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Port Outward Starboard Home: Is it really such a crime to be 'posh'?
I notice that whenever David Cameron is mentioned round these parts, he's more often than not dismissed as 'posh'.
This reads as: because he went to Eton he's out of touch with reality so therefore is ill-equipped to run the country and nothing he can say is to be taken seriously.
While I'm not defending him, his background really seems to rankle with people. Why? Tony Blair was just as posh but no one ever mentioned it. (Aah-Bisto made this point very well yesterday).
I went to a public school. I also did five years at a comprehensive. I've seen it all. It wasn't up to me where I went to school or how I was brought up. You are who you are.
Personally, someone's background matters not a jot to me. Obviously you can't like everyone but that goes for people in all walks of life.
So why the big problem with 'posh'?
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Class War?
Red Wedge?
Right back to land ownership, Wat Tyler and the Tolpuddle martyrs?
I don't think "posh" or "tory" has ever been "cool". That may be part of the problem in addition to the perception of old style Tory/perceived posh policy of "fuck you, I'm alright jack" - though I must add here, there are just as many, if not more, posh boys in the Labour ranks as there are in the Tories. Shaun Woodward being a particularly despicable power crazed hypocritical turncoat.
I wonder
whether it's less to do with being posh per se, and more to do with his association with the Bullingdon Club and the Hooray Henry perception thereof?
Cow
Jealousy? Who wouldn't want to be posh - if that confers money and a greased path to what you want to do.
Isn't the 'posh' insult the same as when women call an attractive woman who is perceived to 'have it all' a 'cow'?
Fair point
But... I'd take issue with that "no-one mentioned Blair was posh" bit; there was plenty about Fettes, pictures of him looking very much the toff. And the (possibly apocryphal) story that when asked what his favourite food was, in his Sedgefield constituency he'd say "fish and chips" and in Islington he'd say "pasta & sun-dried tomatoes".
I think in Cameron's case, you can't deny that he has had a very privileged upbringing; and it's fair to say that gives him a hurdle to overcome when trying to relate to the majority of people. Which doesn't mean to say he can't do it - I heard an interview with the owners of a cafe that Cameron frequented when he was at Oxford, who spoke very warmly of him, telling how he used to babysit their kid and played counting games with him.
"Posh" is the label, the bit of shorthand that journalists will use for him. But just like "bully" for Gordon Brown, it's a one-dimensional term, for someone who is, just like you and me and everyone else, a complex muddle of human frailties.
I'd rather see the "posh" bit dropped, to focus on his very real weaknesses in policy and vision.
Frustration
Also the problem is that the class system, but particularly how it manifests itself in the secret network of advantages that come to the people who speak properly and went to the right schools, is alive and well in 2010.
People who aren't born with those advantages just face a much harder climb.
Some relief from that shared frustration of the majority of the population comes from labelling them as twats
Aspiration
I think that pejorative comments about 'posh' people tend to emanate from what's perceived to be a sense of entitlement; most people work hard to earn a wage and acquire a standard of living, and if someone is born into privileged circumstances, he or she has achieved that standard without the work. If you're 'poor', you can aspire to be 'rich' - the converse is rarely true.
This is, however, giddy nonsense. I've met quite a few 'posh' people who aren't wealthy at all, and I've met rough Lancashire sods who bang on about being working-class as they skip round town in their BMWs. The blurring of class-divisions is interesting, because the media still uses stereotypes in an almost cartoon-fashion; stories told in bold-type without nuance or reasoning.
I voted Labour and I'm 'working-class', but I don't think Cameron is such a bad fella. Nick Clegg is just as posh, and the fact that the media insists on tiresome references to 'toffs' is backward and limiting - people have lost faith in politics because of the relentless obsession with portraying politicians as pantomime villains.
Posh
It's the perceived justification of disliking people because of a background that annoys me. The idea that someone from a background that included a private education is therefore a posh/rich/arrogant bastard (and the keyword is bastard)is plain wrong.
Its the same stupidity that assumes that working class people are lazy, red haired people are ugly (don't get me started on that one), women can't understand the offside rule and men can't multitask (how else do I drive and change the bloody CD?).
We should judge people on how they behave and what they do rather than our tired old (wrong) preconceptions.
