A bizarre article, if you ask me. If you wish to return to a state of poverty you are entirely at liberty to voluntarily hand over more tax to HMRC. This is what they all do at The Guardian. Or you could give most of your money away to charity, as more or less all BBC employees do.
Apart from that, I think it would be quite entertaining to hear some hip-hop from a middle class point of view.
A good and honest article Darren….you may have lit the touch paper on your own excommunication from the leftist church of reheated vomit…that one telling and brilliant phrase,is an indication of your growing realisation that you no longer want to be an insider maggot,destroying the body of not just our political discourse,but the very fabric of this country. But Id say,rejoice, as you don’t have to talk bollox with fairweather ‘friends’ any longer. Yes there IS inequality in this country..but which country DOESN’T have it? But what this country does have is a general compassion and elects those that provide a safety net for the less fortunate. You could even call it “the best of a bad job..” bit it beats Albania hands down.
Juilan Bonmottier
4 years ago
Would it not be true to say that you just successfully used what raw material you had at your disposal to carve out a living?
You had a particular set of character traits and an environment which must have assisted you in some way. You were able to make more in life than many of your peers. There’s bound to be guilt in that.
Now you have experienced some success you have more materials available to you. You must be wondering what to do next?
The class stuff is trickier to justify, I think. People swallow the class struggle narrative- which is one reason why you made money and some fame. Is it true to say that one problem of the working classes (and all classes for that matter) is that they are too proudly defiant in their identity and this rigidity can so often hold people back from separating and individuating? If you define success as material comfort then it’s easy to create a narrative where the middle and upper classes have all the opportunities and the working classes have none. But what is true success? Presumably it has something with becoming truly your own person in life in love and in work. I would argue that that sort of aspiration is denied to a great many individuals in all classes.
Perhaps your current insecurity reflects some uncertainty about your earlier theorising -perhaps it doesn’t seem to make such concrete sense any more as you realise that true success is more complex than just having had money in your path and making money from it. I don’t denigrate the acquisition of wealth by the way but it is obviously not the only measure of success.
Your story might be proof of the aphorism that whatever sh*t people throw at capitalism, it always ends up selling it back to everyone in the end.
Peter Dunn
4 years ago
Ps..though I would say not to agonise too musmch about earning a few bob…you need only ponder just how much Corbyn has in his bank account..Jon Landsman…Seumas Milne and countless more victim-brokers..
I went to the same school as Seumas Milne and Rishi Sunak. I respect Rishi Sunak.
Paul Ridley-Smith
4 years ago
Don’t feel insecure about your place at any table. Everyone there knows that their place is tenuous and depends on the narrative they bring – your’s is just more colourful. As for guilt about moving on from what sounds like a pretty crap past, I figure you want for your kids what you can offer them now – not what might have been. No shame in that. Tell your stories and live life out the windscreen, not the rear view mirror. There’s some unsolicited advice from a random stranger who liked your article.
Anto Coates
4 years ago
What a great article, summing up the internal conflict when the oppressed accidentally become the oppressor. One thing I wish I’d been taught earlier when I was spouting left-wing nonsense was the Pie fallacy summed up by the Peter Bauer quote: “Poverty has no causes. Wealth has causes.” Such a simple place to start forming a realistic worldview but immensely helpful in avoiding the trap of Marxist power struggles and shadowy “elites”.
Peter Ward
4 years ago
What a beautifully constructed piece of (Augustan) prose. Agnes Poirier is obviously old school, with her extended syntax, and even her use of semi colons. Wonderful.
A bizarre article, if you ask me. If you wish to return to a state of poverty you are entirely at liberty to voluntarily hand over more tax to HMRC. This is what they all do at The Guardian. Or you could give most of your money away to charity, as more or less all BBC employees do.
Apart from that, I think it would be quite entertaining to hear some hip-hop from a middle class point of view.
Very humble-braggy, isn’t it.
A good and honest article Darren….you may have lit the touch paper on your own excommunication from the leftist church of reheated vomit…that one telling and brilliant phrase,is an indication of your growing realisation that you no longer want to be an insider maggot,destroying the body of not just our political discourse,but the very fabric of this country.
But Id say,rejoice, as you don’t have to talk bollox with fairweather ‘friends’ any longer.
Yes there IS inequality in this country..but which country DOESN’T have it? But what this country does have is a general compassion and elects those that provide a safety net for the less fortunate.
You could even call it “the best of a bad job..” bit it beats Albania hands down.
Would it not be true to say that you just successfully used what raw material you had at your disposal to carve out a living?
You had a particular set of character traits and an environment which must have assisted you in some way. You were able to make more in life than many of your peers. There’s bound to be guilt in that.
Now you have experienced some success you have more materials available to you. You must be wondering what to do next?
The class stuff is trickier to justify, I think. People swallow the class struggle narrative- which is one reason why you made money and some fame. Is it true to say that one problem of the working classes (and all classes for that matter) is that they are too proudly defiant in their identity and this rigidity can so often hold people back from separating and individuating? If you define success as material comfort then it’s easy to create a narrative where the middle and upper classes have all the opportunities and the working classes have none. But what is true success? Presumably it has something with becoming truly your own person in life in love and in work. I would argue that that sort of aspiration is denied to a great many individuals in all classes.
Perhaps your current insecurity reflects some uncertainty about your earlier theorising -perhaps it doesn’t seem to make such concrete sense any more as you realise that true success is more complex than just having had money in your path and making money from it. I don’t denigrate the acquisition of wealth by the way but it is obviously not the only measure of success.
Your story might be proof of the aphorism that whatever sh*t people throw at capitalism, it always ends up selling it back to everyone in the end.
Ps..though I would say not to agonise too musmch about earning a few bob…you need only ponder just how much Corbyn has in his bank account..Jon Landsman…Seumas Milne and countless more victim-brokers..
I went to the same school as Seumas Milne and Rishi Sunak. I respect Rishi Sunak.
Don’t feel insecure about your place at any table. Everyone there knows that their place is tenuous and depends on the narrative they bring – your’s is just more colourful. As for guilt about moving on from what sounds like a pretty crap past, I figure you want for your kids what you can offer them now – not what might have been. No shame in that. Tell your stories and live life out the windscreen, not the rear view mirror. There’s some unsolicited advice from a random stranger who liked your article.
What a great article, summing up the internal conflict when the oppressed accidentally become the oppressor. One thing I wish I’d been taught earlier when I was spouting left-wing nonsense was the Pie fallacy summed up by the Peter Bauer quote: “Poverty has no causes. Wealth has causes.” Such a simple place to start forming a realistic worldview but immensely helpful in avoiding the trap of Marxist power struggles and shadowy “elites”.
What a beautifully constructed piece of (Augustan) prose. Agnes Poirier is obviously old school, with her extended syntax, and even her use of semi colons. Wonderful.