Trouble is Kosh, its not the upper class thats the problem, its the middle classes thats the problem. Besides too many people like to think they are middle class, most are working class but they like to think they are middle class.



Agreed

But don't start me on new labour

He was a councillor in Hull 25 years ago. Hardly fair to judge all councillors based on his actions. Are you seriously suggesting that only Labour councillors have abused their position?

How exactly are the middle classes the problem? Come to that, what's your definition of middle class?


They weren't a total right-off but they got it badly wrong on too many occasions. Mind you, they're beginning to look like a super-competent wonder government in comparison to this shower.

What money ?

They have to work within the budget, cuts will have to be made in other area's to fund care homes etc.

They demolished the Boulevard and no stadium will ever be back there, any sale of the KC would release money for capital projects say for new stadiums for both RL clubs. The Allams want the KC for nothing and thats not going to happen is it, they are not as easily threatened as Minns.

Elliot Morley is a disgrace no arguing with that one.

Yes he was on the council at one time, he was also a teacher at Greatfield school. Rotten apples appear everywhere and we should all be vigilant on those who would rip us off.

Sod all this argueing about tuition fees and all the other bollox

Im just hoping they cancel 6million pound loans for white elephants in the east

From a Marxist point of view they are the descendants of the18/ 19 century who became rich through commerce, trade etc. They love hunting, private medicine + schools, they think they run the country, Many of us suspect that they have 95% of the wealth of this country and the rest of get zero including the uppper classes. I do actually know a Lord quite well and we share many similar views, he thinks I have more disposable income then he has.

Too many working class upstarts think they are middle class because they have been either sharp in business, pop stars or the worst footballers.

so if you start as working class you cannot move to middle class?

The Marxist POV isn't perhaps one that is widely held nowadays though. To me the middle classes are the 'professions' doctors, lawyers, senior managers - or their kids at least. I think you're stuck with what you're born to, as those are your formative experiences. My mum thinks that you can become middle class - and would cite as evidence the fact that I like the sit-com Outnumbered before anything I've achieved in my work life.



The emergence of a much bigger white collar, non-unionised working class has changed people's perceptions of themselves.

You lost me at Marxist I'm afraid. And "working class upstarts"? WTF? Don't you think that's just a tad arrogant and judgemental?

WTF is this thread allowed? If I posted something about another rugby team it would be locked but because a mod is involved in the bickering (and he's wrong again BTW

) then it's allowed to continue. I thought the sin bin was the place for political debate?

a real lol moment




I do not even recognise any class system, it is just b0llox!!! I bleed the same as the next human no matter how much money they may or may not have.

Course you can't its a matter of breeding and schooling.




I am working class, I know what my ancestors did and where they lived back into the early 1700s and I suspect everyone else is on here as well. They have pretensions to be middle class, but they are not and never will be.

maybe Kosh

Its the bog standard marxist rhetoric and we can all think of a few Hyacinth Buckets

I've always struggled with class definitions TBH. I abhor them although I'm guilty of using them as convenient shorthand in discussions like this. I suppose my own distinctions are drawn more along lines of income than breeding/employment/ancestry. When people talk about the Middle Class I translate that as middle income earners - too well off to get any help and not rich enough to avoid money worries. I'm certainly in that bracket.

If I were to use more 'traditional' class definitions I'd have to say that IMO anyone who works for a living is 'working class'.

Quite true not even an OT.

Anyway they must all have short memories if they think things will be lovely under labour.

I hope the change in council doesn't f@ck up the siemens deal which still isn't finalised

absolute bollox, upper class maybe,

but middle class is well within the reach of hard working, originally working class people, and there is nothing wrong with aspiring to that,

why shouldn't working class parents aspire for their children to be middle class?

Are mcdonalds really paying people 25k to serve me burgers!!

Indeed. My voting strategy was purely locally focussed.

I didn't vote for the party that:

a) Were only waiting for this election to be over before entering into frenzied negotiations with the Allams;

b) Lied and stalled on the Boulevard development then pulled it in favour of yet another "state of the art" school. Regardless of the fact that a mere decade after Hull's previous attempt at a flagship school, Endeavor, finally coughed and died after never really spluttering into life. (Lesson for new councillors - it's not the buildings and facilities that count - it's what goes on inside.);

c) Toadied up to Hudge and co, negotiating a baffling deal to essentially act as guarantor for a £4.2M loan at a time when the council failed spectacularly to win hearts and minds by enforcing unprecedented cuts to jobs and services.

The stadium sale is my overriding concern. I trust that our new Labour governing body will stay true to it's original concept of the "people's stadium". But it's politicians we're dealing with here. At least the new leader is actually from Hull, though, and may "get it" more than the career-obsessed imports who thrust themselves upon us who were representative of the last few administrations.

Rubbish. You're born into a class, and you can't climb out of it. You may be successful and acquire money, but a pigs ear will never make a silk purse.

There are only 2 classes, anyway. The Upper aristos who don't have to work for a living and everyone else. Those, then, who do - the working class.

The "middle classes" are a fabrication of the first working class people who earned a bit of "new money" and then sought to distance themselves from those less fortunate. They imported vulgar words like "pardon" and "perfume" from the French because they thought it distanced themselves from the commoners who said "what" and "scent" little realising that the aristocrats preferred, and still do prefer, the old English way of talking. The middle classes brought snobbery and pretension to our society and are a scourge I would never aspire to.

A well known definition of a man who is not a gentleman to the Upper Classes is "someone who has to go out and buy his own silver - and then proceeds to call it cutlery". I.e., all of us.

Working class and proud, me.

Thats based on the flawed Marxist definitions of the class system;

namely the proletariat - working class who are exploited by the capitalists (upper class) in order to create profit.

Modern sociologists tend to classify the UK's population into 4 groups,

Underclass - namely people on benefits and non-working households

Working Class - the best definition for this is the american term of blue collar workers (semi-skilled), generally not university educated

Middle Class - white collar workers, generally university educated, and >£40k per household income

Upper Class - not requiring a job to live, large amounts of wealth, part of the old "social elite"

Whatever, mate. I'm basing it on what I've seen myself and heard about from my parents and grandparents in Britain. And using my common sense. And a read of Jilly Cooper's bible - Class. (Now there's an apposite and hilarious book, pmh.)

If you're moonlighting from your real-time (in your mind) job as an economist, into the world of philosophy, give it up now lad. You're making as big a dog's breakfast of that too

Sociology and Economics are 2 sides of the same coin really, but I am beginning to realise that rational thought is just not good enough when you have opinion to deal with,

I have a degree in economics and work as an econometrician, at least I think I do

Sin Bin for this sort of thing.