Women can indeed understand the offside rule
Take my wife. After only twenty-one years' study, she's already got it down pat. (Well, the bit about the positions of the player receiving and the last defender. She's still working on the "non-interfering" attackers bit, but her achievement remains immense nonetheless.)
She's done better than
the ref we had on Sunday then......
Sure
But in general those assumptions have become common place for good reason - they are often true.
If one didnt look at signs to interpret what something might be like it would make decision-making a lot more difficult ie if asked 'Is it going to rain?' whilst looking at a leaden grey sky one would have to say 'how can I tell I am not going to pre-judge'
Things that are often true
will also be often wrong. But we will remember the right ones to confirm our perceptions.
I don't think that its as easy to predict whether someone is a decent human being based upon their background as it is to predict the weather in the next couple of hours by looking out of the window. One is looking at evidence and the other is guessing based upon perceptions. More like I've been to Sydney 3 times and it rained every time. Therefore it always rains in Sydney.
Job interviews are a good example - one is actively taught to ignore preconceptions and first impressions and review the interview looking at the evidence. And yet I meet people all the time that say that they know within the first minute whether they will offer someone the job as a matter of pride in their own intellectual power. Baffling.
Nothing wrong with posh
what is wrong is being an arrogant, snot-gobbling toad who thinks the world is beneath them and others exist only to serve one's own needs and ends.
They are not the same thing.
(PS: this is not a reference to Cameron, but about the use of 'posh' generally)
On Cameron specifically, I think 'posh' is a shorthand for a more complicated set of issues. He, like Blair and Clegg, have had fairly comfortable upbringings. This is ok, not their fault (for want of a better word) and the luck of the draw. The problem comes when they try to empathise with 'ordinary' people and tell them they understand the problems tht face them. I very much doubt whether Cameron has had problems covering his mortgage, or maybe even having a house repossessed. I don't think he really understands what it's like to struggle in that way. There were times, for example, when I was young where my parents had to decide whether to heat the house or eat because money was so short. I don't think he's ever been there, howeve rmuch his heart may (or may not, that remains to be seen) be in the right place.
I don't blame him for that, it just sounds a little strange to me when he (and others like him) try to say that they do.
It's a fair point but
by the same token does someone from a poorer background who has never had a management job really understand what it's like to stand in front of someone and tell them they're redundant? Or anyone whose never served really understand quite what it's like to sit in a vehicle expecting to go over an IED or to be shot at?
And do we the public really understand what it's like to be the Prime Minister who must take momentuous decisions about people's livelihoods, savings, pensions and even their very lives unless we, too, happen to have held some incredibly senior position?
I think this business about understanding and especially first hand experience is totally overdone. What matters is that politicians are capable of understanding a breadth of issues and actually doing things to improve the lot of everyone.
Also a fair point, but
I think a manager who hs had the threat of reduncancy hanging over their head may have better than hypothetical knowledge of the impact of what they're saying. Also, if the person being told also manages others, then they too may understand how bad the teller may feel. I also have no real understanding of serving in the armed forces, so I don't know hat those feelings are like; even speaking to friends and family who have doesn't get me much closer really. And I'm never going to be Prime Minister, so I don't seek to understand the huge pressure of the job.
For me, part of undertaking a job and understanding a breadth of issues is being able to appreciate their impact, and not just at the statistical level, but what it may also mean at a human level. I think what I'm getting at is that I don't like the idea of a Platonic leader, cut off from the lives of the people they govern. I prefer the idea of someone who has, for want of a better phrase, lived a bit and has a bank of experiences to call on to inform their decison-making. In that sense, my misgivings about Cameron (and about Blair and to a lesser extent Brown, when I had them) are more about the homogeneous nature of his life experiences than anything else. But I think this is not unusual in terms of the political classes, where the path of school (public or otherwise)->university->political researcher/party hack->MP route is becoming increasingly common. That kind of 'bubble' is, I think, part of the dysfunction with the current political system as a whole.
Hope I've explained myself a bit more clearly now.
There does often seem to be...
...an assumption that "posh" people's experiences are somehow less than others'. That's not true. Working class people don't have the preserve on empathy, heartache, worry, terror, love or excitement, but that often seems to be the implication when people compare the "posh" to those lucky folk who have "lived a bit".
