<> th nstttn s nt nly stll “hdsly wht”, bt hdsly mddl-clss.

Nt, th *nt nly stll “hdsly wht”. t rlly s strng tht n ssyst cn cmpln bt th rhblttn f nch (s f 7/7 dd nt prv hm rght fr th 110th tm), bt cn slr wht flk tht wy. t s ls strng tht smhw BBC cld hv n ntr “sn Ntwrk” (tlk bt ‘cnstrctd dntty”
, wtht dstrbng th h s dlct snsblts f n Chrs Brtrm. Fnlly, ‘d gr wth n rlr cmmnttr tht dnyng wht wrkng clss cltr s n tslf n ct f grssn gnst th wht wrkng clss. Srly n my vst t Mnz’s P nd Msh cpl f wks g, sw th blgrd wht wrkng clss nggng n rtl nfrcng thr wn dntty. vryn n th shp, whch ws dng brsk trd, ws wht. Grndms, rsy chkd sndy hrd lds, cln-scrbbd yng mms pshng prms wth pnk bbs. Qt dfyng ndd. hp ths ppl fght bck—s rwll sd, th nly hp s wth th prls.

BTW, t Nck S. ndd th sklld trds r ‘hddsly wht’ (nglsh, rsh, st rpn). Th sn dvrsn t rl wrk (mkng stff, bldng stff, grwng stff) s cmmnly knwn—ts n f th rsns thy mmgrt (‘v n dbt tht cld b cnfrmd by sclgcl mns). s fr th ‘fr-Crbbns’ , thy sm bst std fr prpng p Kn’s dctrl cty-stt, wlkng rnd gvng prkng cttns, sttng n thr rmps s ntrnc scrty fr mlt-ntnl crprt bldngs (n prt t grd gnst thr c-thncs), rsng th crm rt, nd gnrlly sckng p tx dllrs frm th nglsh s mplys f gvrnmnt ‘rc-rltns’ qngs . gn, t shldn’t b hrd t ddc th pprprt sttstcs t cnfrm ths ‘rcst’ pnns. Fcts r dmn hrd thngs.

Interestingly, for that to be relevant, you have to be using an ethnic, not socioeconomic, definition of ‘working class’. What you are, what you feel, where you came from, not what you do or know.

I suspect things may be different in Scotland to some extent. But in my experience, software development is an almost archetypical example of the modern middle class semi-professional. Whether the relationship is formalised to the taxman or not, a developer is sole proprietor of their career. They are expected to invest in it by unpaid overtime and study, almost certainly aren’t in a union that actually moves their salary from market equilibria. Nevertheless they get good money: more than teachers, less than doctors, and moving upwards based on individual performance, not collective bargaining.

Working in a call center is fundamentally different, even if you would be hard pressed to tell from a photo which office was which.

The power of Google is not something that has escaped my attention this last decade, however, unlike some online commentators, I don’t have any inclination to deliberately overstate my already vast knowledge by pretending I know someone/something I actually don’t. Hovering over your Andrew Anthony link was sufficient to let me know he’s a Guardian columnist, but in the pantheon of decentism he’s hardly the first name to come to mind. My point was that armed only with an entirely objective piece by John Lloyd and something by some bloke called ‘Andrew Anthony’, you were somewhat overstretching with your entirely contrived attack on what and whoever you believe to be “decent” on this 6th day in the month of March, 2008. Like that’s a shock.

I hadn’t realised that “receiving” is a synonym of “anticipating” until now, Brownie. Thanks for broadening my appreciation of English.

Oh, I’m quite certain that any objective reader would quickly come to the conclusion that there’s a great deal more “assumption” than “anticipation” occuring on this thread.

You’ll find his views warmly endorsed multiple times – don’t you guys read one another’s posts?

I’ll take your word. And if I read every post DavidT wrote, my children would wonder who that guy was sitting in corner behind a keyboard.

Anyone who has been following the way the BBC has been promoting the series (on R5 for example) can’t be in much of a state of suspense about what the contents will be like. See also, btw, this piece in the New Statesman

http://www.newstatesman.com/200803060032

“Various” being John Lloyd and Andrew Anthony (who he?).

(If anybody actually bothers to read John Lloyd’s piece, they’ll find a fact-based analysis of the series content and accounts of various interviews with the protagonists. There’s very little – if any – narrative or subjectivity, so quite how Chris has decided this informs opinion about how “decents” are receiving the series is anybody’s guess.)

Let’s face it, Chris, you could write a post on how to bake the perfect cheesecake and you’d find some way to shoehorn in oblique criticism of “decents”. Your slip is showing.

I’m impressed, however, at both your and Daniel’s ability to critique a series of programs that don’t in fact begin broadcasting until tomorrow night. Unlike John Lloyd, for example, I doubt very much you’re in possession of a critic’s preview DVD. Still, since when did blind ignorance prevent you guys from holding court?

