The English

Or, Britons, to taste:

The Zetland estates were acquired in the 18th century by Sir Lawrence Dundas, scion of a long-established Scots family, who became the chief merchant-adventurer of his day. Having made a fortune supplying bread and forage to allied troops in Germany during the Seven Years’ War, he bought swathes of land in Sligo, Roscommon, Fife, Stirlingshire, Clackmannanshire, Orkney, Shetland, Hertfordshire and Yorkshire, where Aske Hall, near Richmond, remains the family seat.
…
Dubbed “the Nabob of the North”, Dundas became among the country’s largest landowners, but despite his best endeavours he never obtained a peerage – he was a mere baronet by the time he died in 1781.

His son, though, was made Baron Dundas in 1794, his grandson rose to Earl of Zetland (an ancient variant of Shetland), and the 3rd earl became a marquess in 1892.

Spivvy lad* becomes vastly wealthy.

But he does not become a Lord, ho no, merely a Bt. The son becomes a Lord, the grandson an Earl and the gg grandson a Marquess having been a government minister and all that.

You’re not a real nob until the money has matured, see?

*You do not make a fortune out of military logistics without being spivvy.

It’s far from easy being a northerner in spaces and places where the default identity is southern. Still, we survive.

In ways many and varied. When I moved to London after university, I found myself further eradicating traces of the broad vowels my family and friends at home all had. I felt a need to blend in, to not stand out. A lot of this was subconscious, driven probably by various mean comments I had encountered during my lifetime, whether directed at me or not. Sometimes, the slights were indirect: hearing people put on a northern accent, for example, to do an impression of someone stupid or unsophisticated. Other times they were very direct, like all the comments about how “racist northerners” caused Brexit.

If we allow you the opportunity to escape from that void, that nothingness, to the civilisation that exists south of the A4 then of course you should adapt to your new environment. That’s the whole point, you are being exposed to civilisation, a life of value and worth, for the first time. Why else would you make the weary trudge from howling wasteland to the England that is and was?

Just to remind about London, the A4 is the Marylebone Road. You’re not actually achieving the aim and goal unless you’re south of that. Yes, this does mean Islington is still The North – which explains those who live there.

The new year got off to an anticlimactic start for hundreds of people in Birmingham who were tricked into attending a non-existent New Year’s Eve fireworks display. Again.

Crowds of revellers gathered in the city’s Centenary Square, hoping to catch a glimpse of a pyrotechnics display to welcome in 2026.

They were left disappointed, however, after they discovered no display would be taking place and that they had fallen victim to false news spread online.

A similar incident happened last year, when thousands of people gathered in the city centre after claims online promised a spectacular display with food vendors and performances.

Not to be elitist, culturalist, or anything but they’ve not exactly got a reputation for crafty and bright – like Cockneys – do they?

What was your childhood home like?
We moved into a prefab in 1948, when I was six, on a rodent-infested street [in Tredegar, a town in south Wales].

Calling the Welsh rats like that…..

Country folk have a new reason to hate Londoners: drivers from the capital are significantly more likely to be involved in collisions on rural roads.
A survey of 2,000 motorists found that 38 per cent of those from the capital had been in a crash on a country road, compared with 23 per cent of the general population.

Londoners actually driving in London move at an average pace of 8 milles an hour or whatever. They’re thus unable to cope with speeds of about a determined stride out.

Starmer to unveil digital ID cards in plan set to ignite civil liberties row
‘Brit card’ already facing opposition from privacy campaigners as government looks for ways to tackle illegal immigration

A “Brit” card would be the most un-English thing ever. And yes, I do mean un-English. Who cares what the Celts think?

It took only a term at Oxford to lose my Grimsby accent
It’s freshers week and thousands of young people are about to sound very different. By Kate Bunn

That’s why he took a stack of George Formby records with him to listen to. So that the socialist revolutionary would not lose his oik accent.

