Working class towns/cities are awful, anyone agree?

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Perambulator
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28 Jun 2009, 12:54 pm

Today I was walking home past a bar and a group of guys were stood outside. Three of them had tied up the one of them with sticky tape and toilet paper to the lamppost. I found it amusing and they were all laughing. So I laughed as I passed in a friendly way.

Their faces all went stone cold and one of them said "He looks like a f***ing Jew." Does that kind of thing happen everywhere?



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28 Jun 2009, 1:21 pm

Great minds talk about ideas.
Average minds talk about events.
Small minds talk about people.

The wrost are those who are middle class, aspire to be working class, and have the snobbishness of the upper class. They do exist.

Surely it should be determined on attitude? To use the above saying, Upper class would be those who talk about ideas, middle would be those who talk about events, and lower would be those who talk about people. Going off this would demote an awful lot of people.



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28 Jun 2009, 1:22 pm

I think if there's a problem then it relates to a 'herd' mentality,which isn't necessarily
restricted to working classes.The herd mentality can lead to blinkered thinking and
refusal to see things from another's viewpoint. This pervades not only classes but nations,
religions,sports teams etc.
I don't think we can really judge people by their 'class' etc,otherwise we're falling in to the
same trap as the herds.I grew up in Glasgow,which is now more cosmopolitan and diverse
than it used to be and none the worse for that.


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LAEMapsie
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28 Jun 2009, 1:41 pm

Although both my parents are working class to different degrees, I like to see myself as lower middle class in terms of my knowledge and tastes (food, music, attitude).

Like many people, I feel working class communities of all cultures tend to exclude as they see as the outsiders, which could be due to intelligence, race, behaviour etc....

Im sure in many communties in Britain pre-1960s, those with Aspergers/Autism were seen as weirdos and creep and the families of them were at best seen as odd and at worst shunned.



TitusLucretiusCarus
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28 Jun 2009, 2:23 pm

oh man, class! I'm from Sunderland, and it is almost entirely a working class area. We used to build ships, I think at the start of the 20thC we built something around 70% of the total tonnage of new builds in the UK (though I might have that wrong) then there's coal, glass, some steel. Apparently Sunderland has a lot in common with Glasgow which is understandable giving the similar-ish background. the council just spent a whole load of money gentrifying the city centre (by christ it needed it, this place used to be a dump), but we usually get well and truly doinked in a recession so we're going four steps forward and three and a half (a dolly step or a shuffle) back.

And yes there are an unnerving number of scumbags round here who are bigoted, xenophobic and willing to screw over anyone if it suits them. A bar I used to work was the watering hole for two brothers, I overheard one brother telling his friend how he bedded his sister-in-law the other weekend. fan-tastic!

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We do not have 'class' distinctions here in North America, though in the US there are inner cities nd ghetto-like districts.


*titter* Ok cos that isn't the least bit contradictory.

actually i'll qualify this by saying that there are a lot of good people, and nice places round sunderland, they go to work raise their kids and, unusually it seems to me, they turn out to vote. (Just there are one to many hicks who haven't given up the whole inbreeding thing they've got going on, can't have it all I suppose)



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28 Jun 2009, 6:38 pm

Perambulator wrote:
I've always lived more or less in a working class town or city. Somewhere with an industrial past of coal mining or slate mining or cotton mills being the basic reason for its existence. I've travelled to more affluent places with a more diverse history and I've always liked them more but can't afford to live in them yet.

Does anyone agree working class settlements suck? Whenever I try socialising at night I'm surrounded by people who are full of machismo, admire big muscles, people who speak curtly and lack almost any manners at all. At times when I've overcame my Asperger's social awkwardness and managed to make a few witty points to people they've barely registered. The people here think being funny is throwing someone or dancing or yelling at someone, it always has to be something loud.


I HATE the term "working class". It makes it sound like "working class" are the only ones that work, etc... Even some "working class" DON'T really work, and I certainly do, even though I am like upper middle class.

But YEAH, if "working class" means poorer, you are right. Poorer people are usually less able and/or less willing to keep things up. They also may be ruder, etc....

Some of the nicest areas I have seen were upper middle or lower upper class.

BTW I was taught earlier that income/job had NOTHING to do with class! RICH people could be LOW CLASS, and POOR people could be HIGH CLASS. I have known BOTH extreemes!



obnoxiously-me
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28 Jun 2009, 6:39 pm

personally my issues are with the pretentious upper class people, who think they're so smart and always agreeing with each other. They give me the creeps!



