g***@gmail.com
2017-11-26 18:56:34 UTC
Has this verbal disease infected British politicians?
In Canada, pols at all levels refer constantly and exclusively to "the middle class" when advertising their wares. Even those backing a controversial hydro dam project talk about "middle class jobs" ---- e.g. truck drivers, drillers, concrete placers.
Whereas US media and pols do sometimes refer to the working class, and US sociologists concede there is an "underclass", Canada appears to be inhabited solely by the middle class.
The irony in Canada is that Justin Trudeau's family and wider kin would be privately outraged if someone called them middle class. Justin inherited Pierre's Mercedes 300SL and promptly spent $400,000 on restoring it.
The other mealy-mouthed phrase is "hard working Canadians", which is rather spiteful to the million-plus who wish to work and have no job. Of course the term is meant to turn the rancour of those working two and three part-time temp jobs on minimum wage towards the unemployed, rather than towards a system that continually removes full-time jobs and replaces them with precarious employment.
\
Comments from the Old Country, about how these issues are phrased in the UK?
In Canada, pols at all levels refer constantly and exclusively to "the middle class" when advertising their wares. Even those backing a controversial hydro dam project talk about "middle class jobs" ---- e.g. truck drivers, drillers, concrete placers.
Whereas US media and pols do sometimes refer to the working class, and US sociologists concede there is an "underclass", Canada appears to be inhabited solely by the middle class.
The irony in Canada is that Justin Trudeau's family and wider kin would be privately outraged if someone called them middle class. Justin inherited Pierre's Mercedes 300SL and promptly spent $400,000 on restoring it.
The other mealy-mouthed phrase is "hard working Canadians", which is rather spiteful to the million-plus who wish to work and have no job. Of course the term is meant to turn the rancour of those working two and three part-time temp jobs on minimum wage towards the unemployed, rather than towards a system that continually removes full-time jobs and replaces them with precarious employment.
\
Comments from the Old Country, about how these issues are phrased in the UK?