Rise and Rise of the Middle Classes within England

Rise and Rise of the Middle Classes within England


This is a fun game that all can play. Basically at the time of writing, we have been through a series of prosecutions in which MPs and Peers have been tried and found guilty for their part in the expenses scandal. But I suppose that’s not the most fun that one can have with this particular subject. The most fun that one can have is realising that they genuinely don’t know what they have done and are genuinely confused with what they now know to be the outcome, ie prison time, or time outside prison with a tag and a home curfew. One of them leaving court just the other day looked genuinely bewildered as if to say “After all I have done for society and all the money I have put into it, why have I ended up in this particular mess?” The answer being of course, that its not the money which you put into it, or the so-called public service which you put into it; it’s the fact that you more than willingly helped yourself over the years to a substantial amount of money that was not yours, that you had not right to claim and after a while it became indefensible. That’s also when you are found guilty of an offence, when the mens rea (state of mind) of the person is such that any reasonable judge and jury come to the conclusion that the person meant to do it, that he or she felt that it was their right to do it. What makes that frame of mind is something which I feel sure is worthy of investigation. There has been a lot of argument that these people have been brought up no different from you or I; that they have all had an average middle class upbringing. Perhaps that’s the problem. No seriously, perhaps that really is the problem. Lets examine the myth of the middle class upbringing. Prep school, private school, then Oxbridge, then possibly a few years in the Civil Service, or teaching before going on to stand for a position as an MP, or councillor with a local authority, followed by elevation to the House of Lords. Thereby having missed most of the checks and balances that some people go through to see the wood for the trees. These are circumstances in which the person is protected by money; is protected by a nice home and a “good education” and later on is protected by the family that is the civil service in the higher echelons, or teaching. Then, the elevation to the gentlemen’s clubs which are the local council chamber and/or the House of Lords. Whether one likes it or not, such an upbringing is privileged and not within the normal bounds. That’s because no-one normal expects to get into the House of Lords; they know they are not going to get into it. That’s because it’s the province of the favoured set; the set of people who have had gilded lives. And if this sounds like sour grapes, well it is not. Because I would rather have had my life the way it is than any of these privileged lives. I say that because of the way that some of these people have ended up; totally bewildered and saying to themselves “If I have done all this, than why has x and y happened to me”? That’s because the upbringing, although not wrong, is inadequate. It is out of step with the reality. And it also means that during the time that the individual has had to eventually commit fraud or expenses overclaims, or whatever, that individual has themselves been unreal and has surrounded himself or herself with unreal people. Yes, I have honestly heard that sort of thing as a recent excuse “Well the rest of them did it in the House of Lords; it was accepted behaviour”. That’s very sad, reiterating what it is that was regarded as the group norm. It could not have been the group norm because otherwise a lot more Lords would be in the Crown Court; what I suspect was the group norm was a form of bullying, of sad chauvinistic behaviour, of picking on the weaker ones as a form of initiation rites and saying “Go on Fred, we’re all fiddling their expenses, its absolutely acceptable, old chap”. But if that was really the case why are they not all ending up in Southwark Crown Court. That sort of groupy behaviour only goes to make the thing even more terrible than it is already.

That’s not really the main point of what I am saying in this section; by the time Fred has been elevated to the Peerage, he or she is pretty unreal already. He or she is already part of the pomp and circumstance ceremony, which is nothing to do with everyday reality for most men, women and children within this sceptred isle. No the real point, is the way that the “middle classes” see things. That’s the way of thinking about things that can really see no wrong. There’s no real study of ethics and morals here. I constantly use the example of my ex General Practitioner as an example of this. Not only was he (or she) informed many many times that I thought I was diabetic but that they wanted to go against what I knew to be so about my own body and decide that they would treat me as some kind of psychiatric case who needed subduing. I needed tranquilising and I needed anti-depressants (and other things, like Stemetil) at every turn. This went on for absolutely years, at this particular practice. It went on for about 14 years until my greatest friend L suggested that I went to another practice across the road from the council estate where I have resided for the past seven years. The practice nurse there immediately diagnosed that I was diabetic. She said that I had sugar in my urine. When they took bloods I came back with 7.4 bg count, which is over the limit for being pre-diabetic and well into the diabetic range. I was immediately prescribed metformin and I have never felt so well for years after taking these tablets every day. That’s in comparison to the bad tempered and depressed person which I constantly was when I was with the other practice.