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28 Jun 2009, 7:05 pm

2ukenkerl wrote:
I HATE the term "working class". It makes it sound like "working class" are the only ones that work, etc... Even some "working class" DON'T really work, and I certainly do, even though I am like upper middle class.


This is a problem of english language - English don't have different words for "ouvrier/obrero/operario" and "travailleur/trabajador/trabalhador"



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28 Jun 2009, 7:06 pm

Perambulator wrote:
Today I was walking home past a bar and a group of guys were stood outside. Three of them had tied up the one of them with sticky tape and toilet paper to the lamppost. I found it amusing and they were all laughing. So I laughed as I passed in a friendly way.

Their faces all went stone cold and one of them said "He looks like a f***ing Jew." Does that kind of thing happen everywhere?


Did you hear the latest NIXON tapes to be released? MAN, I never figured ANYONE would voice such things openly, let alone knowing they were taped, let alone a POLITICIAN! Whites usually don't even bring up the subject, let alone bring up such bias! AND, at this point, people aren't so negative. HECK, if they did, blacks certainly wouldn't have the freedoms they do now. To be fair though, many MINORITIES have also voiced similar concerns. The Old Testament(Jewish Torah) says that Jewish people should not have ANY relations with gentiles, for example.

BTW It is NO secret that a LOT of people have hated Jewish people, and not all were white. Heck, the old testament even has parts that sound antisemetic, and the Book of Esther is built around the idea of an attempt to wipe out every jewish person. The Hitler figure was named Haman, and the Jewish people TO THIS DAY have a desert called hamantaschen. It is eaten on a celebration(PURIM) of the defeat of haman's plan.

Napolian was rumored to have once said that the fact that they are still alive is proof of a god.



TPE2
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28 Jun 2009, 7:25 pm

About all this talk that "There are not class differences" and/or "class has nothing to do with wealth or income".


Imagine that you are a person with a strong difficultie in maintaining a conversation (I am - probably many people in these forum are also).

Imagine that you have to go to a job interview. If you are looking for a job, this will probably be "hell on earth" for you (it was for me).

But imagine that you (with the same personality) is the potential boss searching for an employee, instead of the opposite. In these case, your difficulty in conversation will be more or less irrelevant (probably, it will be the potential employee that will be in stress because of your silence, not you).

Conclusion - your (objective) position in a hierarchy of wealth and power it is, in many case, much more important than your (subjective) personality.

Conclusion of the conclusion - "class" has to do with your income, wealth and/or power, not with your tastes, personality and hobbys .

Conclçusion of conclusion of the conclusion - "elite" is to the people who have millions of dollars/euros and are CEOs of multinationals, not the people who like classical literature and european movies

[Or I am leting my special interest in politics go to far in these thread?]



2ukenkerl
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28 Jun 2009, 7:55 pm

TPE2 wrote:
About all this talk that "There are not class differences" and/or "class has nothing to do with wealth or income".


Imagine that you are a person with a strong difficultie in maintaining a conversation (I am - probably many people in these forum are also).

Imagine that you have to go to a job interview. If you are looking for a job, this will probably be "hell on earth" for you (it was for me).

But imagine that you (with the same personality) is the potential boss searching for an employee, instead of the opposite. In these case, your difficulty in conversation will be more or less irrelevant (probably, it will be the potential employee that will be in stress because of your silence, not you).

Conclusion - your (objective) position in a hierarchy of wealth and power it is, in many case, much more important than your (subjective) personality.

Conclusion of the conclusion - "class" has to do with your income, wealth and/or power, not with your tastes, personality and hobbys .

Conclçusion of conclusion of the conclusion - "elite" is to the people who have millions of dollars/euros and are CEOs of multinationals, not the people who like classical literature and european movies

[Or I am leting my special interest in politics go to far in these thread?]


Just out of curiousity, where are you from? What country? What is your native language?

I looked at class as behavior/manners/morals/attitude. It transcends income.

BTW I have been on BOTH sides of the interview process! I don't care if a guy has AS or autism.



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28 Jun 2009, 8:14 pm

misswoofalot wrote:
I wish there was a class based on intelligence rather than perceived wealth.


there is it's called affluant class a group of people who have earned career and title through the ass of knowledge for exampl university lecturers and teachers, these people live to mprove the nderstanding of their fields



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29 Jun 2009, 12:20 am

@2ukenkerl

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I HATE the term "working class". It makes it sound like "working class" are the only ones that work, etc... Even some "working class" DON'T really work, and I certainly do, even though I am like upper middle class.


