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If the actual traffic issue isnt being addressed then all it will do is give an even more unpleasant experience elsewhere.
Especially at a time when use of public transport in London is being actively discouraged because of covid.
Class is indeed a very weird notion. I like to think of myself as classless seeing as my parents both graduated from Oxford uni but mostly didn't have two pennies to rub together 😬
Apparently a lot of middle class people still refer to themselves as working class. So says this guy who's made a series about it> https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000s7hd/darren-mcgarveys-class-wars-series-1-1-identity-crisis <
The most useful definition of class I've seen went roughly as follows (sorry, I heard this long ago and have no idea where it came from, but it's not my original idea):
The upper-class have no need to plan for or worry about the future because everything is taken care of. They can do whatever they want without a care in the world.
The middle-class have to plan for and worry about the future, but they have enough resources to do this.
The working-class lack the resources to be able to plan for the future so they basically live in the present and let the future take care of itself.
Key to this is to expand "resources" beyond money. Education, skills, social connections, etc. are very important resources. Many working-class jobs pay good wages, but not all working-class people lift themselves out of the working-class because they don't know how to use the resources they have. Someone with a working-class job who has a mortgage and enough income to pay it off is heading for a middle-class life.
The working-class lack the resources to be able to plan for the future so they basically live in the present and let the future take care of itself.
Nope, that's Buddhists.
I thought working class showered after work and middle class showered before work.
@oakkeymuppet that is such a strange and perhaps modern affectation, my gt grandparents met in an orphanage at the in the late 19th century but my grandad got a good education and did well for himself, never once referred to his poorer roots, perhaps for him it was an embarrassment rather than something to be proud of.
blokeuptheroad
Which is why someone born into a dysfunctional, abusive home where education and career expectations are low or non existent is pretty much stuffed before they even start, whatever their innate intelligence etc.
Mmmm, you're probably right but thankfully there are plenty of exceptions to this.
It's all about Tomato Ketchup.
Keep it in the cupboard with the teabags?....You're working class.
Keep it in the fridge as per the instructions on the bottle?....You're middle class.
No idea where cook keeps the chutneys and preserves?.... You're upper class.
Which is why someone born into a dysfunctional, abusive home where education and career expectations are low or non existent is pretty much stuffed before they even start, whatever their innate intelligence etc.
This isn't entirely true. Many people have enough innate intelligence to realise at a very young age that education and hard work are a viable escape route from that life. It's easy to overachieve if you are expected to fail based on circumstances rather than ability.
I agree, and this is why I have a problem with the romanticisation of good old fashioned manufacturing (as in the 1945 video posted on here earlier). It's essentially perpetuating attitudes that keep people down doing menial work. If we can replace those dead-end jobs with something that can encourage diverse flexible skills (beyond fitting bike tyres) then people have more agency in their lives.
However the corresponding risk is that people end up feeling pressured to stay relevant, and that they are always under-trained, which can be very stressful.
My dad was a coal miner, I was brought up in a council house in a pit village. I guess I was a working class kid. I went on to become a chartered civil engineer. That's not working class by any stretch of the imagination. I live in Cheshire (nearly!) and drive a German estate.
I'm also a cyclist, support the idea of low traffic neighbourhoods and I wear lycra.
Nope, that’s Buddhists.
Lol!
I guess I was a working class kid. I went on to become a chartered civil engineer.
And how many of your peers did that? How many of them were forced to go and do something else because the mines closed? My Dad was born in a mining town and everyone worked in the mines, including him. He had to retrain to get out, because he hated it, before the strikes and closures.
I cycled yesterday, plan to cycle today, and I just bought two new expensive lycra tops.
Have we derailed this thread enough yet?
This isn’t entirely true. Many people have enough innate intelligence to realise at a very young age that education and hard work are a viable escape route from that life.
I would be careful about the use of phrases such as "hard work" that suggest those who didn't "escape" didn't because they didn't "work hard." It falls into the same category of Boris Johnson getting over covid because of his "strength" and "courage" which also suggest if you don't get over covid its because you are weak and lack courage. Which we all know is rubbish.
I wear lycra.
When the revolution comes, where will you hide?
@oakkeymuppet that is such a strange and perhaps modern affectation, my gt grandparents met in an orphanage at the in the late 19th century but my grandad got a good education and did well for himself, never once referred to his poorer roots, perhaps for him it was an embarrassment rather than something to be proud of.
I think it's a sign of the times and Trumpism, but it's been bubbling away for a long time - in the country my wifes from people respect it if you get a good education and escape, in my hometown you become one of "them" liberal elites. It's been like that there for decades.
It’s all about Tomato Ketchup.
