I was brought up to read the Daily Telegraph whose ethos was to look down on the working class, though in a more subtle way than the Sun, the Mail, and the Express did. I would read the Sunday colour supplement from cover to cover and dip into the paper during the week. Then, after years of not reading it, I was shocked by the content. The bigoted beliefs I used to hold came straight out of that newspaper and the rest from the BBC. Many of the top journalists, editors, and newspaper owners were boarding school educated. You can't even escape that when watching BBC, ITV, or Sky News.
At Wellington College, you could escape the Daily Telegraph by going to the main building and reading "Archetectural Review". Yes I was shocked that my parents believed Labour had caused the effects of the banking crisis on the UK in 2008, after reading The Times. I don't know how The Times described it. Loony-Left Bankers? And the divide was much bigger pre-internet in the 1980s. My dad never quite realised how a highe exchange rate effected his customers and his business, and carried-on voting for it when his business had to close.
Thanks @lemsip 207 and @Veganlinecom, how interesting. My family were Telegraph readers and Conversatives as well... I remember having a similar thought as a child. Take care, Piers
The UK is set up as a tiered society, the ways things are generally designed sets you up to be reminded exactly what class of person you are. It becomes subliminal if you spend all your life in the UK, but once you move outside (I moved to the US for 5 years and now live in Spain- Spain is actually not so different in many ways), it is very jarring coming back into the UK. I'm not sure how to change it though, it seems very ingrained. And a lot of 'common people' seem to love things like the Royal family. Which is to me just one big symbol of entrenched class difference. We're told and shown ad nauseum that the royals are pretty much a higher species to the rest of us and that this is a great thing to be proud of. IMO relegating that to history would do a lot of good.
Thanks @oliver8296 for your perspective. How interesting that stepping outside of Britain has helped you get that clarity. I lived abroad for 5 years in my 20s and noticed a similar thing. The UK is set up as a tiered society. Take care, Piers
Thank you for these important conversations Piers. Being the long-time spouse of an ex-boarder, the projective identification is real, and I think what Nick says in his book Wounded Leaders is spot on. But we're all enrolled in it in Britain, the poor, the working class, the middle class all strive to be like the upper classes, unlike what I experienced living for many years in France. It's very interesting :)
Thank you @BedandBreakfastCoach, how interesting. Yes, I so agree I do think that all classes want to be like the upper classes in Britain. Someone pointed out yesterday to me that boarding schools are not normalised in the UK; they are in fact idealised.... Take care, Piers
From the PM looking down upon the peons, to the two-car family looking down upon the one, this kind of attitude practically defines the UK today - and has done for quite some time. We like to think we're 'okay' kind of people, but you'd actually struggle to find a more toxic society anywhere within the developed world. From the beginning of history, every civilisation has died at the hands of a government it truly deserved.
Thank you @RetroHobbyMag, yes, it is true how we all look down upon each other. It feels very sad to me. It is time for us to find some humanity. Take care, Piers
As an American, I attended 12 years of private religious (day) schooling before going off to a Midwestern prestigious non-religious university in which I experienced great culture shock, particularly around the East Coast boarding school grads that were plentiful in my Freshman all girls dorm. My religious schools attracted a wide variety of ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds whereby our progressive, liberal teachers spouted jingoistic propaganda about America being a melting pot, tossed salad, and land of opportunity beyond the rigidity of past eras of -isms (sex, race, class, ability, privilege). Fast forward to when at the university cafeteria dinners with the past boarding school grads I'd hear their worldview of how all the -isms were still firmly in place as if by divine right and that it was necessary to accept the obvious limitations of this world as they are. My impression at the time was that while the boarding school grads were more or less polite, smart, and well-rounded, that they must have their worldview wrong (because I liked the pabulum of a cohesive meritocratic society in which my formative schooling had indoctrinated me into prior to that). Well the saying 'time will tell' played out and they absolutely knew what they were talking about, so maybe their overpriced educations had that 'reality check' going for them.
Thanks for sharing @nothingtofind9099, fascinating to hear of your experiences in the US education system and its overlap with boarding schools. Take care, Piers
I think a very dangerous component that "public" school educated and especially boarding school educated MP's can have is smugness. This I believe happens significantly more often in the Tory party than in the Labour or the Liberal Democrats or Greens. There is this attitude they can have which is "when you have grown up little boy/girl you will realise that I was right all along". It really infuriates me because in politics there are always all sorts of things going wrong and so many things that desperately need to be made or done better than is currently the case. There is absolutely no room for smugness. In fact smugness is by far the worst and least appropriate attitude to have.
