The working classes and their outrageous, humourless expectations

I am getting really very cross with mainstream journalists and some bloggers who should really know better (yes, you know who you are) carrying on about

a) what striking workers are doing is really worryingly on the racist side;

b) we really mustn’t go down the protectionist route as this will, in the end, damage our economy.

So let’s have one last go at putting to rights some of those more stupid journos and bloggers.

Holding up a placard saying ‘British jobs for British workers’ is not racist.  It’s humour. 

If a bunch of American lecturers had been drafted in to teach at a university because they were prepared to teach more hours than British lecturers, and if the UCU then had a big demo with ‘British jobs for British workers’, it would be seen as what it is – taking the piss out of a poorly chosen soundbite conjured up by Brown’s speechwriter.   All the bloggers would be out on their blogs saying what a very clever, ironic take all this was, to refer back to an 18 month old speech like that.

But when it’s working class people, it’s not humour – it’s racism, and this is apparently known because the working classes do not have as refined a sense of humour as the middle class bloggers and journos. 

Yes, what’s happening is just a big load of class stereotyping, and has no actual basis in fact – it’s based on middle class  people’s perceptions about how the working classes should react, given the right wing diet of media crap that they’ve been fed for years, and few people actually seem able to countenance that the working classes might actually be more resilient to this crap diet.

 I’m not saying that there won’t have been the odd ‘Wop go home’ chant here and there – I’m realistic and know that the force-fed diet of xenophobia will have the odd victim, but to suggest that the strikes have distinctly racist undertones, or even overtones, is simply without evidence. 

So, if it’s not racist, but humorous, why is it happening at all? Well, let’s look at it in a way even a crap middle class journo might understand.

It’s about thinking that having a job quite close to where you live, where your family lives, and where your friends are, is quite a good idea.  Conversely, it’s about thinking that having to travel miles away from home and live on a ship might be a silly idea, especially if you’re stuck on the ship.

Let’s make a comparison.  If a middle class boy, whom we will call Tarquin because I can stereoptype with the best of them, gets a place at university but then decides to live at home instead of getting a place of his own, is that unwarranted protectionism? 

Well, yes it must be, because he’s getting accommodation subsidised by his ‘welfare state’ mum and dad, and rather than adapting to the open market and learning the skills he needs to survive in that market place, and he’s also placing an undue burden on his ‘welfare state’ mum and dad, who may then get into debt and increase their public borrowing requirement.  I mean, it’s a scandal, especially if the bedroom could be rented out to someone else willing to pay a better rate, which is only sensible business and breeds healthy competition.

I mean, in the end, Tarquin staying on at home and getting his washing done should be made illegal by the EU, in my book!

Yes, it’s a silly comparison, but that is pretty well what the ‘protectionism is doom’ merchants are saying – that it is not s on the part of people in a place near Hull to expect to get a job, commensurate to their skills, in a place near Hull, and that their expecting to do so is more or less the death-knell for the UK economy.

Well, I hear the Sunday Times is thinking about bringing in some very good Irish journalists who understand humour better than the Brits do, what with that cross-class ’craic’ they seem to do so well there.  The good news is that there may be some openings with The Falkland Islands reporter.