Harry's Place

The Independent just makes me sad now. Picking up a copy is like running into someone you once knew and quite liked, and finding that they have become a gibbering, embittered pub bore with a severely depleted personality and absolutely no friends.

Are the BNP paying her to write this stuff?

An object lesson in why any writer would be wise to to sleep on it and have another think before pressing the “Submit” button.

Meanwhile, back at Hazel Blears’ comments, I’m only finding the expression “white working class” in the headlines.

Long-term unemployed people are not working class, Karen Matthews being a rather extreme example, and neither are children who grow up in homes where no adult works.

Meanwhile, in high rise Council estates with very diverse populations and high levels of unemployment, there are residents of white UK ethnic origin who complain if their landlord’s circulars fail to include a bit in lots of languages to tell their neighbours how to find a translation.

To be fair, I assume it’s her maiden/married name she uses. Rather as my full surname is my mother/father’s.

I don’t use it here, as it’d make me look like a ponce.

Alec,
I think its the surname of her first husband hyphenated with that of her second.

I thought she was just honouring our beloved PM. My God, is that a preview button I see before me? Stuff Gaza, that’s news!

Unfortunately I don’t follow the work of Ms Alibhai-Brown as closely as I’d like to, but is she as forthright on communities that might be attracted to other pernicious ideologies? Islamism for instance.

JLM, yes. Although, often in terms of what she was doing and her interventions.

It could only be WWC people being described by the old trout. If it was a religious or racial minority being described (other than possibly Jews, I hate to say, except Jews never riot), it would not be printed in the Independent as that would clearly be racist…

Its great that they give people OBEs for being a pain in the arse nowadays.

The SWP spend a lot of time trying to pretend that the working class aren’t racist and don’t support the BNP. I’m wondering why, though, you’re choosing to attack this piece rather than take the point it was making about the racism implicit in the results of the weekend’s survey?

Deathy, because it’s delirious nonsense which, if there is any sense under all the twaddle, is that to redress the balance of unjust attacks on one population group we should start on another population group.

And, is that the Socialist White Party?

Alec,

are we reading the same article?

Does anyone know how many people were interviewed for this survey?

An almost incoherent article.What the hell is a wakeful sense of history?
Bizarre name, too. Is it cos she’s Brown?

It’s a pity that the idiotic Alibhai-Brown doesn’t mention that no other group of people in this country has absorbed and embraced immigrants better than the white working-class. That there have been – and will continue to be – some problems, goes without saying. But the last time I checked, it wasn’t the middle-class of this country who were dealing with the effects of immigration or even mixing with people of other backgrounds.

I dunno, Deathy. Are we?

An almost incoherent article

Worthy of La Bunting, even. Ms A-B is, or course, a Muslim immigrant from East Africa, when those nice Africans told them: “Get the hell out”. Africanisation, you understand, not racism. She appears occasionally on the BBC Dateline London programme, being, of course “on message” (i.e. metropolitan “diverse” left liberal) as far as Gavin Essler is concerned, and apart from the odd complaint about “Islamophobia”, actually tries to take a decent line. Unfortunately, her brain often gets in the way.

Attacked by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown! Does life get any better than this!

Still, it confirms a long held personal belief that the only race in the UK who can be routinely insulted and misrepresented by toffs and millionaire leftist comedians are the white working class.

Ms Brown (we chavs don’t go in fer titles and such, guv’nor, Gawd bless yer!) has made a handsome living out of needling guilty liberals since arriving in the UK from Kenya, and supplying them with one of the two services they usually have to pay the working class to perform on them.

Blimey! A Preview button! Bang goes my excuse!

I say, give the lower-classes a Preview button and they keep coal in it.

Yasmin and co are the upper -middle/upper classes. They have the best spoken and written English language skills in the world. The current wave of immigrant workers will not and cannot threaten their media jobs, which depend on having superb literary English. That’s why you hear patronising stuff like this, and the radio sketch by the very posh Marcus Brigstock, which still angers me 2 years on, about working class people complaining about East European workers – ‘they’re not taking your jobs, they’re DOING your jobs – and they work on bank holidays!’: this is Brigstock’s brave new world, one where the self-proclaimed ’socialist’ can get his ‘wet room’ made for half the price by workers who’ll work on the few workers’ holidays Britain has (the least in Europe!) but who cannot ever, ever undercut him in his jolly ringfenced Oxbridge media world.

How many wjhite working class people voted for the demagogue G Galloway in Bethnal Green in 2005?

Cat’s Meow, I hadn’t heard that ‘joke’ before. Rest assured, the anger is now re-freshed in me.

What a great example of an Orwellian inversion.

…..well done Brett for the preview function.

Well, as a member of the WWC (aka the swinish multitudes) I reckon Ms AB has given us a fairly accurate description of a good number of my proletarian brothers and sisters. I live a stones throw from Karen Matthews former home and were I to throw a stone I would probably hit someone very much like her; it’s just not good enough to say she and her ilk are some sort of moronic underclass when people like that predominate and increase in number with every passing year in every working class district in the country.
Mind you ‘as a working class person’ I see at least equal stupidity within the middle classes, the witless Alexei ‘as a jew’ Sayle being a lovely recent example.

“It’s a pity that the idiotic Alibhai-Brown doesn’t mention that no other group of people in this country has absorbed and embraced immigrants better than the white working-class.” – Paul.

Bang on! White liberals would have blanched at the school gates where Ms Brown’s white ‘racists’ take their kids to find an education among thirty plus other languages and many different creeds. As someone who lived in a very mixed area and had a place on housing and resident groups I would say older people were quite advanced in their views and despite not having much give tried to make life work. It is precisely these inner city areas where competition for decent housing, school places, work or recreational opportunities are most acute which have had to bear the real problems of satisfying immigration needs (including religiously dictated obligations) and during the Thatcher era when money was very short.

It is not that we had few ‘white’ riots or racist incidents in our area but why not many, many more, depite intense BNP and SWP, Islamist leafletting.

The mass of white working class people get by in ways that the snotty nosed find unpleasant. Ms Brown is no Orwell.

Working-class white men provoked race riots through the Fifties and Sixties; they kept “darkies” out of pubs and clubs and work canteens

What all of them? Strange, because I seem to remember being babysat by the mothers of my black schoolfriends and taken to the pictures by my dad’s black workmates at the post office. Presumably this was while “the white working class” (whatever that is) was taking a day off from being Alf Garnett.

Seriously, how does she get away with this shit (and how do the media, seemingly with help from people like the SPGB) let her?

Collins is superb on the tender history of his own family in south London, but then, as the broadcaster Laurie Taylor noted, this “poetic hooligan … puts up his fists, looking around for someone to clout”. And true to class he hits on blacks and Asians, even proffering an intellectual alibi for the killers of Stephen Lawrence.

Er, what Collins points out is that “the killers” (Judge Alibhai-Brown presiding) were not convicted of anything yet the media treats them as if they were, and that this sort of media prejudice would not be tolerated amongst any other group. This is not an attempt at any kind of “alibi” it is merely pointing out the lesson which many people on South-East London council estates took from the Lawrence case: that British justice did not apply to them.

I’m also curious to know how Ms Brown and her class explain this: I lived in South London for 8 years, in an area that was cheap when I moved there but suddenly became a middle-class housing hotspot. On Sundays, the local shops had veritable stonehenges of Observers round their doors. The park was nicknamed (as are many others, I know) ‘nappy valley’ and full of middle class parents pushing tots with mini-birkenstocks on in the pram version of a 4by4. Weirdly, despite all this evidence of middle-class sprog production, I only ever saw two white kids in the playground of the local C of E primary. It wasn’t, as far as I could gather, a ‘bad’ school, but for some reason the local Guardian/Observer/Indie readers – and writers! – didn’t seem to be sending their kids there (or maybe they were all allergic to sunlight, so they didn’t go outside at break time – well, you never know!). I also noticed that my thirtysomething impeccably ’socialist’ friends moved – to Dorset, Brighton, France – as soon as their kids reached school age.
I’m not suggesting these Guardian/Indie readers are racist, or had an aversion to their spawn mixing with the children of the working classes…(cough!)…but it’s a funny thing, isn’t it?

The majority of working class people I know (that means my neighbours, colleagues and my family come to that) are fairly stupid, ignorant when it comes to politics or any form of culture, racially bigoted (especially if they don’t know anyone from another ethnic minority) and generally a pretty shallow celebrity obsessed, brand dominated, marketed, merchandised and foolish bunch of human beings. I would say that this definition applies equally across ethnic divisions with the Muslims carrying an extra load of religous brainwashing on top (nobody else seems to take their religon very seriously thank goodness).

Graham,

What all of them? – Erm, does she say all of them? No, thought not.

As for the SPGB, all I was saying (I should add for the terminally stupid, as an individual and not as a party spokesperson) was that the article doesn’t say anything remarkably contentious, working class people can be racist, and can display racist tendencies. For example, the results of the survey, people feel they can’t express their anxieties over immigration “for fear of being labelled racist” – that’ll be because their fears are racist.

“The majority of working class people I know”

Which one (your cleaner or your nanny?)

Does anyone know how many people were interviewed for this survey?

43

Seriously

What all of them? – Erm, does she say all of them? No, thought not.

Well she surely does not say “some” of them (which would take little effort for her to do) so she surely at least wants to indicate that she means all of them.

Try these two sentences:

1) Muslims blew up the world trade centre.

2) A group of radical muslims blew up the world trade centre

Which would you use? You know and I know (and it would be dishonest to say otherwise (so God knows why you are trying to do so.)

For example, the results of the survey, people feel they can’t express their anxieties over immigration “for fear of being labelled racist” – that’ll be because their fears are racist.

What utter bollocks, totally disconnected from the real world. So if your doctor can no longer see you within a week because he has too many patients because the local council has decided to get Government funds by accepting a particular group of immigrants (locally it was the Vietnamese, who not unnaturally wished to stay in communities) then raising this concern is “racist”?

Like fuck is it.

“The majority of working class people I know (that means my neighbours, colleagues and my family come to that) are fairly stupid, ignorant when it comes to politics or any form of culture, racially bigoted (especially if they don’t know anyone from another ethnic minority) and generally a pretty shallow celebrity obsessed, brand dominated, marketed, merchandised and foolish bunch of human beings.”

Sigh. Whereas, of course, your average middle-class types are just so sophisticated and intelligent.

But more importantly, Tony, you don’t know any working-class people – you just know a load of twats.

Agree with you Paul on the Middle class, equally shitheaded in many ways. I would have written that on my comment but as I am at work (doing my working class job) I had to rush it a bit.
I think I am just becoming a misanthrope in my middle age.

I probably need more sex.

Self pitying,Always-wretched and complaining, Stupid, and
Vicious? This actually describes the likes of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown more than anything else. They enjoy all the privileges of living in a secular democracy but they always implicitly support Islamic radicals, but the Islamic radicals never see these champagne sipping, scarfless Westies as one of their own. No mattter how much they try to infatuate them.

Graham,

1) Both your sentences are correct and neither would give the spin you were pushing for. Your example is inexact because it is too specific.
2) The concern you cite is not the immigration, but the lack of service provision. So, the difference is between voicing concerns over service provision, or voicing concerns over those immigrants coming here and taking our doctors. The latter is racist.

Ah, Marcus, you do have a ‘thing’ about YAB, don’t you?

I remember that one of your last posts before your hiatus was one about YAB.

Marcus and David T are just back from the pit, you see, washing the coal dust from their faces.

Come on HP commenters, own up, how many ‘members of the working class’ do you know?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv4c4ER8Pzo

“Graham,
What all of them? – Erm, does she say all of them? No, thought not.
As for the SPGB, all I was saying (I should add for the terminally stupid, as an individual and not as a party spokesperson) was that the article doesn’t say anything remarkably contentious, working class people can be racist, and can display racist tendencies. For example, the results of the survey, people feel they can’t express their anxieties over immigration “for fear of being labelled racist” – that’ll be because their fears are racist.” – Red Deathy

And we wonder why the BNP are making headway. With views like these directed at the white working class it is a wonder they are not in power.

Deal with Yasmin’s core argument rather than embarking on ad hominem attacks. But, I suppose you have predictably proven her point, in that your belligerence is aroused not because she is wrong in stating the bleeding obvious, but rather that she [brown-skinned, immigrant stock, Muslim and all], should have the nerves to write so disparagingly about the ‘natives’.

And this is before ‘wholly arseholian’, ‘John P[rat]‘ and ‘raving mad maven’ join in the hate fest-(LOL

I live near the editor of the Indi

He lives in a £2.5m flat, in one of the most expensive streets in London.

If his kids go to a state school I’ll put on a burka and dance round the Iranian embassy singing “I’m a happy Jihadist”

I live in a BNP-voting ward with a large exclusively white working class ex-council estate near me. There are some descriptions I agree with. Self-pitying victimhood, certainly. The ward has little unemployment, excellent public services, the best transport infrastructure you could hope for, brand new schools, etc, etc. I’m no great fan of Labour, but if anywhere has benefitted from this government, it is this ward. Yet, they still complain no-one listens to them, that immigrants and gypsies are taking their jobs and homes (there are only a handful of immigrants, all of whom are married to home-owning white British people and the gypsies have been here for hundreds of years), crime is terrible (crime figures are below national and regional averages) and the country is going to the dogs. I cannot find any basis for their complaints. I’ve tried to understand why they vote BNP and I don’t understand it. I can only agree with Yasmin Alibhai Brown, although “viscious” is not a term I’d use. If I go 15 minutes on the tube to Bethnal Green, I can see real poverty, but these are not white working class people but South Asians who live in the worst housing conditions, doing the worst jobs that no white working-class person wants to do.

Larkers,

you are familiar with the “I’m not a racist, but” line, a very common one among “white” working class. In fact, I think it is actually the first line of one of Chubby Brown’s routines. If people start racialising discussion over resource allocation, claiming priority because they are “British” then that is an ideology that needs to be combatted.

“I also noticed that my thirtysomething impeccably ’socialist’ friends moved – to Dorset…”

Oooh, did someone say ‘Billy Bragg’…? Currently pontificating yet again on CiF today about how unfettered immigration isn’t the real problem?

Well, no, Billy. Not where you are…

“Your example is inexact because it is too specific.” – Red Deathy

I failed my 11 plus by a mile and went to a secondary modern. I cannot make sense this sentence. Is this because I’s white and working class? Racist?!

They enjoy all the privileges of living in a secular democracy but they always implicitly support Islamic radicals

I don’t really like YAB, and I don’t like this article very much at all, too much atavistic trauma coming out in her generalisations and lack of qualification of those of whom she writes. She’s also written stupid stuff on a range of issues that had me laughing and sneering at the same time before. But I have to be a little bit fair to her — she is reviled by Islamists, and she was one of the first high profile Muslims to come out and call the whole ‘Islamophobia’ slander for the MCB – Bunglawala scam that it is, and the culture of victimhood and self-pity that some Muslim organisations feed off. She is despised because of this.

I don’t think she’s a bad person, I just think she’s a bit batty, and has the raw nerves of the old Darcus Howe generation who really did have to fight against visceral racism in the past. It’s time for a new generation to come through, but in the meantime, even if she is a gobshite, she has said some stuff that I actually find admirable, her calling out the Islamophobia fallacy to cover up criticism of Islamists for what it is being one of them. On the other hand, she does my head in with some utter shite, and this article falls in that category.

I mean it broadly falls into the category of too much generalisation.

Rastalion

It seems a tad loaded, I agree, post entitled “Untouchables”, Yasmin is from Indian stock, commenting on the white working class, mmmm.

I don’t know why some folk have a thing about YAB, she seems a pretty mild mannered type, and her politics are quite mixed and nothing particularly untoward either way. She even had a go at the MCB, which must surely earn her credit around here.

Deal with Yasmin’s core argument rather than embarking on ad hominem attacks.

Come on, this is HP, there’s no danger of that.

Dan: “I can only agree with Yasmin Alibhai Brown, although “viscious” is not a term I’d use.”

