Sunday NY Times piece on British Snobbery, for all you little plebs and gits

[CountDeMoney]

See, Ide?  It could be worse. 

SundayReview | News Analysis

British Noses, Firmly in the Air

By STEVEN ERLANGER
DEC. 5, 2014

LONDON — DAVID MELLOR, a former Conservative Party minister who resigned over a largely forgotten scandal in 1992, forced himself back into the headlines the other day.

A taxi driver recorded an extraordinarily vicious and elaborate outburst from Mr. Mellor, so full of snobbery and self-regard as to seem a comedy skit. "Shut up! You sweaty, stupid little git!" Mr. Mellor yelled, in a dispute over the route. "I've been in the cabinet, I'm an award-winning broadcaster, I'm a Queen's Counsel! You think your experiences are anything compared to mine? You shut up for Christ's sake."

The driver said, "You want to calm down," which set Mr. Mellor, 65, off into a further extended and repetitive rant, which he later put down, as he apologized, to having something other than water to drink at lunch. This is what the magazine Private Eye, wary of British libel laws, describes with the euphemism "tired and emotional." Mr. Mellor was both, in snotty spades.

Mr. Mellor's humiliation was paired with that of Andrew Mitchell, a former Conservative Party whip, who last week was found by a judge to have insulted a policeman at the gates of 10 Downing Street, calling him "a pleb" in a harangue about what route to take to leave on his bicycle. Mr. Mitchell denies using the word, though he, too, is known to be irascible.

And all of this was combined with an ill-advised tweet late last month, by the Labour Party's shadow attorney general, Emily Thornberry, of a photograph of a modest, flag-draped abode of a white-van driver in Kent, which was considered to be sufficiently mocking and snobby about the working class as to force the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, to ask her to resign.

Together, the three episodes of nastiness, accelerated by social media, sparked one of those very British immersions in the hot tub of the nation's own insecurities about snobbery and class. Of course all nations have their sore points and their obsessions — race, weight, accent, gender — but the persistence of class markers and the exigencies of etiquette seem ingrained here.

As for "pleb," wrote William Langley in The Telegraph, "That an arcane, one-syllable insult can be so costly goes to the heart of British notions of snobbery."

While a Roman plebeian, or citizen, would take no offense, he continued, "transported into modern times and put in the mouth of an ex-public-school prefect, apparently known around the dorms of Rugby as 'Thrasher,' and directed at a group of less socially advantaged policemen, it takes on a different meaning."

Snootiness, Mr. Langley concluded, has always been with us, "but these days there is either more of it going on, or it is a lot easier to get caught."

As Britain becomes more global, it also becomes more regional — Scottish independence, London as the great sucking black hole of talent and money — and small differences, and ancient rules and distinctions, seem to matter more in a country that, as the old cliché goes, has lost an empire and still not found a role.

The pettiness is particularly vivid in a Britain that, if it were Greece to America's Rome, as Harold Macmillan once said, is no longer even that. If Washington cares what Britain thinks, it doesn't do much to show it. The unjustly powerful and hopelessly middle-brow United States, of course, remains a British obsession, blamed for everything from "American Idol" and Black Friday to Internet porn and obesity, as if the pub, Christmas sales, soggy fries and the full British breakfast (bready sausage, bacon, baked beans, eggs and bread fried in fat) were all imports from the old colony, where every person, Britons seem convinced, packs at least a pistol, if not a submachine gun. 

This is a Britain ever more unequal but uneasy about snobbery and "poshness," where to be middle class of a certain sort (actually upper class but graciously self-deprecating) seems the ideal. Just look at Prince William, marrying the graceful daughter of a couple who made a fortune selling party favors, cooing over baby George like a family in a sitcom.

Mr. Mellor, of course, with the snobbery of the striver, went to a selective state school, not one of England's elite schools, attended by Prime Minister David Cameron; the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne; and Mr. Mitchell himself. The elite, of course, do their best not to appear so, even if they dominate the country. As Toby Young warned in The Spectator magazine, "being perceived as upper class in contemporary Britain is the kiss of death, and not just in politics."

The more unequal Britain becomes, he said, "the less we want to talk about it." Britain is a nation of "inverted snobs," because to claim one cares about class "is, in itself, a low-class indicator."

All of which made Mr. Mellor even more ridiculous, reminding many of the apocryphal story of another outraged politician who demanded of a policeman, "Do you know who I am?" The policeman then radioed in, asking for an ambulance, saying, "There's some old toff here who doesn't know his name."

Of course Britons of a certain kind remain marked by the experiences and humiliations of their adolescence. It's difficult to think of another country where every time personages are in the news, let alone when they die, they are classified by the school they attended as a prepubescent youngster.

"Only in Britain," wrote Hadley Freeman in The Guardian, "is there this kind of paralyzing myopia where a person is defined eternally by where their parents sent them to school, where snobbery and inverse snobbery clash with equal force and explode into a fiery ball of angry arguments involving such seemingly random — but actually deeply significant — things like grammar schools and John Lewis," a British department store.

But of course, Ms. Freeman is, like me, an American, and so disqualified from understanding the finer shades of British social intolerance.

[11B4V]

The unjustly powerful and hopelessly middle-brow United States, of course, remains a British obsession, blamed for everything from "American Idol" and Black Friday to Internet porn and obesity, as if the pub, Christmas sales, soggy fries and the full British breakfast (bready sausage, bacon, baked beans, eggs and bread fried in fat) were all imports from the old colony, where every person, Britons seem convinced, packs at least a pistol, if not a submachine gun. 

Fuck the Brits. Their time ended long ago. 

[mongers]

Guys, you do realise that this is Your future?

As nation/empires grow old the joints stiffen up, relatively inflexible class divisions assert themselves.

