The influence of class on values

13

Comments

  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    edited April 9
    Nevertheless it was a novelistic commonplace that if you were born of the right stock, however squalid and deprived your upbringing, it would show in superior moral character.

    There was a racial version as well. There's a Kipling story of an Anglo-Indian railway clerk who faces down a riot because he has that tiny percentage of white blood to give him the necessary authority. (Of course, he goes to pieces afterwards because he is, after all, mainly Native).

    As @Penny S says, the contention is - and it goes centuries, if not millennia - that the rich and powerful are born better.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Fine not to be ashamed of your origins but are you really “working class” now?

    Once working class always working class does not necessarily apply

    If you indeed are what you say, you are indeed a rare beast on this resolutely bourgeois vessel!

    My father was a foundry worker and so was his father. My other grandfather was a car worker at Austins. His father was a miner.

    But you were neither

    Irrelevant. I was born working class. I am working class.

  • Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    My father was a foundry worker and so was his father. My other grandfather was a car worker at Austins. His father was a miner.

    But you were neither

    And what does that have to do with the price of fish? You asserted earlier that it would take "a generation or three" to iron out tastes and accents. @Telford has told us that his family has all been solid working-class stock for generations. That was the environment in which he grew up, in which he formed his tastes, biases, and preferences.

    There's probably a parallel with immigration here. I'm a Brit living in the US. I've been here for almost 20 years. I think like a Brit, talk like a Brit, have tastes and preferences that are very British, and will continue to do so.

    My kids were all born here. They sound quite British to American ears (and a little American to British ears). Their tastes are largely influenced by our home life, which is quite British. So they certainly have a strong British cultural core. Their kids might end up being almost indistinguishable from their neighbours, or perhaps it would take another generation for the effects of residual Britishness to disappear.

    Why wouldn't social class be similar?
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Ethne Alba wrote: »
    Oh curtsying to the The Lady of The Manor was still around in my childhood. Rural England , 1969. Her Uppittyship stopped the cart and questioned me concerning “ manners”. Then appeared at school on Monday morning to complain!

    The headmistress explained that we had recently moved to the area.

    My father hit the roof, spectacularly so.

    Nineteen Sixty Flipping Nine? Where on earth was this? Some English version of Brigadoon? And how old was she? And what on earth did she think "manners" were?
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    My father was a foundry worker and so was his father. My other grandfather was a car worker at Austins. His father was a miner.

    But you were neither

    And what does that have to do with the price of fish? You asserted earlier that it would take "a generation or three" to iron out tastes and accents. @Telford has told us that his family has all been solid working-class stock for generations. That was the environment in which he grew up, in which he formed his tastes, biases, and preferences.

    There's probably a parallel with immigration here. I'm a Brit living in the US. I've been here for almost 20 years. I think like a Brit, talk like a Brit, have tastes and preferences that are very British, and will continue to do so.

    My kids were all born here. They sound quite British to American ears (and a little American to British ears). Their tastes are largely influenced by our home life, which is quite British. So they certainly have a strong British cultural core. Their kids might end up being almost indistinguishable from their neighbours, or perhaps it would take another generation for the effects of residual Britishness to disappear.

    Why wouldn't social class be similar?

    The British working class as typified by Telford’s forebears ( as he describes them) is as dead as the dodo. Blame Thatcher for that, I guess.

    I would guess that Telford was further up the socio-economic ladder as a result of superior educational opportunities.

    He might have his tastes and preferences but they don’t define class even in Britain.

    As for you and yours, you are expats and whether your children become completely Americanised remains to be seen.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    My father was a foundry worker and so was his father. My other grandfather was a car worker at Austins. His father was a miner.

    But you were neither

    And what does that have to do with the price of fish? You asserted earlier that it would take "a generation or three" to iron out tastes and accents. @Telford has told us that his family has all been solid working-class stock for generations. That was the environment in which he grew up, in which he formed his tastes, biases, and preferences.

    There's probably a parallel with immigration here. I'm a Brit living in the US. I've been here for almost 20 years. I think like a Brit, talk like a Brit, have tastes and preferences that are very British, and will continue to do so.