Me neither. Not least because I can spell…

And do you ever stop to think that people ‘moan about (insert Dan’s preferred victim group here)’ merely because they know it winds you up. And they find that amusing…?

but these are not white working class people but South Asians who live in the worst housing conditions, doing the worst jobs that no white working-class person wants to do.

Fair do to the men who do the work that no white working-class person wants to do, but the Bangladeshis (not ‘South Asians’!) who live in those conditions in Bethnal Green are partly the architects of their own conditions too. Large families, restricting the education of women, low percentage of women in the workforce, a certain insularity that prevents them fully engaging with British society and taking advantage of the opportunities that London offers, opportunities that other ‘South Asian’ and immigrant groups exploit with relish, to haul themselves out of poverty and succeed.

She also wrote this book:

http://fpc.org.uk/publications/after-multiculture

Which advocates the end of multiculturalism.

Any takers?

Both your sentences are correct and neither would give the spin you were pushing for.

I am not pushing for any spin at all I am merely saying exactly what Brown does in her article to wit:

Working-class white men provoked race riots through the Fifties and Sixties; they kept “darkies” out of pubs and clubs and work canteens

There is no indication of all that Brown means “some”. I really cannot understand why any “socialist” (even a champagne one) would be defending such prejudices.

Your example is inexact because it is too specific.

The mind boggles at the idea that blaming a small group of radical muslims and blaming all Muslims is the same thing..

The concern you cite is not the immigration, but the lack of service provision.

And the report is suggesting that people are afraid to criticise lack of service provision for fear of being called racist, so what exactly is your point here? You were the one who suggested that expressing anxieties about immigration (which my doctors example would cover) was always “racist”.

Are you becoming a post-modernist Deathy?

When white commentators like simon heffer, Peter hitchens, minnete marin, melanie phillips the list is endless…rountinely abuse the british poor as being idle, dirty, lazy ,stupid (you get the picture)…HP is silent…when an asian commentor makes some silly and ignorant comments about the White W/C (whicle pale in comparison to Simon Heffers comments on it) you all go crazy…why is this?

BTW- YAB is just the type of muslim immigrant britiian needs…educated…progressive…married to a member of the indigenous community…critical of Islamism and islamic fundamentalism…

Actually, I do have a theory as to why the white working-class would vote BNP, even if their fears are unfounded. Parts of the media – notably the Daily Mail, the Express and the Sun – give a false impression of a country being inundated with violent brown people claiming welfare, housing and jobs. This has been utilised by the BNP, who have built on these lies with more of their own. For instance, the BNP claimed that flats in my street had been emptied by the council to give homes to African asylum seekers – a local independent councillor found that all the flats had been sold off to the private sector (they sell for about £150,000 each) and only one had been empty for any length of time due to refurbishment. The upshot was that BNP lies not only helped depress everyone’s property prices and give a wrong impression of our neighbourhood, they helped them secure a council seat. The problem has come from the failure of mainstream parties to counter BNP propaganda and most cannot be bothered to campaign for votes on this ward – the Tories won’t touch it, Labour has collapsed entirely, the LibDems are too small and the residents association has yet to contest it.

There is no indication of all that Brown means “some”.

You are right to point that out, Graham. I agree with you on that.

I think she’s referring to the white non-working class that has been fostered and supported by YAB-types and Independent-reading types.

you are familiar with the “I’m not a racist, but” line, a very common one among “white” working class. In fact, I think it is actually the first line of one of Chubby Brown’s routines.

Blimey, Roy Chubby Brown says something so that means it is “common” amongst the working class!

I think someone is having a bad day.

Actually the idea the “white” working class is resentful about immigration is about 20 years behind the times (as governments usually are.) In fact if I had a pound for every time this year a student who was a black single mother or a British Asian complained about Polish and East-european immigrants I could have a decent night out at least!

My favourite Yaz comment is saying she sent her son to public school (think it was Eton, but cant remember) for the good of “her community”.

I don’t think she has ever forgiven that nasty ticket inspector for asking her to pay her fare on that train.

Pablo: Bangladesh is in South Asia. I agree with you about the problems within the Bangladeshi community, but groups like the BNP advocate the closure of many of those problems intended to address this problems, claiming it is multi-cultural liberal favouritism that “indigenous” people are excluded from. If a Bangladeshi gets employment, they are taking jobs. If they don’t, they are welfare-dependent. If they learn English, they are being given an unfair allocation of funds. If they don’t, they are not integrating. The fact is that there is a body of opinion that would like to see them removed from this country en masse.

Graham,

no, they’re not afraid to voice concern over lack of service provision, they afraid to voice concerns over immigration and the blame they place on immigrants over the service provision. Saying we have too few doctors in Whatsit Ward could never get racist connotations, and would thus not provoke the accusation. If you then go on to say “Its because of immigrants” then that is ipso facto racist.

My point about too specific: 911 was a one off event, committed by specific persons, a generalisation over many events (which are not themselves specifically referrenced0 can be covered by a more general reference. But, the point is, she didn’t say all, she also didn’t say some, but your angered rebuttal remains otiose.

>the Express and the Sun – give a false impression of a country being inundated with violent brown people claiming welfare, housing and jobs.

Thank God for the tabloids.

The country is being inundated with violent immigrants claiming welfare, housing and jobs.

There are, however, a few biggoted media outlets BBC-Guardian etc, which call anyone who points this out ‘racist’.

Of course, most people who work at the BBC/Guardian are richer, white, midddle class types..

Dan thinks we’re all brainwashed by racist media. Its the standard Middle Class – Brown lie. He thinks he’s clever and all the Daily Mail readers are stupid and believe what they read.

Dan thinks he’s superior, and knows what’s happening while the unwashed millions who read the Sun are too stupid to understand what they see.

Dan looks down on the tabloid readers as inferior, that says nothing abouut how British people feel and everything about Dan.

“Which unfortunate group of people are being described in the Independent this morning?

Self pitying,

Always-wretched and complaining,

Stupid, and

Vicious.”

erm….is it HP writers?

no, they’re not afraid to voice concern over lack of service provision,

It is entirely the problem that people ARE afraid to voice concern about service provision for fear of being called racist that Blears etc are drawing attention too.

But, the point is, she didn’t say all, she also didn’t say some, but your angered rebuttal remains otiose.

I’m not angry at all (I am quite used to lazy middle-class journalists and ridiculous disconnected “socialists” talking utter bollocks and chucking out prejudices.) Your amateurish (and rather silly frankly) spinned attempt to cover up the fact that a journalist has chosen her words very badly reveals exactly which side you and other establishment cronies like yourself are on.

The country is being inundated with violent immigrants claiming welfare, housing and jobs.

Define ‘inundated’ in this context.

And what welfare, housing and jobs?

The country is being inundated with violent immigrants claiming welfare, housing and jobs.

I’m sure we are not being “inundated” (it is only recently I think that immigration topped emigration.) Anyway, surely you should say “some” immigrants are violent and claim benefits (or perhaps not, Deathy won’t mind anyway….)

I certainly read it as “some”. It’s hardly as if all white people could collectively conspire to provoke race riots. If she was talking about attitudes rather than actions, such as “white people blame immigrants for taking their jobs” then that’s different – it’s clearly ambiguous and could (probably would) be read as a blanket generalisation.

Yes, I should have said ’some’…

‘Inundated’ is when several milliion immigrants move to a country and radically change the economic, social, religious and crime state of the country.

What would be a better word/

Tidalwave?
Flood?

As for housing, there are housing estates in the East End where almost all residents are Bangladeshi.. that’s the housing problem.

Of course, we Sun readers only believe what we read and don’t know what those Middle Class Guardianistas see.

It’s hardly as if all white people could collectively conspire to provoke race riots.

She was very careful not to say all white people (she excludes women for example) but that makes it even stranger that she could not say (some) :

“Working-class white men provoked race riots through the Fifties and Sixties; they kept “darkies” out of pubs and clubs and work canteens”.

Which despite attempts to spin the contrary is exactly what she has said.

Graham,

I’m not covering up for a bad choice of words, just chuckling at your inept rebuttal. Now, I don’t know about you, but advocating the abolition of Britain hardly puts me on the side of the establishment? I generally feel that all nationalism is racist, and consequently oppose all such ideologies.

What the report revealed is people are unwilling to voice their concerns over immigration. Why would a rational person think that saying there are too few bins on the high street would attract accusations of racism? It’s not the provision, its the “inundation” by “foreigners” that they’re scared to voice against.

Saeed, I sent a complaint off to the BBC a few weeks ago when they cancelled Little Dorrit to make way for an hour long primetime ’special’ on Karen Matthews, ‘the worst mother in the world’ – I said I wasn’t just pissed off about missing Little Dorrit – I was also pissed off that an hour of state-funded television should be given over to a public horsewhipping of this woman (a nasty piece of work, yes, but then, there are many more evil than her out there), about the way the BBC was acting like the Daily Mail, and that we should leave punishment to the law courts and news to the news channels and not turn the state broadcaster’s ‘entertainment’ channel into an 18thc pillory.

“Dan thinks he’s superior, and knows what’s happening while the unwashed millions who read the Sun are too stupid to understand what they see.”

I don’t think I am superior, but am just saying what I see in a ward that is controlled by the BNP. There are very few immigrants of any colour, the gypsies in the district are not in this ward, we have excellent public facilities – a leisure centre and a football and boxing academy, a large doctors surgery, four primary schools and two secondary schools, night buses, a tube station, the M11 slap bang next to us, large employers such as the Bank of England printing press, Clinton Cards and Alan Sugar’s business empire, most people have bought their council houses, there are huge open green spaces, lots of shops. I’ve lived in a rural affluent market town which has far fewer amenities. So what is there to complain about? Why vote BNP? There is a complete dislocation between reality and what people believe and that is created by the tabloid media and reinforced by a neo-Nazi party whose lies go unchallenged.

“Ancient Britons built Stonehenge”

Now, to a casual reader, that doesn’t say whether it was some or all, but using an ounce of noggin power they’d infer from the fact that not all Britons could have built Stonehenge (by reason of georgaphy if nothing else) that it would be some.

As for housing, there are housing estates in the East End where almost all residents are Bangladeshi.. that’s the housing problem.

When I lived in Bradford, there were houses full of people from Pakistani stock. The shock, the horror! Yes, in houses.

The came over ages ago, had kids and stuff, and – sharp intake of breath – live in houses. That’s right, they buy or rent the houses. Whatever next?

I was frankly shocked they lived in houses, it was such a “problem”…

I’m not covering up for a bad choice of words, just chuckling at your inept rebuttal.

In that case you must be absolutely pissing yourself at your failed attempts at spinning! (Perhaps you need to get some basic reading qualifications.)

Why would a rational person think that saying there are too few bins on the high street would attract accusations of racism?

Probably for the same kind of reasons that a rational person living on an Eltham council estate might think that British justice was not for them.

It’s not the provision, its the “inundation” by “foreigners” that they’re scared to voice against.

Seriously, you need to get out and about and talk to people (you are supposed to be a socialist after all.) Many really are scared of being called racists for raising any concerns.

“As for housing, there are housing estates in the East End where almost all residents are Bangladeshi.. that’s the housing problem.”

Have you seen these housing estates? They have the worst housing conditions in Europe and this is not because of the Bangladeshis but because there has been no investment in the housing stock. No-one but the Bangladeshis will live there.

In Belsize Park Camden council wanted to put in an assylum hostel.

The White, Left Wing, Guardian reading Labourits stopped it.

Rich people don’t need to riot.

Middle Class Guardianistas neither

“If people start racialising discussion over resource allocation, claiming priority because they are “British” then that is an ideology that needs to be combatted.” – Red Deathy.

You are clearly a decent human being so I will point out only that by placing British in quotations you are complicit in a type of racist thought. We all are, inevitably. (I am myself English, a racial identity current Race Laws deem does not exist. I could be Scots, Irish or Welsh, but not English. This does matter; but as I once said to a questioner, “You have raised the question of race. I did not.”) The real question is are we all equal? The suspicion among many is we are not and that race plays a part. I share the view expressed here by others that the facts show otherwise and priority is strictly governed by need. But this widespread discontent is an expression and one which needs to be addressed. It is not an ideology and combating it will take something more than righteous anger or contempt for working people. This contempt is not new, at least not to those of us who grew up in ‘traditional’ working class areas – the usual subtext nowadays to tar working class people for being hot beds of BUF stroke NF stroke BNP nastiness.

Have you ever been lectured by a semi-educated Community Worker on how “your” failings (i.e. whiteness) are responsible for the rise of the far right? I thought not. I have.

By possessing a white skin you are personally responsible for the Atlantic Slave Trade, colonial exploitation, religious and racial persecution down the ages and an extant cult of aggrandisement over the ‘lesser breeds without the Law.” The BBC will remind you at length and schools drive on with a curriculum which sets out to question national achievements, personalities and motives so long as these relate to being white.The Union flag is a banner of oppression and something of which to feel ashamed. As a race, we need to ask forgiveness. Working class white children notice and resent this even if they cannot articulate their reasons.

Thirty five years of this have had their effect and one only has to pick up the tabloid newspapers to see how.

As I said before, given this, it is a wonder the BNP is not in power or at least as powerful as its equivalents in Europe are.

I think the way forward is to re-connect the white underclass – de-skilled and marginalised – with their own heritage and reminded of the figures who came forward from within the working class to celebrate internationalism. (Cotton workers supported the Northern States in the US Civil war; see Gandhi’s reception by the UK working class on old news reels; and support for the Spanish Republic – it is not that there is a lack of evidence or material for such studies.)

One needs to build people up not bang on eternally about their failings. If I were as unconcerned as you appear to be about what Ms Brown actually thinks about the white working class – her words are her own and must speak for her – then I am far worse educated than I thought.

Graham,

OK, she should have been more specific with her language as people have obviously interpreted her comment in different ways. Do you think it was merely that, ie sloppy wording, or do you think she meant to smear all of the WWC as racist?

>No-one but the Bangladeshis will live there.

There is a 15- 25 year waiting list for council property in London.

Another genius, I assume a Guardian reader.

Lord help us

Ancient Britons built Stonehenge

Yes, I rather think this (being in the distant past) is an accepted shorthand. Also as Stonehenge is generally regarded as a positive thing nobody is being assigned any blame.

Brown’s attempt to blame all working-class white men for provoking riots however is quite plainly the very same kind of prejudice that she falsely pretends to be concerned about as she pisses on the masses from her lofty position.

Try again (and please try harder this time!)

tt,

belsize is a Lib Dem Ward, Camden is a Tory/Lib Dem Coalition…

Red

I don’t think it was when this happened 5 years ago.

the whole place is a Guardian/BBC ghetto. You can’t throw an organic, ethically harvested stick without hitting a lovie-journalist-champaign socialist.

or do you think she meant to smear all of the WWC as racist?

I think Andrew that there have always been people who considered themselves “foreigners” (Brown actually describes herself this way) who have found it necessary to look down on the great mongrel working-classes of Britain in order to boost their own egos and elevate themselves above the masses. (There were Indian-born MP’s presiding over the slums of Bethnal Green in the 1890s for instance who said basically the same sort of thing as Brown about the scum they had to pass by.)

I have never seen Brown as a sloppy writer before – she is usually quite precise in her meaning I think.

Graham,

when I do get out among the working class, i.e. my family, they’re not shy at coming forward with racism, my friends up North aren’t slow neither, so I do know what I am talking about.

But, ask yourself, why should they fear being called racist if there is no racial element to their concerns? Or are they projecting?

“tt” is Jeremy Clarkson and I claim my five butchered speed cameras.

Although Jeremy Clarkson can spell.

@Dan
“Have you seen these housing estates? They have the worst housing conditions in Europe and this is not because of the Bangladeshis but because there has been no investment in the housing stock. No-one but the Bangladeshis will live there.”
Really? So they have spare council flats there I know people who will live there – how do they apply?
@Graham
“Actually the idea the “white” working class is resentful about immigration is about 20 years behind the times (as governments usually are.)”
Not sure about that one. I know lots of people who are resentful about some abuses who would describe themselves as white working class. Also non whites though.

