Class Act

The big wee man of comedy, Ronnie Corbett, has finally shuffled off this mortal coil. And without a title too, cried the commentariat, while every honours list today is packed to the rafters with donors, stoners, chancers, cronies and outright crooks. To Ronnie’s family, consider it the highest honour that he was thought too good to join their distasteful and hypocritical ranks. To those of us who grew up with the Two Ronnies, you were a better night-in than any knight-errant.

But we grew up in different times when, despite the failings of our stubborn, stiff upper lip demeanour, and rigidly observed protocols, British people had far more about them and far greater opportunity for expression and advancement than the Frost Report class system sketch betrayed. “I know my place” said Ron, as the lower class oik at the end of the line. How would that attitude go down with those on the bottom rug today?

I am Upper Class. I like to pretend, however, that I am Middle Class, to ingratiate myself with him. He is Middle Class and he pays the taxes that pay the grants that maintain my family seat. Otherwise I rely almost entirely on charity. I no longer look down on him, but I still despise him.

I am Middle Class and I still look up to him because he was born into riches. I am aware, however, that he relies on me and my fellow taxpayers to foot the bills, but I do wish he would stop dropping his aitches. I preferred it when I was happy to believe he was better than us. [TURNS] I look down on him though, because he is The Most Vulnerable in Society.

I am The Most Vulnerable in Society. I don’t look up to anybody but I do call those who pay my benefits, ‘Tory Scum’. I don’t know why I feel this way, but it is expected of me and I like to do my bit because we’re all in this together.

I am Upper Class. I only look up to royalty. I envy him though, because he is Middle Class and he still has aspirations.

I am Middle Class. I do all the work. I envy him because he is where I want to be [TURNS] but I fear him because he is the alternative.

I am The Most Vulnerable in Society and I don’t give a damn. I used to be Working Class but now you work for me. Now and again the Middle Class try to make it difficult for me, but I’m not afraid of them. I am, however, afraid of... him.

I am muslim class and I am untouchable.

Class Act

Does my memory fail me, or was it only a few months ago that Ed Miliband said Labour was going to bring back socialism to Britain? Cue much cheering from the trade union stalwarts and a raft of accusations of puppeteering behind the scenes from the, er, the opposition, for want of a better descriptor. Ah, the soap box days, the up-close smell of the great unwashed among whom Ed walked to heal the sick and bring comfort to the dying. How quickly we forget; Ed’s latest big, new, policy-free election campaign gambit is to appeal to the middle class.

Does he know who the middle class are? Traditionally they would have been among the staunchest of the anti-Labour vote. They were the small business owners and white collar workers, the people who paid the bulk of the tax. But thanks to social engineering John Prescott’s 1997 announcement – greeted with derision then – has come to pass. Yes, “we’re all middle class now”. Social boundaries have blurred to the point where a person’s profession no longer reflects their income, status and, crucially, their voting preferences. Nobody knows who the middle classes are any more.

Luckily Labour have managed to ease the solution to the ‘what class am I’ conundrum by wiping the working class off the political map altogether. Not by the promised route of raising their aspirations and their opportunities and elevating them to the hallowed middle class plateau but by progressively lowering the prospects for everybody else. What we used to call working class are either mouldering in idle obscurity, appearing on Benefits Street or else they simply aren’t even British any more.

So which is it? Appeal to the middle class – whoever they are – or bring back socialism? Luckily the answer isn’t far away; yesterday on the Daily Politics, former Labour MP Chris Mullin actually stated that it was important to "bind the middle classes into the welfare system" That’s right, once everybody is on some form of benefit they all belong to the state and socialism - at least of a sort - is reality. What’s next Ed, going for the bankers vote? Whoops, too late, they already moved abroad and moved all their money with them.

You know, the old class system wasn’t so bad - at least you had a place to be kept firmly in and you knew who to look up to…or down upon. Now nobody has a bloody clue to what ‘class’ they belong. Equality is just a crock of political bullshit, meaning that once everyone is equally subjugated we can label them as we wish; the classless society, where everybody is pegged at attainably mediocrity.

They both work for me now. I win

This illusory egalitarian disease is no respecter of boundaries either and manifests itself across party affiliations. The Conservatives used to have the middle class but if Labour are claiming that ground then sod it, enlarge the already discredited honours system, give out gongs for, say, services to hairdressing and pasty making and cat grooming and maybe once having had a job. Arise Sir Jedward, arise Lords One Direction, ‘ey up Lord Scargill: arise, arise and get thee to a mongery. Best get extending the second chamber, we’re going to need it. We’re all Upper Class now. 

A Touch of Class

So, we wake to a new day and a whole new way of being labelled, classified, graded and packaged. As Shakespeare wrote, “How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't.” Gone are the Upper, Middle and Lower and all the sub-grades in between. In come the seven circles of hell on earth as experts regrade our social structure... probably on the back of a fag packet.

I took the test and based on my deluded sense of self I came up Technical Middle Class. Well, that can’t be right at all. After all, I know my entitlement and I’m more what you’d call ruling class, surely? This survey must be flawed, which shows just how far you can trust the experts to screw up. An expert is, after all, another word for the unemployable who nevertheless manage to con huge amounts of money from the public purse for their pointless pontificating. 

I may as well do it myself. So here, based on extensive research on Twitter, are my new sophisticatedly nuanced and socially sensitive class grades.

Lucky Fuckers: The most privileged class in Great Britain who dine on swan and quaff champagne as celebrate their having been born into high society. They don’t do fuck-all, they don’t know fuck-all but they do fuck-all real harm to any other fucker. 