I'm probably going over something you know, but, 'working class' is used because the people in that group must work (as in go to the factory/mine/plant etc) as against the person who owns the workplace and draws an income that far outways the value of the work they do. After that you've got a couple of gradations of income, property, types of work available (some lecturers, higher management, some executives, higher ranks of police and military etc)

It's strange that I always find those who aren't working class disavow any possibility of a class society prefering the terms 'the poor' and 'everyone else' or some such like, whereas those who are working class either state it openly or are trying their best to get out of it
(this often includes scrambling over one another).

Quote:
But YEAH, if "working class" means poorer, you are right. Poorer people are usually less able and/or less willing to keep things up. They also may be ruder, etc....

Some of the nicest areas I have seen were upper middle or lower upper class.


Who's going to put money into a working class area when you can make more somewhere else? People in working class areas rarely have enough spare money to justify gentrification, no one can make profit from cafés and bars, museums etc if at all. My city has just tried this and with the recession already about 10% of the new shops, bars and coffee bars etc have closed down (after maybe 8-12 months at most) - there's no-one to patronise them!

Quote:
BTW I was taught earlier that income/job had NOTHING to do with class! RICH people could be LOW CLASS, and POOR people could be HIGH CLASS. I have known BOTH extreemes!


You've been taught or you've known? I'd love to see this one argued. I can be rich and lower class? Sure I can be rich and a rude obnoxious charv (type of town centre hick or white trash), or poor and massively pretentious. Possibly we are dealing with two different definitions of class?



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29 Jun 2009, 5:40 am

There are districts in cities which have gone from middle class to working class and back to middle class. Islington, Hackney, and Stoke Newington in north/north-east London were middle class in the 19th and early 20th century, working class from the 1920s, and since the 1970s have become increasingly gentrified and middle class.


I feel most affinity to intellectual middle class or to alternative people.



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29 Jun 2009, 6:39 am

I come from a city which was formerly a steel town. There's still a bit of that working class mentality there. While the people are quite nice, they are all deeply into sports. If you're from my home town and you are not into sports, people look at you like you have two heads.


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2ukenkerl
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29 Jun 2009, 7:15 am

TitusLucretiusCarus wrote:
@2ukenkerl

Quote:
I HATE the term "working class". It makes it sound like "working class" are the only ones that work, etc... Even some "working class" DON'T really work, and I certainly do, even though I am like upper middle class.


I'm probably going over something you know, but, 'working class' is used because the people in that group must work (as in go to the factory/mine/plant etc) as against the person who owns the workplace and draws an income that far outways the value of the work they do. After that you've got a couple of gradations of income, property, types of work available (some lecturers, higher management, some executives, higher ranks of police and military etc)

It's strange that I always find those who aren't working class disavow any possibility of a class society prefering the terms 'the poor' and 'everyone else' or some such like, whereas those who are working class either state it openly or are trying their best to get out of it
(this often includes scrambling over one another).

Quote:
But YEAH, if "working class" means poorer, you are right. Poorer people are usually less able and/or less willing to keep things up. They also may be ruder, etc....

Some of the nicest areas I have seen were upper middle or lower upper class.


Who's going to put money into a working class area when you can make more somewhere else? People in working class areas rarely have enough spare money to justify gentrification, no one can make profit from cafés and bars, museums etc if at all. My city has just tried this and with the recession already about 10% of the new shops, bars and coffee bars etc have closed down (after maybe 8-12 months at most) - there's no-one to patronise them!

Quote:
BTW I was taught earlier that income/job had NOTHING to do with class! RICH people could be LOW CLASS, and POOR people could be HIGH CLASS. I have known BOTH extreemes!


You've been taught or you've known? I'd love to see this one argued. I can be rich and lower class? Sure I can be rich and a rude obnoxious charv (type of town centre hick or white trash), or poor and massively pretentious. Possibly we are dealing with two different definitions of class?


YEP, THAT was my point, TWO DIFFERENT definitions of class.

And I HAVE to work ALSO! HECK, I haven't had a vacation, or ERALLY even been home, for TWO YEARS! My LONGEST vacation, outside of one in 1989 was 2 weeks. In 1989 it was 3 weeks.

If I were at a minimum wage job, at least I would feel more free about losing it.