    My kids were all born here. They sound quite British to American ears (and a little American to British ears). Their tastes are largely influenced by our home life, which is quite British. So they certainly have a strong British cultural core. Their kids might end up being almost indistinguishable from their neighbours, or perhaps it would take another generation for the effects of residual Britishness to disappear.

    Why wouldn't social class be similar?

    The British working class as typified by Telford’s forebears ( as he describes them) is as dead as the dodo. Blame Thatcher for that, I guess.

    I would guess that Telford was further up the socio-economic ladder as a result of superior educational opportunities.

    He might have his tastes and preferences but they don’t define class even in Britain.

    As for you and yours, you are expats and whether your children become completely Americanised remains to be seen.
    When my father was 10 or 11 he passed an exam which qualified him to go to what was the equivilent of a grammar school. He was in a large family and they couldn't even afford the uniform. This made me determined to pass the exam and do what he had not been allowed to do.

    I have been more successful but I insist that I have always been working class. My daughter and her husband are probably middle class.
  • Barnabas62Barnabas62 Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host, Epiphanies Host
    Surely America is not a homogeneous culture? I have no idea what Americanized actually means.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Yes there are many features of life and outlook which are “American” such as the view that anyone can get on ( not true as we all know but still widely sold), suspicion of “guvmint”, the myth of rugged individualism and the “land of the free” outlook ( great of fleeing oppressive dictatorships not so great if an ex slave).

    The “ I know my place” view ( whether resented or not”) though dying hard in Britain never took root there

    Come to think of it, it did not flourish in Oz either(except in genteel Adelaide which was never a penal settlement)
    but what else would you expect in a (British) former gulag?
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    fineline wrote: »
    Also, @Forthview, surely the point about removing a class identity from disabled people was not about disabily being a class - no one said there was a disabled class - but about the fact that working class people can be disabled and not work (in the same way as middle class people can be disabled and not work). Therefore, if you simply define working class as people who work, then working class people who don't work because of disability no longer have a class. The point is surely that working class is a lot more complex than your definition.

    A bit of a tangent perhaps, but many with injuries leading to ongoing disabilities which would stop someone working in a factory, or carrying out a trade, but would not stop a middle class person from working in an office - or indeed doing office work online from home.
  • Penny S wrote: »
    Ethne Alba wrote: »
    Oh curtsying to the The Lady of The Manor was still around in my childhood. Rural England , 1969. Her Uppittyship stopped the cart and questioned me concerning “ manners”. Then appeared at school on Monday morning to complain!

    The headmistress explained that we had recently moved to the area.

    My father hit the roof, spectacularly so.

    Nineteen Sixty Flipping Nine? Where on earth was this? Some English version of Brigadoon? And how old was she? And what on earth did she think "manners" were?
    @Ethne Alba That was a spectacular display of lack of manners on the part of the woman (definitely not a "lady") concerned.

    @Penny S Old habits died hard. As late as the early 1980s there were a handful of old people in the village where I grew up who would tug the forelock (yes, really) or bob when they met me, papa or my siblings - something we found incredibly embarrassing. The only reason we could think of for such behaviour was that all had been in service at the rectory before the war when the incumbent's wife was titled.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I think there may have been variations in different rural areas in the persistence of such customs. It would be interesting, but is probably too late, to map such differences.
    I did intend to suggest that the person concerned in Ethne Alba's post lacked good manners herself. Very sad, though, to be such a person who needed others to validate their existence in that way.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    Telford wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    My father was a foundry worker and so was his father. My other grandfather was a car worker at Austins. His father was a miner.

    But you were neither

    And what does that have to do with the price of fish? You asserted earlier that it would take "a generation or three" to iron out tastes and accents. @Telford has told us that his family has all been solid working-class stock for generations. That was the environment in which he grew up, in which he formed his tastes, biases, and preferences.

    There's probably a parallel with immigration here. I'm a Brit living in the US. I've been here for almost 20 years. I think like a Brit, talk like a Brit, have tastes and preferences that are very British, and will continue to do so.

