Middle class anxiety

[8ball]

I was brought up definitely middle class, but as I so infrequently mix with middle class people, and went to a Polytechnic rather than a University, class wise I am in a rather dissatisfying limbo.

Must be tough knowing what to put in your kebab.

 

[Manter]

Sorry manter but what.

Regardless of it being a 'huge global event' it wasn't an act of god and the imposition of austerity on working class while capital bailouts and recovery went to the wealthy, the use of the crisis to drive deepening inequality, cut social spending, destroy the rump of post war consensus, can't be dismissed as arguing about whether 'austerity was appropriate'. The crisis was caused by them and used by them to enrich them at the expense of us. We, whatever that means, weren't ready then either. And the 'voices amplified' then were anti us, anti social spending, anti working class. For years and years and years.

I'm really not arsed about the idea of global or 'us', what us

Us as in a nation state. Britain. Whatever you think of borders that is an entity in common usage.

The last crash wasn’t caused by austerity, the global economic crisis was triggered by a sub prime mortgage crisis in the US which exposed a series of structural issues in the global financial system, which toppled. Austerity was the response Britain chose to respond to that crisis.... it wasn’t a cause of the crisis itself which was external to these shores and national boundaries.

 

[8ball]

Austerity was the response Britain chose to respond to that crisis....

Austerity was a great class-war opportunity for the rich while billions and billions were given to the banks.

 

[weltweit]

Must be tough knowing what to put in your kebab.

All the salads and always lashings of garlick sauce

 

[SpackleFrog]

I'm basically interested to comprehend people who always prided themselves on their sensible and pragmatic politics and tough choices have to be made, political centre ground types, who managed to ride through post crash/austerity years maintaining this political sensiblism but can now be found in fancy dress and blue and yellow face paint with trot stalls or shouting at the backs of regional news presenters

Er not trot stalls.

 

[8ball]

Er not trot stalls.

I keep reading that as "troll stats". Need sleep...

 

[Poot]

How are we defining middle class? Because that sort of changes things.

 

[8ball]

How are we defining middle class? Because that sort of changes things.

All the salads and always lashings of garlick sauce

 

[weltweit]

And I used to wear those yuppie stripy shirts back then as well.

Never had a Golf GTi though.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Us as in a nation state. Britain. Whatever you think of borders that is an entity in common usage.

Yeah I know Britain exists. I'm just confused about why economic crises are better when they are wider or why one limited to UK is somehow something me or anybody else should feel guilty or responsible for. There is no national us.

The last crash wasn’t caused by austerity, the global economic crisis was triggered by a sub prime mortgage crisis in the US which exposed a series of structural issues in the global financial system, which toppled. Austerity was the response Britain chose to respond to that crisis.... it wasn’t a cause of the crisis itself which was external to these shores and national boundaries.

Yeah I know all this, it's basically what I've just said. So why was the political response of austerity more palatable? You said all 'we' could do was weather it as well as possible. Which sorry is total bollocks

 

[Proper Tidy]

Er not trot stalls.

Mate I've seen them. Hardcore remainers will wallpaper stands. No papers tho

 

[SpackleFrog]

If you look at the likes of Johnson's, Raabs, Patels plans they are even more neolib than those you mentioned, they also never used nationalism and racism like Farage does.

This is about as incorrect as anything is possible to be.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Mate I've seen them. Hardcore remainers will wallpaper stands. No papers tho

Not trot stalls. Just stalls.

Accept no imitations.

 

[SpackleFrog]

does anyone actually rate themselves as 'woke', impeccably or otherwise?

Yeah a lot of people to be fair. No one you'd want to know though.

 

[xenon]

My daughter, a social worker, has just phoned me, incandescent with rage, after a 'congratulations' card has been handed around the office. 'Congrats on your new (bigger) house'. She witheringly mentioned how no-one ever offered her a card in the event of her moving to a different private rental. A huge uncomfortable silence ensued and mutterings of 'O well, what do you expect from N'. Her point, which none of them even considered, is, once again, the enormous gap between the mc, dual income, property-owning workers and the people who they are supposed to support...which is shaded by contempt and disgust at worst and condescending patriarchal noblesse oblige at best...without even a shred of shared solidarity.

In London, there will be wc social workers, because, even with a gloss of professionalism, it is a career which is not highly regarded...but in Tory Norfolk, the class difference is unbreachable.

She is submitting a little rage-y essay to 'Lumpen'.

Really, the card I mean? Fucking incredible.

 

[killer b]

Yeah a lot of people to be fair. No one you'd want to know though.

seriously? in the UK? I've only ever seen it used as a term of derision here.

 

[Manter]

Yeah I know Britain exists. I'm just confused about why economic crises are better when they are wider or why one limited to UK is somehow something me or anybody else should feel guilty or responsible for. There is no national us.



Yeah I know all this, it's basically what I've just said. So why was the political response of austerity more palatable? You said all 'we' could do was weather it as well as possible. Which sorry is total bollocks

You are mis reading what I am saying.

No recessions are fun. Recessions which come at the nation from external forces are shit. More shit are foreseeable, predictable and avoidable recessions which are done to the nation by its own leaders, particularly when we can all remember quite how shit they are and for many people (as 8ball states) the last one doesn’t feel like it’s over yet.

Austerity was not a recession. It was a political choice made by the British government. The economy was growing or we weren’t in recession for a lot of the ‘austerity’ period (which May of course says is over)

Edit: a lot of people believed the we need to live within our means narrative. We are spending more than we earn, you can’t spend your way out of debt etc. That’s how the government ‘sold’ austerity, as I’m sure you know- like national economics worked in the same way as a household budget. That meant that global inevitability meeting ‘common sense’ was unpleasant but many people could get their heads round it. The next recession I don’t think many people can. And for the record I don’t think austerity was the way out of recession economically let alone socially, morally etc.