But, ask yourself, why should they fear being called racist if there is no racial element to their concerns?

Because Deathy they are not all librarians at London University. They are forced to weigh their words much more deeply than pampered journalists in the Indy and many are already stumbline over articulating those words; they get things wrong, they say things they don’t exactly mean and are pounced upon for doing so by people who are much more able than themselves. To be called “racist” in any of the inner city areas that I have ever lived in is by far the worst thing that can happen to anyone. To be labelled racist (if your skin is white, and only if it is white) is to be turned into a social-leper (even if, in the case of one woman I vaguely knew, your grandaughter is half-black.) Yes there are racists amongst the working-class – but there are an awful lot more people unable to articulate resentments about services and frightened of doing so for fear of it not coming out quite right.

I actually like Jeremy Clarkson. Nothing he’s said is particularly offensive.

“tt” is another self-pitying person believing they are being victimised by anyone who reads The Guardian.

I know lots of people who are resentful about some abuses who would describe themselves as white working class.

I should say again that most of my experiences are in communities which are very mixed. I am not quite sure who the “white working-class” (as community or media construction) actually are. I think that in the eyes of most metropolitan lefties and media luvvies when the “white working-class” are mentioned the word “ESSEX” appears in front of their eyes and we are treated to another kind of resentment….

services and frightened of doing so for fear of it not coming out quite right. – that is not a fear of being labelled a racist, that is a fear of trying to enter into political debate – and quite at odds with my experience of arguing on doorsteps with people, who can put their arguments cogently and succinctly, but who will not get involved in politics nor vote.

that is not a fear of being labelled a racist, that is a fear of trying to enter into political debate

Perhaps to you it is a fear of entering into a political debate but when you learn to empathise rather than preach you may begin to see things from the point of view of those to whom you are talking (at which point you will actually have connected and you may also persuade them to vote SPGB).

Eureka!

I am not quite sure who the “white working-class” (as community or media construction) actually are.

When I go up to Teesside I see what it’s like, its really strange walking into a supermarket where everyone, everyone, is white – after years in London it feels strange (because, I suppose, the layout/look of the supermarket is the same in both places, so its the differences of the people that stand out…)

see things from the point of view of those to whom you are talking (at which point you will actually have connected and you may also persuade them to vote SPGB).

I wouldn’t want them to vote SPGB, unless they udnerstood and wanted socialism. If they did, then they would ignopre immigration as a non-issue, and instead focus on the need for a qworld socialist commonwealth…

Of all of yees, Larkers is the only one with a bit of common-sense.

The Comunity Worker as described is someone I’ve encountered on many occasions. They remind me of Doctor Zhivago type idealogues. Spouting the party line without any knowledge at all of that which they speak, except that they, of course, have been cleansed and are not as those they accuse.

More and more such people remind me of any proselytizing fanactic religionist, take your pick, Catholic priest, Right-Wing Christian fundamentalist, and the guy who used to stand outside Finsbury Park Mosque. My less compassionsate self hopes that they will all emigrate to Siberia, (if only the Eurostar would make a stop) otherwise, mandatory lectures in atheism, and how they need to provide actual written and photographic proof of God, before they continue to propagate Her existence.

Larkers 2.01 pm has it dead right.

The white working class is indeed, at its worst, whingeing, bigoted, oafish, small-minded, thuggish and coarse.

But the thing to remember is that it’s not always ‘at its worst’ – often it’s nowhere near and the ‘typical proles’ YAB was slagging off are a minority in terms of their extremity. Such a large number of people – WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT??? – can be remarkably diverse.

The WWC is simply one of those groups, along with the fat and smokers, that it is acceptable to shit on these days now that it’s considered uncouth to be rude to ‘coloureds’ and the disabled. Same disease, different symptoms.

I wouldn’t want them to vote SPGB, unless they udnerstood and wanted socialism. If they did, then they would ignopre immigration as a non-issue, and instead focus on the need for a qworld socialist commonwealth…

That’s nice but I’d really rather everybody had enough doctors.

It is entirely the problem that people ARE afraid to voice concern about service provision for fear of being called racist that Blears etc are drawing attention too.Graham

I,ve been watching you defend this point and I agree with it.

It’s important to allow people to speak about problemes without intimidation, whether those problemes be real or just percieved, so that they KNOW someone is listening to them. Otherwise they’ll tend to grivate to radicals

There’s a kind of language controle taking place and it’s based largely on economics and involves threats and intimidations.

For instance, complaints about gov’t cutbacks in health services and such are often reined in by accusing those who complain of the resulting shortages of being bigots, particularly if those reduced services and cutbacks occur in high immigrant areas.

There’s a similar phenomenon happening under the auspices of enviromentalism, and once again merely for the purposes of cost-cutting.

Québec Province’s Liquor Commission ( has the exclusivity on sales of spirits) is no longer providing customers with bags, even paper bags, for any purchase, be it a bottle of wine, wiskey or absinthe. If you’re caught short and haven’t an old bag ( no, not yer mother-in-law) with you, you just grab your scotch by the neck of the bottle and walk out like you’re ready to crack it open and down ‘er on the spot.

But this Liquor Commission offers no return deposit on all those glass scotch bottles. They have to be thrown, thus, into the garbage. It takes only a few weeks for a paper bag to decompose into useful compost, but how much time does it take for a glass bottle to decompose?

How many centuries?

After I’d complained and pointed out the nonsense of such a move and questioned whether or not it was merely a cost cutting measure, I was told that I was anti-enviroment, polluting, and anti-green.

And I’d just come back from confession, to boot.

Graham,

but we won’t get enough Doctors without socialism, and immigrants are irrelevent to the number of doctors.

What JamesJoyce said.

Jeremy Clarkson – not offensive? The ‘man’ makes jokes about truck drivers -people who won’t earn in a lifetime what he ‘earns’ in a year – killing female sex-workers (oh, ha ha!). He boasts that he deliberately swerves his car to kill animals. His 90’s TV programmes consisted largely of homophobic ‘jokes’. In ‘Jeremy Clarkson Meets the Neighbours’ – a publicly-funded jaunt where he could go round Europe being racist – he illegaly killed and ate an endangered Ortolan (the ‘recipe’ for this involves capturing the tiny endangered bird, pulling its eyes out with tweezers – this stimulates it to eat – feeeding it up for a fortnight, killing it in hot brandy and eating it whole) – well done, the BBC! Last month, it was revealed that Top Gear faked a scene where an eco car ran out of juice. He orchestrated a campaign to try and bankrupt the League Against Cruel Sports. It goes without saying he is abominably sexist. The man is an almighty arsewipe and a wen on the face of humanity.

BTW most doctors, dentists and NHS staff in working-class areas ARE immigrants themselves: white middle-class ones tend to do private!

but we won’t get enough Doctors without socialism

Too many variables on this one, your view of what socialism is certainly conflicts with mine.

and immigrants are irrelevent to the number of doctors.

Not when a decision is made to place a large group of immigrants in one NHS area they are not, especially when that area already has too many problems and not enough doctors. But the major problem is those who argue that mentioning that the new arrivals have made it more difficult to see a doctor is always racist rather than a complaint about the lack of doctors….

Jeremy Clarkson – not offensive?

Just about everyone is offensive to somebody else…

What Morgoth said.

“Jon Cruddas Was Right, Says Hazel Blears”? No, of course not. But she certainly should. She slapped him down, and no mistake, when he suggested during the Labour Deputy Leadership Election that the white working class had been alienated.

The white working class feels abandoned, Hazel? Never! This realisation has only taken three and a half years since turnout in some of their areas was as low as one in three.

Someone is paying for the BNP, and I doubt that the BNP has the faintest idea who. Someone wants to get them into Strasbourg in June, so that association with them can be used to keep all sorts of things off the agenda. Mention those things, and you will “sound like the BNP”. This has already started.

Anything addressing loss of sovereignty, whether to the European Union, to the United States, or to global capital. Anything adddressing the practical consequences of that loss, from the Common Fisheries Policy, to the Iraq War, to the imported credit crunch. Anything addressing the importation of a new working class whose members understand no English except commands, know little or nothing about workers’ rights here, can be moved around this country at will, and can be deported if they step out of line.

Anything addressing deference to Islam. Anything addressing the erosion of the traditional family and its values, not least on the airwaves in general and (because better is rightly expected of it) the BBC in particular. Anything addressing the proliferation of lap-dancing clubs. Anything addressing the de facto legalisation of cannabis. Anything addressing the deregulation of drinking and gambling. Anything addressing how the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have effectively lowered the age of consent to 13.

Anything addressing the Police not patrolling the streets. Anything addressing soft sentencing, the kind that gives rise to horrific calls for the restoration of the death penalty. Anything addressing the fact that the white working class has been left behind. Anything addressing the fact that no one ever mentions manufacturing, which still accounts for more than twice the GDP of the entire financial services sector, never mind the bailout-begging City alone.

Anything addressing the fact that the powers that be apparently cannot distinguish between the respectable working class and the characters from Shameless, so that council and housing association tenants are therefore to lose security of tenure in order for Shameless characters to be moved in next door to them, or even in place of them. Anything addressing the indiscipline in many schools serving the working class, the kind that gives rise to horrific calls for the restoration of the cane.

Anything addressing the concern that Scottish devolution has never been supported by the majority of eligible voters in Scotland, yet is presented by all parties there, both as “the settled will of the Scottish people”, and as “a process rather than an event”, a “process” which can have no logical end except one massively unwanted “event”.

Anything addressing the fact that a mere twenty-six per cent of the electorate ever supported devolution in Wales, where it is being used to entrench the rule of those who live in English-speaking areas but who speak Welsh as a cordon sanitaire.

Anything addressing the fact that the government of Northern Ireland has been carved up between a bizarre fundamentalist sect and a fully armed, highly active terrorist organisation.

And anything addressing the treatment of England, where there is now the kind of resentment that gives rise to crazy calls for an English Parliament, a potential BNP platform.

These valid and well-founded concerns are very widely, deeply and strongly shared within the visible ethnic minority communities. Yet the main parties are not addressing them. So the vacuum is being filled. By the BNP.

And when the BNP, heavily hyped by the client media, marches into Strasbourg, then these concerns will be off the mainstream political agenda once and for all. That is the plan.

Meanwhile, however, my friend Phillip Blond (a working theologian who really ought to become a Catholic and has even said so on Facebook) has been made head of the Demos progressive conservatism project on a permanent contract, and his goal is to turn the Tories “Red Tory”. Well, good luck to him with that. But Jon Cruddas (a practising Catholic, of course) is speaking at the opening event, as is Frank Field.

So the plates are shifting.

Based on this and previous evidence, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is, at heart, an old-fashioned snob. Which doesn’t mean she is incapable of saying sensible things too.

“Anything addressing the fact that the government of Northern Ireland has been carved up between a bizarre fundamentalist sect and a fully armed, highly active terrorist organisation.” David Lindsay @2.56pm.

Now there’s the funniest, truest thing I heard said about NI for a long time.

What is snobbery is to treat working class racism different from any otehr sort, and to deny workers political personality – “all they have, poor lambs, is their inarticulate cries of pain and distress, which we must try and listen to.”

Graham, Jeremy Clarkson isn’t simply offensive – a lot of his actions are actually illegal (deliberately killing animals on the road, killing an Ortolan).

And there was I, thinking that Jeremy Clarkson was the role model all men looked up to and envied!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Celtic tiger in a paper cup.

Catsmeow – what has Jeremy Clarkson got to do with any of this?

I’m a woman, btw…my extended family includes engineers and racers and they think Jeremy Clarkson’s an idiot, too, but not, sadly, because of his political views but because he knows sod all about engines: he’s just a posh boy who likes to drive fast and got the job at a drinks party long ago.

Paul – someone brought him up earlier on. Like a hairball.

I’m not a fan of Clarkson’s actions Cats (I’m not even a driver and have been known to pontificate about the world being run for the benefit of car drivers on here!)

What is snobbery is to treat working class racism different from any otehr sort

Exactly, and just adding “some” before writing off the entire male working class as facilitators of race riots would have brought her into line with how every other group of people in this country were treated by the papers and nobody would have called her a snob.

Pity she still had to lie about the contents of Michael Collins’ book however,

Someone is paying for the BNP, and I doubt that the BNP has the faintest idea who.

Is it Clarkson?

Yes how did Clarkson get into this?

because he’s a bigger arsehole than YAB?

I think somehow that the ex-public schoolboy Jeremy Clarkson functions to some commenters as the epitome of working-class yobbishness.

er not to condone the dramatic move off topic

Red Deathy:

But, ask yourself, why should they fear being called racist if there is no racial element to their concerns?

Because “racist” has become the term used to smear anybody whose views do not correspond with the agreed orthodoxy. In our society in the late 20th / early 21st centuries, it is used in the same way as the term “communist” was used in the America of the Fifties, and “witch” was used four hundred years earlier. The term has attained an almost taboo-like power, and in doing so has entirely lost its original meaning. It is now used to describe both the Nazi-supporting white supremacist and the ordinary fellow who just wants to cling on to what little is left of his cultural identity.

And what power the word now wields! Like “communist” in Cold War America, an accusation of racism, no matter how unfair or unfounded, can derail or even destroy a career. It can provoke both social ostracisation and police investigation, Is it any wonder, then, that people “fear being called racist”?

The power of the word has only increased its misuse by the unscrupulous looking to protect their own interests. This Government recognises its debilitating effect, and long used it to suppress any questioning of its disastrous immigration policy. The hysterical chattering classes use it to denigrate anybody who disagrees with their rose-tinted view of multiculturalism (from their safe havens in “multicultural” Hampstead and Highgate.)

Islamists know of its power to destroy, and so use it to attack anybody voicing concerns about Muslim extremism. European Union officials use it to smear anybody opposed to the EU super state. Criminals and prisoners use it to cower the police and prison service. Even senior police officers now wheel it out in petulance at not being promoted.

The increased use of the word “racist” in recent years comes, ironically, in directly inverse proportion to the relatively successful and peaceful “diversifying” of our society. Proof, surely, that “racism” has become the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Don’t blame Clarksons stone washed jeans on the white working class. Thats just unfair….

“What is snobbery is to treat working class racism different from any otehr sort, and to deny workers political personality”

I totally agree with you, Red Deathy. Racism is racism. There are plenty of working-class people who are articulate, perhaps more so than some verbose and evasive middle-class politician. We have some good local councillors who are actively anti-racist and have working-class origins.

In addition, lack of service provision does not necessarily affect one community more than another. Housing is an enduring problem in the south-east that all people have struggled with, because house-building has been constrained, council housing stock has been privatised and the region’s economy has gone through a long period of over-heating. At the same time, there is a long-term jobless problem in parts of the country that has gone unaddressed.

Sometimes I think immigration is being used as an excuse not to get a job. There are plenty of jobs in the agricultural sector in Norfolk where if you work hard you can earn a good income – or at least more than you can get on the dole – and these are almost exclusively taken up by foreign workers. But still there are locals who resent the foreign workers “taking our jobs”, even though they don’t want to take this kind of employment because it is physically tough.

Judging by his popularity amongst my friends (from an Essex state school), to many he epitomises middle-class laddish toryism more than working-class yobbishness

There are unexpected capabilities among the ‘Shameless’ones.Like, to set up anelaborate, speculative scam, to recruit helpers, to bluff police and mediafor 3 weeks and to show brass neck and an acting ability of a high order. No, not Madoff, Karen Matthews.

“…even though they don’t want to take this kind of employment because it is physically tough.”

Yes, that’s what it is. That’s the trouble with the working-class these dasy – getting all uppity about having to do mindless, shitty, low-paid, soul-destroying work. The workshy, lazy, racist cunts.