One of those stories just far, far, too good to bother to check despite there being echoes of it further back in history related to other lumpen determined to remain so.

It’s probably true that a party worker shouldn’t be saying such things about an old girlfriend of the party leader.

A particularly vibrant game of fuck, marry, kill, is also something I don’t think is misogynistic nor, wholly, a capital crime requiring the execution of a public career. But maybe that’s just me.

Sure, sure, it’s not particularly erudite and it’s certainly not polite but in the list of potential sins it’s really pretty venial. We are, after all, English, the defining feature of us has long been noted as being that we take the piss out of everything and use the rather base language and habits of Anglo Saxon to do so.

The organisers of the Great North Run have apologised after finisher T-shirts and medals were printed with a map of rival north-east city Sunderland instead of Newcastle.

About 60,000 people took part in the half marathon on Sunday, running 13.1 miles from the centre of Newcastle, across the River Tyne, and through Gateshead, finishing by the coast in South Shields.

After receiving their finishers’ merchandise, runners noticed that the river on their T-shirts and medals matched the shape of the north-east’s other famous river and not Newcastle’s Tyne.

While the map on the medal has been printed with the words “Newcastle”, “Gateshead”, and “South Shields”, they appear to have been overlaid on to a map of Sunderland’s streets, shown either side of the River Wear.

They’ve actually gone to the trouble of giving names to different parts of it, have they? That void, the beyond the A4. Still, I suppose it comforts them in their sad acceptance that they are not of civilisation, to pretend that any one part of the morass is distinguishable from any other.

Pity, not hate, is the correct reaction among us gentle folk. Look how they try to ape us….

A failure to ensure that white working-class children succeed is holding back Britain, the Education Secretary has said.

Ahead of GCSE results day on Thursday, Bridget Phillipson warned that four-fifths of children from white working-class backgrounds were falling short in the English and maths skills required to get on in life.

A little-discussed aspect of the British class system — which, thankfully, everyone has stopped pretending doesn’t still exist — is that one doesn’t have to be pure bred. The categories aren’t as rigid as you think. It’s not just “underclass, working class, middle class, posh”. You can be a hybrid of these classes — like a human cockapoo, or a griffin.

For example: David Beckham. Sir David Beckham now — and, therefore, a member of the most upper. Even without his title, David Beckham’s adult life is like that of a prince or a king. Multiple houses, private yachts and jets, and the financial freedom to do pretty much whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Indeed, Beckham — estimated fortune, together with his wife, £500 million — is much, much richer than either the King of Belgium (€12.4 million, or £10.6 million) or the King of Spain (only €2.6 million, apparently, although he does have access to a lot of palaces, which must be a comfort).

And yet recently, when dining at the Michelin-starred Core by Clare Smyth in Notting Hill, London, Sir David eschewed the seven-course £255 menu and requested a pie — served with Bisto. Made from instant granules. £2.95 from Sainsbury’s.

At this moment, I hope we can all observe that while Beckham isn’t financially or materially working class any more, he is still, in some aspects, culturally working class.

This isn’t a little discussed aspect of class in England. It’s the heart and the core of class in England and always has been. The very centre of most comedies of manners for example.

Sheesh, and in The Times too. Tempora, mores etc etc eheu.

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?

Two friends have accused an Airbnb host of “xenophobia” after they were rejected for a room booking because they were Welsh.

Jemma Louise Gough, 38, and Jamie Lee Watkins, 37, had been trying to book an £83 double room for one night at the property in Manchester.

No Welsh within the walls overnight.

Or was that Chester, without the Man bit?

The usually tranquil roads were busy as guests arrived in Mercedes vans at the small medieval parish church of St Michael and All Angels in Great Tew. Nine bridesmaids, including Jessica Springsteen, daughter of Bruce and a show-jumping champion, wore crimson gowns to match the 5ft balls of roses decorating the outside of the church.

As any student of Britain knows, class doesn’t change in hte one generation. Over three it definitely does. Two sometimes.

