Does class still matter?

[danny la rouge]

We're told it's "old fashioned" to think it does. But does it?

 

[dessiato]

Like it or not people still judge you by there preconception of you, which includes the way you look, the way you dress and their idea of social class. Look around and you will see it clearly on here.

 

[Frampton]

The lower down you are in the food chain the more you realise that class is very much alive.

 

[rioted]

Can't vote "strongly agree" 'cos that would align myself with those nutters who think class is the ONLY thing that matters.

 

[Belushi]

Of course. The class system has changed in this country but its as important as it always was.

 

[jimadore]

With out the Royals ,the class system would be history.

 

[Fedayn]

With out the Royals ,the class system would be history.

So, the United States and France are classless societies then?

 

[jusali]

As the Beckhams prove you can't "buy" class. It's like style, you either have it or you don't.

 

[jimadore]

HI Fedayn yes they are only money counts or power.

 

[Belushi]

HI Fedayn yes they are only money counts or power.

What do you think class is all about?

 

[In Bloom]

It's difficult to have a useful discussion about it without defining what you mean by class. Are we talking about class as a cultural identity, class as a social relationship or class as a way of describing social inequality?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

What do you think class is all about?

It's about cutlery. Cutlery is very important.

 

[PAD1OH]

British people are more obsessed by class than anywhere else.

 

[Fedayn]

HI Fedayn yes they are only money counts or power.

Really? So there's no ruling class in America or France? It's a classless society? No workers/producers and no owners?

 

[electrogirl]

Yes, class still matters.

 

[butchersapron]

Yeah, class matters

Stop poorer dying younger

Boys born today in East Dorset and Kensington & Chelsea can expect to celebrate their 80th birthdays in 2086, but those in Glasgow City in Scotland (where male life expectancy rates stand at 69.3 years) will be lucky to reach 70, according to a new study released today by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP).

Life expectancy gap 'widening'

The joint University of Bristol and University of Sheffield team found a 10-year difference in life expectancy between the best and worst areas.

Poverty and inequality in the UK

The long shadow of childhood: associations between parental social class and own social class, educational attainment and timing of first birth

Army disproportionately recruiting in schools in deprived areas

Number of Working class students 'to fall'

Private schooling key factor in career success

A study examining the educational backgrounds of the 500 most influential people working in politics, the media, medicine, law and business reveals that more than half had attended fee-paying independent schools. That compares with the tiny proportion of pupils - just 7% - who are privately educated.

Over half country's top journalists went to private schools

Declining/stalled social mobility in Britain

Gap Between Rich And Poor Widens

Children who cannot escape the poverty trap

A child born to a labourer is six times more likely to suffer extreme poverty by the age of 30 than one born to a lawyer, a major study has revealed.

In a remarkable portrait of childhood in Britain, academics have exposed a society in which inequalities are entrenched and social mobility is a myth. Millions of bright children face 'multiple deprivation' in adulthood simply because of the circumstances of their birth.

Those born into disadvantaged families in 2000, it concludes, have slipped further behind their middle-class counterparts by the age of three than those who grew up in the Seventies.

Class segregation 'on the rise'

100 schools 'dominate Oxbridge admissions'

Premature deaths

Religious schools 'show bias for rich'

Damning new evidence that faith schools are siphoning off middle-class pupils can be revealed today, as research shows they are failing to take children from the poorest backgrounds nationwide.

Networked from birth

Still, the bare facts are there, for those who wish to make something of them. While in the UK only 7.3% of the population go to private schools, 59% of Conservative MPs were privately educated. Of the 27 members of David Cameron's shadow cabinet, 17 went to private schools. Last summer, a smattering of reports drew attention to the fact that no less than 14 Tory frontbench spokesmen were educated at Eton alone. To be fair, such high-flyers as William Hague and the shadow defence secretary Liam Fox keep their comprehensive-educated end up - but Cameron's circle of friends, colleagues and associates is, perhaps inevitably, dominated by men who once spent their school days cloistered near Windsor, dressed in top hat and tails. They include his speechwriter and "ideas man" Danny Kruger, Tory MPs such as Hugo Swire and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Cameron's avuncular guru Oliver Letwin and his stepfather-in-law Viscount Astor. The shadow chancellor George Osborne, it should be noted, went to the London school St Paul's - but managed, once he'd got to Oxford, to make it into the "Buller", among whose members he was reportedly known as "Oik".

Last year, figures obtained under the Freedom Of Information Act revealed that Oxford admitted almost twice as many Old Etonians in 2006 as in 2001, and that the figure for alumni of Westminster School was up from 14 to 52 (at the last count, 60% of Westminster's sixth formers got places at either Oxford or Cambridge). When you look at the array of research put together by the educational charity The Sutton Trust, the picture is pretty quickly fleshed out. In the past 18 years, for example, the proportion of privately educated high court judges has barely shifted: in 1989, it was 74%; in 2007, it was 70%. And anyone who sees the media as some forward-thinking meritocratic milieu should think again: to quote from one of the Trust's reports, "the proportion of independently educated top newspaper editors, columnists and news presenters and editors has actually increased over the past 20 years".

A postcode lottery of life and death

Deprived areas data reveals cancer survival divide

People who live in the most deprived parts of England are less likely to survive cancer than those who live in more affluent areas, according to figures published yesterday by the Office for National Statistics.

 

[Fedayn]

Yes

Care to expand on that? So, in France and the US, there are no class inequalities? No concentration of wealth in the hands of the few?

 

[electrogirl]

Care to expand on that? So, in France and the US, there are no class inequalities? No concentration of wealth in the hands of the few?

No, I meant class still matters.

I didn't quote you did I?

 

[Fedayn]

No, I meant class still matters.

I didn't quote you did I?

No but people don't always quote. My apologies.

 

[Idaho]

Once again another urban thread on class gets confused as to whether it is discussing culture or economics.

 

[rioted]

culture or economics.

cos there's SO much difference!

 

[teuchter]

We're told it's "old fashioned" to think it does. But does it?

Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, depending on the context. Obviously.

 

[teuchter]

cos there's SO much difference!

The two are not unrelated but they are definitely different things and like Idaho says the reason these discussions quickly become confused unless everyone agrees on a definition at the start.

 

[fredfelt]

British people are more obsessed by class than anywhere else.

I would say India is much more obsessed - but it's called the caste system

 

[butchersapron]

The two are not unrelated but they are definitely different things and like Idaho says the reason these discussions quickly become confused unless everyone agrees on a definition at the start.

How are they related then?

 

[In Bloom]

I would say India is much more obsessed - but it's called the caste system

That's a different thing to class as it exists in most of the world though. Class isn't about some rigid set of social categories that you are born into and will absolutely, definately remain in for life (at least as far as people who use it as a tool for analysis are concerned).

 

[teuchter]

How are they related then?

Some activities around which a culture forms are expensive.

 

[Kaka Tim]

The lower down you are in the food chain the more you realise that class is very much alive.

This is very true.

The people most likely to talk about a classless society and that it belongs in the past are almost always from the affluent middle classes.
Ask people on any social housing estate and you'll get a very different response.

 

[Paulie Tandoori]

in my opinion, someone who argues that class (however defined) isn't important or doesn't exist as a concept anymore, is someone who doesn't, or hasn't, had experience of being at the bottom of the heap essentially.

 

[Idaho]

How are they related then?

In the same way they are unrelated of course. I'm sure a man of your powers can explain the terms "class" and "culture" and their inter-relationship simply and concisely in a 100 words or so.