 

[cantsin]

it's not just about m/c anxiety, important to emphasise the positive side to #FBPE as well imo

 

[Pickman's model]

it's not just about m/c anxiety, important to emphasise the positive side to #FBPE as well imo

no one is making that case because the only people whose grandparents (and increasingly greatgrandparents) fought for it fought under a rather different flag to the uk's.

 

[oryx]

It's not an original observation to note the difference in tone between media reporting of consequences of austerity 2010- and reporting of consequences of leaving EU/no deal, or that lots of middle class/chattering types were happy to turn a blind eye or pay lip service to effects of austerity but have become unhinged post ref.

Obviously queues at airports no cherry tomatoes on shelves blah is cited as reason, self interest and blindness to the years preceding referendum which directly impacted on the ref outcome, but interested in whether there is more to it.

Basically, what other factors are at play in the mass outbreak of middle class anxiety and insecurity over the latter which didn't hit home with the former. Is it just self interest or more than that?

Both your OPs are full of stereotypes and lack nuance, but if you mean that the people who are now voting LibDem because they're a blatantly remain party have short memories because the LibDems helped to usher in austerity, and are therefore hypocrites - then I'd agree with you there.

Fuck cherry tomatoes, when there is evidence pointing to possible food and pharmaceutical shortages because of a situation entirely created by the (almost exclusively upper/middle class, public school educated etc.) likes of Cameron, Johnson, Farage etc. it's not unreasonable for anyone to worry about it, whatever class they are. Oh, sorry - all the talk about said shortages is just Project Fear, isn't it, manufactured by so-called 'experts' who don't know what they're talking about?

 

[Athos]

... Recessions which come at the nation from external forces are shit. More shit are foreseeable, predictable and avoidable recessions which are done to the nation by its own leaders...

This is a false dichotomy; both are the product of neoliberalism which has been imposed on us along class rather than national lines.

 

[Pickman's model]

I was brought up definitely middle class, but as I so infrequently mix with middle class people, and went to a Polytechnic rather than a University, class wise I am in a rather dissatisfying limbo.

what is your relationship to the means of production?

 

[brogdale]

Us as in a nation state. Britain. Whatever you think of borders that is an entity in common usage.

The last crash wasn’t caused by austerity, the global economic crisis was triggered by a sub prime mortgage crisis in the US which exposed a series of structural issues in the global financial system, which toppled. Austerity was the response Britain chose to respond to that crisis.... it wasn’t a cause of the crisis itself which was external to these shores and national boundaries.

I've no issue of much of what you say here, but to excuse UK financial/financialised capital from their part of the cause of the crash is wrong. The trigger my well have been the collapse of faith in the US sub-prime products, but the UK, along with all the other neoliberal, consolidator states had played an enthusiastic part in the structural cause.

As capital increasingly withdrew from the concessions of the post-war period of system competition, the threat to mass consumption was successively mitigated by periods of a) inflation, b)public debt and then c) private debt encouraged by consolidator states. It is the failure of the unsustainable third phase that caused 2008.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Both your OPs are full of stereotypes and lack nuance, but if you mean that the people who are now voting LibDem because they're a blatantly remain party have short memories because the LibDems helped to usher in austerity, and are therefore hypocrites - then I'd agree with you there.

Fuck cherry tomatoes, when there is evidence pointing to possible food and pharmaceutical shortages because of a situation entirely created by the (almost exclusively upper/middle class, public school educated etc.) likes of Cameron, Johnson, Farage etc. it's not unreasonable for anyone to worry about it, whatever class they are. Oh, sorry - all the talk about said shortages is just Project Fear, isn't it, manufactured by so-called 'experts' who don't know what they're talking about?

I'm not taking about LibDem voters specifically no and I think you've missed the point of what I have said by quite a margin.

Everybody has a right to be worried. I was asking what factors lead people (specially, middle class people) to be outraged and motivated to action about this when they haven't been about... anything else.

 

[Athos]

The causes of this newfound middle-class anxiety are twofold: first, their material interests are threatened in a way they weren't by austerity; and, secondly, they're not used to not getting their own way.

 

[Idris2002]

it's not just about m/c anxiety, important to emphasise the positive side to #FBPE as well imo

The English middle classes (and this is a specifically English thing remember, unlike the Scots who like to pretend they all work in shipyards where they make irn-bru from girders, or the Irish who genuinely believe they don't have a class system at all [spoiler: they very much fucking do have such a system]) like to think they're cosmopolitan and Euro-minded but they're not really. I still remember being surprised to find that nowhere in Newcastle, a city of three million, with two universities, heavily dependent on external investment to keep the lights on, you couldn't buy a foreign language newspaper anywhere.

 

[Manter]

I've no issue of much of what you say here, but to excuse UK financial/financialised capital from their part of the cause of the crash is wrong. The trigger my well have been the collapse of faith in the US sub-prime products, but the UK, along with all the other neoliberal, consolidator states had played an enthusiastic part in the structural cause.

As capital increasingly withdrew from the concessions of the post-war period of system competition, the threat to mass consumption was successively mitigated by periods of a) inflation, b)public debt and then c) private debt encouraged by consolidator states. It is the failure of the unsustainable third phase that caused 2008.

Yes absolutely fair.

 

[8ball]

what is your relationship to the means of production?

I am the means of production.

 

[Pickman's model]

I am the means of production.

8ball recently

 

[8ball]

8ball recently

I think that's the guy who owns me.