    My kids were all born here. They sound quite British to American ears (and a little American to British ears). Their tastes are largely influenced by our home life, which is quite British. So they certainly have a strong British cultural core. Their kids might end up being almost indistinguishable from their neighbours, or perhaps it would take another generation for the effects of residual Britishness to disappear.

    Why wouldn't social class be similar?

    The British working class as typified by Telford’s forebears ( as he describes them) is as dead as the dodo. Blame Thatcher for that, I guess.

    I would guess that Telford was further up the socio-economic ladder as a result of superior educational opportunities.

    He might have his tastes and preferences but they don’t define class even in Britain.

    As for you and yours, you are expats and whether your children become completely Americanised remains to be seen.
    When my father was 10 or 11 he passed an exam which qualified him to go to what was the equivilent of a grammar school. He was in a large family and they couldn't even afford the uniform. This made me determined to pass the exam and do what he had not been allowed to do.

    I have been more successful but I insist that I have always been working class. My daughter and her husband are probably middle class.

    I rest my case

  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Penny S wrote: »
    Ethne Alba wrote: »
    Oh curtsying to the The Lady of The Manor was still around in my childhood. Rural England , 1969. Her Uppittyship stopped the cart and questioned me concerning “ manners”. Then appeared at school on Monday morning to complain!

    The headmistress explained that we had recently moved to the area.

    My father hit the roof, spectacularly so.

    Nineteen Sixty Flipping Nine? Where on earth was this? Some English version of Brigadoon? And how old was she? And what on earth did she think "manners" were?
    @Ethne Alba That was a spectacular display of lack of manners on the part of the woman (definitely not a "lady") concerned.

    There, in a way, you have it. The difference between a woman and a Lady, and within that the whole mess of assumptions about background and 'breeding'. The opposite of The rank is but the guinea's stamp, the (wo)man's the gowd for a' that.
  • RussRuss Shipmate
    The thing is, I think in the UK, social class and material wealth are almost orthogonal.

    Seems to me that there are a set of attitudes that are associated with how much money and security your parents had during your childhood.

    And also a set of attitudes that are to do with employment as one of a mass of people doing the same not-particularly-skilled work, as against employment where one's success depends on one's own skills and efforts.

    And a set of attitudes that are to do with higher or lower levels of education.

    And a set of cultural factors that are not strongly determined by material considerations, but arise due to the mix of personalities in particular groups.

    Whilst across society as a whole there may be a broad correlation between income, wealth and education, there are outliers. Clergy have been mentioned as a group in the low-income high-education corner. Farmers may have high wealth (owning land & high-value machinery) and low net income. Some groups may have high incomes that they have to spend up to to maintain their influence and thus their income, with little opportunity to build wealth.

    So I reject the materialism that portrays class as all about money, whilst agreeing that past and present income and wealth do play a significant role in forming people's attitudes.

  • MaryLouiseMaryLouise Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    edited April 10
    Firenze wrote: »
    Nevertheless it was a novelistic commonplace that if you were born of the right stock, however squalid and deprived your upbringing, it would show in superior moral character.

    There was a racial version as well. There's a Kipling story of an Anglo-Indian railway clerk who faces down a riot because he has that tiny percentage of white blood to give him the necessary authority. (Of course, he goes to pieces afterwards because he is, after all, mainly Native).

    As @Penny S says, the contention is - and it goes centuries, if not millennia - that the rich and powerful are born better.

    @Firenze’s comment here touches on the tensions around race and class now being looked at in studies on rethinking class in white colonial or settler societies in Africa (as in India). British colonial societies in Africa were all organised along racial lines, and those living in them racialised as white certainly enjoyed related privileges. Unskilled white immigrants found jobs in the mining industries, the railways or in road-building and as the ‘new middle class’ predominately performed supervisory jobs: the high wages paid to white workers were dependent on low wages for black African workers.