Remember the American Dream, that anyone can make it ? We know social mobility as been a major casualties of the last 30-40 years of accumulated power and concentration of wealth seen in USA.

[Martinus]

Good piece. I used to be much more of an anglophile in the past. I prefer Germans and Americans much more these days.

[mongers]

Good piece. I used to be much more of an anglophile in the past. I prefer Germans and Americans much more these days.

Ah, every cloud has a silver lining. 

[The Brain]

I agree that you should generally yell at poor people, not lower class people.

[CountDeMoney]

Fuck the Brits. Their time ended long ago.

NOT SO FAST MY FRIEND

UK to establish £15m permanent Mid East military base
6 December 2014 Last updated at 09:45 ET
BBC News

Britain is to establish its first permanent military base in the Middle East since it formally withdrew from the region in 1971.

The base, at the Mina Salman Port in Bahrain, will host ships including destroyers and aircraft carriers.

The UK said it was an "expansion of the Royal Navy's footprint" and would "reinforce stability" in the Gulf.

Bahrain will pay most of the £15m ($23m) needed to build the base, with the British paying ongoing costs.

UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who signed the deal at a security conference in Manama, Bahrain, said it was "just one example of our growing partnership with Gulf partners to tackle shared strategic and regional threats".

He said the move "builds upon our 30-year track record of Gulf patrols" and would allow the UK and its allies in the region to "tackle the threats we face together".

"To our partners in the Gulf my message is this: Your security concerns are our security concerns," he told the conference.

Mr Hammond said the new base showed Britain's commitment to a "sustained presence east of Suez" - referring to the wording of a 1968 decision to close bases east of Suez by 1971.

Labour's shadow defence secretary Vernon Coaker said his party "supports the Royal Navy having a strong international footprint", but said the government must "clearly set out its reasons for making this particular decision at this time."

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner there was already a "rotating presence" of four British minesweepers at the Mina Salman Port, but the UK had been "piggybacking" on the US naval base there.

He said the new facility would be one of the most important Royal Navy bases in the world and would be used for a "whole host of things" including supporting UK operations in Iraq, where RAF jets have been attacking targets as part of a US-led coalition against Islamic State (IS) militants.

The base would also be used for operations against piracy and for aerial surveillance, he added.

"The deal will have its detractors. Bahrain has been heavily criticised for its human rights record in the past and despite some reforms, power remains concentrated in the hands of the ruling family," our correspondent said.

"The majority Shia population here complain of discrimination by their Sunni rulers. There will also be some who resent the prospect of western military forces being permanently based here."

He also said the threat of IS may have made Gulf monarchies "content to invite British forces to set up on their soil".

UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon added: "This new base is a permanent expansion of the Royal Navy's footprint and will enable Britain to send more and larger ships to reinforce stability in the Gulf."

Bahrain's foreign minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohammed Al-Khalifa said: "Bahrain looks forward to the early implementation of today's arrangement and to continuing to work with the UK and other partners to address threats to regional security."

Next order of business:  an actual navy, there's a good chap.

[Norgy]

The snobbish upper class is everywhere. It may be more pronounced in the UK, but the entitled upper class with their noses in the air live happily everywhere in Europe.

[Neil]

And if a taxi driver tried to tell an American plutocrat where to go, they'd never find the body.  Snobs will be snobs everywhere, and little people with some success under their belts become insufferable no matter what country they live in or where they went to school.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm not at all sure that we British should be condemned as snobby gits for thinking that David Mellor is a badly-behaved tosspot and that his cabbie was the better man 

[Admiral Yi]

As nation/empires grow old the joints stiffen up, relatively inflexible class divisions assert themselves.

I don't see much, if any, evidence for this assertion. 

[Razgovory]

Guys, you do realise that this is Your future?

As nation/empires grow old the joints stiffen up, relatively inflexible class divisions assert themselves.

Remember the American Dream, that anyone can make it ? We know social mobility as been a major casualties of the last 30-40 years of accumulated power and concentration of wealth seen in USA.

No, this is a British obsession that doesn't make much sense to Americans.  We were much more stratified in the past.  The American obsession is race.  Class warfare gains very little traction here in the states.  You see some folks try to stoke it and more people who accuse others of stoking it, but it's essentially a non-starter.  The issues of race cut very deeply into the US though.  That's where the bad feelings and riots come from.

[mongers]

Guys, you do realise that this is Your future?

As nation/empires grow old the joints stiffen up, relatively inflexible class divisions assert themselves.

Remember the American Dream, that anyone can make it ? We know social mobility as been a major casualties of the last 30-40 years of accumulated power and concentration of wealth seen in USA.

No, this is a British obsession that doesn't make much sense to Americans.  We were much more stratified in the past.  The American obsession is race.  Class warfare gains very little traction here in the states.  You see some folks try to stoke it and more people who accuse others of stoking it, but it's essentially a non-starter.  The issues of race cut very deeply into the US though.  That's where the bad feelings and riots come from.

So what's that underclass doing in the US?

It's not a solely a British obsession, go look at the stats for social mobility in the US and then tell me people flit up and down the economic ladder, like so many charmed butterflies.

[Neil]

The underclass is mostly being black and Mexican, and thus allows itself to be treated as a race thing.

Maybe over time, more and more educated white people will be unemployable except as menial labour, and so you'll see more class-consciousness in the US.

[Razgovory]

So what's that underclass doing in the US?

It's not a solely a British obsession, go look at the stats for social mobility in the US and then tell me people flit up and down the economic ladder, like so many charmed butterflies.

Being poor.  I'm not saying that social mobility is great, but it doesn't manifest as classism.  A very large portion of those who are poor are white and often vote conservative.  They are extremely resistant to the idea of social liberalism.  You go to any trailer park in the Midwest and odds are they are solid Republican.