Squeezed Middle Watch

[Belushi]

You know things are really tough when young journalists are forced to live in South London

 

[treelover]

Tracy McVeigh, the editor of that Observer blog is a very good journalist.

 

[Orang Utan]

But not a great editor

 

[butchersapron]

Tracy McVeigh, the editor of that Observer blog is a very good journalist.

Why?

 

[xenon]

Where do they get these ignorant fucks to write for them. It's like they don't know anyone outside their clique, - have never had a critical thought in their life until life hasn't gone quite how they expected.. Most people learn that lesson and ask questions, do a bit of quiet annalisys, maon to a friend then get on with it. Not have an embarrassing public winge and get paid for it.

OMG South London... Landlord's... This shouldn't happen to young and clever people like what I am.

 

[xenon]

Had she done some actual journalism, research. Talked to some older people, people in their 20's doing low wage service jobs in London. Basically got the fuck out of her little bubble. Looked at the experiences of working peple in London, asked why this is happening. Based something around the crisis in housing costs, wealth gap, stagnant wages, the strikes and then added something about the lie that a degree you can't afford anyway, will be your helicopter out of Saigon. Then it might have been worth reading. Maybe even paying for. As it is, it's just a whine that makes adblockers all the more worth while.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Your 'my heart bleeds' moment of the day: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mo...t-I-cant-afford-the-same-for-my-children.html

 

[DotCommunist]

“We could have owned our house outright, we could have a second home and be sending our kids to private school with money to spare,” she says. “But the cost of living these days is so high that the money you earn just about covers your mortgage, your living expenses, bills, clothes for the kids and a holiday a year.”

am I being trolled here

 

[Dogsauce]

Definite trolling, Christ.

State school is 'a scary option'. What the fuck do they actually think happens there? They're actually afraid of mixing with most ordinary people FFS.

We will be feeding these sorts to our pets after the revolution.

 

[catinthehat]

One of the mechanisms that 'grew' the middle classes was the welfare state - which meant greater need for teachers, doctors etc. These positions also provided a lot of the social mobility for the W/C. One of the impacts on the middle classes is the deskilling and disempowering of a lot of these jobs. The destruction of the welfare state (and I know some would argue this is a good thing - hiding the inadequacies of capitalism, keeping the proles un revolutionary etc) squeezes the middle class but also reduces the services for the working class. So whilst on one hand I join in the ah didums cant afford a second pony or whatever I am conscious of further knock on effects for those further down the ladder of stratification - second rate education and longer waits for doctors and terrible MH services.

 

[oryx]

Your 'my heart bleeds' moment of the day: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/mother-tongue/11077953/I-went-to-private-school-but-I-cant-afford-the-same-for-my-children.html

Article is a complete pile of alarmist, elitist bullshit. I know quite a few people who are far from 'super rich' yet send their kids to private school.

I also know people whose experience, or that of their kids, suggests that private schools are no better than state schools.

I don't know why they bother, really, and one feels little sympathy for the people in this article who think state schools are a 'scary option'. First up against the wall and all that....

All education should be state provided and private schools should be abolished.

 

[8ball]

All education should be state provided and private schools should be abolished.

Why do you feel that?

 

[oryx]

Because private education perpetuates an elitist system (cf the current cabinet).

Because every child should be educated in small classes, have access to good science equipment and other facilities.

Because education should not depend on money.

etc.

 

[NoXion]

I can think of at least two reasons:

1) Given that a decent education seems rather important in determining how well one does in life generally, it strikes me as perverse for society to devote resources to be devoted to quality education, but only on the basis of wealth.

2) If as oryx suggests private education isn't actually better than state education, then it's a wasteful duplication of effort.

 

[8ball]

2) If as oryx suggests private education isn't actually better than state education, then it's a wasteful duplication of effort.

Does that mean that the most efficient form of education should be identical education for everybody?

 

[NoXion]

Does that mean that the most efficient form of education should be identical education for everybody?

If by that you mean identical in quality, then yes. Identical curriculums? No.

 

[chilango]

I can think of at least two reasons:

1) Given that a decent education seems rather important in determining how well one does in life generally, it strikes me as perverse for society to devote resources to be devoted to quality education, but only on the basis of wealth.

