Huguenot

Sounds like jailbait. :D

Ratty: Can people stop putting gang or clown activity after posts like this? It stopped being funny in about 2005! Woodrot: yup Really? This coming from the mouth of someone whose relentless crap about yummy mummies, bugaboos or cats has wallpapered this forum for year upon drivelsome year? Woodrot has three pathetic 'jokes' that light up this bulletin board like a snail trail and then has the nerve to affirm that other people are repetitive? Look in the mirror you arse.

If it's only ?97 for the course it's clear that the taxpayer is fronting up for your education Zeban, so getting snotty about it in public is demonstrably biting the hand that feeds you. Sometimes the sense of entitlement in society leaves me genuinely shocked. If you're going to multiple courses in one year you clearly have no intent to use this education for anything worthwhile - it's merely entertainment. So being irritated that other people won't pony up for you is really rude.

Never underestimate the consequences of being annoying.

Like Luke Skywalker in the cantina that has nothing to do with class and everything to do with freighter pilots.

Sanctimonious claptrap. We know what you do. It's great. What the nation is asking you is whether you can do it proportionately and to a reasonable budget. You may well be a firefighter, but you sound like a complete child with all this 'PM me if you want to talk to me'. It's like stamping up the stairs and putting a sign on the door saying 'nobody allowed in except Kevin' after your parents have told you to tuck your shirt in. Asking for an appropriate budget's not an unreasonable demand, and it doesn't deserve all this self righteous sulking.

'They' waited until he was dead because then he can't defend himself.

DaveR, I also recal nostalgically being an actor, but that doesn't make me working class no? The builder illustration was just an extension of your own analogy. Most people claiming to be 'working class' are as pretentious as those claiming to belong to a more exalted class. They're taking on a mix of symbols and cliches and wearing them like a cheap suit. It reminds me of North American Irish. They're about as Irish as their fevered imaginations and quest for a fabricated identity allows them to be.

I think that when Unions think there is an equivalence between neurosurgery and tube driving, you know they've jumped the shark.

DaveR, it doesn't matter whether he's an assistant producer at the BBC or self employed builder, he's still middle class. As self-employed he's in control of the means of production - manifestly not a working class pursuit. Your description trys to define middle class as being an artistically inclined educated liberal. That's a much more tightly demarcated tribe, not a 'social class' but undoubtedly as Maxxi would have it, a 'classification'. Additionally, I spent much of my youth working with arty liberals doing up property in France for witless yuppies - we were all self employed builders, but I don't think anyone on here would suggest I was 'working class'? On the EDF, 'working class' is defined as having lived in ED when it was shit, and not liking grotesque caricatures of people from Clapham. That's not a social class, it's a local tribe.

Again Chillaxed, I think you're confusing class warfare with tribalism. It's understandable that you would try and slot undeserved prejudice and snobbery into a picture postcard version of Britain - we all do the same thing to foreigners too ;-) Class distinctions are an outdated cliche regarding the British that has as much relevance as claiming that 'Roast Beef' is the nation's favourite dish in a country that gorges on Chicken Tikka Masala. The proletariat - the vast Victorian block of society whose only wealth was their children - is no more. All we are left with is banal justifications for small minded behaviour.

How much more would ED citizens be willing to pay in council tax to ensure we can rescue Chippy from any bin he sticks his head in within 3 minutes? Given that Chippy is probably marginally brighter than 'Our Willie' depicted in the photo, for how many years would they be willing to pay those hugely inflated taxes for a service that has a vanishingly small chance of ever being used? The Fire Service must be fit for purpose, relevant for the modern age and funded accordingly. It must balance possible risk against potential impact and the various investment opportunities. Having worked in the fire service for 20+ years guarantees you no more of the skills to run a national fire service with appropriate funding and resource distribution than living in a house means you can build one.

T-e-d, one idiot doesn't define a country. The reason his comment made headlines was because it was exceptional rather than everyday. To some extent the fuss that comment caused is PROOF that traditional class prejudices are not ubiquitous in Britain.