The reason why I have used my General Practitioner as an example is this is because of the way the middle classes think; they think in a narrow band and the people they collect around them are symptomatic of the way they think in that narrow band. So this General Practitioner was practising in one of the more middle class areas of Southampton, where a lot of the people were ludicrously well and where the babies were fabulously well cared for, even though their well heeled (and in some cases keeled) mums would bring them into the mother and baby clinic. What they did not see within that practice was people who were unwell (like me). People who were unwell would have been a drain on their resources. Yet all I would have wanted would have been for my diabetes to be diagnosed; was that too much to ask?

My next question is, can you imagine what sort of an upbringing that general practitioner must have had; been spoon fed through private schools, medical training, F1 and F2 positions in hospitals and then doing the examinations for the GP position? Although from the way he went on I sincerely doubt that he was ever an F1 and an F2; he looked as if he were too frightened to be anything at a hospital. But then perhaps that’s my nasty working class way of looking at his career? However to be right up there with very high earners, on about £100,000 a year and not even being able to diagnose diabetes; I think there must be something wrong there, surely. I think what was really worrying about that practice was that they knew nothing about illness; illness was for something else and somebody else. More likely to succeed was a surgery that catered for a population known to be a catchment area that would not cause too many ripples; where people had a nice standard of living with access to private medicine and fit young mums with disgustingly healthy children. That was their reality. Just like being at home. But my argument is, do not working class people deserve to be fit as well, do they not deserve a share of what the NHS has to offer; don’t they have children as well? What this general practitioner was doing was that he was operating on the basis of medical selection; he was doing a variant of genetic engineering that would not have been out of place within the Nazi regime. If that’s being too extreme for some readers, then I am sorry but how would you like it if you had been the one chosen to die whilst more “deserving” people had been chosen to live and all for the sake of 24 metformin tablets per week? That’s the sort of thing that cant be right. That’s what I mean about the rise of the middle classes; they don’t want nasty things like illnesses to blur their idyllic view of things and middle class doctors are the same as other middle class people in their idle and blinkered view of what really goes on.

As I have already stated, these people get really fabulous money in their roles as “doctors”. And it’s a never ending surprise to other, lesser, mortals when these “doctors” turn out to be less than salubrious. Lets not dwell on the case of Doctor Shipman, who first alerted us to the case of middle class doctors turned bad. Or maybe yes, lets concentrate on it. Because that man killed about 200 identifiable patients and probably a great deal more unidentifiable ones. We shall never know for certain how many people that man killed but I bet he did it with a smile and “It was all in their best interests” disposition. Just like some of the general practitioners I have been describing. Not Donald you have diabetes its been “Well we have counselled you because it has been thought you have pre-diabetes for the past year or so and we have warned you!” What codology that turned out to be. It was not the case at all; it turned out that I had full blown diabetes for years and that chap would not diagnose it; it’s a corollary of the Shipman saga whatever anyone likes to think. Sooner or later I would have become really ill with the complications of diabetes. He still would never have diagnosed it. There’s a real criminal act in there somewhere. Lets hope that someone discovers what this guy is really like before someone gets really hurt.

That’s not the only reason why I don’t like what is risibly called “The Middle Classes”. I don’t like it because the just don’t have any feelings about them worthy of the name. I noticed this because I had enough of it at teacher training college; I don’t want to be thought sexist but the amount of fur coat and no knickers there among the women had to be seen to be believed and the men certainly were not any too much better. That’s because it was a place where the rich and monied wanted to send their kids; more than a smattering of well to do names and well to do offspring peopled that place when I was there. All about money. But a lot of the people with money were some of the most disgusting specimens that you ever saw; they certainly would not want anything to do with the likes of “my sort” of person. Every woman who went there was engaged to some well to do, or the other; until they realised that these well to dos would chuck them over at the drop of a hat for a female that was nearer. After all, what price long distance relationships? They gave up their long standing relationships and found relationships with the few men that were brave enough to go to teacher training. That’s what I found with this particular college; that despite all that precious middle class talk about being happily engaged, most of those women found the reality of it to be too much and turned to the proximity of the nearest pair of trousers. In that respect, everyone a winner, I suppose.

