28th February

Has the old class system changed?

Britain's class structure loosened after the Second World War. The landed aristocracy became relatively poorer, the number of people in manual work decreased, and the 1944 Education Act opened universities to more children whose parents could not afford private education. Television knocked down some of the cultural barriers between classes. In the 1960s, there was the famous Frost Report sketch featuring John Cleese in a bowler hat, Ronnie Barker in a cheap suit and Ronnie Corbett in a cloth cap, satirising the way people dressed and spoke according to how they perceived their social status.

But even as that sketch was broadcast, the social stigma attached to speaking with a working-class or regional accent was breaking down. Middle-class teenagers were swept up in Beatlemania just as much as their working-class contemporaries, and in 1965 a former grammar school boy, Edward Heath, succeeded the former 14th Earl of Home as leader of the Conservative Party.

Now, even if the Tory leader is an old Etonian, he likes to be known as "Dave" and to be seen not wearing a tie. This fad for the trappings of downward mobility was brilliantly captured in a 1984 TV advertisement for Heineken, featuring a School of Street Credibility where a tutor is struggling to teach an upper-class girl – Eliza Doolittle in reverse – to drop the "t" from "water" and to sound the "j" in "Majorca".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-big-question-has-the-divide-between-britains-social-classes-really-narrowed-989660.html  (28/2/13)

This article is looking at some of the reasons for the changes in the social classes order and why they have become more equal overtime, this article suggests that the main reasons are the impact that television and the media had on us as well as the second world war leading to the higher classes loosing money and things forcing them to go to the same schools as the lower class this forced them into becoming more equal and having better understandings for people. I think that it is also suggesting that now unlike in the past people don’t always want to be referred to as their titles and they want to make a name for themselves and want to start from the bottom so that they can feel they too have got themselves somewhere in live. These days it is too expensive to not work because you have a title. This Article was for the Independent about four years for the independent newspaper. the government want to show that they are running an equal society and this article is trying to back them up with the facts. 

http://ashleaturner.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/social-class.html (28/2/2013)

This picture shows that they may not be more merged there have become more categories that the people can fit into. it shows that although there are many differences between both times the working class always has the most people in it and dominants the different social classes. 

Today we thought about what our aims are for this project and what are goals are. I think that i want my audience to be for a newspaper article looking at a debate on the reasons and differences for social classes to change over the years or something to do with social classes over time. I think that i want to write an article stressing to people that they should not judge someone on thier class and that class shouldn’t have as big an impact on people explaining how it used to be and what it can change into giving examples of past, present and what it may be like for the future. I will try and convince people that we need all classes in order to work together.