Come on guys, it can't be that difficult to ring environmental health and get them to pick up and test the stuff?

For me this is repeated new threads for the same business. He can stick them all on one thread if he likes, he may be able to argue that it's new products rather than bumping. I wouldn't bet on his chances.

Eh? Bizarre. If you can save money and be more efficient, then surely the service costs less - that's exactly the point. It's not a 'cut', it's appropriate funding. You even say yourself that you believe in a better fire service that costs us less! That's a cut! The insurance claims thing is a red herring. You would expect insurance claims to go up every year - that's economic reality along with the price of bread or your age. Interested in this firefighter injury figure you keep repeating - can we see the stats? The fire service is great, and it needs to be fit for the social realities of the 21st century. That means appropriate responsibilities and an allocation of resources in line with risk analysis. We would all like a hospital, a police station and a fire station at the end of every road to cope with every eventuality. In reality we can't afford it. We need to make a series of compromises about what we can afford and where. That's all this assessment of the fire service is. So please stop with these alarmist scenarios. If little Freddie has his fingers down the drain he may have to wait a few more minutes, and if Auntie Jemima's cat is up a tree it'll have to stay there.

baroldmc, I've already explained why it's Great Britain ad nauseam... Some of the original kingdoms that historically included these islands also included large tracts of North West France - now known as Brittany. 'Great' Britain was used to differentiate what is now England/Scotland/Wales from 'Lesser' Britain in what is now France. It has nothing to do with being powerful.

That's true Mick Mac, but when most people talk about class in Britain they are explicitly referring to the Victorian landed gentry (the toffs / the aristocracy), the white collar middle classes and the blue collar working classes that are established by birthright and genetic heritage. What LondonMix and mrsS are referring to is tribalism and on a larger scale regionalism - a particular manifestation of small time British protectionism, but most definitely NOT a class system. On a grander scale you can see it in anti-Europeanism, and no-one would call this 'class war'. When a petty home counties fusspot looks down on a regional accent it is not class, because both individuals are cut from the same jib, it's about tribes. The ED locals complaining about Clapham blow-ins is not class - because the established citizens and the blow-ins do the same jobs and have the same mortgages. It's about tribes and values. People often want to extend tribal conflicts into class ones, because it's a natural way to extend the size of your army. In this case 'working class' is the most attractive because it's not only the largest group but also the most physical. However, it's an abuse of reality, the disenfranchised Marxist proletariat is practically no more, and with right-to-buy is being actively empowered out of existence. The landowning aristocracy has been taxed out of existence. We are all middle class now, but I'm sure that won't stop the haters and the boo boys from finding enemies within prejudices based on skin colour, accent, store selection, and any other differentiating factor. But it ain't CLASS.

Depends on your scenario Jessie. So far as I can tell child benefit is different to child tax credit is different to working tax credits isn't it? Working tax credits are available for all to help those on low income, regardless of whether they have children or not. ?26,000 seems a very reasonable top threshold for this. It's not exactly low income. If you feel you are entitled to more because you have children or childcare costs, then you should be complaing about child benefit or the child tax credit shouldn't you?

Haha LadyD, Marx would put every single self employed person (including yourself at some points in time) into the ruling classes. Conversely EP Thompson would make every CEO the subordinate of their shareholders - more often than not the middle classes. The old clich?s simply no longer apply.

My guess is the embittered husband of the office gossip, he'd been humiliated just one too many times...

There's clearly a disparity in income and opportunity across society, but I think that for taxonomy there would need to be clearly defined boundaries. Certainly phrases like 'working class' wouldn't apply when unemployment is highest in this segment. Likewise, save the royal family the 'landowning' upper class is no more - the largest land owning individuals now being a mixture of white collar workers and impoverished farmers, with significant proportions owned by corporations and institutions.

Absolutely extraordinary BNG. My eyes are opened.

Where was that comment about outrage over the nanny's sure start? I WANT to read that thread!

Guardian readers on average earn ?30,500 per year compared to the UK average of ?21,000 and are twice as likely as the average UK adult to earn ?40,000 or more.