What makes you think that someone with a privileged background hasn't "lived a bit"? Do you have to undergo financial hardship to understand the pressures and joys of life?
Answer: no.
I'm not saying exactly that
(and from what you've said here previously I know you are speaking from experience). Hard as it may seem to believe, I actually agree with you in a roundabout way.
I was drawn particulary by your phrase, "Do you have to undergo financial hardship to understand the pressures and joys of life". No, I just think that the causes of pressures and joys you experience may be of an entirely different character to those of many other people. Not better. Or worse. Just different.
That's possibly true.
I don't think you need to have experienced the non-posh variety to lead a country effectively, though. We know a lot about Cameron, but what we don't know is how alive the quality of empathy is in him. That's the important thing: if he's an empathic person, and I have no idea about that, he'll be able to translate other people's experiences - regardless of their cause - into an emotional resonance of his own.
After all, I've never lost a child, but the thought of what he must have gone through when his little boy died freezes me to the marrow.
Who's to say he's not perfectly capable of understanding the terror of losing one's job, or not being able to make ends meet? We can never know how someone's empathic wiring may or may not work, and that wiring has nothing to do with class.
Yeah
I can go with that, and this discussion finally puts a finger on the thing that nagged at me about my misgivings about him; whether the understanding is acquired from experience or empathy is maybe not the important thing, but whether he has it and can use it. [ASIDE: And I also agree that I am glad I've never lost a child; that really does make my blood run cold just to think about it].
Now we just wait and see and give the man a chance to show some of my hoped for understanding.
On a related tack, I've had a similar discussion about acting with someone who teaches theatre where I work. And I averred that I thought method acting was at heart, a poor practice, principally because those who had to use the method to understand a role did so because of a failure of empathy. He basically shrugged and said, "you may think so, I couldn't possibly comment."
Perhaps that empathic issue was Brown's problem. for all he may have cared, he wasn't good at signalling empathy, which is a different thing form having it, of course.
And finally, to turn all that on its head, some of the least empathic people I have ever met have been the furthest from what one might call 'posh'.
Empathy is not
about sharing the same experience but about sharing an understanding of what experience has taught us. Brown, I suspect, was a man capable of great empathy but not too great at communicating it. Blair on the other hand struck me as someone with little empathy but with a great ability to communicate the idea that he had it. Cameron I suspect is somewhere between the two. My other impression of Brown is that he suffered fools badly but that Blair would happily suffer them if they gave him something he wanted. My understanding of the background to Cameron is that he has a steel within him that he's not afraid to show if required but feels more in control if he doesn't have to lose control: he's often alluded to this when he talks of the "new politics" with less haranguing and more debate. I can empathise with that.
Financial hardship is a relative issue, not an absolute one. Whether you take home £200 a week or £2000 a week thare are commitments, responsibilities and obligations that must be met financially, the books have to be balanced. As others have alluded on here the culture of living today and paying tomorrow is rife at all income levels as is the ignorance and selfish attitude that goes with it, the latter often more strikingly apparent when children are on the scene. As a father I would naturally say this.
In the same way that financial hardship is relative, so is financial extravagance. I know people who bitch and moan about not having enough money but who continue to shop and dine week in week out, seemimgly incapable of rationalising that the empty bank account isn't because they don't have enough money but because they don't have the right lifestyle for the money they earn. It's their choice and has nothing to do with me whatsoever but it's an observation I've made. On the other hand I know people who bitch and moan about having no money but that's because they've invested in things like their house, their savings, their pensions, their kids, their parents, their business and so on. It makes no difference in either scenario how much you earn, it's a question of choice of how you balance the books.
For me poverty is not being able to pay for the basics: a roof over your head, food on the table and clothes on your back. After that it's a question of choice.
This little threadlet
is one of the reasons I love this place so much. I struggle to think of many places out there on the web where a discussion like this would have wound up being so polite, articulate, considered and, more importantly for me, able to illuminate my own thoughts.
Mind you, when idiotbear talked about about whether David Cameron was, "perfectly capable of understanding the terror of losing one's job". I bet he's got a much better feeling for that now! :)
I'm glad...
...it was as good for you as it was for me. I really love this blog sometimes.
:-)
Matters financial.
