan and did not regard them as particularly left wing, I saw Wilson as a visionary opening up the universities with his white hot technical revolution.
83% tax rate, nationalised industries wasn't left wing enough for you?
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Something about actors really winds people up. Don't get it myself. For a profession that involves a huge amount of hard work mostly for little money, brings a lot of happiness to paying customers and is something that the UK excels at, it seems to make a certain kind of person on the Right very angry.
Re wealthy people posturing as working class, I actually think it's the "self made" Sugar and Stringfellow and Ashton types who do a lot of it. But not being "luvvies" (perish the thought) they escape censure. Until NOW!
On actors, though, Michael Caine - who I like, don't we all, national treasure - has always irritated me slightly with that cockney shtick of his.
Father = market porter; mother = cook/charwoman (wiki).
Most actors would swiftly have lost their original accent and replaced it with something a bit more RP. Not him. And this irritates you?
To me it becomes affectation after a while when you've long ago left your roots behind. Also with Caine - Sir Michael rather, great actor, national treasure and I mean it - he went very right wing in no time and also he fled our shores to avoid tax.
Just thinking about it now for the first time, this template is perhaps kind of the equivalent for me that Toynbee & Co are for others. I have an irrationally strong aversion to the self-made rich man who plays up his working class essence and at same time is smugly congratulatory of himself for escaping it and who votes Tory and dodges tax.
Wonder if it would bother him if he knew how I felt?
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Something about actors really winds people up. Don't get it myself. For a profession that involves a huge amount of hard work mostly for little money, brings a lot of happiness to paying customers and is something that the UK excels at, it seems to make a certain kind of person on the Right very angry.
Re wealthy people posturing as working class, I actually think it's the "self made" Sugar and Stringfellow and Ashton types who do a lot of it. But not being "luvvies" (perish the thought) they escape censure. Until NOW!
On actors, though, Michael Caine - who I like, don't we all, national treasure - has always irritated me slightly with that cockney shtick of his.
Father = market porter; mother = cook/charwoman (wiki).
Most actors would swiftly have lost their original accent and replaced it with something a bit more RP. Not him. And this irritates you?
To me it becomes affectation after a while when you've long ago left your roots behind. Also with Caine - Sir Michael rather, great actor, national treasure and I mean it - he went very right wing in no time and also he fled our shores to avoid tax.
Just thinking about it now for the first time, this template is perhaps kind of the equivalent for me that Toynbee & Co are for others. I have an irrationally strong aversion to the self-made rich man who plays up his working class essence and at same time is smugly congratulatory of himself for escaping it and who votes Tory and dodges tax.
Wonder if it would bother him if he knew how I felt?
He doesn't care what you think. He made Muppets Christmas Carol. He doesn't care what anyone thinks. And why should he? Deserved an Oscar for that
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Labour's great mistake is to assume that working class people want to stay working class. Often, they don't. Being working class isn't a state of grace. It can be pretty unpleasant and depressing, I imagine.
The state of grace is being where Polly Toynbee is, a wealthy person 'on the side of' the working class. (but also well insulated from it). A wealthy person who is also 'moral'.
This is the Nirvana that many studying soft subjects at our universities aspire to. They look up to the BBC, the third sector, the quangos, the arts, the race industry, education......and they dream the heady dream.
And is this dream less worthy than the one of getting rich and shitting on those who haven't?
No but getting rich in the private sector is a classless dream. Always was. The leftist dream is one of a person who is exclusively middle class. And white middle class at that.
Working class people need not apply.
For the kind of people we are talking about, working class people exist and must remain that way so that they can be 'represented'. Same with disadvantaged BAME people. They have to stay that way for the vast white leftist panoply of well paid people 'on their side' to continue to exist.
That's why Patel and Co. excite such ire from the left. They don't need highly paid 'representatives' or 'advocates' or people 'on their side' any more.
They threaten the leftist Nirvana. And when there is a threat the response is vicious. As pensioners are about to find out with TV licences.
That's quite a rich and complex world you have constructed around your own prejudices there. You could code it up and market as one of those games. It might take off if what I hear about the political attitudes of "gamers" is correct.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Something about actors really winds people up. Don't get it myself. For a profession that involves a huge amount of hard work mostly for little money, brings a lot of happiness to paying customers and is something that the UK excels at, it seems to make a certain kind of person on the Right very angry.
Re wealthy people posturing as working class, I actually think it's the "self made" Sugar and Stringfellow and Ashton types who do a lot of it. But not being "luvvies" (perish the thought) they escape censure. Until NOW!
On actors, though, Michael Caine - who I like, don't we all, national treasure - has always irritated me slightly with that cockney shtick of his.
Father = market porter; mother = cook/charwoman (wiki).
Most actors would swiftly have lost their original accent and replaced it with something a bit more RP. Not him. And this irritates you?
To me it becomes affectation after a while when you've long ago left your roots behind. Also with Caine - Sir Michael rather, great actor, national treasure and I mean it - he went very right wing in no time and also he fled our shores to avoid tax.
Just thinking about it now for the first time, this template is perhaps kind of the equivalent for me that Toynbee & Co are for others. I have an irrationally strong aversion to the self-made rich man who plays up his working class essence and at same time is smugly congratulatory of himself for escaping it and who votes Tory and dodges tax.
Wonder if it would bother him if he knew how I felt?
Have you changed your accent? You have also come a long way.