The increased use of the word “racist” in recent years comes, ironically, in directly inverse proportion to the relatively successful and peaceful “diversifying” of our society. Proof, surely, that “racism” has become the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Or maybe proof that calling racists on their racism helps stop racism. Dunno. but I do note that your list of things that folk dare not speak against lest they be “labelled” racist consists of not wanting foriegners around “here”. Nothing to do with housing provision overall…

“dasy” = “days”, obviously…

I think somehow that the ex-public schoolboy Jeremy Clarkson functions to some commenters as the epitome of working-class yobbishness.

Not really. Not a yob. More like your ‘typical’ Middle Englander. Although he does make me laugh.

Anyway, according to Wikipedia he was born in Doncaster to teacher Shirley Gabrielle Ward and travelling salesman Edward Grenville “Eddie” Clarkson. Working class stock, no?

“That’s the trouble with the working-class these dasy – getting all uppity about having to do mindless, shitty, low-paid, soul-destroying work.”

I don’t think most manual work is shitty or even low-paid. Many working-class people have turned manual work into a profitable business. There are plenty of builders and plumbers from the East End living in the biggest houses in my town. Good for them. It ultimately comes down to motivation, intelligence and hard work. If there are jobs that pay more than the dole and are going unfilled, then it’s because people are choosing not to work, they are idle. And that annoys most working-class people who have to pay taxes to sustain them.

Judging by his popularity amongst my friends (from an Essex state school), to many he epitomises middle-class laddish toryism more than working-class yobbishness

True bit these days it is so hard for the vast majority of the country to distinguish between a Tory and a Marxist.

A teacher and a travelling salesman who send their kids to public school? You must be following the Richard Seymour definition of “working class!”

I actually like Jeremy Clarkson

Well I don’t “like” him, since he appears only as an image on flat screen LCD. However, he is quite jovial. Says things that are can’t really agree with, but he doesn’t seem actually occasionally unpleasant like Richard Littlejohn.

Dan: “I don’t think most manual work is shitty or even low-paid.”

You say that now. But earlier you were specifically talking about (and it’s what I responded to) agricultural work in Norfolk. Which, whichever way a middle-class idealist like yourself chooses to spin it, is pretty fucking soul-destroying and shitty.

But anyway, who are you to bang on about manual work and the working-class? Every member of my (wc) family is (or was) a manual worker and, unless they were hiding their fortunes from me, they didn’t ever seem to make that much money. It’s why I’m not back there with them, doing the same thing, because it’s rubbish – despite your dopey ‘Loadsamoney’ style romanticising about East End builders living in big houses etc.

Oh, Richard Littlejohn. “His father was an Engineer for British Rail”.

Damn, sorry Graham.

Don’t mention it – apparently Hammond, May AND Clarkson are all from Yorkshire. This must say something surely? I bet Yasmin can make a large generalisation out of that little fact!

“But earlier you were specifically talking about (and it’s what I responded to) agricultural work in Norfolk. Which, whichever way a middle-class idealist like yourself chooses to spin it, is pretty fucking soul-destroying and shitty.”

I used to work on a fruit farm in summer months when I was doing my A-levels and while I was at university. I didn’t think it was soul-destroying or shitty, although it was hard work. Some fruit and vegetable farms pay bonuses if you pick more and you can earn £20,000 per annum.

“It’s why I’m not back there with them, doing the same thing, because it’s rubbish”

Snob!

(I know, I know, very off topic, but of course J Clarkson is ‘jovial’ – he gets paid millions of quid to drive around going ‘poop poop’ like Mr. Toad! R Littlejohn is truly vile, but at least he is confined to the pages of a newspaper I don’t have to buy – J Clarkson seems to be on TV 24/7, and I’m paying him, cos it’s the sodding BBC).

Dan: “I used to work on a fruit farm in summer months when I was doing my A-levels and while I was at university. I didn’t think it was soul-destroying or shitty… ”

That’s because you knew that you wouldn’t be doing it for the rest of your life! Christ almighty. I tell you, you’d really benefit from having a listen to Pulp’s Common People – it’s probably the easiest way for you to understand.

“Some fruit and vegetable farms pay bonuses if you pick more and you can earn £20,000 per annum.”

A king’s ransom, for sure! Blimey Dan, are you for real?

I’m still rather bemused why the defence of the idea that you are innocent until proven guilty in this country comprises (according to Ms Alibhai-Brown anyway) “an intellectual alibi for the killers of Stephen Lawrence.”

Red Deathy:

“Dunno. but I do note that your list of things that folk dare not speak against lest they be “labelled” racist consists of not wanting foreigners around ‘here’”

What the hell are you talking about? If you read it again – carefully – you’ll see that the list to which you refer was of situations where spurious accusations of “racism” are used to both intimidate opposition and stifle legitimate debate. If you believe that opposition to Islamism consists of “not wanting foreigners round here” then you clearly are deluded.

I am a lifelong resident of the East End of London. We have had “foreigners” as you call them “round here” for more than four hundred years. Please don’t smear all of us with your own hysterical prejudices about working class people.

As for not “wanting foreigners round here”, take a trip to Hampstead, or Southgate, or any other bastion of bien pensant liberalism. Count how many dark faces you see. Then come and tell us that we are “racists”. Hell, they didn’t even want a McDonalds in Hampstead for fear that it would lower the tone. I’d love to see their reaction if they had 10,000 Somalis dumped on them.

“That’s because you knew that you wouldn’t be doing it for the rest of your life!”
Nobody does. Or even for the whole year. But if you need more income, then you’d do it, wouldn’t you? The fact is that there are some people who complain they are hard-done-by because of immigrants, but actually don’t really want to work in jobs that are available – it’s an excuse.

“A king’s ransom, for sure! Blimey Dan, are you for real?”
How much does the dole pay?

“Nobody does. Or even for the whole year. But if you need more income, then you’d do it, wouldn’t you? The fact is that there are some people who complain they are hard-done-by because of immigrants, but actually don’t really want to work in jobs that are available – it’s an excuse.”

I think it’s perfectly obvious, Dan, that, like Alibhai-Brown, you’re simply a patronising, privileged, middle-class twerp who knows sod all about the working-class. Which is amazing really, considering that you once spent a few weeks working with them during your summer break.

Top Gear is crap, and of course he is paid too much. I occasionally watch it the show for light relaxation because the banter is reasonably amusing at times. I have absolutely no interest in cars.

apparently Hammond, May AND Clarkson are all from Yorkshire.

No, Hammond is from Solihull and May is from Bristol. Although they have both spent some time in Yorkshire.

Joseph K.,

Some racists do use opposition to Islamism as cover for general racism against south asians generally. Very often the “legitimite debate” is actually racist, and justifiably called so.

As for Hampstead, unless I’m reading the stats wrong, it registered 17% BME population in the 2001 Census, less than the, I think 27% for Camden as a whole, but still higher than the UK average…

No, Hammond is from Solihull and May is from Bristol. Although they have both spent some time in Yorkshire.

I don’t think we need to let such petty details occupy us on a thread dedicated to yasmin!

What has all but ruined the British working class has been the British intelligentsia’s scornful assault on the middle class values that the working class could ameliorate its condition by aspiring to. Values such as hard work, thrift, self-reliance, education and respectability, which people unfortunate enough to live in the slums needed to keep their heads above the water — and if they were bright and lucky, rise up and escape their fate. The harshest and most passionate putdown the British intelligentsia can muster has always been to call someone a “Daily Mail reader”.

You see a lot of that intellectual contempt in this thread, funnily enough. Scorn for ordinary people that sometimes emerges as fear and loathing of the unruly and difficult proles, who refuse to toe the line the enlightenment set out for them, as in these musings of the always execrable Alibhai-Brown.

“I think it’s perfectly obvious, Dan, that, like Alibhai-Brown, you’re simply a patronising, privileged, middle-class twerp”

It’s pretty obvious that you are a moaning white working-class man with a chip on his shoulder.

“Top Gear is crap, and of course he is paid too much.”

Top Gear was unwatchably boring before Jeremy Clarkson. Now it is watched across the world, making it one of the BBC’s most successive commercial ventures. He deserves a good salary. A working-class man made good. Good on him.

“It’s pretty obvious that you are a moaning white working-class man with a chip on his shoulder.”

And it’s witless Tarquins like you that keep those chips there. But go on, do tell us more about your vast experience of working-class culture. It’s quite amusing, if nothing else….

As for Hampstead, unless I’m reading the stats wrong, it registered 17% BME population in the 2001 Census, less than the, I think 27% for Camden as a whole, but still higher than the UK average…

Although I wouldn’t use the “dumped on” language I think Joseph K’s point (rather like my own about the arrival of several thousand Vietnamese in this area in the eighties above) is that any immigration into Hampstead has been nice and slow and steady and unlikely to upset those residents who slum it down the NHS.

Surely the point all along here has been that at times local authorities have inserted whole communities into (usually) working-class areas without really making enough provision for the strains on services. When people complain about this, power is abused in order to suggest any complaints are “racist”.

This could of course never happen in an area where people were used to playing the right language games.

That’s because you knew that you wouldn’t be doing it for the rest of your life!

Most working people will not do the very same job all their life, if they have some gumption and initiative. I expect the fruit pickers were all young people, most looking to do something better in the future, and most getting there in the end.

I tell you, you’d really benefit from having a listen to Pulp’s Common People – it’s probably the easiest way for you to understand.

Hilarious. That song and “Cunts are still ruling the world” seems to be the alpha and omega of the contemporary British Left’s political analysis, at least judging by a lot of posters on HP.

“The harshest and most passionate putdown the British intelligentsia can muster has always been to call someone a “Daily Mail reader”.”

The Daily Mail is for the lower middle-class.

The Daily Mail is for the lower middle-class.

An examining board a few years ago suggested in their coursework materials that the Mail was read mostly by lower middle-class women.

Graham,

according to the 1991 census figures, Hampstead was 90% white then, so a 7% growth over ten years is quite significant…plus, if you ever look at the hidden council estates round Camden (there’s one just behind the nice houses of Belsize park) you realise that it’s more mixed than you’d think…

“Most working people will not do the very same job all their life, if they have some gumption and initiative.”

Well, duh. I wasn’t talking about the exact job but, rather, the type of job. Young Dan, being born with a shiny silver spoon hanging from his wide open mouth, knew that he wouldn’t be in for a life of manual labour, whatever happened.

Of course, when you’re a nice middle-class type it all seems so easy. A bit of initiative is all the working-class needs. A bit of gumption. A bit of get up and go. What on earth is the matter with them?

Just cos something’s popular, doesn’t make it good (Peter Mandelson at a Fabian Society thing I one went to: ‘Why are you pandering to a Daily Mail agenda?” “The Daily Mail is a very popular newspaper.”). Btw the Daily Mail doesn’t normally ‘like’ council house people (it’s the Hyacinth Bucket paper, isn’t it?)- apart from this weekend, when along with the Express, it has seized on this report about the white working classes as though it had always been their champion. I suppose it’s in angry response to that glee that Y A-B (who I used to like, till I read this) has written her thoughtless piece, but it still doesnt justify it.

I think somehow that the ex-public schoolboy Jeremy Clarkson functions to some commenters as the epitome of working-class yobbishness.

Or rather, nowadays the middle classes aspire to yobbishness so as to prove their authenticity. You could tell profound changes were afoot when the middle classes in the space of a few years suddenly got into football instead of their previously preferred sports. More than a decade ago, public schoolboy and posh lawyer Tony Blair made sure everyone knew of his love of NUFC, while Campbell made a point of swearing like a terrace thug to any journalist in earshot. Very telling.

Yes Deathy but the point is nobody would ever try resettling a whole community in Hampstead (as they have elsewhere.)

Anyway what on earth does 90% white mean? a change in methodology could even explain away the 7%. For instance when I am offered a questionairre where the only answer that seems to come anywhere near me is “White British” I tick it, but I am more honest if I can tick the “unknown” box found on some surveys. If I was ever to apply to see my real birth certificate I could end up ticking something else entirely…

Or rather, nowadays the middle classes aspire to yobbishness so as to prove their authenticity.

This has always been the case though. It would be interesting to see how many members of inner-city gangs actually came in each day from suburbia. Certainly when I was a youngster and hanging with some very violent people in Brixton one was the son of a top copper.

A bit of initiative is all the working-class needs. A bit of gumption. A bit of get up and go. What on earth is the matter with them?

What’s the matter with them? Well, they have a bunch of middle class intellectuals whispering in their ears that trying is hopeless and they ought to give up, because “the system” has doomed them to be untermenschen.

“A bit of initiative is all the working-class needs. A bit of gumption. A bit of get up and go.”

Isn’t that exactly what you did? You decided your parents’ jobs were too “shitty” for you and you did something else, on your own initiative. A slap on the back for you, old boy.

Graham,

its the Census, I think it has an option for White British (they include White Irish as a category, so I assume the divisions were there) – regardless, I doubt a 7% change through normal means would feel different from a 7% resettlement. Admittedly, I went down as “other, Human being” on the last census, so…

“Isn’t that exactly what you did? You decided your parents’ jobs were too “shitty” for you and you did something else, on your own initiative. A slap on the back for you, old boy.”

Patronising twat. But yes, hurrah for me. But what has my own personal experience got to do with anything? Go down that route and you just end soundling like a blustering “if I can do it, so can they” Gradgrind.

Isn’t that exactly what you did? You decided your parents’ jobs were too “shitty” for you and you did something else, on your own initiative.

It is, isn’t it? But deriding the effort on the part of others and pretending that it’s too difficult for working class people to do the same is the equivalent of pulling the ladder up after using it himself.

And this, from people who imagine that they are champions of the proletariat.

Wer: “Well, they have a bunch of middle class intellectuals whispering in their ears that trying is hopeless and they ought to give up, because “the system” has doomed them to be untermenschen.”

Really? And who might these “middle-class intellectuals” be?

“It is, isn’t it? But deriding the effort on the part of others and pretending that it’s too difficult for working class people to do the same is the equivalent of pulling the ladder up after using it himself.”

Stop being a twat. It’s nothing to do with ladders and difficulty. It’s to do with patronising middle-class fools like you and your pal Dan projecting your own poxy values on to people who aren’t like you. Don’t be too surprised if your well-meaning Middle England dunderheadedness is met with scorn.

Graham,

On the subject on whether YAB was generalising about all of the WWC, I think we’ll have to disagree – I just don’t read her comment the way you do.

I fully agree with the following though.

I’m still rather bemused why the defence of the idea that you are innocent until proven guilty in this country comprises (according to Ms Alibhai-Brown anyway) “an intellectual alibi for the killers of Stephen Lawrence.”

Whatever they did or did not do it is certainly not for the Court of the Daily Mail to pass the verdict.

“But what has my own personal experience got to do with anything?”

You haven’t sat on your arse blaming foreigners for everything, but you’ve done something. I’ve not actually said that all working-class people are idle scroungers or the cause of their own misfortune. My gripe is about those who complain foreigners are taking jobs, but who don’t want to work anyway even if they are given the opportunity to do these jobs. If they don’t want these jobs, then why complain when immigrants opt to do them? There are people in East Anglia who complain that Polish and Lithuanian workers are taking all the jobs in agriculture, but they actually prefer to remain unemployed that do these jobs even when they pay more than the dole.

I doubt a 7% change through normal means would feel different from a 7% resettlement.

Actually I think that would depend an awful lot on how “alien” the 7% being resettled were perceived to be. One day not a single Vietnamese person and the next day virtually the entire British quota of boat people would surely feel different than a slow growth of British muslims into Hampstead as they became wealthy enough to buy property in the area. Likewise (and as already pointed out) NHS and other services in Hampstead were probably not as overstretched as in say Peckham to begin with and a growth of 7% over several years is unlikely to impact on services or even be noticed except by hard-line racists.

The resettlement of Vietnamese people around here actually worked very well in the end. Sons of Irish friends have duaghters of Vietnamese immigrants as girlfriends etc. There was no hatred towards incomers but there was at the time an over-demand for services and a council eager to shout “racist” at anyone who complained about it.

