I hate the term glass ceiling, it is pointless, ambiguous, more outdated than a beige floral motif and makes an irritable insatiable tapping noise when hit by rain. My 6th form centre (Yes, we had a whole centre, because I am one of those statistics who went to private school, even though it was in inner city Bradford - which has a lovely reputation for schools) thought itself useful to install an actual glass ceiling - reinforcing the thought in our compressed minds that although we were paying for our education, it, being from Bradford wouldn't give us too much of an advantage in the real world.
Oh and by the way, before we properly start, the subject which has led me to opening this blog by talking about glass ceilings, is of course the latest scare-mongering report on social mobility or lack there-off, written by those who mistakenly believe we are living now, under the same three class tier system as we were in the '70's
The problem with these reports is that they spout percentages and statistics in as much abundance as the Niagara Falls spouts water of the top of its chilly edge. These are then picked up by the media and taken out of context, go un-compared and get so twisted that they resemble the original statistic as much as Jacko resembles his original face. For those who are forgetful or ignorant, here is a statistic from myself:
"Jobs in the service industries have increased by 45 percent, from 14.8 million in 1978 to 21.5 million in 2005, while those in manufacturing have fallen 54 percent from 6.9 million to 3.2 million over the same period"
Just for clarification, service sector jobs are typically those ones which employ the middle class, i.e: media, education, health care, real estate, legal practice etc. While manufacturing are obviously jobs which involve manual labour commonly associated with the working class.
Now it doesn't take much to see that today the manufacturing sector is employing approximately 5% of UK's population, showing a reduction if not eradication of the standard class system. Famously, on the topic an unnamed union leader declared "No longer can I call on my comrades, who now have a mortgage, two cars and an annual holiday, to march for better conditions". It appears that the middle class and working class have merged - typical working class jobs such as plumbers earn more than teachers who were of course the stalwart of middle class sensibility:
"John Major in 1996 argued that “we are all middle class now” – in other words working class living standards have risen to such a degree that the difference with middle class people have become blurred."
This merge has given rise to a new three-tier class system, in turn introducing a new social class - the underclass. The underclass is easily personified in chav form - apparently they live on the dole, take drugs, procreate another baby in tandem with every cigarette they smoke on their 30-a-day habit and generally mug/vandalise/burgle and occasionally rape 83 year old women and lock their kids under the bed of their local, convicted child-sex-offender weirdo of a relative. Basically the kind you find on Jeremy Kyle
Moving on, it is not surprising then, what with the rise in affluence of the working class and the emergence of the disastrously degenerate under-class who are infinitely more poor than the old working class, that there has been a rise in the number of families with an above average income. This then shows why there has been a rise in the amount of people coming from above-average incomes in industries such as media and accountancy. The fact that there is a larger number of more-affluent families shows that social mobility is happening, take my families example for instance:
My paternal grandparents hail from a mill-town called Low Moor and lived in a small terraced house without indoor toilets - a typical working class family of the time. My father was born in the '60s hitting the job market in the '80s. Having not gone to college or anything like that, he decided to become a salesman, and after a variety of jobs settled in selling computers. He worked his way up as the industry boomed and now is living in a detached house in the more middle-class area of Baildon and drives an Audi TT. Similarly, after having their second child my grand-parents realised they needed a larger house, so my grandmother decided to get a job as a typist and they both worked until they could afford to buy a nice semi-detached house in the middle-class suburb of Baildon. This goes to prove that social mobility is extremely accesses able - if you put in the work.
To finish, as I am getting horribley bored by such a dull subject, where I might just be talking a load of shit, here is another quote concerning John Major:
And a concluding sentance on statistics - just remember you probably have an above average number of legs!
Reading:
www.bbc.co.uk/news
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