Ah yes. The terrible loneliness of the holidays, connecting to terrible snobbery. I would just say not all politicians are the same. The current govt has the largest number of state-educated staff in some time, I believe. Many thanks for another excellent talk Piers.
Your in another world, politics is the dirtiest game, therefore u have the most important scum in the home side, the tories, who now adopt a jeering, sneering, misogynistic, type, desparte to jump on anything, so they can get into power to serve the power not mentioned, in a not democratic way, who gave them that power, pray tell,
@bengreatorex502 I often wonder who boarding school pupils hang out with in the school holidays as they lose touch with friends they made in the day schools they once attended and who either stayed in them or were sent to other boarding schools to them. Often, they now feel very different to the friends still attending day schools, especially if they are state schools.
Hi Ben, thanks for your comment. Yes, you are right. Out of the 10 Labour front benchers or so only David Lammy was educated at a boarding school. It is interesting to note that many Labour ministers, like Diane Abbot, have sent their children to board I believe. Take care, Piers
During my teens I was working in an Eton restaurant when a group of Eton boys started hurling abuse at me for being an oik. I was quite shocked as I'd not encountered anyone from the upper classes before. It was a rude awakening as our culture teaches us to look up to them. I didn't realise that toffs were capable of loutishness and it intigued me that they carried such loathing for those beneath them in the social order.
Thank you for sharing @scottgraham1143 your story. How interesting. I have heard several stories like this especially of public school boys trashing restaurants and their parents paying for the damage rather than them get into trouble. I certainly learned to dispise the working class at my boarding school, take care, Piers
I think the majority of politicians have lost touch with their constituents. Partly due to them receiving higher incomes, prestige, inflated egos & basically not socialising with the every day person. Some are born with a silver spoon & self entitlement & others like to inform the public how poor they were as children & how they worked their way up. Sadly once a lot of people climb up the ladder they somehow lose their empathy & emotional intelligence.
Many of the ones in the cabinet are state educated, but when they went to university, they were mixing with people who had been to boarding schools. Also, they would have grown up at a time when Tony Blair was PM, so they would have been influenced by that.
@@lemsip207 Tony Blair was wierd. I wonder if the Labour Party is now more influenced by posh schools than other parties. There are MPs who want to "set an example", like prefects. There's a speech by Tony Blair to his party conference where he says something about cutting pensions, and then goes straight-on to another subject, he thinks, about spending money on the Olympics, or a school sports day in other words. Oh and he hated Yobs.
Thank you @dh-s6002, yes, so true. I too feel that many politicians have lost touch with their constituents and have now lost their empathy and emotional intelligence. (if they didn't lose that in their education.) Take care, Piers
Bigotry can work both ways. Im working class, but my Dad had a white collar job. Because he was the only man on the street to go out in a suit, we as a family attracted a lot of hostility. Dad was never good with money and we've always struggled, whereas the factory working dads received inheritances etc which raised them up. I find some other working class people very nasty, but others really nice. Same with upper middle class. I'd prefer them to a hypocritical champagne Socialist any day of the week.
Thank you @emmas3716, so true - bigotry can work both ways. I feel that I looked to our leaders to see what they did and followed suit. Take care, Piers
Hi @normanpouch, yes, I believe that we can heal. You might be interested in this conversation with an ex-boarder who talks about his healing journey. ruclips.net/video/tVjwO1GLG9o/видео.htmlsi=kqrehPhmfwLfWvFm Take care, Piers
it was a two way street with us at our local comp in Wokingham, we would when the opportunity came our way take the proverbial of the `posh twits` from Wellington just up the road from us. So have no fear about snobby chaps in the establishment, I still think they are and always will be `posh twits` Sorry.
This sounds like intentional training built into the system, but other societies all seem to have their scapegoats, but maybe not done in such an intentional way.
