Jay Doubleyou: race is the big issue in the united states
It seems that it's social class which defines British society - and something which many non-Brits find difficult to understand...
BBC News - The Great British class calculator: What class are you?
It's everywhere in the media:
Andrew Anthony: How Britain turned its back on the white working class | Comment is free | The Observer
Britain's class divide starts even before nursery school | Politics | The Observer
Food and class: does what we eat reflect Britain's social divide? | Life and style | The Observer
... especially at the moment:
Class war is back again – and British politicians are running scared | Society | The Observer
A British politician lost her job over a tweet: how to explain it to someone outside the UK
If you’re not British, Labour politician Emily Thornberry’s resignation for posting a tweet of a house, some flags and a van may seem baffling. Here’s why it happened
Emily Thornberry’s resignation from the Labour shadow cabinet for posting an image of a house in Rochester has provoked fury in Britain and bafflement abroad. While political commentators in the UK were divided over whether she should have resigned, they were fairly united in the belief that Thornberry had committed an embarrassing and potentially devastating faux pas.
At worst, she had shown her (and therefore Labour’s) contempt for the patriotic working classes. According to the prime minister, David Cameron, “effectively what this means is Ed Miliband’s Labour party sneers at people who work hard, who are patriotic and who love their country. And I think that’s completely appalling.”
All for tweeting this photo, with the caption: “image from #Rochester”.
So how would you explain to someone from outside Britain why Thornberry’s position became untenable? Obviously there’s the timing, turning what should have been a tricky day for the Conservatives – who were about to lose another MP to the insurgent rightwing party Ukip – into one dominated by questions of Labour snobbery. And it played perfectly into the narrative of the main political parties being a bunch of out-of-touch metropolitan elites. The tweet was particularly disastrous as Thornberry is MP for Islington, an area of London long a byword for rich, bourgeois cultural and political elitism.
But why? After all, Thornberry has a habit of taking pictures of buildings and posting them on Twitter. The problem, as with so much of British politics, was one of class. She had taken a picture of a working-class home, covered in England flags: exactly the kind of home potentially containing the kind of “white van man” voter that the Labour leadership is accused of being out of touch with. And, some claimed, there was an air of contempt in her choosing to tweet the image at all.This, despite Thornberry herself being brought up in a council house.
A British politician lost her job over a tweet: how to explain it to someone outside the UK | Politics | theguardian.com
BBC News - Labour's Emily Thornberry quits over 'snobby' tweet
25 November 2014 Last updated at 09:34
David Mellor 'swore at taxi driver' during route row
David Mellor accompanied his partner Penelope, Lady Cobham, at an event at Buckingham Palace before taking the taxi
Former Conservative cabinet minister David Mellor has been secretly recorded having a heated row with a London taxi driver, a newspaper has reported.
He was recorded swearing at the driver and arguing about the best route to take, according to The Sun.
Mr Mellor called the man "stupid" and told him to "shut up", the newspaper said. He also recounted some of his lifetime achievements. Mr Mellor told the paper the driver had "seriously provoked" him.
'Just shut up'
Mr Mellor got into the taxi with partner Penelope, Lady Cobham, outside a restaurant in Marylebone High Street, central London, at 17:50 GMT on Friday. The couple wanted to go five miles to St Katharine Docks, east London, and were charged £29, the paper said.
In the recording Mr Mellor, 65, who served as national heritage secretary in Sir John Major's government, is alleged to say: "You don't know as much about London as I do."
He adds: "You've been driving a cab for 10 years? I have been in the cabinet, I am an award-winning broadcaster, I'm a Queen's Counsel, you think your experiences are anything compared to mine? Just shut up.
"Drive me whichever way you want, and keep a civil tongue in your head."
'Seriously provoked'
Mr Mellor also accuses the man of ruining Lady Cobham's day. Earlier on Friday Lady Cobham, who is chairwoman of tourism body Visit England, had attended Buckingham Palace to be appointed a CBE for her services to tourism.
The driver passed the recording to the tabloid newspaper.
Mr Mellor resigned as heritage minister in 1992, blaming his departure on a constant barrage of hostile stories in the tabloid press. He has developed a career as a radio broadcaster since losing his seat in the Commons in 1997.
Mr Mellor told The Sun: "This man seriously provoked me and ruined a wonderful day. Once I had lost my temper, which I regret, he then secretly recorded me. I will leave the public to judge his actions."
BBC News - David Mellor 'swore at taxi driver' during route rowDavid Mellor 'Really Sorry' For Taxi Rant
The "Plebgate" (or "Plodgate", "Gategate") scandal in the United Kingdom concerns an altercation between Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, the Government Chief Whip at the time (who later resigned because of the incident), and the police, which took place on 19 September 2012. It gained notoriety initially for the conduct claimed of Mitchell and again two months later when, subsequent to Mitchell's resignation, CCTV and other evidence was revealed which appeared to call into question some of the evidence against Mitchell.[1]
Leaked police logs, later apparently backed up by eyewitness evidence, suggested that Mitchell had sworn at police officers on duty at Downing Street and called them "plebs" (a pejorative word signifying someone of low social class) when they refused to open the main gate for him as he attempted to leave with his bicycle. Mitchell apologised but denied using the words claimed and in particular calling police officers "plebs". However, finding his position untenable amid the media storm surrounding the incident, he resigned from office a month later.[2]
Plebgate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The affair concerns a 45-second encounter between Andrew Mitchell and police officers at the gates of Downing Street
Allegations that Conservative chief whip Andrew Mitchell called some police officers plebs during a row in Downing Street cost him his government job.