And I think your point about the working classes getting uppity and changing allegiances explains very well the results of the Labour Party over the past 50 years or so.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?
In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.
On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?
I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).
How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.
It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).
But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.
Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.
The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.
Grr.
So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).
As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.
If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.
Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?
I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Labour's great mistake is to assume that working class people want to stay working class. Often, they don't. Being working class isn't a state of grace. It can be pretty unpleasant and depressing, I imagine.
The state of grace is being where Polly Toynbee is, a wealthy person 'on the side of' the working class. (but also well insulated from it). A wealthy person who is also 'moral'.
This is the Nirvana that many studying soft subjects at our universities aspire to. They look up to the BBC, the third sector, the quangos, the arts, the race industry, education......and they dream the heady dream.
And is this dream less worthy than the one of getting rich and shitting on those who haven't?
No but getting rich in the private sector is a classless dream. Always was. The leftist dream is one of a person who is exclusively middle class. And white middle class at that.
Working class people need not apply.
For the kind of people we are talking about, working class people exist and must remain that way so that they can be 'represented'. Same with disadvantaged BAME people. They have to stay that way for the vast white leftist panoply of well paid people 'on their side' to continue to exist.
That's why Patel and Co. excite such ire from the left. They don't need highly paid 'representatives' or 'advocates' or people 'on their side' any more.
They threaten the leftist Nirvana. And when there is a threat the response is vicious. As pensioners are about to find out with TV licences.
That's quite a rich and complex world you have constructed around your own prejudices there. You could code it up and market as one of those games. It might take off if what I hear about the political attitudes of "gamers" is correct.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?
In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.
On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?
I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).
How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.
It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).
But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.
Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.
The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.
Grr.
So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).
As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.
If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.
Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?
When did the UK ever have a true left wing government?
Wilson, Callaghan Atlee....although the last admittedly would only be remembered by the over 75's. Or do you claim they weren't left wing?
Well I remember Wilson Callaghan and did not regard them as particularly left wing, I saw Wilson as a visionary opening up the universities with his white hot technical revolution.
83% tax rate, nationalised industries wasn't left wing enough for you?
Given I was a student 83% tax was irrelevant to me and the nationalized industries were the norm at the time. Left right really depends on where you are at the time some peoples left is close to fascism to others. I think the two dimensional political model is outdated and meaningless in today’s world I. A not left not right but forward type.
A former PM might be qualified to oversee an investigation into the WHO response to the pandemic - particularly from a political and organisational point of view - but this kind of definitive statement is both silly, and quite probably wrong:
Neither science nor vaccine development can be forecast with anything like that certainty. And the ramping up of production capacity - depending upon the precise nature of successful vaccines - could be a great deal faster than that.
Probably one thing that needs looking into is the way politicians tend to rely on what they're told by sources that claim to be "informed", rather than trying to inform themselves - in this case just by reading the newspapers!
People cannot even consistently agree on what left and right wing mean, theres no hope of agreeing the 3 or 7 or whatever classes we now have.
I would like to see the ONS take a lead on this. Create some new measures with distinct and clearly definited terms, not using the word "class" at all, one based on background and education, another on wealth, another on employment status. Standardise and promote awareness of them so this discussion isnt repeated with chaotic personal definitions of class in 20 years time.
I believe there are now seven social classes. You can even find out which one you are part of here:
I am a member of the Elite group, much to my dismay...
But it doesn't say what % of the country falls into each of the 7.
If (say) 15% are scoring Elite that would devalue the label.
It does at the end, 6% are Elite, 25% established middle class, 6% technical middle class, 15% new affluent workers, 14% traditional working class, 19% emergent service workers and 15% Precariat
Ah OK, Thanks. Yes I guess 6% is just low enough to merit the Elite tag.
What’s funny about surveys like this is how everyone slags it off and bigs-up their working class roots, whilst secretly really hoping they come out as Elite.
Do I sense that you have done it and come up just short?
LOL it *really* matters to you, this class thing.
Working class (if I may) northern lad comes to London, ends up working at Goldman (or with Goldman or near Goldman) and is thereby thrust into The City, with its attendant braying toffs (as well as of course plenty of pin-sharp northern lads) and gets hugely confused about life and priorities and what is this fresh hell I have chanced upon and appears, from your stated political views and certainly today's posts, to take refuge in a "hate the stupid poshos" line.
Boy are you conflicted.
I honestly wouldn't worry about it so much. People will accept you at face value (or post value here on PB). You don't need to make such a big thing about class because you clearly need to work through a few things.
It was actually @SouthamObserver and Laura Pidcock who brought it up.
Doing good is what counts, not class. I don't obsess about class. But I do want the working class to wise up and vote Labour.
Re me and City activities, I'll get back to you on a quieter thread when there aren't so many people around.
People cannot even consistently agree on what left and right wing mean, theres no hope of agreeing the 3 or 7 or whatever classes we now have.
I would like to see the ONS take a lead on this. Create some new measures with distinct and clearly definited terms, not using the word "class" at all, one based on background and education, another on wealth, another on employment status. Standardise and promote awareness of them so this discussion isnt repeated with chaotic personal definitions of class in 20 years time.
I believe there are now seven social classes. You can even find out which one you are part of here:
I am a member of the Elite group, much to my dismay...
But it doesn't say what % of the country falls into each of the 7.
If (say) 15% are scoring Elite that would devalue the label.
