Getting on in the world.
Going up in the world.
Doing better.
Improving.
Bettering yourself.
A leg up.
Aspirational.
Class of origin and class of destination.
For me the escalator that helped me climb from the working to the leisured classes was not a placement in a company arranged by my Father, he went from driving buses to become a Driving and Traffic Examiner, no, it was leaving work at twenty and heading off to theological college.
On my first day at college, I met some other new students who said that they were going for tea would I like to join them? Well, yes. but tea was the main evening meal of the day in our house, so I was puzzled as tea was meant to be at six o clock in college.
It turned out to be 'Afternoon Tea' ... how posh is that?
The waitress came round with the Tea Menu, Tea Menu? I had only ever heard of '99' Tea from the Co-op. Lapsang what?, Earl who? I realised that I had a lot to learn and term hadn't even started.
Then the cakes came round, now the thing is, it is always better to know that you don't know, then you can watch others who do know and copy them, that way you learn.
When you don't know that you don't know, that's when you get into trouble.
For some reason I was offered the Cake Plate first, 'I'll have this one' I said, picking up this creamy, gooey cake and placing it on my plate.
That was when I noticed the shocked silence.
Then each of my new friends was served, pointing delicately at their cake of choice whilst the waitress used cake tongs to lift the cake and place it elegantly onto their plates.
There was no point in blushing I was working class and they were posh. Simple as that!
After three years I had worked out the difference between St. John's Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels and also between dry, medium and sweet sherry.
Years later in a pub in Newcastle this came in handy when I ordered a medium sherry for my partner and a bottle of Brown Ale for myself. The lady behind the bar, having carefully examined the bottles, announced that there was either sweet or dry, then added, 'I can mix you a medium?'.
Brilliant!
So that's the point really. Nick Clegg wants us all to be upwardly socially mobile like him and Dave were. But he doesn't want us to have unfair advantages by being given work experience through the old boy network that they used.
But that is classically having your cake and eating it.
Karl Marx in his treatise on the big society, The Communist Manifesto, helps us to see that in society what determines class is the economic structure of work and property. For Marx the proletariat sell their labour to get a share of the cake whilst the capitalists (bourgeoisie) own the means of producing the cakes, and generally keep the best cakes for themselves..
As Marie Antointette is supposed to have said, 'Let them eat cake'.
Nick Clegg apparently wants us to have our cake, served elegantly and eaten with a cake fork ............
Going up in the world.
Doing better.
Improving.
Bettering yourself.
A leg up.
Aspirational.
Class of origin and class of destination.
For me the escalator that helped me climb from the working to the leisured classes was not a placement in a company arranged by my Father, he went from driving buses to become a Driving and Traffic Examiner, no, it was leaving work at twenty and heading off to theological college.
On my first day at college, I met some other new students who said that they were going for tea would I like to join them? Well, yes. but tea was the main evening meal of the day in our house, so I was puzzled as tea was meant to be at six o clock in college.
It turned out to be 'Afternoon Tea' ... how posh is that?
The waitress came round with the Tea Menu, Tea Menu? I had only ever heard of '99' Tea from the Co-op. Lapsang what?, Earl who? I realised that I had a lot to learn and term hadn't even started.
Then the cakes came round, now the thing is, it is always better to know that you don't know, then you can watch others who do know and copy them, that way you learn.
When you don't know that you don't know, that's when you get into trouble.
For some reason I was offered the Cake Plate first, 'I'll have this one' I said, picking up this creamy, gooey cake and placing it on my plate.
That was when I noticed the shocked silence.
Then each of my new friends was served, pointing delicately at their cake of choice whilst the waitress used cake tongs to lift the cake and place it elegantly onto their plates.
There was no point in blushing I was working class and they were posh. Simple as that!
After three years I had worked out the difference between St. John's Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels and also between dry, medium and sweet sherry.
Years later in a pub in Newcastle this came in handy when I ordered a medium sherry for my partner and a bottle of Brown Ale for myself. The lady behind the bar, having carefully examined the bottles, announced that there was either sweet or dry, then added, 'I can mix you a medium?'.
Brilliant!
So that's the point really. Nick Clegg wants us all to be upwardly socially mobile like him and Dave were. But he doesn't want us to have unfair advantages by being given work experience through the old boy network that they used.
But that is classically having your cake and eating it.
Karl Marx in his treatise on the big society, The Communist Manifesto, helps us to see that in society what determines class is the economic structure of work and property. For Marx the proletariat sell their labour to get a share of the cake whilst the capitalists (bourgeoisie) own the means of producing the cakes, and generally keep the best cakes for themselves..
As Marie Antointette is supposed to have said, 'Let them eat cake'.
Nick Clegg apparently wants us to have our cake, served elegantly and eaten with a cake fork ............
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