Even then the stench of middle class hypocrisy and double standards did not manage to elude them; that’s why I was chucked out of teacher training college. Not because I was a bad student, not because I was lacking in brains, not because I was unable to write an essay, or dare I say it, an extended essay. No, it was simply because I had a close liaison with a woman that most teachers and senior staff there wanted to have the same sort of liaison with, Simple as that. I had got what they had most wanted and I was to pay the penalty of being kicked out for it. In reality I should have seen the writing on the wall. Only 12 months before that I had been openly criticised for seeing another woman whom lots of other blokes there had found irresistably attractive. But if that was the case why did she not go out with them. Some of these fatal embraces don’t seem to have an answer. What it generally boils down to is the feeling that the middle classes with their wealth and their education must get what they want. Damn it all they are entitled to it and devil take the hindmost. Damn it all I am the Lord High Executioner of this college and that damn student is seeing the woman I want; fie on him and devil take it. That man shall suffer for it. If that behaviour is not the behaviour of a barrel full of mad hatters then call me Shirley and have done with it.

A lot of this sort of behaviour makes excellent television of course. Everyone will be aware of the BBC series “The Apprentice” in which a lot of mostly middle class boys and girls are put together in a house which people would only ever dream of and asked to do various tasks in order to form up, or start a business. The fun of it is that its obvious from the very start that what is on their curriculum vitae is unsustainable, that none of them have really run their own businesses and that those of them who state they have been doctors have barely scraped their F1 without being shown the front door of A&E, or being asked to shut it from the other side on their way out of it. That such people have dreams way beyond their actual abilities is exactly what I have been going on about in this particular piece. They have eyes for the whole chicken and mushroom pie, whereas their tummies are saying that they only need one slice of it before their small appetites are satiated.

I suppose that’s the fundamental thing that I am getting at; being brought up middle class is a one way street with blinkers all the way down. It looks good provided that one does not look round but there is a danger in looking round. That’s not to say that there are not good middle class people; what I have drawn for the sake of brevity in the argument is the common stereotype.

You must forgive me. I don’t know what it is to be middle class because I am not from that class. I don’t kid myself that my education (of degree level standard, just working for my second BA degree) puts me into the frame for someone who is middle class. I live on a working class estate (council estate) in Southampton, my furnishings are as poor and as impoverished as it is likely to be. I have a new kitchen and bathroom in my studio flat which has made life far more worth living. I have come to pension age and I still have not got any money. Yet the odd thing is that I probably know and have known far more life than middle class people with all their flash cars, money and fancy houses. Heaven knows what class I am from or what class I am in now but I don’t think that its any readily identifiable one. What I do think is that its utterly essential to have good knowledge of what goes on in life, to continue to educate oneself about what really goes on and also to be humble. If that is something that I would criticise about the middle and upper classes it is that they are just not humble. They really think they have got the answers. Like the Peer who stood outside that courtroom after having been found guilty of fiddling expenses, he really thought that he had given his all to society. No, to give your all in a position is when you are really poor and you don’t claim expenses because you are morally and ethically decent. That’s really giving your all. The excuse of “Well the others told me to claim because they were all doing it (overclaiming) does not hold water. What they were really saying is, don’t show us up by not claiming because if people don’t claim then the money wont be available in the future. That’s how greed gets its start. Something’s owed to us and we (middle classes) should be the ones to get it. What a shame that we have never got over and grown out of this palpable greed in our society.

But as I have so often said in this piece, this is all to do with morals and ethics and that’s something maybe that’s the subject of future debate within these pages.