But were they?
A 1973 survey showed that 87.5% of politicians deemed their working-class constituents to be less important than a second family car or having regular bowel movements. The concept of a functioning 'society', of which the working class believed they were a valuable part, when in fact they were little more than consenting serfs, had been invented by an eight-year-old hobby virologist who worked part-time for the government in the Department of Domestic Propaganda.
A fabricated sense of worthiness among the working class also benefited advertisers and therefore the economy. As one Scarfolk sociologist noted:
"When people think they are important they buy expensive continental wines and Custard Cream biscuits, and they won't even notice if they've misplaced one or two of their many children". Indeed, the aforementioned 1970s survey indicates that 78% of adults would have rather lost a child than a biscuit.
Some things never change
ReplyDeleteBut it could apply to the BBC these days as well
Times really have changed so much for the better in the intervening years haven't they?
ReplyDeleteNowadays barely 72% of adults would prefer to lose a child rather than a biscuit.
The only reason this isn't funny is that it's literally, factually true, and describes why we have shitty travesties like "I'm a Celebrity", and nobody is actually reading any great literature: they assume there will be a dumbed-down remake made every 3 years, which they can wait for, and Cumberbatch will be in it, so they can spazz about his dick size on Tumblr. It's really the depressing end of the world. You ought to go back to obvious parody, like children murdering people, which isn't happening yet-- OH WAIT OH NO.
ReplyDeleteThe reasons you gave are why it is funny.
DeleteWe won some soap! Or...it might have been the next week's issue of TV times?
ReplyDeleteDid get a letter replied to from that Fix-It Jimell, it said I was too old and Scarfolk didn't have the sort of hospital he liked? I wanted a go in an Army Tank not a hospital?
That's a Datsun Aspiration 6Z on the cover. Brown tombstone seats, three rear cigarette lighters and no ash-trays, 3rd gear came after 4th as I remember, and it tended to buckle in the rain.
ReplyDeleteThere were never any cars on the roads when I grew up, then there were more, then they had to ship more roads in and we were suspicious because they might harbour Colorado Beetle or Caravan Blight.
The 6Z was well inoculated so we felt safe, but I once saw a Ford Suitcase GLX rotting in a lay-by because the van it was pulling had the blight. Didn't get its jabs.
Was the 6Z the one with the exhaust on the inside? We had an Austin Clacton in draylon which ran on silver top. Built in passenger sick-bags. The higher spec included a dansette but we couldn't afford it.
ReplyDeleteSorry, didn't notice you there. They've just discovered gravity waves but the past is still a foreign country. (And good riddance. We don't need it over here. Keep it THERE. Where it BELONGS.) Anyway, the Clacton should have been fed gold top and nothing else. Silver was folly. The internal exhaust was only meant for salesmen. No objections here. I think the sick bags were a joke by bored designers. Dansette did a model called the UOX, which sounds just like a Belgian chorister hurling out of a chapel into a gale. Anyway, if you still have that Clacton put it in a furnace. 3423 were recalled because of possessed.
DeleteInterestingly, the past wouldn't be a foreign country if Heath had had his way and taken the UK (apart from Northern Ireland) into a controversial partnership known as the Economy of Earlier Centuries. There was a celebratory set of Green Shield stamps prepared and ready for issue when disagreement over the wording of oaths of fealty for serfs within the newly created Unitary Metropolitan Manors caused the government into an embarrassing volte-face and also the abandonment of the project to build a Time Tunnel* and a joint-era dirigible known as Cankered.
Delete*The TV series was originally to have been an instructional film with voice over by John Cleese. Not to be confused with The Tomorrow People which was a short-lived attempt to improve the freshness of milk by delivering it on the following morning to when it was consumed.
Hi ho ho
ReplyDeleteI foolishly left my biscuits in charge of my 3.75 children and have now lost them all. At least I still have my bottle of extensively purchased consequential wine. Hmmm vinegar...
ReplyDeleteI need someone posh to explain this to me
ReplyDeleteI have a spare 3.75 children. Will swap for milk chocolate hobnobs (other McVities' confectionery considered).
ReplyDelete