|
0fe1b2f
|
A victory is scored when your opponents are forced to debate issues they would rather leave ignored
|
|
|
Owen Jones |
|
020fa62
|
One day, this Establishment will fall. It will not do so on its own terms or of its own accord, but because it has been removed by a movement with a credible alternative that inspires. For those of us who want a different sort of society, it is surely time to get our act together.
|
|
politics
the-establishment
movement
society
government
state
|
Owen Jones |
|
290db60
|
May you always look as beautiful as this last time I saw you.
|
|
|
Owen Jones |
|
1f7c304
|
Demonisation is the ideological backbone of an unequal society.
|
|
politics
inequality
|
Owen Jones |
|
7352cc3
|
Being born into a prosperous middle-class family typically endows you with a safety net for life. If you are not naturally very bright, you are still likely to go far and, at the very least, will never experience poverty as an adult. A good education compounded by your parents' 'cultural capital', financial support and networks will always see you through. If you are a bright child born into a working-class family, you do not have any of th..
|
|
|
Owen Jones |
|
d6355ab
|
Taken together, New Labour policies have helped to build a series of overlapping chav caricatures: the feckless, the non-aspirational, the scrounger, the dysfunctional and the disorderly. To hear this sort of rhetoric from Labour, rather than the Tories, has confirmed the stereotypes and prejudices many middle-class people have about working-class communities and individuals. But it can be far subtler than outright attacks. Many of New Labo..
|
|
|
Owen Jones |
|
278994e
|
It is entirely undesirable that on modern housing estates only one type of citizen should live,' he argued. 'If we are to enable citizens to lead a full life, if they are each to be aware of the problems of their neighbours, then they should all be drawn from different sectors of the community. We should try to introduce what was always the lovely feature of English and Welsh villages, where the doctor, the grocer, the butcher and the farm ..
|
|
|
Owen Jones |
|
feac2d8
|
But as the late socialist politician Tony Benn would often put it, social change is a combination of two things: 'the burning flame of anger at injustice, and the burning flame of hope for a better world'.
|
|
|
Owen Jones |
|
f0d1942
|
We bar girls don't cheat on wives, we are just the rope that cheating husbands hang themselves with.
|
|
cheating-husbands
owen-jones
|
Owen Jones |
|
2bec0bf
|
The modern Establishment relies on a mantra of 'There Is No Alternative': potential opposition is guarded against by enforcing disbelief in the idea that there is any other viable way of running society.
|
|
politics
society
government
|
Owen Jones |
|
5ab620c
|
As well as a shared mentality, the Establishment is cemented by financial links and a 'revolving door' culture: that is, powerful individuals gliding between the political, corporate and media worlds - or who manage to inhabit these various worlds at the same time. The terms of political debate are in large part dictated by a media controlled by a small number of exceptionally rich owners, while think tanks and political parties are funded ..
|
|
politics
the-establishment
|
Owen Jones |
|
b3c9227
|
The Establishment is amassing wealth and aggressively annexing power in a way that has no precedent in modern times. After all, there is nothing to stop it.
|
|
politics
oligarchy
the-establishment
corporate-greed
power
|
Owen Jones |
|
63c2641
|
Get rid of all the cleaners, rubbish collectors, bus drivers, supermarket checkout staff and secretaries, for example, and society will very quickly grind to a halt. On the other hand, if we woke up one morning to find that all the highly paid advertising executives, management consultants and private equity directors had disappeared, society would go on much as it did before: in a lot of cases, probably quite a bit better. So,
|
|
|
Owen Jones |
|
04f407e
|
Chav-bashing draws on a long, ignoble tradition of class hatred. But it cannot be understood without looking at more recent events. Above all, it is the bastard child of a very British class war.
|
|
|
Owen Jones |
|
5015292
|
George Orwell observed: 'If you look for the working classes in fiction, and especially English fiction, all you find is a hole ... the ordinary town proletariat, the people who make the wheels go round, have always been ignored by novelists. When they do find their way between the corners of a book, it is nearly always as objects of pity or as comic relief.'2
|
|
|
Owen Jones |