Guardian article. Same ruling families since the Normans! 👇 According to the author Kevin Cahill, the main driver behind the absurd expense of owning land and property in Britain is that so much of the nation's land is locked up by a tiny elite. Just 0.3% of the population - 160,000 families - own two thirds of the country. Less than 1% of the population owns 70% of the land, running Britain a close second to Brazil for the title of the country with the most unequal land distribution on Earth. Much of this can be traced back to 1066. The first act of William the Conqueror, in 1067, was to declare that every acre of land in England now belonged to the monarch. This was unprecedented: Anglo-Saxon England had been a mosaic of landowners. Now there was just one. William then proceeded to parcel much of that land out to those who had fought with him at Hastings. This was the beginning of feudalism; it was also the beginning of the landowning culture that has plagued England - and Britain - ever since. The dukes and earls who still own so much of the nation's land, and who feature every year on the breathless rich lists, are the beneficiaries of this astonishing land grab. William's 22nd great-granddaughter, who today sits on the throne, is still the legal owner of the whole of England. Even your house, if you've been able to afford one, is technically hers. You're a tenant, and the price of your tenancy is your loyalty to the crown. When the current monarch dies, her son will inherit the crown (another Norman innovation, incidentally, since Anglo-Saxon kings were elected). As Duke of Cornwall, he is the inheritor of land that William gave to Brian of Brittany in 1068, for helping to defeat the English at Hastings.
% of landownership is a useless measure of equality in the UK. We are not a land based agrarian society anymore. One family owning hundreds of acres of land (being farmers) while I, a programmer making a 6 figure salary while I rent an apartment does not mean they are far wealthier than I am. Additionally all land we would consider useless is owned, including by the crown estate. Coastal areas, estuaries, rivers, seabeds, wetlands, marshlands, the highlands, moors, rocky soil. Who cares if someone owns all this land? It's false outrage. Besides, plenty of "progressive" policies are pushed to make this land more useful and in your terms make society more unequal. We are expected to fork out our hard earned salaries to subsidize renewable energy projects on these lands just because it sounds good to do so, rather than having real energy solutions like nuclear power. These aristocrats you despise push these progressive ideas and you lap it up. They're the ones pushing for mass migration to raise land prices at the cost of higher taxation, poorer social services and depressed salaries. It's all a web of contradictions.
I was brought up to read the Daily Telegraph whose ethos was to look down on the working class, though in a more subtle way than the Sun, the Mail, and the Express did. I would read the Sunday colour supplement from cover to cover and dip into the paper during the week. Then, after years of not reading it, I was shocked by the content. The bigoted beliefs I used to hold came straight out of that newspaper and the rest from the BBC. Many of the top journalists, editors, and newspaper owners were boarding school educated. You can't even escape that when watching BBC, ITV, or Sky News.
At Wellington College, you could escape the Daily Telegraph by going to the main building and reading "Archetectural Review".
Yes I was shocked that my parents believed Labour had caused the effects of the banking crisis on the UK in 2008, after reading The Times. I don't know how The Times described it. Loony-Left Bankers?
And the divide was much bigger pre-internet in the 1980s. My dad never quite realised how a highe exchange rate effected his customers and his business, and carried-on voting for it when his business had to close.
So true!
Thanks @lemsip 207 and @Veganlinecom, how interesting. My family were Telegraph readers and Conversatives as well... I remember having a similar thought as a child.
Take care, Piers
The UK is set up as a tiered society, the ways things are generally designed sets you up to be reminded exactly what class of person you are. It becomes subliminal if you spend all your life in the UK, but once you move outside (I moved to the US for 5 years and now live in Spain- Spain is actually not so different in many ways), it is very jarring coming back into the UK. I'm not sure how to change it though, it seems very ingrained. And a lot of 'common people' seem to love things like the Royal family. Which is to me just one big symbol of entrenched class difference. We're told and shown ad nauseum that the royals are pretty much a higher species to the rest of us and that this is a great thing to be proud of. IMO relegating that to history would do a lot of good.
Thanks @oliver8296 for your perspective. How interesting that stepping outside of Britain has helped you get that clarity. I lived abroad for 5 years in my 20s and noticed a similar thing. The UK is set up as a tiered society. Take care, Piers
Thank you for these important conversations Piers. Being the long-time spouse of an ex-boarder, the projective identification is real, and I think what Nick says in his book Wounded Leaders is spot on. But we're all enrolled in it in Britain, the poor, the working class, the middle class all strive to be like the upper classes, unlike what I experienced living for many years in France. It's very interesting :)
Yes, living abroad can help for those who want to see...
Thank you @BedandBreakfastCoach, how interesting. Yes, I so agree I do think that all classes want to be like the upper classes in Britain. Someone pointed out yesterday to me that boarding schools are not normalised in the UK; they are in fact idealised.... Take care, Piers
From the PM looking down upon the peons, to the two-car family looking down upon the one, this kind of attitude practically defines the UK today - and has done for quite some time. We like to think we're 'okay' kind of people, but you'd actually struggle to find a more toxic society anywhere within the developed world. From the beginning of history, every civilisation has died at the hands of a government it truly deserved.