Keep it in the cupboard with the teabags?….You’re working class
What kind of maniac keeps the teabags in a cupboard? They should be right next to the kettle.
I would be careful about the use of phrases such as “hard work” that suggest those who didn’t “escape” didn’t because they didn’t “work hard.” It falls into the same category of Boris Johnson getting over covid because of his “strength” and “courage” which also suggest if you don’t get over covid its because you are weak and lack courage. Which we all know is rubbish.
Yes.
In the case of the intelligent ones that don't manage to get out, I think it's more like some kind of working/under class Stockholm syndrome.
"All the people around me are abusive uneducated morons but I'll stick with them because they're "my people"."
They should be right next to the kettle.
Underclass. You lack the inherent nobility of the working man which would compel you to strive for the honest dignity of a teabag and red sauce cupboard.
The middle class dont exist, if you have to work 5 days a week then you’re no different to the vast majority of others in society.
What if you don't have to work 5 days a week? or even work at all? Are they upper class?
What if you could actually stop working but choose to continue to work (for a better standard of living or just your own sanity).
What if you don't work because your partner earns enough that you can walk the dogs / lunch with friends all day?
What if you only work 2 days a week, or whenever it suits you?
Odd for the Tories to attack the middle class
Not at all. Divide and conquer has been their unwritten motto for as long as I remember, reflected in our many Tory tabloids. At least since Blair some two decades ago Labour (and LibDeM) have been increasingly identified as ‘middle class’, the ‘othering’ of whom has been successful/instrumental in the campaign for Brexit/Johnson. They just changed the labels. Identify the ‘enemy’
The piper plays the tune and the dance goes on.
This is an illuminating piece, taken as parcel with the comments below it:
stumpyjon
Bobbins, there’s a world of difference between a management role where you have to think on your feet, take responsibility for your performance, your teams performance and often things out of your control and the traditionally working class roles, trades, machine operator, warehouse work etc. where you are only responsible for your own performance. Something a lot of working class people will never get to experience or understand, partly because their mindset won’t allow them to progress into these roles. Still, lot of rubbish management out there as well.
I really hope that was being ironic. If not you’re an idiot. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve read on here for a long time. If you replaced working class in that paragraph with gay, women, or black you’d probably be facing a ban.
This needs relevant context.
Road/Crit racing = working class
Time Trial = working class
Track (outdoor) = working class
XC = working class
Track (indoor) = middle class
Sportive = middle class
Enduro = middle class
BMX = working class
Gravel = middle class
Audax = working class
Downhill = working class
Bikepacking = middle class
Touring = working class
Triathlon = middle class
Cyclocross = working class
And the forgotten MTB Trials riders?
...
Who says bobbins anyway, when there's words like bollocks readily available?
And how many of your peers did that?
Quite a few of my friends from junior school went onto grammar school then university, etc.
You forgot one:
Bicycle as primary transport/utility?
Crank class or virtue-signalling ‘woke’ upper-middle class?
(In truth - I hate this ****ing stupid British game!)
Road/Crit racing = working class
Time Trial = working class
Track (outdoor) = working class
XC = working class
Track (indoor) = middle class
Sportive = middle class
Enduro = middle class
BMX = working class
Gravel = middle class
Audax = working class
Downhill = working class
Bikepacking = middle class
Touring = working class
Triathlon = middle class
Cyclocross = working class
allowing some of your grounds to be used for a race once a year = upper class
It's a strange one. I grew up in a proper shit hole council estate, surrounded by drugs and crime. My parents divorced when I was 7, dad was a painter and decorator, then joiner, mum was on the dole. And I left school with no qualifications what so ever.
I now work (4 days a week) in civil Engineering, own 2 houses, 2 cars and (usually) have at least 2 foreign holidays a year one of which is skiing. 4 bikes though, priorities and all that!
I'm kind of embarrassed by now being middle class but also proud that I 'made it out of the ghetto'....so to speak. But I still have that feeling that I'll never amount to anything which holds me back no end. I just hope my kids have a better take on it all and go for it a bit more.
I know my place
Quite a few of my friends from junior school went onto grammar school then university, etc.
Ok so out of a school of however many hundred...? Clearly your friends are a self selecting group no?
You lack the inherent nobility of the working man
It me.
Effectively the middle class being “othered”.
You’ve obviously never studied political philosophy or sociology with a bunch of middle-class kids sitting around with a middle-class professor with trendy facial hair denouncing the false consciousness of the bourgeoisie and expounding on their working class consciousness. It doesn’t matter that they never did a day’s actual work in their lives
I grew up among ‘inverted-snob’ (still just snobbery) working class yet was quite affable around anyone I met regardless of their social standing (maybe I’m an ‘idiot class’) so have seen a few stereotypes in my time. If it was the ‘working class’ being ‘othered’ would you choose your worst and most cartoonish anecdote/experience with the ‘working class’ to ‘explain’ why they were being ‘othered’?