    At the same time, white working-class immigrants from Britain to southern African colonies in the years between the wars were often seen as undesirable, or morally or intellectually inferior. Poor whites were viewed as likely to fall into 'degeneracy' through marrying or fraternising with local blacks. Interracial relationships were seen as destroying the moral fibre and inherited genetic superiority (superior bloodstock) of the white settler culture.

    Whites were expected to live up to the self-proclaimed superior culture by virtue of being white. They were supposed to be better educated than indigenous black Africans, occupy superior positions in the workplace and aspire to cultural capital. Following the example of forced removal of children from indigenous families in Australia and Canada, the colony of then-Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) used a similar model to take legal guardianship from ‘failed or degenerate’ white parents into its custody. The state goal to reproduce white supremacy for successive generations made it imperative to directly determine the future of white children. Hence the future of then-Southern Rhodesia could not be left in the hands of individual parents but rested with the state. Children seen to be at risk (from families ‘racially contaminated’ by living in black compounds or with single mothers begging on the streets or known to be prostitutes) were removed from poor white working-class families between 1930 and the late 1970s and placed in juvenile delinquency homes, state-run orphanages and trade schools to be rehabilitated for a better standard of living.

  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    edited April 10
    @Russ - what is ‘skilled’ work? Some work is essential and extremely skilled, but valued very little. Of course, the majority of such work is done by women.

    Take two equal towns. Have all the men in one town go on strike and all the women in the other. Which grinds to a halt first?

    This question came up during lockdown when we all suddenly realised that essential work is often very low paid.
  • Boogie wrote: »

    Take two equal towns. Have all the men in one town go on strike and all the women in the other. Which grinds to a halt first?

    I suspect that depends on the towns. Most delivery, train and bus drivers are men (long distance Clara remains unusual). So are most farmers. And technicians keeping gas, electricity and telecoms going. It's not a matter of "women's work" being more or less vital than "men's work", just that men have historically been better paid for work of similar importance and skill.
  • If you immigrated to Canada, the class origins wouldn't much matter. It's not all based on ability, race and poverty as a child influence, and within the more recent decades as gov't funding for university and trade schools has created a debt load for those whose parent don't have money to pay tuition is impactful, it is quite typical that those who own businesses and run things are descended from uneducated immigrants themselves, or are from what the UK would call working class backgrounds. I understand this can be different in Ontario and provinces east where there's what we used to call "old money".

    My father's family came to Canada as refugees, penniless. He got well educated in the public school system (private schools exist but are rare, gov't funded schools are far more usual), he got 3 degrees, professional job and became wealthy. His children grew up with mostly poor ex-farm kids (farms were small and progressively have beckoned huge, farms export kids to cities). These kids became all of the leaders in society professionally, politically, in business, in society. This continues. Yes, there is what we call "old money" down east (Ontario is what we mean), but the level of mobility from rich to poor (money is the only class marker) is high. The general sentiment is that no one is better than anyone else. Very different than what I hear UK people say. People all call themselves middle class. Value-wise it's mostly true. Money-wise there is disparity but it's not nearly as wide.
  • In income terms the Gini coefficient suggests the UK and Canada are not dissimilar. Is it possible that First Nation and Inuit poverty skews a more equal picture among Canadians of immigrant descent?
  • In income terms the Gini coefficient suggests the UK and Canada are not dissimilar. Is it possible that First Nation and Inuit poverty skews a more equal picture among Canadians of immigrant descent?

    That would be a hell of an indictment on both countries if that was the reason.
  • finelinefineline Kerygmania Host, 8th Day Host
    Gee D wrote: »
    fineline wrote: »
    Also, @Forthview, surely the point about removing a class identity from disabled people was not about disabily being a class - no one said there was a disabled class - but about the fact that working class people can be disabled and not work (in the same way as middle class people can be disabled and not work). Therefore, if you simply define working class as people who work, then working class people who don't work because of disability no longer have a class. The point is surely that working class is a lot more complex than your definition.

    A bit of a tangent perhaps, but many with injuries leading to ongoing disabilities which would stop someone working in a factory, or carrying out a trade, but would not stop a middle class person from working in an office - or indeed doing office work online from home.