It does at the end, 6% are Elite, 25% established middle class, 6% technical middle class, 15% new affluent workers, 14% traditional working class, 19% emergent service workers and 15% Precariat
Ah OK, Thanks. Yes I guess 6% is just low enough to merit the Elite tag.
What’s funny about surveys like this is how everyone slags it off and bigs-up their working class roots, whilst secretly really hoping they come out as Elite.
Do I sense that you have done it and come up just short?
LOL it *really* matters to you, this class thing.
Working class (if I may) northern lad comes to London, ends up working at Goldman (or with Goldman or near Goldman) and is thereby thrust into The City, with its attendant braying toffs (as well as of course plenty of pin-sharp northern lads) and gets hugely confused about life and priorities and what is this fresh hell I have chanced upon and appears, from your stated political views and certainly today's posts, to take refuge in a "hate the stupid poshos" line.
Boy are you conflicted.
I honestly wouldn't worry about it so much. People will accept you at face value (or post value here on PB). You don't need to make such a big thing about class because you clearly need to work through a few things.
It was actually @SouthamObserver and Laura Pidcock who brought it up.
Doing good is what counts, not class. I don't obsess about class. But I do want the working class to wise up and vote Labour.
Re me and City activities, I'll get back to you on a quieter thread when there aren't so many people around.
Wait, what? I thought it was just the two of us here?
"I don't obsess about class. But I do want the working class to wise up and vote Labour".
A reference, presumably to the famous Lockheed Skunkworks. Which before the suits took it over and ruined it, specialised in delivering the impossible on a budget.
A reference, presumably to the famous Lockheed Skunkworks. Which before the suits took it over and ruined it, specialised in delivering the impossible on a budget.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Labour's great mistake is to assume that working class people want to stay working class. Often, they don't. Being working class isn't a state of grace. It can be pretty unpleasant and depressing, I imagine.
The state of grace is being where Polly Toynbee is, a wealthy person 'on the side of' the working class. (but also well insulated from it). A wealthy person who is also 'moral'.
This is the Nirvana that many studying soft subjects at our universities aspire to. They look up to the BBC, the third sector, the quangos, the arts, the race industry, education......and they dream the heady dream.
And is this dream less worthy than the one of getting rich and shitting on those who haven't?
A rich person making money in the private sector has not taken from the poor any more than a rich person making their money in the public sector.
Agreed. The sector isn't relevant. Only what you do and how much you are paid for it.
The value you add minus the remuneration you extract = your net contribution to society.
The Beatles formulated it almost right - "and in the end" - at the end of Abbey Road but not quite.
Not criticising you Big G, but...how does shop locally, limit visits to supermarkets and avoid numerous destinations mean "a return to the High Street?" Unless you live on a High Street, that means the opposite surely? To me it means more deliveries.
A reference, presumably to the famous Lockheed Skunkworks. Which before the suits took it over and ruined it, specialised in delivering the impossible on a budget.
Some of us on PB might prefer to refer to the original Skunk Works in the cartoon mentioned in that Wiki - it was where the relevant communal drug was brewed, called 'Kickapoo Joy Juice'.
People cannot even consistently agree on what left and right wing mean, theres no hope of agreeing the 3 or 7 or whatever classes we now have.
I would like to see the ONS take a lead on this. Create some new measures with distinct and clearly definited terms, not using the word "class" at all, one based on background and education, another on wealth, another on employment status. Standardise and promote awareness of them so this discussion isnt repeated with chaotic personal definitions of class in 20 years time.
I believe there are now seven social classes. You can even find out which one you are part of here:
I am a member of the Elite group, much to my dismay...
But it doesn't say what % of the country falls into each of the 7.
If (say) 15% are scoring Elite that would devalue the label.
It does at the end, 6% are Elite, 25% established middle class, 6% technical middle class, 15% new affluent workers, 14% traditional working class, 19% emergent service workers and 15% Precariat
Ah OK, Thanks. Yes I guess 6% is just low enough to merit the Elite tag.
What’s funny about surveys like this is how everyone slags it off and bigs-up their working class roots, whilst secretly really hoping they come out as Elite.
Do I sense that you have done it and come up just short?
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
F1: Sunday morning should be fine but qualifying could be a washout, so I don't think the second practice results are likely to determine what the grid will look like.
A reference, presumably to the famous Lockheed Skunkworks. Which before the suits took it over and ruined it, specialised in delivering the impossible on a budget.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
Still plenty of years to go.. don't give up so early.
A former PM might be qualified to oversee an investigation into the WHO response to the pandemic - particularly from a political and organisational point of view - but this kind of definitive statement is both silly, and quite probably wrong:
Neither science nor vaccine development can be forecast with anything like that certainty. And the ramping up of production capacity - depending upon the precise nature of successful vaccines - could be a great deal faster than that.
Probably one thing that needs looking into is the way politicians tend to rely on what they're told by sources that claim to be "informed", rather than trying to inform themselves - in this case just by reading the newspapers!
There is a tendency (both in business and government, I think) by those at the top to believe that privileged access necessarily means knowledge.
It doesn't, necessarily - and it certainly doesn't grant understanding.
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
Still plenty of years to go.. don't give up so early.
Fair point but in 1997 Labour was polling big leads years before the election.
Starmer really should have made progress by this time next year to stand any decent chance of ever being PM.
This isn't me abandoning him BTW, just accepting reality. Perhaps those who called him a Kinnock character, might well be right.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Labour's great mistake is to assume that working class people want to stay working class. Often, they don't. Being working class isn't a state of grace. It can be pretty unpleasant and depressing, I imagine.
