Amongst the bundle of Saturday papers on the breakfast table this morning there is a supplement from the Guardian this morning called 'Do Something'.
It is a series of articles of things people can try out over a weekend - write a short story, do archery, or be a silversmith - or a printer. Obviously the last one got my attention.
It is a series of articles of things people can try out over a weekend - write a short story, do archery, or be a silversmith - or a printer. Obviously the last one got my attention.
Am I alone in finding it slightly nauseating that middle class people can now play at things that working class people used to be paid for ?
The same middle class people who in their own working lives as corporate managers and marketing parasites have overseen de-skilling and off-shoring of these activities as jobs that ordinary people can actually make a living from. The same middle class people who would never dream of their own children pursuing one of these trades rather than go to university.
I know my response is emotional and irrational. It's good to some extent that these skills are being kept alive in some way. But I do resent the belittling and disrespectful implication that the skills and values that took a time-served tradesman four or even seven years to develop are now reduced to a leisure activity to amuse people with too much time on their hands.
Much as I also find it disrespectful when uber Tory-toff Kirsty Allsop presents a TV series encouraging yuppies homeowners to create a 'Homemade Home' by showing how in truth there is nothing to all those skilled trades and services that the middle class once paid the working classes to perform for them.
2 comments:
Good post. Someone ought to respond to this stuff.
Love to see these middle class hobbyists scraping ice off the roof tiles on a building site in January, on a scaffolding in pissing rain, or attempting a temporary repair to a burst gas main on your knees in mud.
Very true, who but a compositor who has served his five years, and I have my apprenticeship papers to prove mine, and I have my City and Guilds qualification to suppliement my apprenticeship. Who would know what a thick, thin, is who would know what a Em is, and wether that is dido or non, and of course there is the dogs cock and other terms that a true printer would know. The computer has a lot to answer for in killing some trades, mind you I dont mind not having black hands any more from where you use to proof the type, and then clean it off with something like petrol or some other spirit.
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