    Yes, absolutely, I see this a lot, and another way in which the working class can be disadvantaged. And also, jobs that are physically demanding can lead to health problems and disabilities over time. If it's a one-off accident, you might get compensation, but if it's wear and tear over time, you generally don't.
  • SighthoundSighthound Shipmate
    Ethne Alba wrote: »
    Oh curtsying to the The Lady of The Manor was still around in my childhood. Rural England , 1969. Her Uppittyship stopped the cart and questioned me concerning “ manners”. Then appeared at school on Monday morning to complain!

    The headmistress explained that we had recently moved to the area.

    My father hit the roof, spectacularly so.

    Absolutely mind-boggling. I would not have believed it possible without your testimony.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Shipmate
    edited April 10
    Ethne Alba wrote: »
    Anyone else looked at the Great British Class Survey linked by Lucia upthread?

    And if so, what you thinking about it??

    It is silent on those who don’t or can’t work. It seems to place me in the elite or the class below that. However, possibly because of position in the class system, I have met quite a lot of people who have vastly more money, property and social capital than I do. The structure conveniently makes them as invisible as those who are on unemployment or disability benefits. So it makes the chief losers and winners of capitalism disappear.

    If I, as someone who has to work to meet my bills, can be constructed as being in same class as the Duke of Westminister, then the typology is a bit flawed.

    It also seems to ignore the concept of a household.
  • In income terms the Gini coefficient suggests the UK and Canada are not dissimilar. Is it possible that First Nation and Inuit poverty skews a more equal picture among Canadians of immigrant descent?

    That would be a hell of an indictment on both countries if that was the reason.

    The conditions experienced by Canada's indigenous peoples are an indictment of both the British and Canadian governments, regardless of whether their current economic conditions skew Canada's Gini coefficient. The only positive thing one can say about Canada's treatment of its First Nations and Inuit populations is that it's not always as bad as that of its neighbour to the south.
  • I notice the NRS class system also excludes true capitalists.
  • Ethne Alba wrote: »
    Anyone else looked at the Great British Class Survey linked by Lucia upthread?

    And if so, what you thinking about it??

    It is silent on those who don’t or can’t work. It seems to place me in the elite or the class below that. However, possibly because of position in the class system, I have met quite a lot of people who have vastly more money, property and social capital than I do. The structure conveniently makes them as invisible as those who are on unemployment or disability benefits. So it makes the chief losers and winners of capitalism disappear.

    If I, as someone who has to work to meet my bills, can be constructed as being in same class as the Duke of Westminister, then the typology is a bit flawed.

    It also seems to ignore the concept of a household.

    Quoting myself to point out, not so much that it ignores the concept of household as - doesn’t account for single person households.
  • Boogie wrote: »
    This question came up during lockdown when we all suddenly realised that essential work is often very low paid.

    Essential, skilled, and rare are all different things. There are plenty of tasks that are essential for the smooth running of our societies, but do not require extensive training to be able to do, and can be done by pretty much anyone. Keeping the streets clean, or stacking shelves / working in a supermarket, for example.

    These are essential tasks. Without them, we'd be hungry, and living in a cesspit. But it's not difficult to find people capable of doing them.

    Or take nursing, for example. Completely essential. Also quite skilled - it takes significant time to learn everything that a nurse needs to know. But not especially rare: a large number of people are capable of training to be nurses.

    Professional footballer? Not even slightly necessary. Very skilled, and also rare - to be capable of performing at the highest levels in football requires both extensive training and practice and a rare natural ability.

  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    My father was a foundry worker and so was his father. My other grandfather was a car worker at Austins. His father was a miner.

    But you were neither

    And what does that have to do with the price of fish? You asserted earlier that it would take "a generation or three" to iron out tastes and accents. @Telford has told us that his family has all been solid working-class stock for generations. That was the environment in which he grew up, in which he formed his tastes, biases, and preferences.

    There's probably a parallel with immigration here. I'm a Brit living in the US. I've been here for almost 20 years. I think like a Brit, talk like a Brit, have tastes and preferences that are very British, and will continue to do so.

