A-level algorithm? Givowwer!
IT’S time for Mr Gavin Williamson to go! After he clears his ministerial desk and collects his coffee mug, the beer mats he jots his policies down on and Cronus his pet tarantula, perhaps Dominic Cummings could give him a lift back to Scarborough via Barnard Castle!
The recent A-level fiasco and its unquestionable bias against bright kids in less advantaged areas has really worked up a radge in this here gadgie! A-level algorithm? Givowwer!
A friend of our family was A* material all the way – a hard working and gifted ‘outrider’ in a disadvantaged area’s school, where he was an exception. He was mercilessly downgraded to a level below the grades needed for his place at a top university. Hmm – most private schools had their teacher assessed grades accepted or increased. Givowwer, givowwer and thrice givowwer!
Which computer was that buffoon Williamson using? A 1984 Amstrad CPC? Or was it Skynet from the Terminator
movies? Remember that was programmed to destroy humanity too! Even the software in London seems to hate us !
Has it always been so? I’m a working class lad. I grew up in Gateshead and am proud if it, yet according to many in today’s London media I shouldn’t be.
We are seen as drunken, bigoted, violent and lazy. Where did we go wrong? In the sixties it used to be cool to be working class. The Beatles and Michael Caine ruled.
We were seen as hard working decent and honourable. Posh people put on our accents for street cred and Mike Neville read the news every night – and he was clearly one of us! Now we are feared and ridiculed: reduced to cartoon characters on the now infamous Jeremy Kyle or TOWIE. What nightmare journey has taken us from The Likely Lads to Geordie Shore?
However fascinating that programme is, it hardly challenges lazy stereotypes about the people up here.
The average night those folk put in was the sort of fantasy Sid the Sexist lied about to his mates the morning after waking up alone.
By stripping away the industries that gave us a living and a proud identity , the powers that be left the door open for the demonisation to begin.
Decent working class folk are mocked by the smug middle class ‘woke’ squad in a way no other demographic group could ever be.
You see it on social media; Brexit voting, thick, racist, ignorant, drunken and flag-waving xenophobes all.
Yet you struggle to hear more than one or two even vaguely working class accents on the Beeb, unless it’s a documentary on how vile we are.
I’m always a champion of diversity and minority representation, but diversity of social class doesn’t seem to count in that uppermiddle class monolith.
The media and political elite, in their bubbles and echo chambers, are so out of touch with us that political earthquakes such as Brexit or the collapse of the ‘Red Wall’ come as ‘shocks.’
Those proles who dared vote against the will of their social and ideological ‘betters’ were sneered at and demonised by those who once claimed to support them. Working class TV characters are now more likely to be losers like Vicky Pollard or ‘Shameless’ Frank Gallagher than past heroes such as the Auf Wiedersehen boys or Jack Ford from the marvellous when the Boat Comes In. Maybe the next Catherine Cookson drama might have the Geordie Shore cast in it?: “Where’s Wor Nelly?” “She’s gannin’ off Clubbing’
with the mill owner’s son after she’s finished her vodka and red bull in the village hot tub”.
Finally, whilst I don’t condone the mad wages of the Premiership footballers, they are no more excessive than many bankers or ‘city boys’ earnings. Yet they are judged as some how less deserving because they are working class –little more than ‘chavs.’
Let’s not forget, Wayne Rooney didn’t start the banking crisis. That wasn’t people in tracksuits, it was people in bespoke designer suits. I think it’ll be a long time before we get a future Prime Minister that ever worried about paying their mortgage after redundancy, or who worried over their bairn’s downgraded results in 2020.
As me grandad once said of the London overlords of all stripes and political persuasions “divvn’t let them tell you hard work’s a privilege – ‘cos if that were true, they’d tek it off you!”
What’s changed, pets?