“Maybe it’s because I’m a foreigner…” This pretty well sums the core weakness of contemporary Britain. Here’s a women of wealth and privilege – OBE no less and obviously Oxbridge educated – yet despite living and prospering in Britain for 36 years, she still enjoys describing herself as foreign. Not surprising as unlike most other countries, power in Britain can be found and held by leveraging one’s ‘foreignness’, to the detriment of any national cohesion. This lack of national identity is tearing the country apart – it really is a cancer, as Yasmin so aptly demonstrates.

Red Deathy:

“Some racists do use opposition to Islamism as cover for general racism against south asians generally.”

So we should be wary of all opposition to Islamism? Get off your knees, man.

“Very often the “legitimite debate” is actually racist, and justifiably called so.”

So the only “legitimate debate” should be that which you and people who think like you deem to be legitimate? Oh yeah, you’re a Socialist all right. I bet you’re a noisy proponent of free speech too.

And you hard-Left types wonder why you have always failed to gain support among genuine working class people? It’s simple – it’s because they can tell instantly that you don’t like them.

Let’s be honest here – you and YAB would probably be far happier if all these horrible white working class people would just somehow “disappear”, or else become middle-class overnight. Nothing new there. If I recall, weren’t Sidney and Beatrice Webb supporters of eugenics as a way of “improving” society?

It’s to do with patronising middle-class fools like you and your pal Dan projecting your own poxy values on to people who aren’t like you.

Yep, that was my original point about the evil influence of British intellectuals on working class lives. Middle class tossers like you who complain about working class people aspiring to the very values that enabled you to get ahead. A moron who actually thinks the lyrics to a pop song have something worthwhile to offer and is so stupid he even admits it in public. Truly the British working class is utterly fucked if they’ve only got someone like you to speak for them.

Fortunately they don’t. They have the practical example of millions of people over the years who have bettered themselves and made a nice life for themselves. Many of them, I should add, in the building trade — despite builders being the epitome of all that the right-on and politically correct despise in working class attitudes.

“You haven’t sat on your arse blaming foreigners for everything, but you’ve done something.”

The fact that you’re still not getting what a patronising twat you are is really getting to me. Not sat on my arse? Done something?

Fuck you.

On the subject on whether YAB was generalising about all of the WWC, I think we’ll have to disagree – I just don’t read her comment the way you do.

Well that she was generalising about all male members of the WWC when she said:

Working-class white men provoked race riots through the Fifties and Sixties; they kept “darkies” out of pubs and clubs and work canteens.

Seems to me to be unarguable (but I look forward to any Derrida-like reasons for reading it any other way.) In my local area Asian -bashing used to be undertaken by some working-class black men but you would not catch me leaving that “some” out for anything in the world.

Joseph K.,

no, legitimite debate includes putting forward racist opinions if you have them, but lets call them for what they are.

I hate to point this out to you, but I and my comrades are genuinely working class, so please remove your no true scotsman fallacy to someplace else…

“Maybe it’s because I’m a foreigner…”

This is known as “The Prince Phillip getout clause”.

“A moron who actually thinks the lyrics to a pop song have something worthwhile to offer and is so stupid he even admits it in public.”

If you read back, you’ll see that I chose the Pulp song as elucidation for Dan because I thought that that would be the easiest way for him to understand. Because he didn’t appear to be that bright. Get it?

“Middle class tossers like you who complain about working class people aspiring to the very values that enabled you to get ahead.”

When did I do that? Answer: I didn’t. I simply objected, as I said, to middle-class types thinking they have all the answers for the working-class because they, you know, once spent a week picking apples with them. Middle-class types like you who think they know what’s best for people who aren’t you. Dunderheads, like I said.

Blimey now we are being told pop lyrics have nothing to offer?

I think you will find they are the distilled folk-memory of our society mate (although having said that Pulp are from Sheffield like Clarkson)

Down Benji – I know it is actually Rotherham.

Graham:

“Although I wouldn’t use the “dumped on” language I think Joseph K’s point (rather like my own about the arrival of several thousand Vietnamese in this area in the eighties above) is that any immigration into Hampstead has been nice and slow and steady and unlikely to upset those residents who slum it down the NHS.”

I used “dumped on” because it aptly describes, both metaphorically and literally, the approach for more than three decades of both Governmental parties towards the dispersal of immigrants to this country. Both the Conservatives and Labour have “dumped” immigrants into poor Labour-supporting boroughs of East London – Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest in particular. Both parties did so because it had no negative electoral effect for them. The boroughs did not vote Conservative, so there were no votes for the Tories to lose. They were staunchly Labour, so this Government could treat the people of these boroughs however they wanted without any fear of losing the seats. If anybody dared to grumble, then they were dismissed as “racists” and the debate quickly moved on.

That’s why you will never see Labour marginals being encouraged to share the “benefits” of mass immigration.

But yes, you did get my point about immigration rates.

“I simply objected, as I said, to middle-class types thinking they have all the answers for the working-class because they, you know, once spent a week picking apples with them.”

Umm, I didn’t. I said that this kind of job is not demeaning and not always low-paid, but is shunned by white unemployed people. Nobody said it’s a career, but it’s better than the dole. But if someone chooses not to do such jobs, then they shouldn’t complain if employers look overseas for workers.

My other point is that manual jobs don’t necessarily mean a life of toil or poverty. Certainly more skilled manual jobs can pay as much as some middle-class professions and in some trades people have created successful businesses on the back of hard work. To suggest that recognising this is romanticising loadsamoney types is to vilify another false stereotype.

“Both the Conservatives and Labour have “dumped” immigrants into poor Labour-supporting boroughs of East London – Newham, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest in particular.”

The East End has been the destination of immigrants since the Hugonauts and has always been in a state of perpetual social change. Before the South Asians, it was the East Europeans, the Greeks, the Irish, the Jews. They are not “dumped” there by governments, they move there because it is cheap. Many have done well and moved out of the area to North London or Essex. People in these areas voted Labour on class lines, regardless of ethnicity.

Jeremy Clarkson – not offensive? The ‘man’ makes jokes about truck drivers -people who won’t earn in a lifetime what he ‘earns’ in a year – killing female sex-workers (oh, ha ha!). He boasts that he deliberately swerves his car to kill animals. His 90’s TV programmes consisted largely of homophobic ‘jokes’. In ‘Jeremy Clarkson Meets the Neighbours’ – a publicly-funded jaunt where he could go round Europe being racist – he illegaly killed and ate an endangered Ortolan (the ‘recipe’ for this involves capturing the tiny endangered bird, pulling its eyes out with tweezers – this stimulates it to eat – feeeding it up for a fortnight, killing it in hot brandy and eating it whole) – well done, the BBC! Last month, it was revealed that Top Gear faked a scene where an eco car ran out of juice. He orchestrated a campaign to try and bankrupt the League Against Cruel Sports. It goes without saying he is abominably sexist. The man is an almighty arsewipe and a wen on the face of humanity.

But he did punch Piers Morgan in the face, so whilst everything you say above is true, redemption is his.

Anything addressing the fact that the government of Northern Ireland has been carved up between a bizarre fundamentalist sect and a fully armed, highly active terrorist organisation

I thought the FRU had been disbanded?

There are people in East Anglia who complain that Polish and Lithuanian workers are taking all the jobs in agriculture, but they actually prefer to remain unemployed that do these jobs even when they pay more than the dole.

Years ago, I put in the accounting system at a well-known plant nursery in darkest Suffolk. I got to known some of the gangmasters personally. They were dripping in it, but mostly because their gangs were working for well below what was then the non-existent minimum wage. Gang-member names at the time included the likes of “Mickey Mouse” and “John Wayne”. With the migrant workers from Eastern Europe, it will be even worse now (th pay, not the names). I’ll guarantee that this back-breaking work doesn’t pay more than the dole, and I’ll guarantee that the accounting system I put in (if it still exists) won’t be used to process any payments to gangs.

Brownie: In order to boost productivity, many farms have introduced incentives to speed up harvests – ie payments by kilos on top of a basic wage (yes, the minimum wage does not extend to agriculture). It’s hard work, no doubt. But if you work hard, you can earn a reasonable wage.

If you read back, you’ll see that I chose the Pulp song as elucidation for Dan because I thought that that would be the easiest way for him to understand.

Oh, so you were patronising him. In the course of complaining about him being patronising. Very clever. Very senior common room.

Nobody said it’s a career, but it’s better than the dole.

Exactly. Any job is better than the dole — because it means (i) you are supporting yourself without having to hold your hand out; (ii) the taxpayer has one less mouth to feed.

Of course, some of the middle class smart arses in this thread will laugh at the idea you should work for no more money than the dole pays, because they care nothing if working class people are reduced to being powerless and infantilised clients of the welfare state.

God I fancy being a powerless and infantilised client of the welfare state for a bit, I really do.

That or move to Illinois anyway.

Red Deathy:

“no, legitimite debate includes putting forward racist opinions if you have them, but lets call them for what they are”

From your posts it appears that, in your view, “racist opinions” include, among other things: any questioning whatsoever of immigration levels; any concern over the erosion of cultural identity; any opposition to Islamism. If these constitute “racism” in your book then I think that says everything about you and your views.

“I hate to point this out to you, but I and my comrades are genuinely working class”

Ha! I have never met a true “genuinely working class” person who uses that laughable term “comrade”. It’s a usually reliable yardstick that people who do use it are either a) middle-class student poseurs with Che Guevara fantasies or b) bedsit revolutionaries who effect an air of class solidarity, but in reality are tremendous snobs who absolutely despise genuine working class people.

From your posts, I’d guess that you probably lean towards the latter. Again, it’s why you and people like you have always failed so miserably to mobilise white working class support. No wonder you have such a deep-seated grievance towards them.

columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Any barking idiot can become a ‘columnist’ in this deranged rag (shrug).

“A bit of initiative is all the working-class needs. A bit of gumption. A bit of get up and go. What on earth is the matter with them?”

Doktor Wer

“What’s the matter with them? Well, they have a bunch of middle class intellectuals whispering in their ears that trying is hopeless and they ought to give up, because “the system” has doomed them to be untermenschen.”

Yeah Im sure the working class really listen to middle class intellectuals.

Its so common to see the WWC walking around reading the Guardian and Independent and eschewing The Sun and News of the World.

If you want a scapegoat try the welfare state. Immigrants have come to do the jobs the WWC wouldnt – their children have gone on to better things. The WWC also helped elect Thatcher who destroyed much of their traitional industries.

The point is not a few from the white working class HAVE made it – so what excuse do they have? Many ethnic minorities have out suceeded them and they dont have the advantages they have of being White, Christian and native English speakers.

They have the best spoken and written English language skills in the world

I don’t know, Catsmeow. It seems to me that written English language skills consist of more than stringing a lot of long words together in the correct order: I would also like to see some literate, well-informed, nay sane, content. I can see none of that in this self-regarding scribbler’s outpourings.

But he did punch Piers Morgan in the face, so whilst everything you say above is true, redemption is his

Nah. So he is only a skin cancer instead of lung cancer.

The white working class is indeed, at its worst, whingeing, bigoted, oafish, small-minded, thuggish and coarse

So are the ‘upper’ classes. So is the Muslim working class. And the black one. So is Y. A-B. Actually, she is all those all the time.

my extended family includes engineers and racers and they think Jeremy Clarkson’s an idiot, too, but not, sadly, because of his political views but because he knows sod all about engines

I can confirm that. My in-laws are all working mechanical engineers and suchlike, indeed two brothers built a working car in their garden in Birmingham as teenagers 40 years ago, and they all say much the same.
Me, I don’t know much about cars, but I detest him as a disgusting Neanderthal yob. I wish I was the one who threw that custard pie in his face when he was awarded an ‘honorary doctorate’ (heaven help us) by the increasingly ridiculous and deranged Oxford Brooke University a couple of years ago.

Larkers:

“By possessing a white skin you are personally responsible for the Atlantic Slave Trade, colonial exploitation, religious and racial persecution down the ages and an extant cult of aggrandisement over the ‘lesser breeds without the Law.” The BBC will remind you at length and schools drive on with a curriculum which sets out to question national achievements, personalities and motives so long as these relate to being white.The Union flag is a banner of oppression and something of which to feel ashamed. As a race, we need to ask forgiveness. Working class white children notice and resent this even if they cannot articulate their reasons.”

I agree with that, and it does indeed sow confusion and bewilderment among children. Especially when they have to try and resolve family history of rickets, the workhouse, and men and boys (sometimes as young as seven years old) dying in accidents down the pit, or on a trawler, and a teacher telling them how their ancestors became wealthy through the wicked exploitation of colonised races. I have watched as they reasoned these things through, and finally came to the conclusion that they were being pilloried for being the same race as the folk who exploited the black and brown races. They became angry at this double standard which seemed to single them out for the stigma of original sin, but after that subsided, it was replaced by a form of contempt for the purveyors of this white guilt tatt.

But above all, such preaching is racially very divisive.

And the main beneficiary of all this shit-stirring will be the BNP. They are already rejoicing at YAB’s latest cringe-worthy racist rant. And they haven’t even picked out the most relevant aspect of her track record. She was among a racial group who were dispossessed and deported from Africa because of their race. Despite this, she has no rancour against Africans, because to do so would be racist.

But once she starts on the subject of white Britons, the gloves come off, and she has said some seriously nasty racist things, on the record, about the British.

Why is it OK for this vile old harpy to make racist remarks about any racial group?

“My in-laws are all working mechanical engineers and suchlike, indeed two brothers built a working car in their garden in Birmingham as teenagers 40 years ago, and they all say much the same.”

If Top Gear was all about manufacturing engines, the only people who would watch it would be those involved with manufacturing engines. It’s an entertainment programme, for god’s sake.

I doubt YAB would actually dare say that to a member of the working class…
She might actually encounter a “violent” reaction.

“schools drive on with a curriculum which sets out to question national achievements, personalities and motives so long as these relate to being white”

This is absolute bullshit. The curriculum does nothing of the sort. This statement demonstrates that you don’t know what is in the curriculum.

“The Union flag is a banner of oppression and something of which to feel ashamed.”

But not for black athletes who win gold medals. Another myth.

History KS1 and KS2: http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes2/history/

Note Unit 12, “What are we remembering on Remembrance Day?” http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes2/history/his17/?view=get
This unit is divided into sections. Each section contains a sequence of activities with related objectives and outcomes. You can view this unit by moving through the sections or print/download the whole unit.
1. Why are people wearing poppies this week?
2. Who do we remember on Remembrance Day?
3. Why do we have Remembrance Day?
4. What happens on Remembrance Day?
5. Why is it important to remember?

Why is it important to remember? – http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes2/history/his17/17q5?view=get
Ask the children to think about why we still have Remembrance Day. Develop the discussion to include other commemorations, eg international, national, local and family events as appropriate. Help children to identify, through discussion, why some commemorations are national/international events.

So where is this nonsense about “questioning national achievements”? It simply does not exist in the curriculum. Quite the opposite. So let’s stop this “metropolitan anti-white liberal elite” bullshit and look at the real world.

Yeah Im sure the working class really listen to middle class intellectuals.

Sadly, most of the bad ideas causing misery nowadays in working class families began as the preserve of “edgy” and “radical” middle class thinkers. The idea that all property is theft (P. J. Proudhon) — very popular amongst criminals. That marriage is oppressive and sexist (H. Ellis et al) — popular among the likes of Karen Matthews and others who see children as an unfortunate side effect of their pursuit of sexual freedom. The idea that education is just training for wage slavery (K. Marx) — very popular amongst kids too lazy to turn up or work at school, condemning themselves to always be at the bottom of the ladder.

How do ordinary people come across these ideas? They are everywhere, on the TV, radio, newspapers, colleges, down the pub. The government even complains when soap operas like East Enders fail to toe the ideological line, and suggests handy plotlines to get its messages over to the oi polloi.

Dan, I’ve gathered from your 3rd & 4th posts that you live in Debden or Loughton. How do you get to Bethnal Green in 15 minutes?