    My kids were all born here. They sound quite British to American ears (and a little American to British ears). Their tastes are largely influenced by our home life, which is quite British. So they certainly have a strong British cultural core. Their kids might end up being almost indistinguishable from their neighbours, or perhaps it would take another generation for the effects of residual Britishness to disappear.

    Why wouldn't social class be similar?

    The British working class as typified by Telford’s forebears ( as he describes them) is as dead as the dodo. Blame Thatcher for that, I guess.

    I would guess that Telford was further up the socio-economic ladder as a result of superior educational opportunities.

    He might have his tastes and preferences but they don’t define class even in Britain.

    As for you and yours, you are expats and whether your children become completely Americanised remains to be seen.
    When my father was 10 or 11 he passed an exam which qualified him to go to what was the equivilent of a grammar school. He was in a large family and they couldn't even afford the uniform. This made me determined to pass the exam and do what he had not been allowed to do.

    I have been more successful but I insist that I have always been working class. My daughter and her husband are probably middle class.

    I rest my case

    I am pleased that you agree with me
  • Telford wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    My father was a foundry worker and so was his father. My other grandfather was a car worker at Austins. His father was a miner.

    But you were neither

    And what does that have to do with the price of fish? You asserted earlier that it would take "a generation or three" to iron out tastes and accents. @Telford has told us that his family has all been solid working-class stock for generations. That was the environment in which he grew up, in which he formed his tastes, biases, and preferences.

    There's probably a parallel with immigration here. I'm a Brit living in the US. I've been here for almost 20 years. I think like a Brit, talk like a Brit, have tastes and preferences that are very British, and will continue to do so.

    My kids were all born here. They sound quite British to American ears (and a little American to British ears). Their tastes are largely influenced by our home life, which is quite British. So they certainly have a strong British cultural core. Their kids might end up being almost indistinguishable from their neighbours, or perhaps it would take another generation for the effects of residual Britishness to disappear.

    Why wouldn't social class be similar?

    The British working class as typified by Telford’s forebears ( as he describes them) is as dead as the dodo. Blame Thatcher for that, I guess.

    I would guess that Telford was further up the socio-economic ladder as a result of superior educational opportunities.

    He might have his tastes and preferences but they don’t define class even in Britain.

    As for you and yours, you are expats and whether your children become completely Americanised remains to be seen.
    When my father was 10 or 11 he passed an exam which qualified him to go to what was the equivilent of a grammar school. He was in a large family and they couldn't even afford the uniform. This made me determined to pass the exam and do what he had not been allowed to do.

    I have been more successful but I insist that I have always been working class. My daughter and her husband are probably middle class.

    I rest my case

    I am pleased that you agree with me

    Please don't start these games again.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    Telford wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Sojourner wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    My father was a foundry worker and so was his father. My other grandfather was a car worker at Austins. His father was a miner.

    But you were neither

    And what does that have to do with the price of fish? You asserted earlier that it would take "a generation or three" to iron out tastes and accents. @Telford has told us that his family has all been solid working-class stock for generations. That was the environment in which he grew up, in which he formed his tastes, biases, and preferences.

    There's probably a parallel with immigration here. I'm a Brit living in the US. I've been here for almost 20 years. I think like a Brit, talk like a Brit, have tastes and preferences that are very British, and will continue to do so.

    My kids were all born here. They sound quite British to American ears (and a little American to British ears). Their tastes are largely influenced by our home life, which is quite British. So they certainly have a strong British cultural core. Their kids might end up being almost indistinguishable from their neighbours, or perhaps it would take another generation for the effects of residual Britishness to disappear.

    Why wouldn't social class be similar?

    The British working class as typified by Telford’s forebears ( as he describes them) is as dead as the dodo. Blame Thatcher for that, I guess.

    I would guess that Telford was further up the socio-economic ladder as a result of superior educational opportunities.

    He might have his tastes and preferences but they don’t define class even in Britain.

    As for you and yours, you are expats and whether your children become completely Americanised remains to be seen.
    When my father was 10 or 11 he passed an exam which qualified him to go to what was the equivilent of a grammar school. He was in a large family and they couldn't even afford the uniform. This made me determined to pass the exam and do what he had not been allowed to do.