Everyone complains about money. In the same way that work expands to occupy the time available, lifestyle expands to occupy the money available. There are few people in this World who don't think "Ooh.. just imagine what I could do with a bit more.."
We also have to consider Brtish manners and reticence. I know a fair few very, very comfortably-off people but manners dictates that they have to complain about just how crippling school fees are and that they'll have to see how things go before they book the second week's skiing. I know they don't even have to consider the price of either. They know that I know. But we continue the charade.
Does anyone know anyone who is open about how much they earn and how comfortably off they are?
Common People by Pulp
nails this issue doesn't it?
I assume that's a joke.
No. As a jokey, sour little bit of lyrical fluff, it's a good 'un, but it speaks precisely no wider truth about anything.
I've always loved this bit...
Like a dog lying in a corner
they will bite you and never warn you
Look out
they'll tear your insides out
'cos everybody hates a tourist
especially one who thinks
it's all such a laugh
yeah and the chip stain's grease
will come out in the bath
You will never understand
how it feels to live your life
with no meaning or control
and with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
and they burn so bright
whilst you can only wonder why
Brilliant, insightful, and more importantly the pop record of a decade.
Brilliant and insightful?
Really?
"Nailing" a type of person who simply doesn't exist on any large scale (i.e. trustafarians slumming it) is pretty easy, and I think the "they burn so bright..." bit is guilty of the most lazy and crass romanticisation of working class people I can think of. At the same time it makes a pretty terrible set of assumptions about poshoes: they're all dilettantes who have to hang around working class people to experience "real life", as if "real" and "poor" were synonymous.
I find it pretty richly ironic that the song contains the couplet "the stupid things that you do / because you think that poor is cool", because it always seemed to me that that's exactly what Jarvis WAS saying. At least, he seemed to be saying the flip side: that posh people are lame, idiotic wannabes. The corollary to that would seem to be "poor people are better".
But maybe I'm over analysing, or at least over-generalising. I don't think so, though: the whole point about anecdotal songs like this is that they're trying to use a specific instance to present a perceived universal truth. I think Jarvis has written cleverer lyrics than this in his sleep.
I mean, don't get me wrong - it's a good pop lyric, as pop lyrics go. But it's not true.
Yes, really.
Brilliant and insightful on a micro level; at a relationship level. There is a palpable anger at its flinty little heart. You can feel his rage, and bitterness.
You experience an insight into his emotional state, unrefined and unedited. That line '...if you called your dad, he could stop it all...' always made me wince - because there is a shameful truth in there for people like me. I have a safety net, no matter how much I might screw up. That's clearly not true for everyone.
If you generalise it out - all posh people are like this, all common people are like that, well of course it isn't true - and I can't believe that Jarvis really meant it like that. But at a specific level it is very, very true, and utterly real. It says something about class, and perceptions of class that pop music rarely bothers itself with, I'd say it is worth cherishing if only for that.
Fair enough.
Like I said, I really like the song, and I agree totally that it's one of the defining songs of the last 20 years or so. I just think the lyrics aren't El Jarvo's very best. "I Spy", on the other hand...
Is I Spy
the one where he talks about skilfully manoeuvring his bike around the dog turd on the pavement outside the corner shop?
Hang on...
Yss, I've just checked. And it is. Class.
Oh yes it is
I have known people like this, IB. As to it being a wider truth: don't know.I was just responding to Mark JF's comments
I went to public school too
I think the point with Cameron is that it seems very much as if many of the clichés about being upper class and out of touch - favouring the rich, surrounding oneself almost entirely with upper-middle class white men, stances on gay rights and immigration - may turn out to be applicable to him and his government. I could be wrong.
There are people, and I've chosen not to be one of them, who go straight from public school into their careers with the intention of staying in the same social circles, having the same friends and the same opinions, and ultimately creating an atmosphere of Old Boys' Club around them. It doesn't just happen in politics.
This is it.
I think, actually, the braying hooray-Henry types are actually just the ones who haven't moved on. Actually, many public school types, like myself and - apparently - Lucas, had no interest in just being at school for the rest of our lives. I went to one of the major Victorian public schools as a day pupil, on a very large bursary, which enabled my parents, who otherwise would have been reasonably comfortably-off, to near-bankrupt themselves on the balance of the fees.
The thing is, even though I definitely have "the accent", and am in no sense one of those blokes who tries to deny my schooling, I also had no interest in continuing the public school experience.