True, true, this is an American but the same rule applies.

Alan Sugar is indeed a Lord and very very rich. It’s his grandkids who are going to marry Viscounts etc.

A bonfire in Northern Ireland topped with a model migrant dinghy and a sign reading “stop the boats” has been set alight as police investigate the display as a hate crime.

The correct answer is “Fuck off”. Even, fuck right off.

They used to burn effigies of the Pope at these things after all.

People writing about class in England without understanding class in England:

The idea that the gentry is a fallen group is perhaps based on an optimistic misconception about what you have to do to remain rich in modern capitalist societies. In fact, you can live off existing wealth. But it’s more than that. If we were to look at the richest 1% through time, we might see families dipping in and out of the group: a wealthy CEO passes money to their children, who remain in the top echelon; but their grandchildren perhaps then fall out of it. Among the aristocracy, though, family lines have managed to sustain themselves in the 1% over many generations. Why? After all, the titled few have just as much, or as little, control over how their children turn out as other wealthy people. Why is it that aristocratic wealth persists and other types often burn out?

Bond and Morton have two possible answers, both of which concern cultural traditions. One is that members of this group are particularly concerned with their dynastic reputation, which prompts them to keep assets together rather than split them between multiple inheritors. The other is that they have a long history of managing money. We think of this group as being out of touch and out of time. “In fact, they are canny wealth managers,” says Morton. “The image of the bumbling aristocrat is false.”

It’s because the aristos marry money.

Alan Sugar is indeed a peer but he’s not an aristo. His grandchildren probably will marry into the aristocracy – or at least the county gentry. Because that’s what the aristos do – marry into money in order to get that roof replaced.

How anyone could observe British class and not note the influx of American brides in the Victorian era is just an absurdity. The bird got the title, Daddy who makde the money got a grandson who would be a Marquis and the roof got repaired.

The aristos haven’t “maintained” their fortunes. They’ve married money without class over the generations. Each side selling what they’ve got.

Sheesh.

But to successive Labour, Tory and coalition UK governments, the Barnett largesse is regarded as the ‘Union dividend’ which helps Scotland remain a key part of the United Kingdom.

Ditching what is seen as this “Barnett bounty” for Scotland – due to reach £50 billion this year – would, say Reform’s critics, be a boost for the SNP and its perpetual demand for independence.

David Mundell, the former Conservative Scottish Secretary, said: ‘This proves that Reform isn’t a Unionist Party, instead it’s a populist party that wouldn’t stand up for the Union.”

As I keep saying, let the English have a vote and they’d be gone by lunchtime.

Please don’t ask me to tolerate them, understand them, accommodate them, or sympathise with why they feel as they do. I won’t. No one should. I live my life seeking to love my neighbour as myself, which I think is a pretty good way to approach the obligation to all others, whether a person follows a faith or does not. Reform and those who support it oppose that idea. They do, as a result, oppose the whole tradition of thinking that has supposedly underpinned our society for around fifteen centuries.

The desire to overthrow the essence and culture of a society to fundamentally change the norms of behaviour within it is what defines extremism. That is why the far-right is properly described as such. That is why Germany has got this right with regard to the AfD. That is why Reform should also be named as such here in the UK.

The, err, 15 centuries of essence of culture was that our neighbours were those from around us. We looked very askance at Celts let alone Frogs over that time. Muttering something about illiterate goatherders from the Hindu Kush is, in fact, very English, pretty much the essence of that 1500 years of that culture. Even, to note that as individuals wholly welcome, waves not so much.

You know, there were a few centuries of kerfluffle about Willy the Bastard and all that?

Now that she’s a Baroness as well as a Dame and also the widow of a knight she’s, what?

Dame Margaret, Lady Hodge, Lady Hodge

No?

Bristol has one of the country’s lowest birthrates. Here’s why

Imagine, if you can manage the horror, living in Bristol. You look at the environment around you and decide you want to bring new life into this?

Quite, quite, all is explained.