    I have been more successful but I insist that I have always been working class. My daughter and her husband are probably middle class.

    I rest my case

    I am pleased that you agree with me

    Please don't start these games again.

    Sorry. I appear to heve misunderstood.
  • Ethne AlbaEthne Alba Shipmate
    edited April 10
    In answer to your questions @Penny S , and your response is akin to my fathers!

    East Of England.
    Sept 1969.
    I think she would have been in her late seventies or early eighties.
    She was Lady Somethingorother and quite the rural bully. Had been used to getting her own way for generations and was an absolute tyrant to her own family and anyone who crossed her path.

    Her view of manners was I think Do As I Say.

    I don’t quite know what happened after that incident, but she didn’t read the lesson at the Christmas Carol Service in 1969. Not I think any other...


    Rural areas can throw up interesting situations, full of fascinating people.
  • Ethne AlbaEthne Alba Shipmate
    edited April 10
    @TheOrganist
    The sheer joy of that situation was that the elderly lady in question WAS a titled Lady.

    A very Rude and a very entitled Lady. But in our class ridden Britain, a Lady non the less.
  • Ethne AlbaEthne Alba Shipmate
    edited April 10
    +
    I am absolutely certain that some of the ministers here have had to contend with attempting to start a first church service in a new living- only to be informed that Mr or Mrs So and so hasn’t arrived yet.

    Where does the power lie in various organisations? Church or secular. Usually with the money donators. Who are usually the wealthy ones.

    In the past that was landed gentry or those with family money. Family business . Old Money if you like.

    The UK has an upsurge in New Money. All our countrywide lotteries give everyone a chance to Be Rich. Like “ them”.

    Only it is not ( at all ) the same.
  • Ethne Alba wrote: »
    @TheOrganist
    The sheer joy of that situation was that the elderly lady in question WAS a titled Lady.

    A very Rude and a very entitled Lady. But in our class ridden Britain, a Lady non the less.

    When Adam delved and Eve span
    Who was then the gentle man?


    I'm with John Ball on that. Being a gentleman or lady has damn all to do with 'breeding', antecedents, money or title and everything to do with good manners.
  • Ethne AlbaEthne Alba Shipmate
    True that
  • Interestingly C S Lewis took the opposite view - that Gentleman and Lady should have solely technical meanings denoting title or position and that these should be divorced from any sense of proper behaviour.

    I do think the fact that "entitled" has the connotations it does says a lot about the way the holders of titles have behaved over the course of history.
  • In income terms the Gini coefficient suggests the UK and Canada are not dissimilar. Is it possible that First Nation and Inuit poverty skews a more equal picture among Canadians of immigrant descent?

    That would be a hell of an indictment on both countries if that was the reason.

    The conditions experienced by Canada's indigenous peoples are an indictment of both the British and Canadian governments, regardless of whether their current economic conditions skew Canada's Gini coefficient.

    Sure, it was a somewhat tongue in cheek remark, meant to underline how bad the situation is; on the one hand the poor of the UK living lives comparable to a colonised people, otoh the First Nations reduced to living in the near Victorian conditions described in Philip Alston's report.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    That lot would occasionally turn up to services in one church I attended, to sit in the squire's pew above a side chapel to one side of the choir - thus behind the pulpit. But they were always on time. Their chairs from home got nicked, being of quality.
    Another church, the family who got to choose the vicar (or rector) would turn up occasionally and occupy the front pew, which meant no-one else could see what was happening because they were taller than the average. (Normans, according to my mother.)
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    Scuse double post - ran out of edit time,

    I remember a rector here, long back, holding forth on Rogationtide beating the bounds with the peasantry pausing what they were doing in the fields as the choir processed past, and thinking to myself "No they didn't, they were at chapel", only to realise that round here, the provision of chapels was rather sparse. Back in Sussex, there were Congregationalists, Baptists, any variety of Methodists, architect constructed chapels and tin chapels. Round here, in the four parishes organised together, one Elim, and one other, now replaced by a housing development. (Also a number of places in woods labelled by the Ordnance Survey as "site of chapel" but I think those were another sort of chapel.)

