{"id":5651,"date":"2017-10-06T12:26:54","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T10:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5651"},"modified":"2017-10-06T12:29:18","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T10:29:18","slug":"middle-class-snobbery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/5651\/","title":{"rendered":"Middle-Class Snobbery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rob makes the following remark<\/a> in the comments at Tim Worstall’s:<\/p>\n

It is the classic upper middle-class disdain and snobbery for everyone else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A couple of years back I realised that this middle-class snobbery is what drives so much social and political campaigning these days. Probably the best example is the campaign to reduce sugar in people’s diets – for their own good, of course. It is always fizzy drinks and sugary snacks that get cited, never fancy desserts. This is because it’s the plebs who eat the former, whereas the working classes don’t order profiteroles in metropolitan eateries nor buy Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks. Rarely is disdain for the lower-classes more stark than a multi-millionaire mascot of Sainsbury’s criticising children’s pack lunches and school meals for being unhealthy and causing obesity, while flogging pricey recipe books which cause Tate & Lyle’s share price to shoot up with every release.<\/p>\n

The middle-classes seeking to restrict or outlaw food which the lower-classes enjoy is merely a variation of the vicar’s wife lecturing the poor on good housekeeping. But at least the vicar’s wife probably did keep her own house in order. Can the same be said for today’s modern food-puritans? Well, they’ll be sure to tell you that little Tarquin only eats organic apples and Mummy makes sure he gets only ethically-sourced kumquat juice, but I bet in reality the little shit is the one who chooses what he eats, when, and how much. So sure, the lower-classes might sit around a bucket of KFC but the mothers are unlikely to have nightly debates with their toddler who is “a fussy eater” and hence “simply won’t eat” bread unless it has Nutella on, and I doubt you see brats throwing tantrums in the aisles of Iceland over what’s for dinner like you do in Waitrose.<\/p>\n

I’d be a lot more forgiving of middle-class snobbery if they showed some self-awareness once in a while.<\/p>\n

(Just for Theo: sure, not all the middle-classes are food-puritans; but all the snobbish food-puritans are middle-class, and they’re driven by class-snobbery.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob makes the following remark in the comments at Tim Worstall’s: It is the classic upper middle-class disdain and snobbery for everyone else. A couple of years back I realised that this middle-class snobbery is what drives so much social … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[102],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5651"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5654,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5651\/revisions\/5654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}