The state of grace is being where Polly Toynbee is, a wealthy person 'on the side of' the working class. (but also well insulated from it). A wealthy person who is also 'moral'.
This is the Nirvana that many studying soft subjects at our universities aspire to. They look up to the BBC, the third sector, the quangos, the arts, the race industry, education......and they dream the heady dream.
And is this dream less worthy than the one of getting rich and shitting on those who haven't?
A rich person making money in the private sector has not taken from the poor any more than a rich person making their money in the public sector.
Agreed. The sector isn't relevant. Only what you do and how much you are paid for it.
The value you add minus the remuneration you extract = your net contribution to society.
The Beatles formulated it almost right - "and in the end" - at the end of Abbey Road but not quite.
Having previously whined "one for me, nineteen for you".
Just think, if Dom had not driven to Barnard Castle, and Jenrick not done whatever he's supposed to have done, the Tories would be about 30 points ahead.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Assuming they have any decent data to use. No point having the boffins sat in a central unit away from the data gatherers in my experience.
Not criticising you Big G, but...how does shop locally, limit visits to supermarkets and avoid numerous destinations mean "a return to the High Street?" Unless you live on a High Street, that means the opposite surely? To me it means more deliveries.
I expect you gov thinks the high street itself does not include large supermarkets in out of town centre locations, but not sure to be honest
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
Still plenty of years to go.. don't give up so early.
Fair point but in 1997 Labour was polling big leads years before the election.
Starmer really should have made progress by this time next year to stand any decent chance of ever being PM.
This isn't me abandoning him BTW, just accepting reality. Perhaps those who called him a Kinnock character, might well be right.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Assuming they have any decent data to use. No point having the boffins sat in a central unit away from the data gatherers in my experience.
The best way to get decent data is to demand it. Then use it and demand more.
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
The air is almost solid with excrement at the moment. The chances of it all missing the sundry fans scattered about are sub optimal (at least from a government perspective).
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Because Big Dom has Big Ideas and people in other departments not under his direct control are too stupid and cannot be trusted.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Assuming they have any decent data to use. No point having the boffins sat in a central unit away from the data gatherers in my experience.
It's a fair observation. The collation and presentation of data during Covid has been genuinely spectacular in its awfulness.
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
The air is almost solid with excrement at the moment. The chances of it all missing the sundry fans scattered about are sub optimal (at least from a government perspective).
Yeah but at some point I start to wonder if the Tory support just is that strong - and nothing will dent it, ever.
The Labour strategy seems to be the long game (which is fair enough) but the strategy needs to be more than "wait for the Tory vote to fall", as it may well not.
Starmer needs to get Labour consistently polling above 40%. So far he's gained about 6 points - but it's nowhere near enough.
Data science very much depends on the quality of data going in to any model. The issue with the public sector is that it will be garbage quality data going in. It's a completely pointless exercise until they get good quality data to feed into the models. That means you need a team of data engineers and data analysts to collect, clean and transform the data into something a data scientist can actually use. Hiring a bunch of six figure data scientists from the city or tech is going to be an exercise in frustration for everyone involved.
I say this as someone who interacts with a data science team on a daily basis, the main frustration they have is data quality and consistency. It's been something we've spent a lot of money fixing.
Siting polls that makes one happy is risky as as sure as anything another one will come along and make you sad
The trend in polls is the best way of considering the political climate and at present opinion seems to be settling around a modest conservative lead, despite everything that has been thrown at Boris and HMG
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
But its nonsense! So on retirement everyone stops being working class?
In this country its also perfectly possible to live off state benefits without ever doing a days work. Not fun or recommended, but do-able. So at birth we are all excluded from being working class.
On a personal level I could certainly retire early today and survive, just not at the level I would like to so will probably end up working another 15 years or so. Which level sets my class, my desired income, historic income or average income, or state sustenance?
I can answer these questions on Laura's behalf. On retirement you carry on being what you were before you retired. Being jobless on benefits does not count as living off your wealth because it is not living comfortably. Which means - let's put this out there - that your capital needs to be sufficient to generate an income of at least the average wage without any labour input from you. If you're in that boat you can only be "cultural" working class - which is the softer, subjective and imo less useful concept (albeit not irrelevant).
How do I know how long Im going to live? If its 75 Im excluded from working class on your definition, if l lived to 95 I would be eligible. This is silly.
It's silly if we get too literal about it. My point is mainly that of the 2 extremes - class is all about money or all about attitudes - I prefer the 1st one. I think that's more useful when it comes to the true economic interest of people (whether they see it or not).
But OK, since I don't like to dodge questions. We don't know how long you're going to live. But remember we've said that when you become a pensioner - at say 65 - you remain in the class you were in on the day before that event. Thus at this point we only need to ascertain if your wealth is sufficient to live comfortably on UNTIL you reach 65. If it is, you can be "Stocky" working class but not "Pidcock" working class.
Sorry to be a literal pedant and all that but it really is still nonsensical. At 64y 11m everyone is no longer working class, as they only need a months average wages. By the last day they only need one days average wages to prevent them being working class. At retirement date their class is fixed, so you have no working class retirees.
The group the Labour party has really lost are working class retirees.
Grr.
So, if you approach retirement in a position whereby your wealth alone is generating a comfortable income then whatever class status that signifies continues to the grave (barring accidents).