    I think there may be a connection with who had the gift of the living, the association of the church with the "family", and the major employer who watched the voting at elections. Closed rather than open villages.
  • In income terms the Gini coefficient suggests the UK and Canada are not dissimilar. Is it possible that First Nation and Inuit poverty skews a more equal picture among Canadians of immigrant descent?

    According to Wikipedia, Indigenous people make up just less than 5% of the population of Canada; I'm no expert on measures of inequality, but I would have thought that however poor they are, there probably aren't enough of them to make a large difference to the national Gini coefficient.
  • In income terms the Gini coefficient suggests the UK and Canada are not dissimilar. Is it possible that First Nation and Inuit poverty skews a more equal picture among Canadians of immigrant descent?

    According to Wikipedia, Indigenous people make up just less than 5% of the population of Canada; I'm no expert on measures of inequality, but I would have thought that however poor they are, there probably aren't enough of them to make a large difference to the national Gini coefficient.

    That's what I rather suspected. I was just reaching for something to explain the discrepancy between the data and @NOprophet_NØprofit 's lived experience, and distinct communities outside the experience of the average Canadian seemed like a possibility.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    When Adam delved and Eve span
    Who was then the gentle man?

    "The answer was, of course, Adam, but the mystics of the Church had concealed this dangerous knowledge."
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited April 11

    When Adam delved and Eve span
    Who was then the gentle man?

    Should not the second line be "gentleman"?
  • North East QuineNorth East Quine Shipmate
    edited April 11
    Firenze wrote: »
    There used to be a category 'distressed gentlefolk' to describe those not only brought up to wealth and privilege but of good breeding (ie they had inherited the W and P from a sufficiently long line of ancestors) but now impoverished. Popular literature of the first half of the 20th C was usually sympathetic to them, authors ensuring that attractive young women cruelly compelled to actually work were duly rewarded with a financially secure husband.

    (Or, if not marriageable, would at least be shown manifesting inherent nobility and self-sacrifice eg Sorrell & Son)

    In the 1980s / early 1990s, a charity for the relief of distressed gentlewomen advertised in the Journal of the Law Society of Scotland asking solicitors to bring cases of distressed gentlewomen to their attention.

    Once month they brought out a new advert - "What you've never had, you'll never miss, but imagine the horror of living in reduced circumstances" (or words to that effect). The original advert returned the following month - there had been complaints.

    ETA - they may have continued to advertise after the early 1990s, but I stopped reading the Journal then.
  • Gee D wrote: »

    When Adam delved and Eve span
    Who was then the gentle man?

    Should not the second line be "gentleman"?

    Not in the 17th century original.
  • Penny SPenny S Shipmate
    I knew someone supported by the Distressed Gentlefolk charity - left adrift after vicar father who had kept her from working died. I gathered back then that the charity had changed their name. Her sister had escaped, married and made money for herself, her brother died young and left her some money. But she had not been able to amass a pension and really needed that support.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited April 12
    Gee D wrote: »

    When Adam delved and Eve span
    Who was then the gentle man?

    Should not the second line be "gentleman"?

    Not in the 17th century original.

    Thanks. That's interesting as I see a difference between a gentle man and a gentleman,.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    Gee D wrote: »
    Gee D wrote: »

    When Adam delved and Eve span
    Who was then the gentle man?

    Should not the second line be "gentleman"?

    Not in the 17th century original.

    Thanks. That's interesting as I see a difference between a gentle man and a gentleman,.

    This is because language changes and the meaning of 'gentle' has shifted since the compound 'gentleman' was coined, whilst the meaning of 'gentleman' has shifted less.
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    edited April 12
    Yes, one of the senses used be gentle as not of working class but not of the nobility either
  • Gee D wrote: »
    Yes, one of the senses used be gentle as not of working class but not of the nobility either

    And here is a mediaeval poem about a gentil cok.
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