Class and student protests

I couldn't join the protest yesterday, I was sleeping off a 12 hour waking night shift in a care home . I was paid just over £7 an hour, yet I have a degree ,a masters and am a qualified social worker.

I am the only one in my family to have got a degree. I think I am pretty much the only one not to have left school at 16. I don't now have any family, certainly not a nice middle class one who could bail me out when I lost my nice well paid job this year.

I'm still not really sure how I did end up doing a degree, I certainly didn't have any roles models to follow. I sort of just kept going and my mother encouraged me as she saw it as the escape route from the council estate and poverty. It would have been a much easier option for her to have got me to get a job .

She had worked hard all her life, as had her mother , but two ill husbands meant money was not plentiful . One image that has always stuck with me was her wrapped in a duvet with a hot water bottle, to keep the heating bill down.

So I worked hard . I escaped . I looked after my mum, bought her stuff, took her abroad for holidays. The first time she left the country was at 60.

So why am I going on about this ?

Well I did work hard and pulled myself out of the gutter. There were even more obstacles than poverty but I'll leave those for another time, but the point is however far I came, I never really became middle class. Why not, I mean I bought a flat, got educated etc etc. Yep, but what I am learning now the hard way is that it slips away much easier when its not yours by birth . I never felt I fitted in and didn't want to anyway.

Many of the students today feel cheated , we older ones have it all. But we don't . Its not about age, but class. I didn't inherit when my parents died, I could never fall back on my mother to bail me out . I didn't think, oh well when I'm older I'll pay off my mortgage with my inheritance or mummy can give me a deposit for my flat . Instead I helped her out , made her life more comfortable . She gave up a lot to encourage me to study , I owed her that .

I feel pissed off that I was unemployed back in the 80s and am again now.

I do feel angry that students face fees and debt, that they won't have the jobs they perhaps expected they would. But lets also remember that some younger people will be hit harder than others . Some will be lucky to get a decent basic education and getting to university is as likely as getting to the moon.

I'd lay bets that my dads family, who I have not seen for nearly 20 years (long story), are still doing factory work , probably getting asbos and stuck on a crap estate .

I do hope the students remember them, their expectations have not been dashed, they had those beaten out of them long ago.

I hope that further action will be with workers , with those relying on public services, the unemployed and the left does not put all its hope in students . I have heard mutterings that some sections of the student protest were not wanting to broaden out the demands to no cuts AT ALL. We need unity, not cuts or fees for education, but no cuts also for public services.

The young are getting fucked over by this Government , but lets not get caught up by age . Some young people will be hit harder , some older people will be hit harder. The poor more than others .

Also, remember that losing your job when older is pretty crap as well. What are my expectations now, fuck knows .At 46 I am now back at square one . I am doing temp work for crap wages , I am facing potentially having to sell my flat . I don't have family money to fall back on. I was homeless as a kid, my flat is my security .

I do understand , and support, the students and their anger at an uncertain future . But lets make this a fight against all cuts, and please remember that.

Finally, what inspired this post was reading this post by Laurie on yesterday's demo:

This is about a political settlement that has broken its promises not once but repeatedly, and proven that it exists to represent the best interests of the business community, rather than to be accountable to the people. The students I speak to are not just angry about fees, although the Liberal Democrats' U-turn on that issue is manifestly an occasion of indignation: quite simply, they feel betrayed. They feel that their futures have been sold in order to pay for the financial failings of the rich, and they are correct in their suspicions. One tiny girl in animal-print leggings carries a sign that reads: "I've always wanted to be a bin man."

Two things. It is not just about making sure those who get to university get the nice well paid jobs they expect , its about making life better for ALL, not just those with degrees. They may feel betrayed, well many many people have felt like that for a long time and we need to listen to them and include them.

Plus what really pissed me off, the 'tiny girl in animal-print leggings.' Somehow I doubt she knows any bin men and her sign is pretty elitist and insulting . Sorry, poor thing, mummy and daddy I'm sure never brought her up to be a bin men. I wonder if there were no fees etc, would she actually ever give a damn about those who are bin men, who also face cuts in their work ? Or would she just walk on by to her life with fulfilled expectations ?

This should not be about making sure some young people have bright futures and ignore the 'bin men' of this world.

Harriet Harman, Class Warrior - Yeah Right

It seems that Harriet Harman has discovered class, pointing out that class is an obstacle to people progressing in life. Give her a job as Minister for Stating the Bleeding Obvious. Evidently, class is such an obstacle that comprehensive schools populated by local working-class kids were not good enough for her offspring.

I can only assume that the very idea of Harriet as a class warrior is what prompted her evident amusement in this photograph. Mind you, New Labour has indulged in plenty of class war since being elected in 1997 - the only problem that it has not been for the working class but against us!

There's a decent kick back at Ms Harman in the Guardian letters page.

Etiquette tips ...

Now as regular readers know, I'm not one for North London dinner parties, sipping wine and making polite small talk about house prices, schools and asking for the recipe.
It also seems I wouldn't fit into life working in academic institutions if this report is anything to go by, getting drunk and calling people fuckwits might be a bit of a faux pas. There is apparently grooming advice given to new staff at Leeds Metropolitan University as part of a guide to etiquette:


Make sure your underwear fits and is unobtrusive, consider whether your eyebrows are a distraction to others and, at all costs, avoid looking cheap.

The rules were set out during “manners training”, which included how to walk wearing a hat, how to select the correct cutlery during dinner and how to make polite small talk.