As for Labour, yes, our biggest problem is not about class it's about age. We are going gangbusters with the under 40s - setting records there - but it's the opposite of that with the over 65s.
If we could make 'full set of own teeth' a condition of voting we'd be in great shape.
Strange that, the ones not keen on a true left wing government are the one's who have actually experienced one. The ones most in favour are people who have never experienced one. I wonder if this tells us something?
I think we're waiting to have a bash at big interventionist state here in the modern era. I'm not counting this effort from Johnson and Sunak - I sense their heart is not in it.
Thankfully not enough are stupid enough to think a big interventionist state will work currently and I don't think you will ever convince enough
Just think, if Dom had not driven to Barnard Castle, and Jenrick not done whatever he's supposed to have done, the Tories would be about 30 points ahead.
Let's face it, if Jenrick had not done what he's supposed to have done he would have done something else. He may aspire to being Chris Grayling when he grows up.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Assuming they have any decent data to use. No point having the boffins sat in a central unit away from the data gatherers in my experience.
Yes, exactly this. Data science is a field that sits on top of a very, very good data engineering and analyst team. It's the cherry on top of a really good desert, not the desert itself.
Data science is very important. I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
It must be because we do not have a government in this country now, let alone government departments. Instead we have an incompetent blustering Johnson machine which makes everything up on the hoof. And the control freaks who are running him need the data to know how to spin the Johnson line to greatest effect.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Labour's great mistake is to assume that working class people want to stay working class. Often, they don't. Being working class isn't a state of grace. It can be pretty unpleasant and depressing, I imagine.
The state of grace is being where Polly Toynbee is, a wealthy person 'on the side of' the working class. (but also well insulated from it). A wealthy person who is also 'moral'.
This is the Nirvana that many studying soft subjects at our universities aspire to. They look up to the BBC, the third sector, the quangos, the arts, the race industry, education......and they dream the heady dream.
And is this dream less worthy than the one of getting rich and shitting on those who haven't?
No but getting rich in the private sector is a classless dream. Always was. The leftist dream is one of a person who is exclusively middle class. And white middle class at that.
Working class people need not apply.
For the kind of people we are talking about, working class people exist and must remain that way so that they can be 'represented'. Same with disadvantaged BAME people. They have to stay that way for the vast white leftist panoply of well paid people 'on their side' to continue to exist.
That's why Patel and Co. excite such ire from the left. They don't need highly paid 'representatives' or 'advocates' or people 'on their side' any more.
They threaten the leftist Nirvana. And when there is a threat the response is vicious. As pensioners are about to find out with TV licences.
That's quite a rich and complex world you have constructed around your own prejudices there. You could code it up and market as one of those games. It might take off if what I hear about the political attitudes of "gamers" is correct.
Yeh...whatever
New Yougov out shows tory lead of 10.
I return that "whatever" - I'm only really following the US polls atm.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Assuming they have any decent data to use. No point having the boffins sat in a central unit away from the data gatherers in my experience.
Yes, exactly this. Data science is a field that sits on top of a very, very good data engineering and analyst team. It's the cherry on top of a really good desert, not the desert itself.
But that knowledge is based on your expertise - Boris and Cummings don't like experts they just want someone to point at, boost about and when, it finally becomes necessary, cop the blame.
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
Still plenty of years to go.. don't give up so early.
Fair point but in 1997 Labour was polling big leads years before the election.
Starmer really should have made progress by this time next year to stand any decent chance of ever being PM.
This isn't me abandoning him BTW, just accepting reality. Perhaps those who called him a Kinnock character, might well be right.
If Starmer is going to have any chance, he has got to take on loons like this - otherwise, their former voters in the Red Wall will never come back to them
The most ironic part is when they start saying "f*ck off out of my borough". It's like listening to one of those chants of the 70s and 80s of "f*ck off back to where you came from"
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
As I have said, by next summer it will look very different. Johnson's 'administration' will be polling very badly.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Labour's great mistake is to assume that working class people want to stay working class. Often, they don't. Being working class isn't a state of grace. It can be pretty unpleasant and depressing, I imagine.
The state of grace is being where Polly Toynbee is, a wealthy person 'on the side of' the working class. (but also well insulated from it). A wealthy person who is also 'moral'.
This is the Nirvana that many studying soft subjects at our universities aspire to. They look up to the BBC, the third sector, the quangos, the arts, the race industry, education......and they dream the heady dream.
And is this dream less worthy than the one of getting rich and shitting on those who haven't?
A rich person making money in the private sector has not taken from the poor any more than a rich person making their money in the public sector.
Agreed. The sector isn't relevant. Only what you do and how much you are paid for it.
The value you add minus the remuneration you extract = your net contribution to society.
The Beatles formulated it almost right - "and in the end" - at the end of Abbey Road but not quite.
Having previously whined "one for me, nineteen for you".
Very good! Yes - grim and highly reprehensible lyric. I don't play that one. Prefer the Jam rip off.
People cannot even consistently agree on what left and right wing mean, theres no hope of agreeing the 3 or 7 or whatever classes we now have.
I would like to see the ONS take a lead on this. Create some new measures with distinct and clearly definited terms, not using the word "class" at all, one based on background and education, another on wealth, another on employment status. Standardise and promote awareness of them so this discussion isnt repeated with chaotic personal definitions of class in 20 years time.
I believe there are now seven social classes. You can even find out which one you are part of here:
I am a member of the Elite group, much to my dismay...
