The Trials and Tribulations of Working Hard and Playing Hard.

Working class citizens, we work and we have class. I feel somehow the interpretation of the class system has been either totally lost or has become a little fuzzy around the edges.

It all came about after a Vodka induced and heated debate with my significant other about what class my parents fell into. They were not born into "money" and any money there was had been earnt by mother and father ie: my grandparents worked. So to me that would suggest that for generations my family has been working class? Apparantly not, your class is not determined by the fact you WORK or how hard you graft, it is determined on how well you hard graft pays off. Yes it is all about the readies!

You can actually move out of the working class category by working damn hard, the fact you still work is now irelevant as you have cried, pushed, grafted and found you way to that much coverted "middle class". Maybe a detatched 4 bed house in suburbia, three kids a dog, a couple of Caribbean Holidays every year and the token BMW estate with a little Merc roadster for the missus. Well done old boy! You have shaken off that degrading title and membership of the "working class" The Tories will be rubbing their hands together, another vote is coming their way!

Of course the majority of the "upper class" have quite probably never done a hard days work in their lives, there is far too much Krug and white powder to be enjoyed. Getting Tarquin to Eton is a requirement of being "upper class" Tarquin needs the best education at Britains costliest public school, followed by a place at Oxbridge. Only the best for Tarquin. Not that old Tarq will really ever benefit from it, he knows he is going to be wealthy and that silver spoon will be attached to his stiff upper lip for decades to come. It is not that I am jealous of Tarq and his daddies Bentley I just do not understand it. You do not work your way into the upper class, you are born into it and where is the fun and satisfaction in that? Where is the sense of achievement? maybe in a rolled up twenty pound note, next to Columbias finest and daddies platinum card.

You see the misconception as I see it is that the "middle class" are really the working class. Society sees the chavs and the dregs of society, who are too idle to wipe their own bottoms let alone hold down a job as the "working class". People with on "benefits" and yes thats the key "benefits". Handouts to the laziest to buy their drugs and beer. Handouts to give them a cosey council house, paid for by the silly bastards that are members of the "middle class"

There is a connection here, the "middle class" who "work" are giving a large chunk of their earnings to the state to pay for others to exist. Lets put this into perspective if this is the case then HM Elizabeth and Phillip and the arrogant, self opinionated Charlie boy are by definition: "working class" They get the most "benefits" out of anyone one. The best paid unemployed people in the world.

If you work, you are "working class" It does not matter what the work is or how much it pays, you "work" for it aswell as working for everyone else who can not be bothered or thinks it is their right to be paid for by the likes of us.

So whilst I am sat here with a stonking headache ( the product of the Vodka I mentioned earlier) trying to get the words in my open university text books to sink in, hoping that my hard "work" will eventually provide me with opportunities suitable enough to move me into the "middle class" I begin to realise that I will always be "working class"

I have been brought up to work for what I have, it is a respectable and satisfying thing to and by being in the "working class" it is perfectly acceptable to go out at the weekend after a week working hard in a job you hate and get absolutly shit faced. You can do that in the working class, I might invite Tarquin out one night, see what he makes of it all.

It is not easy being in a mundane job. It causes stress and anxiety but it feeds the determination to better ones self. It gives you a purpose, a goal and ambition. It pushes you harder and harder and makes you a stronger and more focused person. It grounds you but more importantly it gives you the excuse for a bloody large Vodka on A Saturday night, because you have earnt it!