But every school has the twat who was cool in the fifth form, and when you meet him thirty years later is exactly the same. That's not just a public school thing.
But, yes, public school people tend to be wealthy and very well-educated. That's a potent mix in terms of life prospects, and I can see why it could cause resentment, but that's no excuse for lazy stereotyping. I get pretty annoyed at people being dismissed as posh, because I've had colleagues prepared to dismiss me as a dilletante and somehow not "real" because of my background. It doesn't help that I've progressed fast in my career, I guess, but the fact is I've always taught in comprehensives and I'm pretty fucking good at my job. I'm the opposite of a snob: my whole motivation as a teacher is to try and replicate the frankly brilliant education I was lucky enough to receive for people who couldn't have a hope of going to the sort of school I went to. I judge people on their merits - class never EVER comes into it - so I think I've every right to get fucked off if others don't extend me the same courtesy.
Therein lies the answer
"my whole motivation as a teacher is to try and replicate the frankly brilliant education I was lucky enough to receive for people who couldn't have a hope of going to the sort of school I went to"
Mr Idiotbear, I salute you.
Seconded
up arrow clearly deserved.
Have an up from me
A thought has occurred to me
I run a boys football team in the Surrey Primary League. This covers a real cross section of backgrounds. The 'posher' teams are generally nicer behaved, more polite and less likely to berate the poor parent who has volunteered to run the line. Arrogance and thinking that they are above others manifests itself in many ways.
Manners
At public school they are taught to have exemplary manners. I actually find that the constant exercise of perfect manners.... 'after you' the whole time...is actually irritating because you know behind it they are confident in their own superiority
That's daft
I don't think it's anything to do with superiority. Everyone's entitled to good manners. They cost nothing after all.
Ditto
As a parent of a son in a football team, the poorer the area a team is from the greater the lack of respect, the on/off pitch nastiness, the bad language, the cheating, the fighting.
I am also a 'rugby parent' and the absence of the above is obvious.
why is it?
I'm with Mark E. Smith
Working class and upper class people are similar in a lot of ways. It's the aspirational middle-classes that are the problem.
A view shared
not just by yourself and MES but also by Victorian Tory PM Benjamin Disraeli.
Disraeli and Gladstone wouldn't survive these days. Lose an election and you're out. No multiple comebacks as in those days.
Tam Dalyell was ill-equipped to lead the country as well
But I don't think his being an Eton old boy had much to do with that.
And what about Michael and Paul Foot, Richard Crossman, Denis Healey, Tony Benn, Jack Straw, Alistair Darling...? Posh public- schoolboys, the lot of them.
In Benn's
case, his inability to lead the country had less to do with his roots, and more to do with his general swivel eyed looniness.
Loony?
- Campaigned for the Peerage Act, specifically so that he could renounce his own peerage and be elected to the Commons
- Introduced Post Buses, Girobank and got the Concorde development off the ground
- Campaigned for a referendum on entry to the EEC
- Later condemned the EEC as "bureaucratic and centralised"
Madness!
What a Mixture is the Benn
The problem with old Tony is he is equal parts barmy and entirely sensible. You never know which part you will get. He will start answering a question and you will think "spot on, he know's what he is on about". Then he will spiral off in to the potty end of the spectrum. I still admire him though for his stubborness.
He also won
.. along with Roy Bailey, Radio 2 Folk Awards "Best Live Act 2003".
I rest my case.
Have you read his book 'Letters to my Grandchildren'?
It's wonderful... really warm, humane and compassionate.
Not yet
But it is in the pile.
The assumption
The assumption that posh people want to grab a big packet of money from the family tree while standing on a pile of poor people that they are crushing to death. In fact, the desire to have an easy life and to exploit other people seems to be a basic desire of most human beings, although some disguise it better than others and have multiple levels of self-justification behind it. It just gets characterized differently depending on political persuasion.
My experience is that
you tend to find a roughly similar percentage of arrogant, ignorant bastards with an inexplicable sense of entitlement and generous, caring, intelligent people (and variations thereof) in every social and/or economic class.
In my time.
I have had many friends,from all classes and many walks of life.I have had Black friends,Jewish friends,Chinese friends,Muslim friends,Gay friends,German friends,American friends,French friends,Greek friends,Irish,Scottish and Canadian friends I've even had Ginger friends.