Doktor Wer @ 5 January 2009, 4:33 pm: “Values such as hard work, thrift, self-reliance, education and respectability” are working class values. If economic minorities, such as entrepreneurs, self employed people and the rich like to claim them as well, that’s fine, but to deny them to the majority is not fine.

What is new in the last few years is an economy in which the number of unskilled jobs is shrinking faster than the number of unskilled workers. Many people fear dropping out of the working class and wonder how this is happening. It isn’t surprising that some come up with “explainations” that are nonsense.

“How do you get to Bethnal Green in 15 minutes?”

Catch the Central Line westbound tube from Debden station to Bethnal Green. Perhaps it’s 20 minutes. Alternatively, you can get on the M11 southbound to Leyton and drive there via Bow Road and Mile End Road. I hope those directions are helpful, if you ever intended to come to Debden Broadway for pie and mash.

The idea that all property is theft (P. J. Proudhon)

Surely much older – Winstanley and the diggers via that hotbed of “edgy” and “radical” middle class thinkers – the bible (specifically the book of acts 4.32 in which the Jerusalem church is described as living communally, sharing everything in common.

Blessed are the Meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Dan, I’ve just looked at the TfL Journey planner and Debden to Bethnal Green alternates between 28 and 26 minutes at this time of evening.
You seem to think its closer than it really is. This confused me when I was trying to work out the area you were writing about.

“I’ve just looked at the TfL Journey planner and Debden to Bethnal Green alternates between 28 and 26 minutes at this time of evening.”

Well, as they say, time flies by when you’re having fun. And the Central Line is so much fun – it’s overground most of the way.

Surely much older – Winstanley and the diggers via that hotbed of “edgy” and “radical” middle class thinkers – the bible

There’s a difference between the idea of sharing property, and the idea that if you don’t have something, a crime has been committed against you. The first implies that you should preach your ideal seeking converts, the second that you are justified in seizing what is not yours.

That’s why nobody ever confused Proudhon, a follower of early anarchism, with being a follower of early Christianity.

Do you think Proudhon was preaching that everyone should go out on the swag then or that his anarchism was about sharing property?

Having read his works I’d suggest the latter.

Acts 32 by the way is clear:

The whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.

Or basically “all property is theft”.

“Self pitying, Always-wretched and complaining, Stupid, Vicious. envy others”

This describes Graham very well. But of course it would be unfair to say all or even some of the “white working class” people are like this. If YAB had restricted her criticisms to Graham, then there would be no problem.

Dan, I was originally thinking Barking for some reason. The notion that people in Debden think they are somehow victims of excessive immigration is indeed bizarre.

BTW, seeing the usual Guardian bashing would be quite amusing if it was not for the rather serious fact that we have other newspapers who don’t seem to attract such ire actively stirring up racial hatred. Alan Ji mentions that it is not surprising that some people come up with nonsense explanations for disappearing jobs, but then when they read that ALL (in big red letters) new jobs in Britain since 2001 have been taken by immigrants it is even less so.

““schools drive on with a curriculum which sets out to question national achievements, personalities and motives so long as these relate to being white”
This is absolute bullshit. The curriculum does nothing of the sort. This statement demonstrates that you don’t know what is in the curriculum.
“The Union flag is a banner of oppression and something of which to feel ashamed.”
But not for black athletes who win gold medals. Another myth.” – Dan.

I am reminded of a remark by playwrite David Hare about the Thatcherites: “What interests me most is their anger.”

You have no argument merely abuse.

Or basically “all property is theft”.

I think you’ll find that an important difference is whether the property is held in common by mutual consent, or simply stolen by someone who has less. People go to jail for the latter but not the former, in case you still can’t work out why they are not the same.

Having read his works I’d suggest the latter.

Of course, Proudhon was a nice, peaceful, salt-of-the-earth type. Did you read the one where he wrote this?

“The Jew is the enemy of the human race. This race must be sent back to Asia, or exterminated.”

Frame it alongside Engels rantings about eliminating “reactionary peoples” and Marx’s jokes about Lasalle being a n-gger. They too just wanted to make the world a happier, nicer place, and are equally worthy of your defence, Graham.

Of course, Proudhon was a nice, peaceful, salt-of-the-earth type. Did you read the one where he wrote this?

“The Jew is the enemy of the human race. This race must be sent back to Asia, or exterminated.”

Quite what this has to do with the fact that Proudhon devised a system based on early Christian writings is anyones guess. Did you think I was defending him, where did you get that from then? (Or, even funnier) did you really think that he was suggesting everybody go out and nick the neighbours horse? Too pathetic.

And look the Revolutionary Communist party’s finest little vanguardist Tag is back too! Pity that (as usual) the useless little twat has nothing adult to say!

You are aware of course Herr Doktor that Proudhon also said that “property is freedom”?

No?

Quite what this has to do with the fact that Proudhon devised a system based on early Christian writings is anyones guess.

That would seem to be a “fact” which the man himself denies, perhaps you missed this in your studies:

“In my first memorandum, in a frontal assault upon the established order, I said things like, Property is theft! … in the memorandum in which I demonstrated that startling proposition using simple arithmetic, I took care to speak out against any communist conclusion.” (Confessions of a Revolutionary)

So Proudhon didn’t base his ideas on Christian writings, but “arithmetic”, and rejected the communism of the early Church.

Perhaps you better shut up about Proudhon before making yourself look even more stupid, Graham?

So Proudhon didn’t base his ideas on Christian writings, but “arithmetic”, and rejected the communism of the early Church.

Good God you are stupid – you’d probably also believe an author who said that his works were dictated to him by a spirit guide!

Of course Proudhon talked about arithmetic (science was an obsssession in the 19th century) then he revived early Christian thinking via the works of the diggers as any fool (apart from yourself it seems) can see. His whole philosophy involves holding everything in common and not saying (as you seem to think) “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law!

Good God you are stupid

(I think this is the more familiar Graham that Tags was referring to.)

Of course Proudhon talked about arithmetic (science was an obsssession in the 19th century)

Actually, in this context “simple arithmetic” is French code for “deduced from first principles”, in the grand Cartesian manner.

But by all means prove that Proudhon was secretly inspired by Christianity, Graham. It’s a very worthy endeavour, I’m sure we can all agree. And was Marx similarly inspired, I wonder? Can’t wait to find out!

The Working Class has been let down by it’s political organs, there is no party to articulate it’s grievances. The Labour Party has become a party stuffed full of timeservers and place seekers, only interested in filling their own boots. (Check out the lists of directorships that many Labour MPs hold.). I remember back n the 80s, when Blair was mooted as Leader of the Party, that his supporters said quite openly that they were aiming to create an American ‘Democratic’ style party, with no internal democracy. Joseph k@ are you mad? I can assure you that Southgate is full of non-English speakers, if I go shopping I will not hear a word of English spoken, it is a Tower of Babel. Where we live there are four families and we are the last four English families left in this stretch of our long road. My children have never had English friends, all of their friends are either fully ‘immigrant’ or of mixed race. Because there is an FE College in Southgate, during the week it is full of Somalis dressed in those capes they wear, and even burquas. The selective schools are usually full of middleclass ndian children, because they have a culture of applying themselves to learning, to becoming professionals. Actually, Dan, maybe that’s what you don’t get about the white working class. They don’t want to be professionals, they just want jobs that pay enough to live on. As for your nonsense about why can’t they harvest mangelwurzels. What may be a reasonable wage for a young Pole, living in a shared house or a tent, and sharing meals with his/her friends may not be a very good wage for a person who has to pay rent, support a family etc. It ought to be pointed out as well that workers can only work when there are jobs available. It’s not like India where people work on the land and that occupies them every day of the year. A proletarian requires a job in order to earn money. No job, no money. A recognistion of the cyclical nature of capitalist society meant that the State had to institute poor relief (taking over from the Churches), but the idea was to avoid mass unrest and disorder not to be philanthropic.

But by all means prove that Proudhon was secretly inspired by Christianity, Graham.

No problem at all. Proudhon was required to earn his early living as a proof-reader and in that position learnt both Latin and Hebrew in order to proof-read a great many religious books. He screened all his ideas of equality behind the Mosaic law because lets face it there is nothing at all incompatible between the teachings thart I have flagged up from the bible about property and the teachings of Proudhon. But the French revolution changed everything as far as religion and progressive politics were concerned in the minds of a 19th century thinker like Proudhon. As D.W. Brogan has it in his classic study of the anarchist:

Proudhon does not deny the existence of God; but he is hostile to any idea of God which makes human action depend on His action or which puts off to the next world the remedy for the injustices of this. The central achievement of the Revolution was that it brought down Justice from the sky to the earth. Where Christian teaching had stressed charity, an idea involving more or less than Justice, the Revolution asserts that Justice is the greatest need of man -and that it is attainable. To look to God for aid in its achievement is to corrupt the essential truth that all men hunger after Justice before all other earthly goods; that Justice is immanent, not transcendental. Christianity obscures this truth. It has many merits; it is the only possible alternative to the rule of Justice; but whatever its services in the past, since the Revolution abolished government by divine right, all authorities depending on divine right, the Church, and even the state, substituting the divine right of the people for the divine right of the king, are condemned. They are a barrier in the way of progress, the realisation of Justice on earth, Justice revealed in mutual respect, in economic equality, and in the political equality that will follow from it.

Now you prove that he thought everyone should go out and nick stuff – go on!

Probably best next time Dok to study a little history before blurting out silly bullshit about Proudhon inventing the idea that property is theft when the idea had been in use for centuries!

Andrew Adams: “The notion that people in Debden think they are somehow victims of excessive immigration is indeed bizarre.”
I agree. As is the notion that they are deprived and hard done by. Just why they think they are marginalised enough to vote BNP completely escapes me. If anything, Debden is an advertisement for Labour, although Labour voters now vote BNP. And Jack Straw came from Debden, brought up by his mum in a council flat at the end of my road (she still lives nearby).

Larkers: “You have no argument merely abuse.”
OK, well come back and show me which part of the English curriculum makes white children feel ashamed of themselves, their culture and their history. Such a notion is pure fantasy peddled by people who have an agenda against religious and ethnic diversity, ranging from the Daily Mail to the BNP.

Sue R: “The Working Class has been let down by it’s political organs, there is no party to articulate it’s grievances.”
The working-class comprises a diverse range of groups with different interests, problems and grievances. When you talk about them collectively, you bring together people who are fairly affluent with people who are long-term unemployed. A farmhand in Cornwall has a completely different set of grievances from a builder in Essex or an assembly line worker in Glasgow.

“My children have never had English friends, all of their friends are either fully ‘immigrant’ or of mixed race.”
So, my son, who is mixed race, will never be considered English in your eyes because of his skin colour, even though he was born in England and is learning English. To you, English is a racially exclusive category, so you’d better sign up for your BNP membership.

“Dan, maybe that’s what you don’t get about the white working class. They don’t want to be professionals, they just want jobs that pay enough to live on.”
Many want to earn as much money as possible to have a better life, whether that means learning a trade, opening a shop or going to university.

“Pity that (as usual) the useless little twat has nothing adult to say!”

So being “adult” is shrieking about how your more “working class” than anyone else, and making misogynist comments. In this universe it’s usually considered the opposite.

I think this post was put up here for two reasons 1: So that Graham can ramble on about how prolier than thou he is and actually be on topic, and 2: So Harry’s place can pretend they are still on the left.

And was Marx similarly inspired, I wonder?

Here, you can do your own reading on that one – I’m not being paid for these remedial classes!

http://omnologos.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/the-christian-roots-of-marxism-and-secular-thought/

Now you prove that he thought everyone should go out and nick stuff – go on!

As usual, Graham, you’ve missed the point I was making — which was the uses that criminals make of the idea that “property is theft” to justify their behaviour. Most of them have never even heard of Proudhon, in fact.

(BTW, nothing you’ve posted has proven that Proudhon was lying when he explained what reasoning inspired him to assert that “property is theft”. It’s really rather sad the silly depths you descend to in your blather, given you are a teacher of young adults, as I understand it.)

So being “adult” is shrieking about how your more “working class” than anyone else, and making misogynist comments.

Yeah and also it is about actually having some proof for your assertions (neither of the above for instance can you find any proof of me doing on this thread – unless you are so completely pathetic that you think twat a misogynist comment – although given the amount of times you have probably been called a twat I suppose you need to come up with some sort of deflection!

Now piss off.

… Graham can ramble on about how prolier than thou he is …

I’d love to see a face off between Graham and Modernity over who is more authetically proletarian. Perhaps involving who has the faster racing pigeon, or the biggest patch of damp in their council flat, or who can eat the most curry’n'chips before Corrie starts.

which was the uses that criminals make of the idea that “property is theft” to justify their behaviour.

And yet they have never heard of Proudhon you say? How disappointing, I thought we were heading towards your creation of the sublime image of a man in a stripey T shirt with a DVD player under one arm and a copy of Système des contradictions économiques ou Philosophie de la misère under the other!

Keep kidding yourself – you sure are entertaining the rest of us!

I’d love to see a face off between Graham and Modernity over who is more authetically proletarian.

He he. Having been soundly beaten in argument (which has to smart when you are a snob) we are now getting the old “you’ve got a chip on your shoulder” bollocks!

Very entertaining – keep it up

(Mod is the most Proletarian by the way.)

which was the uses that criminals make of the idea that “property is theft” to justify their behaviour.

I think I remember that episode of The Sweeney. Or was it Monty Python?

“we are now getting the old “you’ve got a chip on your shoulder” bollocks!”

Or a palate fritte on your scapula.

Or a palate fritte on your scapula.

How dare you – I visited the STD clinic in 1983!

Just curious, Graham, but in that large chunk of Brogan you posted, where does it say that Proudhon was inspired by the communism of the early Church?

It doesn’t say that anywhere, does it? Because it’s an inane idea, explicitly contradicted by Proudhom himself, that you’ve been desperately Googling to find justification for ever since you foolishly posted it.

It’s all just blather with you, isn’t it? Are you ever going to learn that bullshit just doesn’t cut it, mate, no matter how loudly you repeat it? I fear not …

“I’d love to see a face off between Graham and Modernity over who is more authetically proletarian”

Modernity would eventually lose interest in the argument and walk away, because he has a life. Boasting about how working class he is is Graham’s only reason to live.

Calling Chinese women dogs is quite misogynist (and racist too). Graham, you never did explain why you said that.

where does it say that Proudhon was inspired by the communism of the early Church?

Yawn – the Brogan is there to show how the revolution inverted the role of religion in the minds of 19thc thinkers like Proudhon – not that he was inspired by religion (which was proven to anyone except a moron by the fact that he had read most biblical texts as a proof-reader and learnt biblical languages to do so (Or perhaps you thought he was reading Mills and Boon in Hebrew?)

Nutcase

Calling Chinese women dogs is quite misogynist (and racist too). Graham, you never did explain why you said that.

That’s because I never did say that – you lied about it and started screaming racist when you were losing an argument. But thanks a lot for proving one of the great points of this thread – that anti-racism is abused by middle-class twits like yourself.

… he was inspired by religion (which was proven to anyone except a moron by the fact that he had read most biblical texts as a proof-reader and learnt biblical languages to do so

So his employment as a proof-reader of religious texts proves he must have been inspired by religion.

Logic is not your forte, is it? You are better at comedy, I think.

Because it’s an inane idea, explicitly contradicted by Proudhom himself

Ah yes the idea that the early Christians, The Diggers and Proudhon all thought property should be held in common is “an inane idea” because you say so.

Yer completely barmy and I’m off to bed laughing and absolutely glad I’m not you!

Goodnight!

“that anti-racism is abused by middle-class twits like yourself.”

Since when did I ever say I was middle-class. Show me proof that I am. By your own standards your being childish.

Graham seems to think that constantly repeating statements like “I’m working class”, “Tagnuzlsx is middle class” “Tagnuzlsx is a member of the RCP”, “I never said Chinese women were dogs”, and “Proudhon was inspired by early Christians” is proof that they are true, and is a perfectly good substitute for rational argument.

His idiocy never fails to amaze me.