But it doesn't say what % of the country falls into each of the 7.
If (say) 15% are scoring Elite that would devalue the label.
It does at the end, 6% are Elite, 25% established middle class, 6% technical middle class, 15% new affluent workers, 14% traditional working class, 19% emergent service workers and 15% Precariat
Ah OK, Thanks. Yes I guess 6% is just low enough to merit the Elite tag.
What’s funny about surveys like this is how everyone slags it off and bigs-up their working class roots, whilst secretly really hoping they come out as Elite.
Do I sense that you have done it and come up just short?
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Assuming they have any decent data to use. No point having the boffins sat in a central unit away from the data gatherers in my experience.
It's a fair observation. The collation and presentation of data during Covid has been genuinely spectacular in its awfulness.
But that's not something a data scientist fixes, it's something a standard old data analyst fixes. A data scientist will give you a model that predicts death rates months into the future based on current trends, you won't get a nice readable graph of current data from them though.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Something about actors really winds people up. Don't get it myself. For a profession that involves a huge amount of hard work mostly for little money, brings a lot of happiness to paying customers and is something that the UK excels at, it seems to make a certain kind of person on the Right very angry.
Re wealthy people posturing as working class, I actually think it's the "self made" Sugar and Stringfellow and Ashton types who do a lot of it. But not being "luvvies" (perish the thought) they escape censure. Until NOW!
On actors, though, Michael Caine - who I like, don't we all, national treasure - has always irritated me slightly with that cockney shtick of his.
Father = market porter; mother = cook/charwoman (wiki).
Most actors would swiftly have lost their original accent and replaced it with something a bit more RP. Not him. And this irritates you?
To me it becomes affectation after a while when you've long ago left your roots behind. Also with Caine - Sir Michael rather, great actor, national treasure and I mean it - he went very right wing in no time and also he fled our shores to avoid tax.
Just thinking about it now for the first time, this template is perhaps kind of the equivalent for me that Toynbee & Co are for others. I have an irrationally strong aversion to the self-made rich man who plays up his working class essence and at same time is smugly congratulatory of himself for escaping it and who votes Tory and dodges tax.
Wonder if it would bother him if he knew how I felt?
Have you changed your accent? You have also come a long way.
And I think your point about the working classes getting uppity and changing allegiances explains very well the results of the Labour Party over the past 50 years or so.
Lost most of accent but not on purpose. Didn't try hard to keep it either.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Assuming they have any decent data to use. No point having the boffins sat in a central unit away from the data gatherers in my experience.
The best way to get decent data is to demand it. Then use it and demand more.
Or end up with a cottage industry devoted to producing bullshit until someone looks at the cost and benefits and pulls the plug.
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
As I have said, by next summer it will look very different. Johnson's 'administration' will be polling very badly.
Indeed. There is absolutely no chance of that lead being sustained. By this time next year both the bills will have had to come in for the Covid crisis, and Johnson is going to have made some form of decision on Brexit which will be unpopular, either to the Brexit hardcore or to more business-minded Tories.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Assuming they have any decent data to use. No point having the boffins sat in a central unit away from the data gatherers in my experience.
The best way to get decent data is to demand it. Then use it and demand more.
Or end up with a cottage industry devoted to producing bullshit until someone looks at the cost and benefits and pulls the plug.
Indeed, this is going to end up as an expensive exercise of GIGO.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Number 10 has to choose where to expend our taxes and their political capital; to decide where they can make the biggest difference in the time that they have. I can see data science giving them some insight into that.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
Assuming they have any decent data to use. No point having the boffins sat in a central unit away from the data gatherers in my experience.
Yes, exactly this. Data science is a field that sits on top of a very, very good data engineering and analyst team. It's the cherry on top of a really good desert, not the desert itself.
But that knowledge is based on your expertise - Boris and Cummings don't like experts they just want someone to point at, boost about and when, it finally becomes necessary, cop the blame.
I'm going to break the habit of a lifetime and defend Dom here.
I think he's sincere in his lust for scientific government. If only everything could be optimised, and everything unnecessary trimmed, just think of the savings to be made.
The trouble is that, underneath the stinky T shirt, he's an Oxford humanities grad, so he doesn't get the limitations of scientific management. In particular, while it's certainly possible to use data to rigorously answer a question like "how can I optimise the profitability of my business?" or "how can I get enough votes to win a referendum?", real government has infinitely more interacting tradeoffs involved.
Worse than that, data doesn't help you know what questions to ask. My hunch is that a lot of the problems with the UK's Covid response in March were down to asking the wrong questions- "how do we prevent a second peak?" and "how do we stop the NHS being overwhelmed?"- as much as competence/incompetence in their answering and execution.
But yes, should it go wrong, it will be the fault of the boffins. It's always the fault of someone else.
A reference, presumably to the famous Lockheed Skunkworks. Which before the suits took it over and ruined it, specialised in delivering the impossible on a budget.
Genuinely, Labour has a really big problem on their hands and not sure how it can be resolved. Starmer is evidently the best they could have chosen but right now he's not looking like it's enough.
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
The air is almost solid with excrement at the moment. The chances of it all missing the sundry fans scattered about are sub optimal (at least from a government perspective).
Yeah but at some point I start to wonder if the Tory support just is that strong - and nothing will dent it, ever.
The Labour strategy seems to be the long game (which is fair enough) but the strategy needs to be more than "wait for the Tory vote to fall", as it may well not.