Some have been very rich,some dirt poor but with very few exceptions I have enjoyed the company of them all.
It's the character of the person that matters,If they are of good heart and open minded then the chances are that I will get on with them.
As for Politicos'they are all professional liars whatever their background.
er...
Er...if you didn't enjoy their company, they wouldn't have been your friends, no? (but I know where you are coming from.)
I'm a Comp taught Hackney boy
but one of my best friends went to the same school as Clegg (was only a few years below actually). He's not posh as such, in fact he was brought up by a single parent and he and his family are extremely left wing. He knows how to play the game though, socially and has a broader network of friends from his school days than I do, who have ended up in useful positions in various industries.
Most of my old school contacts ended up either in prison or in Essex.
Not sure which is
the worst of those scenarios. ;)
It's not where you're from
it's where you're at. Let's judge him on what happens next.
Simon L has made my point far better than I could ^^^^
So the only addition I want to make is I have met many "posh" people who are incredibly warm, likeable and generous individuals, just as I have met a great many working class pillocks. Never forget that George Orwell was an old Etonian. But then he spent his life examining class and inequality, and indeed writing about it.
My problem with Cameron is he appears to have ascended gracefully with no setbacks of any kind, cushioned by privilege and a large amount of personal wealth with the help of an establishment that he is happy to be a part of. Has he ever questioned if there was anything unequal or unfair about this situation? I doubt it, but I could be wrong.
He may have shifted more towards the political center than many of his Tory colleagues, but I cant avoid the personal suspicion that he did that to appease the electorate, rather than because he has become less ring wing himself. Maybe establishment is a better word than posh, but it takes up more newspaper space, and so isn't used.
Setbacks
It is worth pointing that one of Cameron's children was born severely disabled and recently died. So there's two setbacks more difficult than anything most people (of any class) will have to experience in their lives.
True
with a slight caveat. Having a disabled child and suffering the death of that child can (and does) happen to people from all walks of life, and it's horrific for anyone it does happen to.
At the same time we should also be aware that others may not be so fortunate in the amount of care and support that they could call upon in those circumstances. As great as the NHS is, it can't do everything.
As I mentioned before, this is not an attack on Cameron, merely an observation.
Is their anything unequal or unfair
with having well off parents?
Or is it just luck? Is it any different to the fact that I am a crap singer and Mick Hucknall is better singer than me? I don't see a difference, in that respect at least, between being gifted genes that means someone can sing or money which means I have more opportunity.
If he had forced some setbacks in order to look a little less priveliged, then that would be stupid and not what I would want a PM to be doing.
I share some of your concerns - the fact that he didn't wear morning dress at his brothers wedding in case he looked like Eton boy seems to suggest a worrying element of manipulation to me. But I will endeavour to keep an open mind and judge him by how he performs.
Yep
have an up arrow. Judge the man on results not on which school he went to or how much cash his parents have
The morning after
the coalition was formed, the TV cameras filmed Cameron leaving his house enroute to number 10. His house seemed to be pretty normal in a not very impressive street. If this is his only property his achievements thus far dont seem anything special at all. He could of course have several other properties that we havent seen including some maybe even with a duck pond and a moat!!
Posh status has absolutely no influence on me at all - I judge people by their character. Brian Clough was most obviously working class yet made millions and proceeded to give much of it away to needy causes. Joanna Lumley always comes across as Posh yet her support for those less well off is impressive. There again Piers Morgan who aspires to be posh appears to have no redeeming traits whatsoever.
Ha!
"There again Piers Morgan who aspires to be posh appears to have no redeeming traits whatsoever."
Piers the Sneer
How he hasn't been battered yet is beyond me.I liked the time he tried to crawl to Alex Ferguson, asking him if there was anything he could do to repair their fractured relationship.The reply was "Yes, fuck off and die."
He has
Jeremy Clarkson famously lamped him once.
Not that famously
Until now, I was unaware of this.
Despite the passage of time it still made me smile.
Which is probably a bad thing.
Given that education is always a major theme of
any election and we all think it's important, why do we have a hang up about having a well educated Prime Minister?
