Talking of reality television, Sting has pretty vehemently denounced X Factor:



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8355611.stm

How true, in my opinion. He's just gone up in my estimation.

Also, 16 million viewers - one quarter of the entire UK population watches this stuff...? Incredible.

Oh God, I'm going to have to kill myself. Twice in 24 hours is just too much.

Myp loves Cavey!

The PS3 is an ace console, I love it.

Hope this serves as an antidote.

That's true, though. The PS3 is a fine console. In my eyes, it's not as good as a 360, but that doesn't detract from it in any way.

Yeah, I actually had a couple of months last year when I wanted to get one. They're still too expensive, though. Once it gets down to £150ish I'll probably bite. Unless the new Xbox is out by then.

But it's mostly only the same 16 million dullards who like shit music and shit telly anyway, it's not like they'd be sat watching some worthy documentary if this wasn't on. And there will always be people making good music and I'm not sure it really matters that they aren't the ones who are number one in the charts at Christmas.

You've just described Curiosity to a tee.

Despressing Feex

FTFY.

Sadly Mark, I fear you're right. Which makes me very angry to be honest.

Sorry to get heavy here, but historically the Working Classes (of which I consider myself a proud member thereof - I was working in a factory at 16 on £35/week) were much more highly educated and life-curious than they appear to be now. I'm afraid I put this down largely to dreadful education standards, as well as the media.

Time was, ordinary people used to take keen interests in pursuits like gardening/horticulture, cinema, music, sport, chess, writing, home electronics, cookery, literature and the arts to an extent; the membership of libraries and the like was commonplace. These days it's all TV dinners, Heat magazine and brain-dead shit on TV (soaps, reality TV).

*Agrees*
*Dispairs*

Did you mean despairs?
*Despairs*

*Disappears*

*Reappears with longer scarf*

I enjoy The X-Factor and BBC4 documentaries.

I do have to agree with you to a great extent. My parents were both from very working class backgrounds, but their families pushed them into education and made sure they bettered themselves. My father ended up as an accountant and his brother a civil engineer, and they came from a family of un-skilled factory workers.

Grammar school was key to this, I think, as it gave them a good education and a desire to learn and improve. Dad got his management qualifications at night school once he started work because he was determined to do justice to his parents' efforts for him.

He then instilled the same sense in us. And he also transferred his love of hobbies to us, too. My brother and I wouldn't be so handy with the carpentry if it weren't for him, and I wouldn't be a big ol' Airfix and Hornby nerd either.

Admittedly it's all a very narrow anecdotal basis, but I don't hear very many stories like that any more. Then on the other hand I suppose I didn't hear the stories about all of my parents' contemporaries who were from shit families and who were too lazy to do much and ended up on the dole. As my brother in law keeps saying , the whole "golden age" thing is an absolute myth. *shrugs*

*Dese Pears*

I enjoy X-factor and computer games and putting Dimrills face on racists.

What demographic am I?

You're unique.

I can't remember the last time I watched a soap.

I have a handful of TV I watch each week, most are drama or light dramas (mainly the american stuff in other threads on here).

I have started reading form pleasure again which is really nice.

I want to be pigeonholed.

Dirty

You've hit the nail on the head, old chap. A grammar school, however imperfect, is based on merit and merit alone. A reasonably intelligent kid who is in the top 40-50% could have expected to go to one, back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Once there, he or she would’ve received the best education in the world, for free, regardless of how little money his or her parents had, or where they lived. Thus, this was the route to success for so many you describe, including your parents (and mine).

The terrible irony is that now, you must have money to get any sort of education and this still won’t be anywhere near as good as that which was freely available 30-40 years ago. Your dad simply wouldn't have been able to do what he did then, now. Progress?

I’d even argue that your average Secondary Modern was still streets ahead of today’s bog standard Comprehensive – Mrs Caveman went to one and still got six good GCE ‘O’ Levels that were of course much harder to get (and entirely exam based) than their current day GCSE so called equivalents. They still had the same classroom discipline as the Grammars, for one thing.