Starmer needs to get Labour consistently polling above 40%. So far he's gained about 6 points - but it's nowhere near enough.
YouGov tends to give the Tories their highest scores and Labour its lowest. YouGov may be right, but Opinium on Sunday had Labour on 37 and the Tories on 41, while Redfield and Wilton was 44/39 and Survation was 44/37. All the polls are now showing MoE after a period in which Labour rose and the Tories fell.
So, the Tories could be 10 points in front of 4 points in front. They were 20+ points in front when Starmer took over. There has been significant progress, therefore - mainly because Starmer is not Corbyn and the Tories have scored several own goals. However, right now for most people who have not been directly affected by the virus itself the covid crisis is abstract, so why woud Tory voters in December have changed their minds now? Let's see what happens when the economic situaiton becomes more real.
For those who have been watching the National Theatre at Home streams on YouTube next week’s is I think the last one: Amadeus. I saw it live and when it was originally streamed to cinemas and think it may be the best of the lot (though “This House” might edge it). Much better than the film with some stunning performances both by the actors and the musicians, and particularly by Lucian Msamati who plays Salieri.
Absolutely, who does he think he is getting above himself? Where's his cap?
Doesn't this come down to whether you view class as predominantly a description of economic interest groups or something cultural and performative? If the former, a working class business owner is a contradiction: you cannot be both capital and labour at the same time. If the latter, then a person could define themselves as working class in cultural terms (eg call their evening meal "tea") and be a billionaire capitalist. To my mind the first usage is more useful, because it is tied to something concrete, but then I am an economist. The culture warriors on here might prefer the more performative use of the phrase.
What we need in this country is far more "working class" business owners, people who are aspirational and hope for better for their children. I find the idea that someone is a traitor to their class because they want to get on or have ambitions deeply offensive and immoral. I therefore prefer the second description but I wonder how useful the economic version of your definition is if membership is that transient. Better to focus on gig workers, the unemployed or specific sectors that tell you more about the issues they are facing.
You don't need to be a business owner to hope for better for your children. The problems come when business owners treat their employees like they're disposable and prevent them from realising their dreams for their children. Aspiration is not binary. I don't think it's at all helpful to view people as traitors to their class simply because they have made some money. But equally one might question whether they are still members of that class in the way that many people understand it. Although I have always been middle class I have certainly moved from one end of that wide envelope to the other in material terms over the course of my life, so I am certainly no stranger to, or enemy of, aspiration.
But your argument wasnt against bad business owners exploiting workers, it was that you cant be a working class business owner. Take a previously working class brickie who decides to employ five of his mates, they all work the same duties and hours but he happens to be the owner of the firm. On his first day of ownership does he automatically change class? Is he supposed to be aware of this?
Per Pidcock, you leave the working class at the point where you can live off your wealth. So with your example that would not be on the 1st day or anything close to it.
Usual caveat. Life is not so precise. But it's a helpful thought imo.
Under her definition, I'm still working class, then Kinabalu. That doesn't ring true, I own a flat in Hampstead and work for an international bank in investment markets. I'm the very definition of comfortable middle class.
Yes. She is saying you're working class, don't kid yourself otherwise. And so was I until I didn't have to do it anymore.
Totally understand that this is not definitive. It's a complex area that impinges on identity which is always sensitive.
But I do think her Marxist lens on it is a useful one to use. Certainly more useful than the other extreme - that class boils down to attitudes and as such is essentially self-defined. Not sure where that gets us.
Plus on a partisan political note. If Labour is the party of the working class it makes sense for them to define it to include most of the population.
Just occurred to me. If nowadays you can choose your Gender, surely you should be allowed to choose your Class. I suspect that those allowing the former might be against allowing the latter.
I suspect a lot of left wing luvvies definitely identify as working class, despite significant buckets of cash and very nice houses...
I'm used to this sort of comment. But I would ask you to note that I have been arguing exactly the opposite all thread. That IDing as working class when you're minted is bollox.
Something about actors really winds people up. Don't get it myself. For a profession that involves a huge amount of hard work mostly for little money, brings a lot of happiness to paying customers and is something that the UK excels at, it seems to make a certain kind of person on the Right very angry.
Re wealthy people posturing as working class, I actually think it's the "self made" Sugar and Stringfellow and Ashton types who do a lot of it. But not being "luvvies" (perish the thought) they escape censure. Until NOW!
On actors, though, Michael Caine - who I like, don't we all, national treasure - has always irritated me slightly with that cockney shtick of his.
Father = market porter; mother = cook/charwoman (wiki).
Most actors would swiftly have lost their original accent and replaced it with something a bit more RP. Not him. And this irritates you?
To me it becomes affectation after a while when you've long ago left your roots behind. Also with Caine - Sir Michael rather, great actor, national treasure and I mean it - he went very right wing in no time and also he fled our shores to avoid tax.
Just thinking about it now for the first time, this template is perhaps kind of the equivalent for me that Toynbee & Co are for others. I have an irrationally strong aversion to the self-made rich man who plays up his working class essence and at same time is smugly congratulatory of himself for escaping it and who votes Tory and dodges tax.
Wonder if it would bother him if he knew how I felt?
He doesn't care what you think. He made Muppets Christmas Carol. He doesn't care what anyone thinks. And why should he? Deserved an Oscar for that
Muppets Christmas Carol is the best film adaption of the original book out there. And I’m not even slightly joking.