Yer completely barmy and I’m off to bed laughing and absolutely glad I’m not you!

Ken “the Exile” is much more working class than you, Graham. He’s selling second-hand clothes in a third world flea market while you are sitting in the staff room sipping a capuccino and doing the Guardian crossword. Who are you trying to kid???

“Larkers: “You have no argument merely abuse.”
OK, well come back and show me which part of the English curriculum makes white children feel ashamed of themselves, their culture and their history. Such a notion is pure fantasy peddled by people who have an agenda against religious and ethnic diversity, ranging from the Daily Mail to the BNP.” – Dan.

Are we discussing what I wrote and meant or what you claim I wrote and mean?

The curriculum (“course”) merely gives an outline of the subjects to be studied. It does not assert a point of view. “I am studying the Spanish Armada” is not an opinion. (Actually, I seriously doubt any child currently studies the Spanish Armada.) The interpretation is everything, and in conversation with teachers and at least two school advisers I can reasonably assert the prevailing influence over historical studies is the one I gave above. But it is, like everything here, my own viewpoint. I raised this because it seems to be an important strand and frequently overlooked. To me the issue is what the effect of such teaching is on the white working class. Judging one large section of the population in order to make another much smaller part of the population feel better about itself seems to me to be a bad idea and in need of reform.

I noticed that, starting in the early 70s and gaining momentum subsequently, influential UK television histories in particular have assaulted the idea of a unifying national identity, most recently in Simon Schama’s BBC series. Schama emphaised the marginal and dissenting position at every turn and his position is generally typical. (Partly this seems inspired by the need to sell these programmes abroad especially in the USA, where Schama lives.) The ‘historical’ aspects of other subject areas have also adopted this view, largely negative, of British life and achievements. So pervasive has it become that it is reflected in all manner of discussion and public life. I believe this has had an influence on the white working class – which I do not want to rehearse again here; please read my earlier posts.

No one apart from the Daily Mail – I cannot even remember when I last looked at a Daily Mail headline, leave alone picked up a copy to read, so I am not the person to comment on it’s current positions; I will leave that to you – no thoughtful person then, wants to return to the Arthur Bryant – W S Churchill ‘Island race’ histories, but without a national story which both explains and celebrates rather more than the ‘inherent nastiness’ of the English, all white working class people are left with it seems, particularly males, are football songs.

It is a fact, unfortunately, that the Union flag has been the subject of much discussion and some national bodies question whether to fly it over official buildings, or do so only infrequently. I happen to like this rarity value (contrasting this with the USA or Sweden, where the flags are huge and numerous) but I am baffled by the interpretation some place upon the Union flag’s public status. In the 80s one Arts Council funded artist (child of immigrants himself) equated it with a Nazi flag; and, you will recall, Gordon Brown has spoken about the need to ‘re-claim’ the flag. I do not think any of this should come as a surprise, still less can it be said in seriousness “Such a notion is pure fantasy peddled by people who have an agenda against religious and ethnic diversity, ranging from the Daily Mail to the BNP.” I do believe it is right to point out, as another contributer to this thread did before me, that the responsibilty for re-settlement fell to largely white working class districts and local councils, whose white inhabitants Ms Brown describes as “’self pitying’, ‘always-wretched’ and ‘complaining’, ’stupid’, and ‘vicious’”.

Always.

This has been utilised by the BNP, who have built on these lies with more of their own. For instance, the BNP claimed that flats in my street had been emptied by the council to give homes to African asylum seekers – a local independent councillor found that all the flats had been sold off to the private sector (they sell for about £150,000 each) and only one had been empty for any length of time due to refurbishment………………………………………………………………………………….. Even Nazi Filmakers used brighter stuff than this, even Sun readers must realize that these people must live somewhere at a subsidised level. Even Vizz readers must wonder how people are able to live in Kensington as migrants or in KX. as non english speakers!

Judging by my own children’s education, it is not education they are receiving in school but social engineering. In English, my 12-year old is reading modern books in translation about the Holocaust. Admirable, but what about the English verses that displayed the flexibility of the language and the nuances of rhyme? Dan – are your kids English? I think one needs to seperate out the political ideal of citizenship and the historical ethnic identity. I have noticed that in the schools and in the many novellas written for youngsters, none of them are written before 1995 and the English is an artificial concocted mix (that I actually find hard to read and understand used as I am to fluent literate English.). Everyother ethnicity is allowed to celebrate its uniqueness, why not the English? Let’s face it, it was the English working class who achieved universal sufferage, a state-funded National Health Service, a common-law system with the independence of the judiciary from the executive, abolished slavery, supported national independence struggles around the world, campaigned for legal reforms to bring us into teh modern era. Some of these things do not exist in many of the countries that are supposed to be shining beacons of wise government, or if they do they exist only in written Constitutions that have been adopted but not seriously implemented. I hate to say it, but I do think that the British have ‘the rule of law’, and not arbitary point scoring or laws tailored to a persons religion or social status. If I sound colonialist, then it’s because otehr commentatora are sounding like old-fashioned racist snobs.

Oh dear oh dear (I see it has been jealous-obsessional night in RCP “Spiked” land.)

I don’t have much time to waste on idiots today so here is the score:

1) The fact that Proudhon used the bible to critique society is such an accepted piece of Proudhonian biography that it is rather laughable that you do not know this (almost as laughable in fact as thinking that whatever an author says about their works must be true.)

2) I’m very happy that you think Old Ken more working-class than me (Though he went to Oxford and sounds like a small businessman from your description.) It is a complete fantasy that I have ever as much as described myself as “working-class” on here. I grew up in a working-class household and still live in a council flat; but when the subject has been mentioned by class-obsessives such as yourself I have always maintained that am probably now middle-class although there are some difficulties with this.

3) There are not many cappucino’s in the places I work (not many staffrooms actually as I have in recent years been just as likely to be teaching a GCSE class in the upstairs of a pub on an estate – and I never do crosswords!

4) When you stop arguing with the voices in your heads (rather than what I actually say) we can probably do business.

Toodle pip!

Interesting debate on history teaching by the way – would those who want more “Englishness” actually prescribe what teachers can teach kids? And given the government’s new idea that boring lessons create teenage troublemakers how would you interest a class in the Spanish armada (given that most probably have never seen a boat?)

My mother has not got a drop of English blood in her veins, and hates the English. I grew up hearing exactly the sort of thing that Dan and YBA are saying and it actually had an enormously damaging psychological impact upon me. It’s a dead end. You live in a country accept the indiginous population, if you don’t like it, move. I would love to have the opportunity to move somewhere else, but unfortunately I don’t.

On a more abstract level, let’s not forget that the British Labour Movement founded the first trade unions. You may or may not think that an achievement depending on your politics. As Britain (England) was the first industrialised nation in the world, it created the first working class, it created the first working class organisations. As I said, you may or may not think that a Good Thing. By the way, I don’t mix with the criminal classes, but a lifetime spent watching police procedurals on the telly has shown me that the prevalent attitude umong crims is ‘I’ll ‘ave that.’. Would that they were literate and politically coscious enough to read and study the nineteenth century articulators of social and political dissent!

Heh! It’s about the most classic piece of lunacy that I have ever read here which suggests that robbers and thieves (who had got on very well without Proudhon before the 19thc if history is to be believed!) Were suddenly all influenced and “made use of” one of his maxims.

Kepp this sort of thing coming – serious threads need a touch of laughter!

“The interpretation is everything, and in conversation with teachers and at least two school advisers I can reasonably assert the prevailing influence over historical studies is the one I gave above.”
Pure fantasy. I don’t know who you are listening to, but your claims are completely at odds with the reality I see in my local school. The curriculum is there to make children question and analysis, not dictate answers to them. That means understanding who benefitted and who lost as a result of empire and how it was regarded by different social groups. It means looking at various causes of events in history, like the Great Reform Act or World War One. It doesn’t mean banging on about how great the white man is, or even how bad he is. The idea is not to indoctrinate with one idea or another, but give students the ability to reach their own conclusions based on evidence. That is the national curriculum.

“I grew up hearing exactly the sort of thing that Dan and YBA are saying and it actually had an enormously damaging psychological impact upon me.”
I don’t hate the English – ie the people who were born and raised in England. I just don’t think “English” is a racially exclusive term, but you do.

“I think one needs to seperate out the political ideal of citizenship and the historical ethnic identity.”
Why? If I trace back, my ethnic origins are Irish, Scottish, French and Spanish. But I am from England, not France or Spain. It would be ludicrous for me to go around saying I am Spanish. More relevant is the fact that I am a British citizen and a citizen of the European Union, since that is what it says on my passport.

“I have noticed that in the schools and in the many novellas written for youngsters, none of them are written before 1995 and the English is an artificial concocted mix (that I actually find hard to read and understand used as I am to fluent literate English.)”
I don’t know what you think is being studied at school. KS3 and KS4 contain units on Shakespeare and pre-1914 writing as well as the poets of the First World War. Poetry from other cultures forms just one element of English literature. I am sorry that you are finding it tough.

“Everyother ethnicity is allowed to celebrate its uniqueness, why not the English?”
Whose stopping English people from celebrating whatever they want?

I fancy being Chinese, the girls are tiny and have dinky little hands and noses. Yes, I think I’ll chose a Chinese ethnicity. You accept my point though, that there is a distinction between ethnicity and citizenship. I was interested to learn that Barack Obama’s father is actually British. It’s a mixed up crazy old worldas the song has it. Do you think that Chinese, African, Indian etc is a racially exclusive cateogory?

AS for studying Shakespeare etc at secondary school…they only do selected speeches, not entire plays. If they do a whole play, they do it in two weeks flat. Poetry has been a lifelong love of mine, and I think you will find there is not much of it in the school curriculum nowadays, except for the most trival sort.

Tag – do please quote examples of Graham’s misogyny so I can take him to task for it.

“You accept my point though, that there is a distinction between ethnicity and citizenship.”

No, I don’t. Ethnicity is entirely subjective. If someone wants to call themselves English, Scottish, British, Somali or Arab, that’s how they want to define themselves. Many people opt for two or more identities. That’s fine by me.

“Do you think that Chinese, African, Indian etc is a racially exclusive cateogory?”

No, I don’t. There are lots of whites who call themselves Africans. Indians are also not racially exclusive. There are Anglo-Indians, ethnic Nepalis, Chinese, blacks and Parsis who are racially different but can all be Indian.

“AS for studying Shakespeare etc at secondary school…they only do selected speeches, not entire plays. If they do a whole play, they do it in two weeks flat.”

That’s not the National Curriculum. Here is the statutory content of KS3 (http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/subjects/english/keystage3/index.aspx):

The range of literature studied should include:
- stories, poetry and drama drawn from different historical times, including contemporary writers
- texts that enable pupils to understand the appeal and importance over time of texts from the English literary heritage. This should include works selected from the following pre-twentieth-century writers: Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Blake, Charlotte Brontë, Robert Burns, Geoffrey Chaucer, Kate Chopin, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Thomas Gray, Thomas Hardy, John Keats, John Masefield, Christina Rossetti, William Shakespeare (sonnets), Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jonathan Swift, Alfred Lord Tennyson, HG Wells, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Wordsworth and William Wordsworth
- texts that enable pupils to appreciate the qualities and distinctiveness of texts from different cultures and traditions
- at least one play by Shakespeare.

Not only do GCSE students have to study a whole play by Shakespeare but (as I found to my cost a few years ago) they also are supposed to see the whole play in performance (or, at worst, on video.)

Poetry from other cultures forms just one element of English literature.

Except at AQA (“English” rather than “Literature”) where “poetry from other cultures” is now “texts from other cultures.” “Other cultures” has included American and Australian poetry whilst I have been teaching it.

Graham: Larkers says that “schools drive on with a curriculum which sets out to question national achievements, personalities and motives so long as these relate to being white.” Could you tell us whether making white children ashamed of their culture and history and playing down the achievements of white people is the national curriculum? Because to me, it is a straw man argument to attack ethnic and cultural diversity.

“I don’t have much time to waste on people today”

Graham posts at 09:39, 10:00, 10:58, and 12:31.

How can anyone be jealous of an obsessive loser with no life. Haven’t you got better things to do with your time?

Tag – now you’ve turned up could you please give me some examples of Graham’s misogyny. I’m off work with a bad cold, so would really appreciate some occupation that wouldn’t tax me too much. I can’t knit, but taking Graham to task for his misogyny would pass the time, and wouldn’t take much concentration or effort.

Could you tell us whether making white children ashamed of their culture and history and playing down the achievements of white people is the national curriculum?

Well I am not a school teacher so have little practical experience of the full curriculum but I somehow doubt this to be the case – there would be uproar at the Daily Mail for one thing!. I’d suggest though that working-class white culture and history is generally as completely absent from the lessons taught by most teachers as the culture of the Achomowis.

Hi Tag:

“I don’t have much time to waste on people today”

I think we may have identified one of your self-inflicted problems here. You see when you quote someone you are supposed to put what they actually said between the quotation marks and not what is going on in your own head. What I said was:

I don’t have much time to waste on idiots today (and I think we can all tell who those idiots are can’t we?) This means that I have a great deal of time to talk with intelligent people but little for the likes of you – someone who (I am sure I don’t need to remind you) is so desperate for my attention he has now posted 5 times on this thread talking complete cobblers about nothing other than me.

Way to show how much I get to you thickboy!

I don’t think schools set out to either deprive white working-class kids of their “culture” or to punish them for being white. I do think however that for years working-class kids have arrived at secondary school to be greeted by middle-class (and recently antipodean) teachers whose concerns and interests might as well be those of martians and who themselves get increasingly bitter and cynical about their charges as this becomes clear to them.

What is the answer? I have no idea.

I almost feel obliged to say something misogynistic in order to occupy KB’s day.

No, please don’t say something misogynistic, Graham. Misogyny does sometimes occur on this site, but far less than it would on a right wing site.

However, you did say this about YAB:-

Pity she still had to lie about the contents of Michael Collins’ book however,

Accusing someone of lying is serious. You are saying that they knew something was X but deliberately said it was Y.

It is far more likely that YAB misrepresented the book, out of hastiness or lack of comprehension than actually lied about its contents. She always strikes me as an honest writer, though often superficial and wrong-headed.

Given that there is no “Intellectual alibi” for Stephen Lawrence’s killers in the book (and just a defence of the idea that people are innocent until proven guilty I actually think she lied and am happy to stick with that.

“This means that I have a great deal of time to talk with intelligent people but little for the likes of you – someone who (I am sure I don’t need to remind you) is so desperate for my attention he has now posted 5 times on this thread talking complete cobblers about nothing other than me.”

But Graham, you have repeatedly proven you are as thick as pigshit, you cling to the fact that your supposedly “white working class” because you have nothing else of substance to say, and you make racist and misogynist comments and then flat-out deny them afterwards. It’s the others on this board that are making the error of taking you seriously.

I post because it is fun provoking you. When I eventually get bored of poking you with a stick, I’ll go and bother Brownie, who gets in a hysterical panic and runs to the country because of a terrorist attack 3000 miles away.

“Way to show how much I get to you thickboy!”

But I always get a response. Way to show how much I get to you
:-). BTW how do you know I am even a guy. Is this another part of your psychic powers.

I would have said from that evidence that she was confused, or did not understand something fundamental about rights in this country. Deliberate lying when there is evidence in public to prove something a lie is fairly foolish after all.

However, I’m too weak to continue the argument. I’m better practised at misogynist bashing.

Oh well, I’ll have to content myself with taking Tag to task for saying that someone makes misogynistic statements without producing any evidence.

you cling to the fact that your supposedly “white working class”

You can’t even read can you? Hysterical!

because you have nothing else of substance to say

This is absolutely hilarious coming from someone who has only had anything to say about one subject (me) on this thread and who has to make false accusations of racism/sexism in order to even have that much of a comment! The problem I think is quite clear: here we have a thread about the working-class on which I have something to say and you don’t and therefore you think you will substitute silly attacks on me for your lack of knowledge – keep going far from being “provoked” I just love it when an idiot turns up and proves what I have been saying all along!