In the chapter on developing a “personal brand”, the graduate trainees were told to avoid wearing “clashing colours, crumpled or stained clothes” and to make an effort not to appear “frumpy, tarty, [or] lazy”, Times Higher Education reports.

“It really is up to you to send out the signals that you are intelligent, efficient, interesting and an asset to the university,” the guide tells them.

To that end, staff who attend or host university functions are told to be careful not to veer on to subjects that may cause offence during dinner discussion.

“Dinner is meant to be enjoyed, not to be a forum for debate,” and sex, religion and politics should not be on the menu for discussion, according to the 22 pages of rules.

Patricia Lee, the wife of the university’s Vice-Chancellor, Simon Lee, compiled the guide and gave a workshop to staff on how to conduct themselves at functions and how to behave at table. Decorum during dinner should be maintained so as not to cause “insult to your hostess”, the guide advises, adding that “wine at dinner is to complement your food, not to help you along the way to drunkenness”.

Refrain from clinking glasses during a toast, steer clear of the condiments before you taste your food, and never, ever lick your knife, it says. “If your napkin drops to the floor, it is acceptable for you to pick it up unless the house has a butler or servants near the table,” it goes on.




What a snobby , sexist and boring set of rules.

I'm pretty sure I would cause offence to the hostess pretty damn quickly , being a bit tarty and wanting to talk about politics, sex and religion whilst drinking too much and certainly not waiting for the servants to pick up after me. It really is for the best that I have never been to a dinner party and as Dave says to me, you're never make a classy bird Stropps...so Yeah, I'll stick to arguing in pubs with drunken old Trots ...

Chav's , bottle blondes and 'class '

It seems that calling someone a chav makes it acceptable to mock and look down on the working classes . First there was the attack on 'chav's ' who just did not know their place and went to Goodwood races . I mean, shouldn't they be cleaning the lavs and making the tea, doffing their cap at the ladies in their summer frocks. They just don't respect their betters these days:

Ladies dressed elegantly in floral frocks, and on the arms of gentlemen spruced up in cravats and Panama hats, were welcome: Daves and Tracys from Dagenham emblazoned with tattoos and chunky jewellery under Burberry baseball caps were not.

But despite the Earl of March and Kinrara’s wishes, a chav or two did escape the style-police at yesterday’s opening of Glorious Goodwood.

The earl, heir to the Goodwood estate, had said he feared that this most English of meets was going the way of other racecourses “whose patrons dress as though they’re going to a nightclub”.

“I won’t be asking that visitors wear morning coats but I would like to see the ladies in nice traditional English summer frocks, with linen suits and Panama hats for the gentlemen,” he is reported to have said. “We have far too many chavs, I’m afraid. Perhaps we’ll have to have some spare jackets.”

It looks like this was brought about by the Grand National Meeting earlier in the year and reported on by the Daily Mail in suitably snooty tones :

His (the Earl of March, SB)comments are likely to have been prompted by the Grand National meeting in April when Ladies' Day looked more like the queue for fancy dress night at a Liverpool nightclub.

The footballers' wives and glamour girls of the North-West put on a display that spectators at Aintree will never forget.

Heaving bosoms were on show, along with acres of fake tan and extravagant headdresses perched on bleached-blonde hairdos.

To make matters worse, the shrieking hordes swigged beer straight from the bottle.

And what exactly is wrong with bleached blonde hair and swigging out of bottles! Yep, I know i'm not classy ;-)

Following on from this is the youtube video, albeit filmed two years ago, showing jolly japes at a top public school :

One of Scotland's top public schools has condemned a video which showed ex-pupils staging a mock "chav hunt".
"Class Wars" was posted on the internet site YouTube by former students at Glenalmond College, near Perth.

The film, which showed teenagers wearing shell suits being chased by classmates dressed as aristocrats, was partly filmed on the school grounds.

Officials have described the spoof as "deeply offensive" and said it did not reflect the ethos at the school.

It began with one teenager in a baseball cap being pulled out of a river before being subjected to a simulated beating by a couple of tweed-wearing 'attackers'.

Another scene showed a shell suit wearing gang being chased through the school grounds by two young men dressed as huntsmen and on horseback.

They were shown being 'shot' as they ran across a field and one of the 'victims' was then prodded by an aristocrat as he lay on the ground.

Apparently the pupils are no longer at the school, headed for good jobs running business and the country no doubt. The school says it does not reflect the ethos and they condemn it . It is no longer on you tube but there is still a clip on the BBC news page.

I would say it illustrates very well the contempt held for the working class by this group of privileged public school kids and the Earl, even if it is wrapped up in the term 'chav'.They may use this word, but they mean working class. They mean common, not one of 'them', 'look they don't know how to dress or use the right knife and fork'. 'They', the working class, have the nerve to ignore the rules and 'invade' our genteel world. Ignore all that Cameron nonsense, society is not classless and even if you have the money you don't have the 'class'.The message is don't step out of line and know your place.

The barriers are there, some more hidden than others, to ensure even if you can afford to play with the middle and upper classes you never really fit in.

Pic: Courtney.Well any excuse, but nothing wrong with drunken badly behaved bottle blondes !

Update

Of course even some on the left look down on the working classes, as evidenced by a comment left on this post and reproduced here :

I've often considered it a small tragedy that there are so many oiks amongst leftists. I find they are often happy to settle for a lot less than the higher price us ex public schoolboys demand.