Posh gits and (upper-)class heroes

[mirrorshard]

The very rich are not like you and I.
No, they have more money.

Yes, this is a post about Boris Johnson. Feel free to skip.

A lot of the Boris-criticism-criticism I've been seeing lately can be more or less summed up as "don't hate him for being a posh Tory prat". After all, we wouldn't dream of saying that someone wasn't qualified for an elected position because they were too working-class, right?

The problem with that is that the two aren't equivalent. Because our Mayor has always been rich, he's always been privileged and insulated - he's been surrounded by other people of his own class, race, and wealth level to a greater extent than any council-estate hoodie, first at private school and then at Oxbridge. He's never been forced to work at something he didn't want to do, never run the risk of homelessness or bad credit, never had to live hand to mouth. (To the best of my knowledge, at least. I may be wrong about that. If so, please correct me.)

The fact that he went to Eton depresses me more than the Oxford education - after all, many people manage to get through Oxford without being ruined. (And I should stress that this isn't linked to party affiliation. At the moment, they're all posh gits.) But he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, like Cameron, there. For those of you not familiar with the term, they're a bunch of yobs who dress up in penguin costumes and go out to smash up restaurants.

So, like David Cameron (notorious for surrounding himself with others of his own background) he has a far smaller range of people he can identify with, empathise with, and relate to than someone like Ken Livingstone with a more rounded education and socialization. I'm not trying to say he can't, or that he has no interest in it - just that being a posh toff brings with it a lot of disadvantages when it comes to relating to ordinary people, and posh toffs are statistically much more likely to be out of touch with ordinary people than the rest of us are.

What I'd like to see - though there are more than a few problems with the idea - is a rule that nobody can stand for public office unless they've spent at least six months on Government benefits in the past.

Comments

[souldier-blue.livejournal.com]

When I was unemployed I didn't qualify for benefits as my partner was earning minimum wage in a temp job.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Another good point. Obviously, the metric'd have to be much more complex than 'on benefits', but I still think it's a good starting point.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

You didn't qualify for housing benefit on the sliding scale? I'm surprised by that, that sounds like an incorrect assessment if your partner was on minimum wage.

[souldier-blue.livejournal.com]

This was when I'd just finished Uni, so there was no such thing as a legal minimum wage; I'd moved in with my boyfriend as I had nowhere else to go, and he was earning the lowest pay bracket that temp agencies offered at that time, as he'd dropped out of Uni a few months earlier. We were renting a room in a shared house. Maybe the assessment was wrong or maybe things have changed since then?

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

I remember that well cos was in the same position as you when I was 17/18.

In all honesty, knowing what I know now, I think the assessment was probably wrong, because they often are - even then, job centre staff were undertrained and overworked. However, I, like you, had no idea how to go any further with that, or even to know enough to question the decision. One very stupid assumption often made is that if a person doesn't qualify for an income-related benefit, they won't bother with a housing benefit calculation.

However, it's definitely the case that, since then, it has become easier to claim benefits separately, as it were, and to claim small amounts of benefits while not qualifying for larger ones. Hence the move to things like tax credits.

I'm not even going to start here on my concerns about the way these allow employers to get away with paying poor wages, however, because I can really go on about that kind of thing...

[souldier-blue.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was somewhat gobsmacked at the time, but as you say, didn't have an effin clue that I could do anything about it - it did inculcate in me an absolute horror of ever being unemployed though - my sister actually ended up giving up custody of her kid and sleeping rough for a while for pretty similar reasons.