However, I’m too weak to continue the argument. I’m better practised at misogynist bashing.

Well you know it is only my opinion but I’d suggest that she really wanted to descredit Collins (who had after all outed himself as an “always wretched” member of that class who all apparently started race riots and supported Mosley and Powell.)

Haven’t you got better things to do with your time?

Posted by Tagnuzlsx 6 January 2009, 1:07 pm

I post because it is fun provoking you.

Posted by Tagnuzlsx 6 January 2009, 2:59 pm

“I have something to say and you don’t and therefore you think you will substitute silly attacks on me for your lack of knowledge”

Says Graham, who goes on to call me “middle-class” and “a guy” without any evidence.

Pot calling kettle once again. I doubt you’ve ever said anything relevant in your entire life Graham.

Says Graham, who goes on to call me “middle-class” and “a guy” without any evidence.

Actually I called you middle-class before I said anything about your silly attacks (so you can’t even get that right can you?)

I think that there is enough evidence that someone who asserted that (and I quote accurately:) Boasting about how working class he is is Graham’s only reason to live. is middle-class. After all if you were not middle-class and I only talked about being working-class then why would you be at all bothered by what I said? You certainly would not become all obsessive as you have now would you? Silly boy!

Rearrange these words: Petard by hoist own

By the way of course you are a guy – a female could never become quite as sad as you!

By the way of course you are a guy – a female could never become quite as sad as you!

Now, that’s borderline sexist, Graham. Women can be as sad as men, and demand the right to be so if they wish.

Tag – could I have some examples of Graham’s misogyny?

Well just trying to keep you on your toes in case the “day nurse” (or whatever they call that stuff) is kicking in!

Lemsip.

I don’t know what this Tagnuzlsx’s problem is with Graham. I always enjoying reading Mr Graham’s contributions on history and militaria. He appears very knowledgeable and loves the subjects. I don’t think he is white either. Why pick on Graham?

AS for studying Shakespeare etc at secondary school…they only do selected speeches, not entire plays.

I’m having a major Shakespeare session at the moment, including four days in the same seat on the History Cycle at Easter. Over the years I’ve seen pretty much the whole canon on stage, mostly at the RSC (I don’t think I’ve seen Timon of Athens, and I’ve not seen the stuff that’s now held to be canonical like Two Noble Kinsmen) and I’ve read and seen on film and television pretty well all of them.

I’m keen for my children to have the same joy, so my elder, then nine or ten, started with the Doran Dream and the Stewart/Goold Tempest, bullied me into taking her to the Stewart/Goold Macbeth at Chichester (250 mile round trip!) and greatly enjoyed the Stewart/Tennant/Doran Hamlet. She’s now 12, and with younger sister, now 10, we took in the current RSC Romeo and Juliet just after Christmas. Quite what they’ll make of the Stewart/McKellen Godot in a few months is another question, but after that they’re both booked in for As You Like It and Winter’s Tale (last time I saw that was with John Nettles!)

But I’m not at all convinced that studying the plays in school helps — I know I hated it. Some speeches give a sense of the verse and the vocabulary. But reading about plays is like dancing about architecture, and I’m not at all clear what benefit there is for fourteen year olds in studying adult plays written by and for adults. I had to gloss over some of the plot of A Little Night Music for a 12 year old a few days ago, and I eventually opted to leave my 10 year old at home for that.

I read The Tempest at school: a meditation on old age and redemption. What does that mean at fourteen?

Some RCP cadre have almost been programmed to think that anyone who has worked their way up from working-class beginnings are inferior to themselves. Tag is just demonstrating (nicely) how through evidence-free accusations of racism and sexism the thicker members of the priveliged classes try desperately to stop any contributions to debate by those they consider inferior.

Earlier in the thread Red Deathy wondered why working-class people who were not racist would be concerned by accusations of racism. Mr Deathy I am sure would never chuck out such accusations in a vain attempt to win an argument in a comments box but as has been demonstrated by Tag – some desperate types would!

Modernity would eventually lose interest in the argument and walk away, because he has a life. Boasting about how working class he is is Graham’s only reason to live.

What about Graham v Neil Clark? That’s a much closer contest, I think. Clark’s the better and more accomplished writer, but Graham has the command of kick-him-in-the-balls gutter tactics that could give him the edge over Clark, who seems a bit “nice but dim”. They are both FE teachers of History, I understand, so there would probably be a lot of nancying around before any blood got splilt. But it could be interesting. I say odds are 2 to 1 in Clark’s favour, just because his blog photo suggests a considerable weight advantage. What do you think?

I bet I have a considerable weight advantage over Neil Clark!

But why not ask David T – you used to love brownosing him about how you were at the LSE!

and I’m not at all clear what benefit there is for fourteen year olds in studying adult plays written by and for adults.

Difficult to say. But what do your daughters get out of going to see these adult plays? Is it just the spectacle or are they picking up on the themes. Did they ask you if all young men are like Hamlet after seeing the play I wonder?

xyzzy – My elder sister got me to read Dream with her or at least the Mechanicals scene when I was seven and she was fourteen and I really enjoyed it. I think kids can enjoy the witches in Macbeth as well – they can chant all that incantatory verse.

I absolutely cannot bear to sit through King’s Lear – it is so horribly cruel.

Should be King Lear. That new fangled preview button confused me. Who thought that was a good idea?

I used King Lear as a GCSE play for the first few years I taught English. Most people think it an A level play but you can get away with it for adults. Anyway kids like gore and the Peter Hall production at the Old Vic a few years back used loads of chewing gum and ketchup in the scene where Gloucester’s eyes are popped out.

Dan:

““You accept my point though, that there is a distinction between ethnicity and citizenship.”

No, I don’t. Ethnicity is entirely subjective. If someone wants to call themselves English, Scottish, British, Somali or Arab, that’s how they want to define themselves. Many people opt for two or more identities. That’s fine by me.”

Ethnicity is determined by our genetic inheritance. It is not something we can choose, or control.

Citizenship is something we can choose to embrace. If I were to select a new citizenship to cleave to, I might become a citizen of China, because of my deep affection for the people, landscape, and culture of that land. But I would still be Anglo-Saxon, not Han.

“Actually I called you middle-class before I said anything about your silly attacks”

I know you did. Whenever someone beats you in an argument, you call them middle class, and yourself working class to make yourself feel more comfortable.

“I think that there is enough evidence that someone who asserted that (and I quote accurately:) Boasting about how working class he is is Graham’s only reason to live. is middle-class. After all if you were not middle-class and I only talked about being working-class then why would you be at all bothered by what I said?”

Bfffhahaha you call that “evidence”. I only made these comment because you continuously boast about how you are from “the working class”. You use it as a way to shut people up whenever they frequently beat you in an argument. If for some reason you were boasting about how “middle or upper class”, and accusing anyone who disagrees with you “working class”. I would call you out on it too. Get out of fantasy-land.

“You certainly would not become all obsessive as you have now would you? Silly boy!”

Unlike you Graham, I really don’t care where you come from. I go after easily provoked idiots. Would you call mettaculture, Brownie, and Palubiski “working class”.

“By the way of course you are a guy – a female could never become quite as sad as you!”

Sackcloth and Ashes worked this out 6 months ago. You really are completely brainless.

“Ethnicity is determined by our genetic inheritance.”

But there is no English genotype. The population of England and the rest of Britain has evolved and will continue to evolve as a result of migration. As there is no “pure” ethnic group, it is pointless to base ethnicity on genetics.

Tag – as far as I can the reason for your comments in this thread are to lower respect for Graham among those who comment here.

Now I have some degree of respect for Graham. If you want to lower it, there would be no more surefire way than to quote misogynist comments that he has made. So why don’t you get on with it and quote them?

I really don’t think I can be bothered even reading Tags latest ejaculation!

Dunno about that ejaculation, Graham. I suspect a lurking phallocentric sub-text.

But no, I wouldn’t read Tag’s outburst of damp squibs.

Feeble though – he/she could at least have made up some misogynist comments and ascribed them to you.

Dan:

“The East End has been the destination of immigrants since the Hugonauts and has always been in a state of perpetual social change. Before the South Asians, it was the East Europeans, the Greeks, the Irish, the Jews. They are not “dumped” there by governments, they move there because it is cheap.”

Please don’t lecture me on East End history, Dan. Your fruit picking summers may have gifted you a unique insight into working class life, but you know sod all about life in the East End.

They are “dumped” there, in numbers that which have surpassed entirely the migratory waves of previous centuries. The immigration waves to which you refer – the Huguenots, Jewish, and even the Syhletis of the 40s and 50s – added diversity to sections of the East End but did not change entire boroughs. The unprecedented immigration levels of recent decades – agreed to by both Governmental parties – has changed them beyond all recognition, and has created a raft of new social problems, and produced tensions that had previously barely existed.

I wonder, Dan, if their is an element of personal spite in your attitude? You’ve mentioned before that your wife is from an ethnic minority, and that some locals have given you both a wretched time because of it. That is appalling. But it does not give you the right to smear a whole class of people. I have had abuse from some young Muslims for being Jewish – should I despise all Muslims? Of course not.

You’re agreement with YAB’s blithe condemnation of an entire social class smacks of vindictiveness and social snobbery (you are, of course, one of those “home-owning, white, British people” that you mentioned, distinct from the “self-pitying” rabble from the local ex-council estate.)

You and Red Deathy, although differing in political outlook, are both the same – you both despair that your values and beliefs are not shared by the white working class, while at the same time you both display a contempt for such people that borders on bigotry.

The headline for this post was spot on – the white working class have become “untouchables”, a caste apart, openly despised by the middle-classes and abandoned by the very party that was created to help them.

If ever they do decide to hit back – through violent unrest or support for far-Right politics – then bien pensant liberals must shoulder much of the blame. The sad thing is, they won’t be the ones in the firing line.

Would you call mettaculture, Brownie, and Palubiski “working class”.

Yes. It seems that you like to attach yourself to the few commenters on here who actually come from that background? I wonder why that could be?

But there is no English genotype. The population of England and the rest of Britain has evolved and will continue to evolve as a result of migration. As there is no “pure” ethnic group, it is pointless to base ethnicity on genetics.

Whatever you think of anything else Dan says this is surely true. Personally I have no idea of my “ethnicity” (does that mean i don’t have one?)

What’s Homeowning got to do with class, Joseph K. @ 6 January 2009, 5:56 pm ?

There was a time when the majority of Council tenants were working class. There was never a time when the majority of working class people were Council tenants.

“They are “dumped” there”
How do you suggest they do that? Perhaps you think they are shipped by banana boats to the London Docks and forced to live there. Alternatively, it is because the East End has traditionally been poor and therefore cheap to live, which has made it attractive to poor immigrants and unattractive to those born in the East End who have enough money to live somewhere else.

“it does not give you the right to smear a whole class of people.”
Did I?

“you both despair that your values and beliefs are not shared by the white working class”
I don’t. I despair that the idle blame foreigners for the problems they make for themselves, those who think everyone else owes them money and choose unemployment as a way of life. I despair that people who are working-class and live in areas like mine, with ample jobs, public services, good housing and large green open spaces, still complain that they are hard done by and vote BNP. In the first case, immigration is used as an excuse for not working – blaming foreigners instead of taking control of their own circumstances. In the second case, I think BNP voters are misguided by the media and lied to by the BNP, but mainstream parties have been unwilling to challenge these lies at a local level. Then there are these false notions that there is a war against white working-class people in our schools, something that is not supported by any evidence whatsoever. It is the politics of victimhood, self-pity and xenophobia. And it is ultimately disempowering, particularly when it comes to dependence on welfare.

“Personally I have no idea of my “ethnicity” (does that mean i don’t have one?)”

Does it matter?

Does it matter?

That’s a very interesting question. We seem rather obsessed with “race” in this country these days (whether that be “white” “black” “mixed” or whatever) so to show no interest can seem perverse to a lot of people. And of course JK is right to say that It is not something we can choose, or control. At least to the extent that whilst you may not be interested yourself somebody will usually be defining your ethnicity for you.

I really don’t like having my ethnicity defined by others, but I don’t want to do a Godwin here.

Yeah that’s right, ignore nasty Tagnuzlsx, and maybe “he’ll” go away.

Graham doesn’t need me to lower respect for him. Anyone with a brain would come to the same conclusion as I have.

Oh please don’t go, its always fun to be “tagged” by a moronic troll who seems intent on proving every point that you have made upthread!

I haven’t ignored you, Tag. I’ve repeatedly asked you to produce some proof of Graham’s misogyny. I’ve asked you over and over. You should be flattered at such attention. But you simply ignore my requests.

It can’t be that you’ve not read my comments. Your use of the phrase “lower respect” would suggest you had read my comment, and then ignored it. Is it too difficult for you to find such proof? Or is this misogyny a figment of your imagination?

Yes Graham, in your fantasy world, anyone who disagrees with you is middle-class, and anyone says anything that disproves what you say (which happens often) must obviously be motivated by their innate snobbishness. In reality, we attack you because you are thick, and repeatedly calling us “upper class” doesn’t prove anything.

KB Player. I’ll tell you where to find evidence of Graham’s misogyny (though it’s easy to find, so I don’t know if you are stupid or just feigning stupidity) when Graham proves to us that I am A: Upper or Middle Class and B: Male. If finding evidence for peoples claims is what you care about, then you would nag Graham to back up his claim, yet you don’t. Double standard?

Ah I was just astral travelling and found myself invoked in a class war by Snagglepuss, who spirits informed me is actually Tim Carlos Allen of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

RCP is a curious name for a sect of self admiring pseuds characterised by being neither revolutionary, a communist or a party.

Incidentally I believe John Palubiski refers to himself as blue collar.

Would I be called working class?

Well of course Tagsluxxxkxknx would believe this to be his call to make rather than say my mothers or my own.

Having just had occaision to see my assembled clan I can say that the only person in it who would immediately identify himself as middle class is my recently appeared nephew, adopted at birth, who is as pleased to have discovered us as we are at finding him.

The class identity of the rest of us is rather more nuanced, because the shared memory of me and my siblings of shovelling coal and ice forming inside the bedroom window is not something eradicated by fine wine and foreign cheese.

I do not doubt that my other nephew, soon off to Oxbridge, will not describe himself as anything like working class but out of deference to his beloved fireman dad he would not say this just yet.

But as a predominantly Welsh family we show the sociological phenomenon that the Welsh have traditionally viwed themselves as belonging to a single class (beyond a certain point ethnicity shifts and one becomes English this is an abrupt, rather than a progressive shift).

The debate in my family would be thus not about how middle class but how English particular family members are, and this is not about a genotype, but a cultural linguistic phenotype.

I would probably be thought more English but as I speak better Welsh than some more ‘Welsh’ members that effect gets cancelled out and I remain Welsh.

I have never recognised any of the so called racism of the working class in my family ever, from my great grandparents down in my family racial prejudice was forbidden (for fairly obvious reasons if anyone does not know google ‘Welsh Not’ for the answer.

So fuck off ‘Yasmin ridiculous pretentious double barrel’, pseudo posh, social climbing, self aggrandising, disgusting snob, with all the obvious shrillness towards the lower orders shown by the desperate grasping for social position of the arriviste.

Such a patently thin veneer of social grandeur, so obviously declasse, the sort of person who combs their hair in public and has to buy all their own furniture.

Is it me or are tags efforts becoming increasingly silly and desperate?

… self admiring pseuds …

(says the man who time and time again can’t help but post 10,000 words when 100, or even none, would have been appropriate.)

Is it me or are tags efforts becoming increasingly silly and desperate?

It’s you.

It’s you.

Doubtful after that rubbish above!

Is it me or are tags and Doktor weird the same person?

He he it is misogynistic to suggest that Tagnuts is middle class?

Keep it coming I’m crying into me sainsbury’s own-brand lager.

Oh look out KB! Tags is calling you stupid – you must be getting to him! Careful or he will unleash his other insult!