To think that Owen Jones is a fraud.

[soul2000]

I watched the R.T.S Lecture he gave last night on representation of the Working Class on Television, i have never heard such opinionated rubbish.
There are three questions i would like to act Owen Jones

1. Despite having an Oxford Education why do you deliberately mispronounce

certain words, in a kind of "STOCKNEY" accent.

1. Which Comprehensive did he attend , anybody who knows Stockport knows there is a huge gap between Poynton/Bramhall and Brinnington.

3. What class does he think he is with is Oxford education and two University lecturer parents.

HeartbrokenMum73 our Law School used to tell us if ANY Footnotes in our work were Wiki related we would fail on that basis alone. I know people think Lecturers don't read them but they really do. :)

Soul, has your course not led you to information on what the British class system means? The criteria have changed somewhat over the decades - more so in marketing than in government or sociology, but still quite dramatically from my parents' days.

One thing that's remained constant is the way your own class is determined by the head of household's occupation (broadly speaking.) So an individual who was raised by a factory worker, and is now the CEO of a mid-sized company, has gone from D to B. Look on the government stats website :)

eofa. it must grate you greatly that there a lot of very successful ignorant people out there .Clearly, because i have now stated that i have come from a successful (Though Downwardly mobile family) i don't know what i am talking
about.

When you're dyspraxic, you have two options:
a] Give in to disorganised thinking
b] Learn and use methods of organising your thoughts.

I'm grateful to my grammar school for the methods it taught me (they even sent me on a course entitled Thinking ) ... and have continued to seek out improvements. Doing an OU course is a fantastic opportunity to address this ... believe it or not, your respondents here are trying to help you with it ...

yeah i understand that Garlic , but you must accept that the system is not as rigid as it was in Engels time. There is more crossover between aspirational working class who though working hard or running a small haulage company for example acquire assets. Is the CEO middle class if he left school at 15.

On the subject of what Middle class means in an educational context, creamteas have you good advice above:

OP, you could do with looking at the work of Basil Bernstein of educational codes and Pierre Bourdieu on cultural capital.

It really doesn't. It does grate that somebody supposedly interested in education would prefer to remain wilfully ignorant though. And your second sentence makes no sense. I think you don't know what you're talking about because you have shown no evidence that you do, and seem to really struggle to grasp a logical sequence of ideas. This has absolutely nothing to do with your background.

In fact none of that post made sense...

OP - confused by your point, you seem to be saying that you think he is faking his accent because having grown up in a middleclass family yourself in a similar area as him, you have a slightly posher accent? Or is it that because he's been to Oxford you assume as well as getting a degree, he should get a posh accent?

But that's not the point, I hate the idea that unless you've lived something that you have no ability to understand it. (Plus it's not like he lived in a bubble of affluence, he went to a state school that while the majority of pupils will be from the surrounding middle-class area, there were certainly a lot of poorer children from across the borough when I was there.)

If you'd even given the ONS page a cursory read, Soul, you'd have found the answer to your question about the haulage boss along with riders about what the govt system can & can't do.

The 'class' of your haulage boss depends on whether she employs more than 25 people, for government purposes.

But that's not the point, I hate the idea that unless you've lived something that you have no ability to understand it

yes I agree

Although I think when it comes to class, wc people seem to have lots of mc folk ready to speak on their behalf and these mc people seem to get paid a lot of money for doing so (cynic)

Heh, Dontmind, British citizens disprove the idea that unless you've lived something that you have no ability to understand it, on a daily basis: we understand how over-privileged, over-entitled, wealthy Ministers think & live ... this shows they could understand us if they could be bothered!

I am middle-class and went to Oxford. I still have a strong-as-fook Northern accent. You are being really dim to equate class and privilege with accent, as people of all classes will share the same sort of accent in areas where said accent is pronounced. I also care about poverty, etc., despite being middle-class. Same as I care about racism despite being white and homophobia despite being straight.

This remarkable technique of caring about others who are different from you is called 'not being a sociopath' and most people thankfully manage it.

Owen Jones is one of the few people with their finger on the pulse of what really matters. And if you actually knew anything about him and his work, and beliefs, you would know that his concerns cover far, far more than benefit cuts, etc.

Agreed, Ubik. Some would insist the lower classes, in general, lack suitable abilities to argue their case. I rather wish OP weren't supporting that assumption so thoroughly.

Like Russell Brand he has his uses. At least people are talking about class. I agree with a lot of what he has to say but he can best be described as a revisionist.

contortionist. i will check out those two references. I think he deliberately says certain words in a way that are out of kilter with the rest of his speech.

Gosh we have had a Owen Jones Love in tonight , this has been a true discussion between those on the right and left.

I have been ridiculed and bullied for 5 hours tonight, thats a record for Mumsnet , for daring to have a different view from than those on here.

If people on here think i am thick ( You really are living in a dangerous over educated bubble) unaware of 90% of the population, their needs and how you can help them.

If you really think Owen Jones is the saviour of the Working class then god help us.

do you really think understanding Latin phrases or the thoughts of Basil Bernstein are going to help many people find better than £7 Per Hour Jobs.

Why 25 people he is the same person if he employs 2500. I do understand though for Government statistics certain things have to be that way.

But garlictrivia class is so much more than a government classification: see all the Mumsnet threads. I would be laughed at on here if I claimed to be MC! (From what I gather it's the "cultural capital" issue.)

If people on here think i am thick ( You really are living in a dangerous over educated bubble)

Yeah, this is the bit the scares me. The OP is at least trying and the OU thought she had enough potential to admit her to a degree...

But in answer to your final question OP, yes they are. Mid-skilled jobs are disappearing. People basically have to learn latin or get used to wiping other people's shit.

I used to work in marketing, Funny, which uses an assortment of methods to classify markets in ways that are more like what real people mean when they speak of class. But a student whose subject includes socio-economics needs to get to grips with the concept first of all. She may as well start with the ONS, as that is used as a base determinant for domestic policies such as education & employment.

to the teeth Thanks. I used to employ 20 people in my Business my father used to employ 125 people.

Before anyone accuses me or my father,for three years when things were going wrong before we could sell up neither of us took a salary.

This enabled us to not have to make anyone redundant despite suffering a 20% fall in turnover.

Lucky for Owen Jones that he did not live through the Industrial Strife and conflict of Britain in the 1970's. Joey Essex has got a better grasp about British Industry than little OJ.

Having said that, on meeting him, Mick McGahey or Red Robbo would probably have thought he was a pompous Oxbridge twat.

The hero "Derek Red Robbo" the scourge of the British Motor industry.

Actually, increasing the opportunities for working class kids to gain what Bourdieu described as cultural capital can, in admittedly a limited way, increase their chances of making it out of minimum wage land. Academic ideas can have a practical application, and aren't bad just because you can't/won't understand them. Lots of working class people are interested in academic ideas, practical solutions, and the intersection between the two. Just because your awfully successful working class mates aren't interested in such matters doesn't make them bad. Not that you have to understand Latin phrases to have ideas about the world, but given you're doing an ACADEMIC COURSE, your promotion of ignorance really is breathtaking. And on the subject of "bullying", if you're going to pop up on an Internet forum and talk utter nonsense, people will call you on it.

Do you mean Alain Badiou?