To get a good idea of what class is all about , consider two extremes in the UK .First consider the election of the new UK government (the Conservative democratic Alliiance ) in 2010.Under the co-leaders David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the country . the cabinet of 29 was established as usual to provide the key group of people to run the country. In that cabinet, some 23 of them had wealth well over a million pounds and some 20 of them had been to the same university group
Oxford and Cambridge. They are in a sense a distinctly privileged group –with more wealth then most people in the country, but also have a different social and cultural capital, being from the UK’s mist prestigous (and elite) universities. What class would you put them in ?
Next try to watch some episodes of Paul Abbott’s semi-autobiographical Channel 4 drama about a wayward Manchester family, the Gallaghers , in the series Shameless. Very funny and very shocking, in displays a dysfunctional, working-class family running wild on a modern housing estate. It relentlessly and unapologetically depicts depicts them as a ‘horrifying, irredeemable bunch of work – shy, Asbo-inviting chavs,hooked on handouts, the neighbours from hell’