Any fool with enough money
Any fool with enough money can buy an education. It doesn't mean they actually end up learning anything. Someone who's made good use of it, however, is another matter entirely.
I think
it would be a great idea. Unfortunately, we now have a Prime Minister who thought it was a jolly wheeze to belong to a club that smashed up restaurants and then paid the oiks off with a fat cheque.
Well
the idea that doing something stupid as a student should stop people from attaining positions of power and influence would reduce the number of people able to take the roles to non-students give or take a few.
Why is it so difficult to wait and see how he does before we decide he's no good or not?
I can forgive him
for being a Tory student. We all make mistakes. But he's still a Tory now.
Your right of course
but he does have a little dash of Lib Dem in the family now. It might make him more palatable.
A thought experiment:
What would happen if we ONLY had state education?
Isn't the other side of the same coin
those people who are keen to state they belong to one class or another as though it means they have a certain set of virtues? The oddest ones are those who have a questionable claim to being "working class" but still tell you about it. You sometimes see it in celebrities like Frank Skinner (B.A, M.A) who was a teacher and is now a millionaire, but apparently still seems sees himself as working class. Even if his parents had that background, hasn't he moved on a bit?
And it's not just comedians trying to appear "authentic" to give a journalist something to write about. I worked recently with someone who was pleasant enough, but reminded us from time to time that he was working class. He was a Web developer with a degree, and on about £40,000 a year, so pretty much the same as the people he worked with, none of whom made any claims to be any class. (I don't know what his parents did, but he did mention one day that his father had got a new company car - presumably it's hard to get pit ponies these days.)
It's a tough one
My parents are working class, but I'm not now. I had a university education and now work in an academic, middle class professional job. In most senses I am almost archetypically middle class, but in some way I still identify with being working class because of values and habits my parents instilled in me as a child.
Class is not just about the car you drive, the job you do or the house you live in. Class is a state of mind. It can either free you or paralyse you. Your very idea of yourself and your place within a society springs from this place.
While at university (with a well over 60% public school intake at the time) I ran into an awful lot of 'posh' people - rahs. A few were arses but most were genuinely nice people, which came as no surprise to me because of the way I was brought up (treat people how they act, not how they look inter alia). Then there were those like me who came from the comps. Some of these were inverted snobs and had the huge chip on their shoulders about being a lowly pleb in a place of privilege. Others of us, like me, just saw an opportunity to enjoy the experience and soak it all up.
The worst were those who sat between, and ached to be in that select band - they were the 'trainee rahs' and through a mixture of pushy social climbing and self-loathing managed to be all things to no one.
The moral: well, there isn't one really, other than making sure that you're comfortable in our own skin; it makes things so much easier for yourself.
Reminds me of the old saying
Yep
there's a world of difference between loneliness and solitude.
What is posh?
I keep having people tell me I speak "posh". Does that mean I can elucidate any given point I may be expressing? Does it just mean that I know what the word elucidate means? Because I'm certainly a long way from having an inherited peerage or vast amount of wealth.
I learned the big words I use at a C of E junior school. Before I went to a grammar school (where my family didn't pay fees). Yet no doubt if I were to ever consider government (and I'm not by any stretch of the imagination) it would be held against me and I would be described as posh, despite being brought up by a single mother who worked as a classroom assistant in a terraced house in Portsmouth. Because that's how fickle people can be.
Nowadays I try not to judge people. If I do its usually about silly things that isn't real judgement, just musical snobbery. Like individuals having a penchant for liking Akon. That still vexes me.
The trouble is that PR or Standard English
or "posh" accents are really native to the South of England, whereas elsewhere they have to be acquired as part of an expensive education. I come from the same area as you - the other side of Portsmouth Harbour, the glittering land of dreams that you must have often looked at from afar, Gosport. I went to the local Comprehensive and I imagine I have the same "posh" accent as you or Nick Clegg. It was just the way most people spoke. There was a more local Hampshire accent as well, but it wasn't that widespread, partly I think because Gosport being such a naval and military town, most people didn't come from there.
Even Mrs Melville, who was brought up in the Lake District, thought I had been to a Public School when she first met me. I guess the status of this particular southern accent is due to the fact that the South has long been the centre of power - which is not the same as saying all of the people in the South have that power or status.
