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

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

I don't know offhand what proportion of the population have - and I agree that people shouldn't be excluded - but it is pretty common.

To expand the notion of benefits slightly, I got free school meals as a child; I got a full government grant to go to university; I've been on jobseekers' allowance (or whatever they were calling it that year) twice, and on income support for quite a long period.

If I could find a better metric for "not being permanently financially secure" I would.

[malvino.livejournal.com]

Why is that such an issue, is money more important than anything else? What about people how have never had kids? How can they know what it's like to raise children and therfore represent those who are parent? What about people who have never been ethnic minorities, or the victims of crime, or disabled. No representative, or even delegate, can ever fully understand the concerns of every individual he speak for.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

Being poor isn't about money; it's about power.