BBC News - 'Plebgate' row: Timeline
Plebgate: the report’s key points | Politics | The Guardian
Labour’s class war on private schools with threat to cut £700million tax breaks if they do not help state schools
Category: In the News
Posted on:
Tamara Cohen for the Daily Mail, refers to Sutton Trust research in an article on Tristram Hunt’s planned speech.
Tax breaks enjoyed by private schools will be removed under a ‘class war’ proposal to be announced by Labour today.
Shadow education spokesman Tristram Hunt will attack the ‘Berlin Wall’ between the fee-paying and state education system and say the ‘corrosive divide of privilege’ is harming children’s prospects.
And he will vow that a Labour government will axe the £700million of tax breaks which would be earned by private sector over the next parliament – unless the schools do more to help improve education in state schools.
Critics will argue that this approach will only force private schools to raise their fees.
One private school head teacher has already warned that fees are now so expensive they are being used as ‘finishing schools for the children of oligarchs’.
Mr Hunt will say in a speech today that they are ‘barriers to British educational success.
Labour's 'posh' schools spokesman Tristram Hunt accused of fighting a class war instead of improving education - Capitalbay Information Portal
POSH PEOPLE: INSIDE TATLER - THE STORY SO FAR..
We opened the doors to a BBC camera crew, who filmed our every move, from the front row at London Fashion Week to toff-hunting in Scotland. Watch the third and final episode of Posh People: Inside Tatler at 9pm on Monday, December 8 on BBC Two....
Posh People: Inside Tatler - BBC2 Tatler documentary, Matthew Bell, Gavanndra Hodge, Sophia Money-Coutts & Kate Reardon - Tatler
BBC Two - Posh People: Inside Tatler
Poverty tourism shows like Skint are deplorable and dishonest
Poverty isn’t an entertainment. It’s private, debilitating and alienating. It produces shame, guilt and misery, causing those who suffer to withdraw into whatever they call home and shut the door on a world that excludes them.
Unfortunately it doesn’t exclude Channel 4, which went ahead with another series of Skint – this time filmed in my Grimsby constituency – despite my protests and those of many local organisations and concerned individuals.
Channel 4 has discovered that poverty tourism does more for ratings than celebrity culture, missions to explain or any highfalutin attempts to hold government to account. Kicking people when they’re down (and gullible) is so much easier and less expensive than intelligent programming. Victims don’t sue, and when do-gooders complain, they can always be accused of wanting to censor serious seekers after truth. So we get a proliferation of Misery Telly and programmes like Benefits Street, Immigration Street and Skint.
Demonising the poor and turning deprivation into entertainment isn’t just deplorable, it’s dishonest – while television channels all proclaim their high integrity, the producers sent out on this mission to demean aren’t to be equally trusted. They have their own agenda and all too often this demands victims.
So they come to a town nominally to “research”, but in practice to find the most sordid locations and pick out the most loud-mouthed, show-off layabouts who’ll rant at anything for a few bob (which they don’t in fact get).
Then they distort the local situation. Some towns are tougher than others and Grimsby can be a hard place, even curmudgeonly. Yet everywhere there are warm hearts and caring souls, charitable organisations and religious groups that struggle to help the poor and downtrodden, such as Grimsby’s Christian Action, which runs the Daily Bread Food Larder, or Harbour Place Day Centre, started by a nun, which provides care for the homeless.
People care. If they refuse to cooperate with malign production teams, they’re made to seem callous and brutal. Protesting is no use because complaints get the PR brush-off, and the only attempt at balance is an on-air shouting match, such as the one that followed Benefits Street.
These programmes pander to popular prejudices, media misconceptions and Tory propaganda. In the 1930s, poverty, unemployment and deprivation – brought home by Orwell’s descriptions of Wigan and Sheffield, Priestley’s journey and marches such as Jarrow – stirred the nation’s conscience and built the case for the welfare state.
Now poverty has become an object of blame, as if scroungers are responsible for the size of the benefits bill, young people enjoy a life of idleness and “hard-working families” are having to work for peanuts while lazy neighbours procreate.
This is a monstrous travesty of reality and concentrates hatred on the least well-educated, most deprived. TV doesn’t even balance it with shows on the scandal of massive tax evasion and avoidance by corporations and the rich, the luxurious life- style of the City and Taxhaven on Thames or the excesses of the Wolf of Wall Street.
Think again, Channel 4. Why not turn the cameras on the bankers punishing the poor, with Benefits Bankers, Tax-Evading Toffs and Fiddling Financiers? When is television going to do its job and take on all that? All it needs is guts and a sense of fairness.
Austin Mitchell is the MP for Great Grimsby
Skint is on Channel 4 tonight (24th November) at 9.00pm
Skint in Grimsby: Fishermen react to episode 2 of Channel 4 show - what did you think? | Grimsby Telegraph
Skint - Channel 4
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