Читать книгу We’re British, Innit: An Irreverent A to Z of All Things British - Iain Aitch - Страница 43

Foreign visitors are amazed by it, politicians claim it no longer exists and the rest of us struggle to work out where we belong within it. The class system in Britain is second only to the Indian caste system in terms of rigidity and complexity. Our place of birth, parent’s jobs, income, accent and even what we call our evening meal (see tea as a meal) can dictate our place on the class scale, which can then affect education, career and even marriage. Within the confines of working, middle and upper class there are any number of micro-classes, such as lower-middle or Duke of Cornwall, though it is hard to be mobile even between these. Jumping class boundaries is notoriously difficult: moving from working to middle requires acquiring a taste for olives and houmous, while middle to upper means knowing which fork goes where and which servant should polish them. Class envy is one thing that is upwardly as well as downwardly mobile, with the middle classes often affecting working-class accents to fit in. This is most in evidence when they have to call out a plumber and constantly refer to him as ‘mate’, even though he actually earns twice their salary.