I hate threads like this because I have to put ‘quote marks’ all of the time.
I do personally dislike labelling people. It’s a bugbear since I can remember. I’ve noticed myself do it more since the internets.
Grew up around working class yet was quite affable around anyone I met regardless of their social standing (maybe I’m an ‘idiot class’)
This is how I feel. "Idiot Class" is how I'm going to self-identify now, cheers 🙂
Ok so out of a school of however many hundred…?
I'd estimate that out of the 700 odd kids at my high school, when I was there in the 80's, in a poverty stricken post industrial shitehole of a steel town that maybe 10% of the kids ended up dead or in jail, 20% ended up long term unemployed, 40% went on to have normal "working class" type jobs and 30% went on to University or into professional "middle class" type careers.
Keep it in the cupboard with the teabags?….You’re working class.
Keep it in the fridge as per the instructions on the bottle?….You’re middle class.
No idea where cook keeps the chutneys and preserves?…. You’re upper class.
**** off! I'm not working class.
You just don't think you are. The Tommy K doesn't lie.
No idea where cook keeps the chutneys and preserves?
I’m ADD/scatterbrained I do the cooking. Subsequently, I have no idea where the cook keeps the jam or Branston.
If use words like subsequently am I part of the hated class?
Keep it in the cupboard with the teabags?….You’re working class.
Keep it in the fridge as per the instructions on the bottle?….You’re middle class.
No idea where cook keeps the chutneys and preserves?…. You’re upper class.
My wife keeps the red sauce in the fridge, I can't stand the stuff and keep MY brown sauce in the cupboard as I hate cold sauce on my bacon buttie!!
I thought working class showered after work and middle class showered before work.
How very subtle and pre-social media!
Keep up though. Working classes now are either unwashed or have a tropical wet room with 4k TV, while middle classes are either fashionably dirty scroungers with rich parents or otherwise perma-washed in unicorn tears and are blow-dried by the vented heat from the flames of their meaningless social justice events.
If use words like subsequently am I part of the hated class?
Not if you use them incorrectly. Consequently, you wanted.
I think correcting grammar on the internet makes definitely me middle class.
Are you on singletrackworld.com in the middle of a working day? You're middle class.
After your shift? You're working class 😉
I’d estimate that out of the 700 odd kids at my high school, when I was there in the 80’s, in a poverty stricken post industrial shitehole of a steel town that maybe 10% of the kids ended up dead or in jail, 20% ended up long term unemployed, 40% went on to have normal “working class” type jobs and 30% went on to University or into professional “middle class” type careers.
So 30% university attendance in the 1980s. Anyone know the figures for that era? that sounds quite average - as in, not abnormally bad.
Traditional "class structure" seems out of date, (mentioned upthread about it being a victorian concept) by the nature of many jobs changing for the better.
the thinking that working class = unthinking manual labour, and working yourself to an early grave has given us the idea that anything that doesnt involve sitting down and wearing a suit is working class.
Look at the work that a shop owner or any trademan does these days. A lot of planning, thinking, finances etc.
And for those putting a salary band on class, they are raking it in. You can get £300 a day laying bricks round these parts, and you dont have to spend a decade as a hod carrier for you dad or uncle to get to that point either.
What though, to think of the new* underclass? The long term/deliberately unemployed, or underemployed, with no meaningful plans beyond the end of the week?
*the last half century, when career benefit claimant became an option.
thols2
It doesn’t matter that they never did a day’s actual work in their lives,
If you still believe that "actual work" is getting your hands dirty then I'm guess you voted Leave and Tory in 2019.
p.s. There are some absolute tools in the that video. That "blockade" of planters with a massive gap enticing people to drive through and collect a fine is absolutely criminal.
However the need to stop the lifestyle that The Car is King and Convenience is King absolutely has to stop. Central govt has to give targets and local govt has to make the chnages that are unpopular.
I live near an estate that has been cut off with similar schemes. My convenience may suffer as I can no longer drive through, but instead I go through that estate running and cycling with the kids far more. It's a wonderful place to be and others wouls realise the benefit too if they got off their arses and out of the car and off the sofa.
If use words like subsequently am I part of the hated class?
Not if you use it (incorrectly) to begin a sentence...
Not if you use them incorrectly. Consequently, you wanted.
Brilliant! 😄
You're correct of course. My education was every part as shite as my ability to focus. ‘An education’ was discouraged at school/by peers and have been playing catchup since.