Thank you @RetroHobbyMag, yes, it is true how we all look down upon each other. It feels very sad to me. It is time for us to find some humanity. Take care, Piers
As an American, I attended 12 years of private religious (day) schooling before going off to a Midwestern prestigious non-religious university in which I experienced great culture shock, particularly around the East Coast boarding school grads that were plentiful in my Freshman all girls dorm. My religious schools attracted a wide variety of ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds whereby our progressive, liberal teachers spouted jingoistic propaganda about America being a melting pot, tossed salad, and land of opportunity beyond the rigidity of past eras of -isms (sex, race, class, ability, privilege). Fast forward to when at the university cafeteria dinners with the past boarding school grads I'd hear their worldview of how all the -isms were still firmly in place as if by divine right and that it was necessary to accept the obvious limitations of this world as they are. My impression at the time was that while the boarding school grads were more or less polite, smart, and well-rounded, that they must have their worldview wrong (because I liked the pabulum of a cohesive meritocratic society in which my formative schooling had indoctrinated me into prior to that). Well the saying 'time will tell' played out and they absolutely knew what they were talking about, so maybe their overpriced educations had that 'reality check' going for them.
Thanks for sharing @nothingtofind9099, fascinating to hear of your experiences in the US education system and its overlap with boarding schools. Take care, Piers
I think a very dangerous component that "public" school educated and especially boarding school educated MP's can have is smugness. This I believe happens significantly more often in the Tory party than in the Labour or the Liberal Democrats or Greens. There is this attitude they can have which is "when you have grown up little boy/girl you will realise that I was right all along". It really infuriates me because in politics there are always all sorts of things going wrong and so many things that desperately need to be made or done better than is currently the case. There is absolutely no room for smugness. In fact smugness is by far the worst and least appropriate attitude to have.
Thanks for sharing Richard, so true, take care, Piers
Ah yes. The terrible loneliness of the holidays, connecting to terrible snobbery. I would just say not all politicians are the same. The current govt has the largest number of state-educated staff in some time, I believe. Many thanks for another excellent talk Piers.
Your in another world, politics is the dirtiest game, therefore u have the most important scum in the home side, the tories, who now adopt a jeering, sneering, misogynistic, type, desparte to jump on anything, so they can get into power to serve the power not mentioned, in a not democratic way, who gave them that power, pray tell,
@bengreatorex502 I often wonder who boarding school pupils hang out with in the school holidays as they lose touch with friends they made in the day schools they once attended and who either stayed in them or were sent to other boarding schools to them. Often, they now feel very different to the friends still attending day schools, especially if they are state schools.
Hi Ben, thanks for your comment. Yes, you are right. Out of the 10 Labour front benchers or so only David Lammy was educated at a boarding school. It is interesting to note that many Labour ministers, like Diane Abbot, have sent their children to board I believe.
Take care, Piers
During my teens I was working in an Eton restaurant when a group of Eton boys started hurling abuse at me for being an oik. I was quite shocked as I'd not encountered anyone from the upper classes before. It was a rude awakening as our culture teaches us to look up to them. I didn't realise that toffs were capable of loutishness and it intigued me that they carried such loathing for those beneath them in the social order.
Thank you for sharing @scottgraham1143 your story. How interesting. I have heard several stories like this especially of public school boys trashing restaurants and their parents paying for the damage rather than them get into trouble. I certainly learned to dispise the working class at my boarding school, take care, Piers
I think the majority of politicians have lost touch with their constituents. Partly due to them receiving higher incomes, prestige, inflated egos & basically not socialising with the every day person.
Some are born with a silver spoon & self entitlement & others like to inform the public how poor they were as children & how they worked their way up.
Sadly once a lot of people climb up the ladder they somehow lose their empathy & emotional intelligence.
Many of the ones in the cabinet are state educated, but when they went to university, they were mixing with people who had been to boarding schools. Also, they would have grown up at a time when Tony Blair was PM, so they would have been influenced by that.
@@lemsip207 Tony Blair was wierd. I wonder if the Labour Party is now more influenced by posh schools than other parties. There are MPs who want to "set an example", like prefects. There's a speech by Tony Blair to his party conference where he says something about cutting pensions, and then goes straight-on to another subject, he thinks, about spending money on the Olympics, or a school sports day in other words.
Oh and he hated Yobs.
@@Veganlinecom I saw him twice in real life and saw that.