Dodgy Fuckers: These are the self-made, the Alan Sugars, who have risen high on the backs of others but like to talk about how they started out flogging hooky gear out the back of a van and deserve every dirty penny. While patronising high profile caring charities, they will nevertheless shit on any fucker who gets in their way. 

Decent Fuckers (Also known as Technical Middle Class - see my test results for reference): This is the top level of social strata that you can access without going through security controls. The salt of the earth made good, and the social class who all lower classes secretly aspire to reach.

Busy Fuckers: This is the class that does the business. Ducking and diving, dreaming up smart phone apps and making fortunes overnight. They are a young and fit, attractive and active and frankly quite annoying. (But they’ll be old one day, so…) 

Meddling Fuckers: This new class has low economic capital and little experience of real life but they absolutely believe in the sharing out of Decent and Busy Fuckers’ income among those who can’t be arsed. Often working long hours for little pay they should be applauded, but their naïve wholesaling swallowing of juvenile political agenda means the best you can hope for is that they grow out of it. (Owen Jones - this is you) They are exploited by:

Lazy Fuckers: Formerly the Working Class, few of them now admit to wanting to actually work when it’s so much easier to prey on the class above and live a life on the state. Although older examples of this class profess to missing the good old days and occasionally don the Pearly and sing about knees, boiled beef and following vans in Lambeth, they are a shadow of their former worthy status. 

Which leaves us with the final class. This was a difficult sector to classify as many of its typical members may not even be actually human. 

Useless Fuckers: The professors prefer the term 'Precariat' to describe those fuckers who fuck and breed without apparently knowing the connection between the two. Capable only of taking, they act as breeding colonies, dumping their offspring into the care of the state in the hope that one day one of them might win the lottery off the back of a stolen scratchcard or get rich in an honest trade such as flogging counterfeit fags and booze, or running a skunk factory..

I look up to him 'cause he's a Lucky Fucker.

And there you have it. I don't know how long it took the so-called experts and how much it cost but it took me less than an hour and I give it to you free, gratis and for nothing. All that remains is for you to tell the world what sort of fucker you are! Comments below...

Choice Cuts

I spent yesterday deep-cleaning the carpets in my house. The one recently vacated by the verminous tenants. I say verminous for indeed there was evidence of rodent infestation among the debris. Further intelligence from neighbours, the old lady in the corner shop and 'accidentally' opened correspondence reveals a tale of recreational drug abuse, children in trouble, others taken into care and lives lived in their entirety on the largesse of the state.

And despite that a large part of the population want to believe these people have no choice, the simple fact of the matter is that there is always a choice of sorts. You and I choose to go to work, pay our taxes and then choose how we spend what's left over. This means doing without some of the things we'd like in order that we can have more of the things we need. It means limiting our family size, our discretionary spending and our leisure in terms of both time and content.

We can choose to buy and cook and eat sensible food or pig out on ready-made obesity bombs and then complain about the consequences. We can realise that there is already way too much stuff to watch on Freeview and forego the Sky subscription, or we can bow to peer pressure and put two fricking satellite dishes and a cable feed into MY house, drill holes everywhere and mount boxes on MY skirting boards. We can decide to lead a clean and decent life and look after our kids, or we can invite in a succession of dodgy men and spend our days smoking dope in front of TV day and night. (None of this is conjecture. I learned a lot yesterday.)

My brother has recently started working as an electrician for a company which maintains local authority and housing association property. He has a list of tales that would make a tax-payers blood curdle. Whole legions of unemployable scum who scoff at the choices of decent people because when you're deemed 'vulnerable' (for which read: thick, lazy, degenerate, immoral, worthless bottom feeders leeching off the social funding intended for the genuinely needy) your choices never seem to involve consequences.

For instance, pay-as-you-go meters were installed for energy because of former unpaid bills, I learned. The choice there then, between paying your way or buying more skunk. I found the electricity meter to be over £50 into emergency credit, but when I called British gas they simply arranged for that to be erased. They have no doubt learned that there is no point in pursuing such people for payment so they simply pass the cost onto the rest of us, who choose to actually pay our bills.

There's always a choice, but isn't it interesting how the choices of decent working people are different from the choices of those we pay to maintain in their 'vulnerable' little lives. Oh yes, when the state picks up the tab for everything your choices are very easy indeed. (By the way, I am fully aware there are perfectly decent people struggling to get by and raise decent kids on pitifully low incomes. Those people are not who I'm writing about here - but they all know families like this.)

So... Don't civilise your children, that's what school is for. Don't bother cleaning, if it gets dirty enough they'll send in a clean-up crew. Don't worry about rent, council tax, Sky subscriptions, paying bills or fines; when you run out of credit just plead poverty and 'vulnerability' and somebody else will pick up the tab. Don't look after your health, that's what the NHS is for, innit? Oh and don't worry one bit about the shape of your daughter's fanny; the NHS will sort that out too.

All over the world, people get up and do what they have to do to survive. Indira, the kid in the picture below,  is seven years old and has worked at the local granite quarry since she was three. She works five or six hours a day and then helps her mother with household chores. She also attends school, which is 30 minutes' walk away. (You can read more in James Mollison's photo essay here.)

David Cameron is away today, supposedly negotiating the EU budget. Good luck, Dave, but when you get back have a good hard think about where previous governments choices have led us. And then think about the choices you need to make, with or without Europe. And when you've done that, give Iain Duncan Smith a slap on the back and tell him to cut, cut, cut...