So it’s another example of the vogue for multiculturalism. If the default were citizenship to begin with then the whole series wouldn’t be necessary (in the sense of inevitable).
There’s only one culture I defend and it’s democratic culture. We’ve long had a problem in my country with working class catholics who follow their Mullah’s. They vote for the person who promises to take care of them. In NY it’s given us more than a few mayors. The thought that someone would vote that logic I find offensive. But it’s still common, even in many non catholics.
I vote for the person who is most likely to do as I would wish: that’s the philosophy of democracy.

The problem with multiculturalism as theory is that it treats it as a cause rather than merely the desired result. A multicultural democracy is a democracy where every other cultural value has become aestheticized to the point of being politically neutral.
Multiculturalism as a plan is the invention of liberal planners (that is: idiots). Multiculturalism as a result is my neighborhood, where everyone gets along fine because they’re living alongside each other and the all want to live “the american dream” or at least make enough money to go back home and retire. And [this is the kicker] they’ve all had the opportunity to thrive, because my country is more about money than community. You can come her and take jobs from those exhausted grandchildren of immigrants who weren’t strong enough to “get out.” No one likes a loser. What’s interesting is that recent generations haven’t bought into the american dream as past generations have. They are actually part of a change and represent part of the beginnings of social democracy in the US. European social democracy has exclude the immigrants in many ways. But immigrants here, many of whom would rather be back home, or maybe in Europe (and also since travel is easy) are keeping some old habits. But the new habit that does not go away is democracy, which by the way they do NOT associate with the US. The US they associate only with $$$$.
I know very few born americans who are as skeptical about this country as its immigrants are. And yet its immigrants are successful. That’s why I’m optimistic about this country.
Got me?

I’ll go further than dsquared, because I’m part of that demographic the series appears to be highlighting: It’s a curious mixture of bullshit nostalgia and prolier-than-thou class guilt, and I’d assumed we had enough of that on the BBC with Gene Hunt.

There are aspects of working-class-town culture that are fading away, and industrial towns have a short enough history for people to make a false conflation between ‘keeping our heritage’ and the particular siting of those cultural and structural trappings in the time before non-white immigration. But the continuity between a white immigrant culture and a non-white one is obvious to the people who still live in the terraces, and the accent is equally broad on the second generation.

Plus, with the arrival of Poles and others from the eastern EU, the circle is turning again. My dad, whose casual racism is typical of his peers, speaks highly of the Polish tradesmen he’s worked with, and I don’t quite know what to make of that. Perhaps it’s an intersection of race and class, to the extent that the skilled trades remain very white.

In the US color is a marker of class: racial prejudice and anti-immigrant sentiment are essentially class prejudice, motivated in particular by a perfectly legitimate distaste for the behavior of young working class males. I value my privacy in public and I don’t want to have to run the gauntlet every time I go to a convenience store where these jerks are hanging out. I also don’t want to live in a neighborhood where families sit on stoops or on beach chairs in the street because I don’t like having to walk through other people’s living rooms.

According to the received wisdom the US has been trashed by corporations, crooked politicians and plutocrats. Last time I looked the US was still a democracy and it was voters who installed the current regime. What we have now is the dictatorship of the proletariat: it’s the proles who constitute the Republican “base,” the proles who wanted war with Iraq at least initially, the proles who want creationism taught in the public schools, the proles who constitute the bulk of the religious right, and the proles who who support every benighted policy that progressives detest.

It’s a pity that race goes proxy for class, particularly since a significant percentage of minorities are middle class and have to prove themselves in order to get decent treatment. I’d hope that we could get down to brass tacks, stop worrying about Muslims, immigrants and people of color. This is class warfare and the enemy is the working class—white, black or brown, immigrants or native born.

I’m not sure the thousands of people who come our of places like the University of Strathclyde, University of Paisley, or various colleges, and end up working for the vast back offices in glasgow could be classified as “middle class”. Seems to me like a direct continuation of the skilled working classes who built big ships or maintained complex steam engines in days gone by.

The Clyde nowadays echoes to the sound of fingers pitter-pattering on keyboards building and maintaining financial systems rather than heavy machinery, cranes and the like building and maintaining ships, but the employees of the former are largely the offspring of the employees of the latter and their broad function is the same.

I agree with daniel, the BBC is focussing on working men’s clubs with a greyhound fetish and flat caps. That’s a caricature – the working class has changed as much as any other class in Britain and the BBC excludes the bulk of today’s working class in its programme.

So the recruitment ads put up an artificial class-based barrier not required to do the job, and they haven’t been sued?

There’s a very high proportion of people in the UK that go to university these days and many of them would be quite surprised to learn that doing so stops them from being working class.

Yes, things have changed quite noticeably over the last 2 decades, towards a much more US-style class structure, with a big internally-meritocratic educated middle class dominating the numbers. For various reasons, including a focus on race and religion, that fact has not really passed out from specialist academic studies into popular perception.

Immediately, “Nestor” from Ulysses popped into my head.

—I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why?

He frowned sternly on the bright air.
—Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
—Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.

“Historically,” less than 5% of England defined themselves as non-White. Today, 10% do. I don’t see why it should be considered “odd” that race was never much of a factor back in the old days when almost everyone was the same race!