2) If as oryx suggests private education isn't actually better than state education, then it's a wasteful duplication of effort.

The functions of education for "us" and for "them" are quite different. Hence our schools and their schools are very different places.

It gets confusing where some of us have been led to believe that they are actually one of them but aren't getting all the attendant privileges.

 

[DotCommunist]

its not the academic sphere that private schooling imparts its advantages to. Most studies I've ever seen on this is that brain for brain, the educational results are not far off the same at state schooled (irrc this bears out at degree level rather than gcse/as level).

 

[Belushi]

Upper middle classes are finding it really hard to keep up with the super-rich apparently http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...e-properties-despite-six-figure-salaries.html

 

[Doctor Carrot]

These people genuinely don't know they're fucking born do they? They earn in one year what I earn in about 25! I like Dogsauce's vision for the revolution. I want to feed these people to my pets, pets of my friends and pets of people I haven't even met yet. I want various animal shelters around the country to have these people as their food supply.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

Where the fuck is Bono and Geldof when you need them? We need to organise a concert for these poor, suffering souls. It's almost Dickensian what these people are going through. Where is your compassion, U75?

 

[likesfish]

Nah the workers canteen will always need kitchen porters
After the revoultion who will clean the toilets ?that will liz jones and the like

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Upper middle classes are finding it really hard to keep up with the super-rich apparently http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...e-properties-despite-six-figure-salaries.html

Even the Mail isn't pretending not to take the piss there.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Why aren't the British middle-classes staging a revolution?
Why aren't the middle-classes more angry about stories such as the Phones4U collapse, and what will it take to tip us over the edge, asks Alex Proud

The point is, along with the people who sold phones who are now unemployed, some of Phones4U’s employees, were officer class, just like you. Their jobs too have gone. It’s just another example of people who build and make nothing gutting businesses, privatising the profits and socialising the losses. Slowly, it makes us all poorer. So, yes, this is a lifestyle issue inasmuch as it’s about ensuring that you and your children will be able to worry about things like Farrow & Ball Paint colours, rather than getting another credit card to pay the rent.[...]

If I were a member of the working classes who’d been laid off in the '80s or '90s, I might be laughing at the middle classes right now. Because we’ve duped and screwed by the elite just as the lower orders were. The only differences are that, with us, the con was longer, and in many places we played an active part in our downfall; plenty of us were “useful idiots.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thin...tish-middle-classes-staging-a-revolution.html

 

[Belushi]

officer class, just like you.

Fucking A

 

[pesh]

Torygraph going seriously off message right there

The reckoning has been a long time coming too. And even now, when we can see the swarm of financial locusts on the horizon, the sun is still shining and we can still (just about) afford the nanny. But for how much longer? The locusts are already well into the middle middle classes – you know, those poor schmucks who make, say, 40K a year. They may not have reached you yet, in your tastefully decorated detached Victorian house, but they will.

If there’s a buck to made jacking up your mortgage, or asset-stripping the company you work for, privatising some local service you rely on or selling a publicly-owned amenity you enjoy, they won’t think twice. In fact, they won’t even think once. If they could figure out a way to sell your body from under you, they would. Then they’d get some business school shill to write an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about how this was inevitable – and how, really, you should be grateful.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

Torygraph going seriously off message right there

Lots of page hits in trolling your own readers.

 

[pesh]

yeah, of course... but you're not meant to pull the curtain back...

 

[nino_savatte]

Torygraph going seriously off message right there

Not quite but the author of that article is a wee bit confused.

Our current problems have their roots in the early 80s. While much of what Reagan and Thatcher did was necessary, the trouble is that they set a deregulatory train in motion which, over the last couple of decades has dismantled so much of the legal framework that protected us from greedy scuzzballs.

Cognitive dissonance?

This commenter doesn't seem to get it. UKIP is a Thatcherite party on steroids and favours more deregulation.

Jack_H • 2 hours ago
I think this is where UKIP are making the most gains.........just like the Scots nats there is now a very large chunk of society who want radical change and no longer belive our current system can deliver it

Comparing UKIP to the SNP? Er.....

 

[Quartz]

Comparing UKIP to the SNP? Er.....

I've seen this before, but comparing Farage to Salmond in that they are both populist leaders and behave differently to the current lot.