Comments
Seventeen minutes left. He's 6th currently.
Got to say the live leaderboard and lap-by-lap stuff on the official F1 site is working nicely.
Not So Fast: How Biden Could Still Lose
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/09/election-2020-biden-trump-cancel-culture/?utm_source=PostUp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=23072&utm_term=Editors Picks OC&?tpcc=23072
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1281595166294511616
Just thinking about it now for the first time, this template is perhaps kind of the equivalent for me that Toynbee & Co are for others. I have an irrationally strong aversion to the self-made rich man who plays up his working class essence and at same time is smugly congratulatory of himself for escaping it and who votes Tory and dodges tax.
Wonder if it would bother him if he knew how I felt?
He made Muppets Christmas Carol. He doesn't care what anyone thinks.
And why should he? Deserved an Oscar for that
And I think your point about the working classes getting uppity and changing allegiances explains very well the results of the Labour Party over the past 50 years or so.
New Yougov out shows tory lead of 10.
Instinctively and philosophically I am nervous of this.
Doing good is what counts, not class. I don't obsess about class. But I do want the working class to wise up and vote Labour.
Re me and City activities, I'll get back to you on a quieter thread when there aren't so many people around.
"I don't obsess about class. But I do want the working class to wise up and vote Labour".
V good.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1281599737213472769?s=09
But also...
https://twitter.com/JoeTwyman/status/1281596439735533570
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works
The value you add minus the remuneration you extract = your net contribution to society.
The Beatles formulated it almost right - "and in the end" - at the end of Abbey Road but not quite.
Unless you live on a High Street, that means the opposite surely?
To me it means more deliveries.
https://order-order.com/2020/07/10/tories-back-to-double-digit-lead/
https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=39408335&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjM5MDkxNDczLCJpYXQiOjE1OTQzOTI4NzYsImV4cCI6MTU5NDQ3OTI3Nn0.aKDucnRT_-k__jcfa4zgPmyhx52FbEEQBkGOQ03GRZ8
But yes, the Lockheed incarnation was very impressive.
I have no idea why No. 10 is doing it though, when individual departments should be and then feeding into Downing street the key info/needs for action.
Dom is such a California wanna be.
When he is ousted, he'll no doubt be rocking up at Google's door with his CV.
One of the issues is turning a pile of numbers into something that informs non-experts.
An example of assembling data into a revelatory form -
If you don't speak French, the light brown is Napoleon invading Russia and marching on Moscow. The black is his army on the return.
(ps, I am still making these comments despite falling short of being elite, I hope that's ok. Probably not enough theatre or opera.)
The Tory support is rock solid stable, until something happens to actually hit it, Labour ain't gonna be forming any governments any time soon.
It doesn't, necessarily - and it certainly doesn't grant understanding.
Starmer really should have made progress by this time next year to stand any decent chance of ever being PM.
This isn't me abandoning him BTW, just accepting reality. Perhaps those who called him a Kinnock character, might well be right.
Looks quite similar to 2019- so far!
The Labour strategy seems to be the long game (which is fair enough) but the strategy needs to be more than "wait for the Tory vote to fall", as it may well not.
Starmer needs to get Labour consistently polling above 40%. So far he's gained about 6 points - but it's nowhere near enough.
I say this as someone who interacts with a data science team on a daily basis, the main frustration they have is data quality and consistency. It's been something we've spent a lot of money fixing.
The trend in polls is the best way of considering the political climate and at present opinion seems to be settling around a modest conservative lead, despite everything that has been thrown at Boris and HMG
https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1281601956373508096?s=20
https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1281604216725704708?s=20
Hahahahahaha
Jeremy Corbyn lost an election to the worst defeat since 1935. Yet Aaron is still on this "WEll hE Won MOrE VOTeSHAre than eD"
https://twitter.com/prisonplanet/status/863040667869745156?s=21
The most ironic part is when they start saying "f*ck off out of my borough". It's like listening to one of those chants of the 70s and 80s of "f*ck off back to where you came from"
But counting every shot and no gimmes?
But you wouldn't mistake me for Jacob Rees Mogg.
Will Spiked be doing an anniversary genocide denial article?
The industry is furious.
I believe some of our fellow posters have cruises booked
I think he's sincere in his lust for scientific government. If only everything could be optimised, and everything unnecessary trimmed, just think of the savings to be made.
The trouble is that, underneath the stinky T shirt, he's an Oxford humanities grad, so he doesn't get the limitations of scientific management. In particular, while it's certainly possible to use data to rigorously answer a question like "how can I optimise the profitability of my business?" or "how can I get enough votes to win a referendum?", real government has infinitely more interacting tradeoffs involved.
Worse than that, data doesn't help you know what questions to ask. My hunch is that a lot of the problems with the UK's Covid response in March were down to asking the wrong questions- "how do we prevent a second peak?" and "how do we stop the NHS being overwhelmed?"- as much as competence/incompetence in their answering and execution.
But yes, should it go wrong, it will be the fault of the boffins. It's always the fault of someone else.
So, the Tories could be 10 points in front of 4 points in front. They were 20+ points in front when Starmer took over. There has been significant progress, therefore - mainly because Starmer is not Corbyn and the Tories have scored several own goals. However, right now for most people who have not been directly affected by the virus itself the covid crisis is abstract, so why woud Tory voters in December have changed their minds now? Let's see what happens when the economic situaiton becomes more real.