The 2024 film Saltburn focuses on university classism
OK. Then they use this piccie (here shown in The Guardian).
Which shows someone in black tie – an already tied black tie! – with a wing collar.
Good grief, they letting Americans in these days or something?
I went to a provincial public school and a Russell Group university. The bulk of my friends there came from comps and with a range of backgrounds, from leafy Cotswolds to Bradford estates. Quite a few schoolmates went to St Andrews and mentioned the high hooray quota there. However, I never came across anyone mocked for their social background (in either direction) at any university.
I am not saying the article is untrue by the way. We live in a much more divided and polarised society and it is entirely the fault of the sort of wankers who “provide accent training” at universities and who encourage victimhood and ever-greater subdivisions of people by class/race/sex/sexuality etc etc. In the same way, we didn’t have the endless wanking about race and racism in the 90s and we all (regardless of colour) were better off.
We didn’t have that in the 90s? Really, Marius?
I’m pretty sure Marius is right Julia
By the 90s, racism was circling the drain. “Loony Left” London boroughs were developing exciting new Grievance theories, but everyone else just laughed (which was a mistake).
A striking thing now is to look at old TV shows and similar, and notice just how much “diversity” there was. Nothing forced and nobody noticed.
For some or many on the left these days, EVERYTHING is explained and preordanied by your pigmentation, gender identity and so on.
Hi!
When I was an undergraduate – admittedly aeons ago – I noticed no snobbery bar on one topic. The Scots seemed satisfied to have it confirmed that they had, on the whole, been distinctly better educated than the English. But nobody, as far as I know, was in tears about it.
There was one mystery though. I was lolling about in our Common Room one evening and two blokes approached me. “You are the sort of fellow who might know how to shoot. Would you like to join our team in the intra-mural league?” And so I became a ringer in the Mountaineering Club shooting team.
But, I wondered, how does one distinguish someone who might have done some shooting? Years later my wife suggested that it was because I was rural. But lots of us were rural. Rum.
And anyway I didn’t have straw in my hair.
Good Lord, I almost missed the opportunity to repeat my standard advice as a rural Scot to the English urban working class. “Get off your fucking knees.”
As a decided oik, and former American one at that, I’m afraid I’m missing the point here. Is it the pre-tied black tie? The wing collars? Both of them together?
I thought it focused on wrong’uns getting bummed.
@Philip Scott Thomas – August 15, 2025 at 9:30
It is only correct to wear a wing collar with a white tie – which implies “tails” rather than the less-formal dinner-jacket (I believe our American cousins refer to same as a “tuxedo”), which should be worn with a black tie and normal “dress-shirt”.
Only a complete oik would wear a manufactured pre-tied bow, of either colour, as a gentleman is expected to know how to tie a bow (or his “gentleman’s gentleman” should have the required skill).
HTH.
Only a complete oik would wear a manufactured pre-tied bow, of either colour, as a gentleman is expected to know how to tie a bow (or his “gentleman’s gentleman” should have the required skill).
I’ll settle for wife.
When I was an undergraduate – admittedly aeons ago – I noticed no snobbery bar on one topic. The Scots seemed satisfied to have it confirmed that they had, on the whole, been distinctly better educated than the English.
You can’t claim that now, although none of the home nations having anything to be proud of.
https://datamap-scotland.co.uk/2024/08/scotland-declining-education-attainment-pisa-2022/
Stephen Lawrence
August 15, 2025 at 8:27 am
Hi!
Isn’t it strange how one incident like this can be seen as emblematic of the character of a country, but thousands of knifings and shootings and murders and terror attacks and people calling for other people’s throats to be slit on camera and drill rappers and gang rapes and county lines drug operations are merely anecdotal and prove nothing, other than that we live in a cool and deeply diverse new world and should express our delight about that at every opportunity?
“black tie with a wing collar”
When I was an undergraduate in the ‘90s, the fashion for black tie was to wear it with a wing collar for cocktail parties, but with a normal fold-down collar for dinner (the collar only starched if the dinner was particularly formal).
There was even a brief fashion for cream coloured dress shirts for less formal black-tie dinners, but I don’t think that lasted long.
@ dearieme,
When I went to Primary School in 1951-3 the superiority of Scots education over English state education was widely believed and my experience was compatible with the belief. The English “Preparatory School” I joined in 1953 was superior to either.
Anyone who thinks that “Commoners” looked down on Scholars is Murphy-class ignorant.
“ The 2024 film Saltburn focuses on university classism”
Didn’t Brideshead cover that topic pretty comprehensively?
“You can’t claim that now” No, it took devolved government to bugger up centuries of good education. Me, I’d hang the bastards.
Fiction can be absolute poison which is why it’s better to watch The Avengers, which are just mythical tales. You’re an idiot if you think movies are real life.
Any movie set in Oxford or Harvard will show old buildings, black tie, rowing and all that shit. It will never show the Andrew Wiles building which is 21st century, steel and glass.
The other thing is that there’s massive class differences depending on the school. Art history is basically a waste of money, so you do it if you’re a posh girl. Biochem is useful, can make you a lot of money, so poorer kids do it more. Look at all these politicians who went to Oxford and got a PPE. Oxford sounds impressive but based on their skills at eating bacon sandwiches or figuring out how to win elections, they might have just been making potato paintings.
@Baron Jackfield
Thank you. That was indeed helpful.