Sociological Milestone or The Emperor’s New Survey?
Apparently our intellectual betters have decided the redundant and archaic class system is no longer fit for purpose. An entirely new meaningful and modern class system is required to help us more usefully define our station in life. For whom, why and to what end?
‘Class’ in its original meaning and purpose is a conceit of empire, and it’s rightly considered by anybody still exercised at all by the notion that it should have been consigned long ago to that same period of history. Centuries before we became digitized and trackable bits of data, this was necessary for reinforcing important economic constructs like who mined gold and who wore it, or military traditions such as who was rightly cannon fodder at Waterloo and The Somme, as opposed to who sat at a desk 30 miles behind with Melchett and Darling.
If a class re-definition is valid it ought to have been deployed generations ago – around about the same time Britain was letting go of Palestine, and India / Pakistan. It is utterly pointless now.
Before we were all upper, middle or lower, we were simply divided into royalty / knights or proles. Around about the same time the Regency lot were learning to eat with a fork and drink coffee. I have first-hand experience of this after having migrated from the Sussex coast to West Yorkshire in 2004. In t’North, natives still find class really useful as it helps them identify whom to hate and to reinforce why they should still feel disenfranchised and distinctly working class – if not downright second-class. Nine years later we’re seemingly all lovely neighbours but one still gets raised eyebrows that say, Gosh, your kids are actually quite nice, or You have a 10 year-old car you have to use to jump start your wife’s 13 year-old car, or You actually do care about Leeds paediatric surgery.
The traditional class system does so much to hinder good neighbourliness and reinforce useless prejudices. Why foist an entirely new contrivance on the hoi-polloi to re-engage their nascent discontentment?
I would like to know the sort of money involved here. The report runs to 33 pages and in the Funding section (p28) it states that the CRESC at Manchester University put up the cash. Interestingly it states specifically (noteworthy for such a brief section) that “The BBC provided no financial resources to support the research”. It does, however, acknowledge the BBC’s Lab UK for making the data available. Make of that what you will.
At some stage, one hopes, the full costs of the survey will be declared. If we’re lucky, these will be published alongside a concise explanation of precisely what use this will be to us.
I submit there are only two classes of people now: those who swallow this kind of pseudo-babble and those who don’t; or those who will use non-words like precariat straightfaced and those who can actually hear themselves speaking.
“Don’t tell him, Pike!”
There is a link on the BBC News (sic.) website that invites you to take the Class Calculator Test yourself. To preserve your own dignity, do try and resist. If you’re not to be dissuaded, however, it’s between the What your favourite colour says about you and If you were an animal, what animal would you be – an explanation.