I went to a "bog standard comprehensive" and from there I went to Oxford. Have thing changed so much in the last - urk - eighteen years?

Ditto.

*deletes uninformed, inflammatory waffle*
*tries to form proper response*
PLEASE WAIT

Gaywood and I were having a discussion about class the other day. I wouldn't consider you working class, Cavey - you drive a sports car, for one thing. Like yourself, I did factory work and building work when I was younger, but I don't think I could describe myself as working class now, unless it's defined by what you were born into.

Having a butler does rule you out a bit, Grim..., sorry.

Ah, but I only have a butler now. I certainly didn't have one when I drove diggers for a living.

You have socially mobilised upwards then. Well done!

And that's how it works, right? My class is defined by what I am right now?
But Cavey thinks of himself as working class.

I suspect one's Class is defined by birth mate (which I don't agree with btw). In my case, my dad worked in a factory throughout my childhood (as did my mum part time) and as I say, I left school at 16 (flunked the 6th form at my shit Comprehensive) to work in a factory myself. Like you, I know what it's like to do a hard days graft and feel the swarf between my toes.

It's all decided by how far you can ram your nose up your own ass

I'm a Middle-Class Hero! I've never done a hard day's work in my life.

*swivels on office chair*

Eek, a class discussion.

Can I say that I felt entirely let down by the state education system? Yes, I just did.

*deletes self indulgent waffling post*

Suffice to say, the state system fails cleverer kids, or did for me.

I've cleaned planes at Stansted Airport for a summer, washed dishes in a kitchen over the winter, worked in the stock room in HMV and walked eighteen miles in a single day trying to get people to complete surveys without a single success.

But the only long-term job I've ever had is sitting at a computer all day.

I don't think it's totally about what you do though. If you come from an upper class family and are brought up with a good education and certain airs and graces, but decide to drive a digger, I'm not sure you're automatically working class at that point.

I lay my underachievement in school entirely at my own feet, well that and becoming friends with Zardoz. Had I been motivated enough I could have done pretty much whatever I liked.

Nah. That was the case once, but not for many decades, not since the rise of wealthy industrialists at the turn of the century and the creation of the middle classes.

I was born working class; my parents both left school in their mid-teens, my mother was a factory worker, my father a chemical engineer in the automotive factory my grandfather also worked at; he qualified via an apprenticeship scheme at ICI. But now I have a PhD, I work a white collar job, and I find myself getting sniffy about the habits of the lower classes. I'm definitely middle class now.

Yes, it does, often. I lucked out though.

I think you can move between working and middle class, but have to be born upper class.

My father still considers himself working class. My mother most definitely does not (and my sister, a primary school teacher, gets very indignant when Pater describes us as a working class family ).

I'd consider myself middle class (professional is the very definition thereof, I thought). I'm sure some of the upper middle class (ha!) people here [EDIT - at my job, not on Beex. You're all plebs] would consider me to be working class given my parents' background.

How many generations of non-working class job-people do you have to have before your family moves up a grade? Most of those born into "nobility" are ultimately descended from pirates and such.

It's silly, isn't it? The whole notion of "class" is entirely outdated anyway, as the original bases for it have largely, apart from some inbred scounrgers still living in SW1, disappeared.


And, Gaywood, the upper class did and still do consider the industrialists to be gauche "new money" and certainly dont see them as equals. They're just rich poor people.

The middle class has been around a lot longer than that as a concept, too.

Er - such as?

At my job, not on this board, you numpty.

Oh. I did wonder. If it helps, I'm classier than you.

A fairy just died.

Dimrill's real name is Lord St John Fortington-Smythe, don't you know.

Ooooh, he may be related to First Born's favourite stuffed toy - Teddington Wooffenbark-Smythe, of the Gloucestershire Smythes. They may have been at Harrow together?

Mimi is actually a princess.

Craster's a huge queen. That trumps princess.

And trumps he does, too. On an industrial scale.

Your class is [click click whirr]

WORKING CLASS [................./] DISGUSTINGLY MIDDLE CLASS