Thank you @dh-s6002, yes, so true. I too feel that many politicians have lost touch with their constituents and have now lost their empathy and emotional intelligence. (if they didn't lose that in their education.) Take care, Piers
The Road To Wigan Pier was actually written by George Orwell, not the guy you attributed it to.
Hi @caroldonaldson5936, thanks for letting me know. Great, I have updated the show notes, take care, Piers
Bigotry can work both ways. Im working class, but my Dad had a white collar job. Because he was the only man on the street to go out in a suit, we as a family attracted a lot of hostility. Dad was never good with money and we've always struggled, whereas the factory working dads received inheritances etc which raised them up. I find some other working class people very nasty, but others really nice. Same with upper middle class. I'd prefer them to a hypocritical champagne Socialist any day of the week.
Thank you @emmas3716, so true - bigotry can work both ways. I feel that I looked to our leaders to see what they did and followed suit. Take care, Piers
I have two expartners who say just get over BSS. I am 68 and havent got over it. Is it possible to just over it. Had a lot of counselling?
Hi @normanpouch, yes, I believe that we can heal. You might be interested in this conversation with an ex-boarder who talks about his healing journey. ruclips.net/video/tVjwO1GLG9o/видео.htmlsi=kqrehPhmfwLfWvFm Take care, Piers
it was a two way street with us at our local comp in Wokingham, we would when the opportunity came our way take the proverbial of the `posh twits` from Wellington just up the road from us. So have no fear about snobby chaps in the establishment, I still think they are and always will be `posh twits` Sorry.
Thanks for sharing @Iveraghboy, take care, Piers
This sounds like intentional training built into the system, but other societies all seem to have their scapegoats, but maybe not done in such an intentional way.
Thanks @gail777, great insight. I am sure Nick Duffell says something along those lines in Wounded Leaders, Take care, Piers
@@pierscrossthank you, Piers ❤
Guardian article. Same ruling families since the Normans! 👇
According to the author Kevin Cahill, the main driver behind the absurd expense of owning land and property in Britain is that so much of the nation's land is locked up by a tiny elite. Just 0.3% of the population - 160,000 families - own two thirds of the country. Less than 1% of the population owns 70% of the land, running Britain a close second to Brazil for the title of the country with the most unequal land distribution on Earth.
Much of this can be traced back to 1066. The first act of William the Conqueror, in 1067, was to declare that every acre of land in England now belonged to the monarch. This was unprecedented: Anglo-Saxon England had been a mosaic of landowners. Now there was just one. William then proceeded to parcel much of that land out to those who had fought with him at Hastings. This was the beginning of feudalism; it was also the beginning of the landowning culture that has plagued England - and Britain - ever since.
The dukes and earls who still own so much of the nation's land, and who feature every year on the breathless rich lists, are the beneficiaries of this astonishing land grab. William's 22nd great-granddaughter, who today sits on the throne, is still the legal owner of the whole of England. Even your house, if you've been able to afford one, is technically hers. You're a tenant, and the price of your tenancy is your loyalty to the crown. When the current monarch dies, her son will inherit the crown (another Norman innovation, incidentally, since Anglo-Saxon kings were elected). As Duke of Cornwall, he is the inheritor of land that William gave to Brian of Brittany in 1068, for helping to defeat the English at Hastings.
% of landownership is a useless measure of equality in the UK. We are not a land based agrarian society anymore. One family owning hundreds of acres of land (being farmers) while I, a programmer making a 6 figure salary while I rent an apartment does not mean they are far wealthier than I am. Additionally all land we would consider useless is owned, including by the crown estate. Coastal areas, estuaries, rivers, seabeds, wetlands, marshlands, the highlands, moors, rocky soil.
Who cares if someone owns all this land? It's false outrage. Besides, plenty of "progressive" policies are pushed to make this land more useful and in your terms make society more unequal. We are expected to fork out our hard earned salaries to subsidize renewable energy projects on these lands just because it sounds good to do so, rather than having real energy solutions like nuclear power. These aristocrats you despise push these progressive ideas and you lap it up. They're the ones pushing for mass migration to raise land prices at the cost of higher taxation, poorer social services and depressed salaries. It's all a web of contradictions.
Thanks for sharing @MrGavinBoyd, that's really interesting. I will check that out. Take care, Piers
Хваааааала...🙂
Have you ever spoken to Darren McGarvey?
Hi @amac2573, thanks for your message. No, not yet. One of my friends does know him so maybe he would be a good person to interview. Take care, Piers
Yawn...