Social class (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a really interesting article from the Washington Post. It’s worth a read. Check it out!
via Why politicians need to stop using the meaningless term “middle class” – The Washington Post.
As I read the article, my mind drifted to the UK, ahead of the forthcoming election. In the UK, social class is still about more than income, it’s about family background, wealth, beliefs and cultural values. Traditionally, the Labour Party was the protector of working class values. But under Tony Blair, the Labour Party took the middle ground of politics. Now under ‘Red Ed’ Milliband, the current leader of the Labour Party, there has been a move away from the center, back to more left-wing values. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party, under David Cameron, has primarily looked after the interests of the very high earners, the privileged, and the seriously wealthy.
As a further insight into class, the illustration provides an alternative social class model for China in 2005, with capitalists, cadre and quasi-cadre, urban workers, peasant workers and peasants.
This leads me to two open question:
Which UK political party will look after the interests of UK middle-class voters? Also how should we define middle class in the UK?
Thoughts?
Dr Alf's Blog 
Dr Alf’s social stratification model is now 10 years old and most of what used to pass for the middle classes are now dead and buried other than in places like rural Lincolnshire and the so called “Heartland of England”which is recreated in the fictional “Midsomer Murders”.
My old bank manager at Lloyds used to personify this class,he had become an officer in World War 2 and Korea,wore a 3 piece suit 365 days a year ,drove a Humber Hawk,talked to SME loan applicants about “floorboard money”,attended the local “lodge”and shouted at people like me about “unauthorised overdrafts”.
Schoolteachers were like that,police inspectors and above fitted the mould and my old family doctor who was an ex Navy man fitted the description right down to his Wolsey socks ,brogues and pipe.
They have all “Gone with the Wind” and the man who once spoke for them Sir Bernard Braine MP is also dead and we will never see another one like him.
Margaret Thatcher was one of them and she used to talk about “our people” until she became a Bilderberger only to discover that they turned on her after she made a House of Commons speech against full EU integration and used the words “no,no,no”.
Following that speech she was soon out of power with the final coup de grace delivered by Ken Clarke who for more than 20 yeaers has sat of that organisation’s steering committee and admitted it during a rowdy House of Commons exchange.
These days politicians represent only those with liquid assets of £150,000 plus and incomes above £250k gbp and the so called “middle class” do not occupy a nanosecond of their thought processes.
A look at Henry Makow’s website lists the partial but extensive membership of the Committee of 300 which in Queen Victoria’s day was called the Councilof 300 and was the British East India Company before that.
It is headed up by the ruling monarch(the Queen) and the number 2 is the Prime Minister of the day(David Cameron).
The other names include both Miliband’s,Ed Balls,Shirley Williams,Bill Gates,Peter Thiel of PayPal,Eric Schmidt of Google and others representing some of the richest and most powerful people in the world.
The phrase “We are all in this together” applies to this group who make policy in secret but try to create the impression that they are representing us and have our interests at heart.
The reality is they are working towards a modern version of a feudal society with plutocrats at the top,serfs at the bottom and robots and cyborgs fitted with expert systems taking the place of the former middle classes.
So far they are succeeding but in the end they will fail because they too are being sold down the river by a false belief in their own omnipotence.