Over the years
I have met many people who due to their prejudices or distorted perceptions have arrived at some pretty erroneous conclusions about me.
I went to Art School so I must be:- Gay,Weird,Snobbish,Posh,Drug Addicted or a danger to their Daughters.
I had long hair so I must be:- Dirty,Drug Addicted,Weird or Crazy.
I was a Punk so I must be:- Violent,Drug Addicted,or Thick.
I read Books,listen to different music to them,visit Art Galleries so I must be:- Weird,Snobbish or Gay.
I have a faintly Scouse accent so I must be:- A Thief,Violent and Thick.
I NEVER judge a book by It's cover.
I wish I could say the same, I do
I'm always judging books by their cover but as I've gotten older I've tried to question first impressions and give everyone the benefit of my prejudicial doubts. I have prejudices that have been ingrained through experience and impressionable influence but over time I've learned to give them a good and proper slap!
I find I have to bat my first thoughts around my head for a good while before I'm able to move on to a more considered opinion. Sometimes my first impression is correct, often it is completely wrong so as in many things in life the lesson learned is that you only really learn from your mistakes. As our society becomes increasingly inured to risk I find myself rather enjoying making mistakes: it often leads to the best memories and moments I've found.
I don't think prejudices are, by default, necessarily a bad thing and by logic nor is judging a book by its cover. It's often the first way by which you can conceptualise and contextualise what it is you are experiencing, it's your freehand sketch before committing to canvas.
The trick, it seems to me, is to not stop at that first impression but to allow others to take hold.
I regret writing never
as I think I may of given the wrong impression.Of course all of us make rapid value judgements everyday about a variety of things,from Music to People all of which are informed by our prejudices.It's unavoidable.
I do try to avoid making snap judgements on people because of the prejudice I have faced in my life.I give everyone I meet the benefit of the doubt and hope we will get along.
I do on the other hand make decisions about music,films, books,footy and even sandwiches which I am sure are informed by my prejudices,I won't like the new album by Keane even though the chances are I'll never hear It,I won't watch Sherlock Holmes because I can't stand Guy Richie's movies,I'm a United fan so I'm pretty sure that next season I will make some entirely unfair remark about Liverpool F.C. and I won't try that particular sandwich because I won't like the look of It.
Never with people though, they are entitled to a more considered approach.
I don't mind poshness...
...but I abhor arrogance.
because
they're different things entirely.
Arrogance...
is such abhor.
Posh? Another ism?
You can blame someone for who they were born to, where they were born, how they speak or where they were sent to school. You can...but it would be wrong.
But you can criticise them for the company they choose to keep. and that's the problem with Cameron. He seems to be a very decent, intelligent, compassionate man. So what the hell is he doing in the Conservative Party and hanging around with the likes of Nick Clegg?
Privilege
is the problem. Of course, it's not someone's fault if they had a privileged upbringing; they can't help it. However it does tend to instil a certain world-view. Many people manage to rise above this, of course, just as many people manage to rise above the effects of the most deprived of backgrounds.
For those reasons, amongst others, it is wrong to judge someone simply on their background.
However, David Cameron is the leader of the Tory Party. I think he can be fairly described as acting to type.
Company you KEEP
I'm somewhere in the middle now,a teacher,
you have got to WANT to like people , rather than judge them superficially.All specrtums have great people , bad and indifferent.You really have no control over your background,it's good to mix with friends from a different background, apart from a few long term teacher friends, I have friends from deprived backgrounds, ex- boxers, labourers, builders, and I've learned much fom them, still close friends thirty odd years down the line.
There's who/how you are as a person...
... and what you inevitably represent. There is no reason to dislike anybody as an individual on the basis of their background or class. I was at university in the early 80's and the nicest and most impressive people - still friends - were army officers doing in service degrees, all pretty damn posh to be honest and not my background at all. But this is a class-ridden society and the classes change much less here than in the newer democracies because the same sort of people remain in charge. It is a simple statement of fact that the ruling classes/rich in this country are remarkably good at hanging on to power and at times like the recent banking crash - their own personal disaster - they can force the people who are supposed to be our elected representatives to turn the whole country upside down to ensure they feel no personal inconvenience for their incompetence and failure.
Ian Jack's take
on the "toffs and toughs" picture-remarkable bit of writing imo:
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ian-jack/5-boys