Snobbery nobbery
The absurdities of life in the UK occupy many columns in TNC, and today is no exception. We are witnessing outbreaks of abject stupidity in some of our formerly cherished institutions, for example the ancient universities and the police where there is such fragility and over-sensitivity it is a wonder they function at all.
There is a scene near the end of Mel Brooks’s sublime spoof of the Robin Hood story, Robin Hood: Men in Tights when Robin tells Ahchoo (bless you!), who is black and played by a very young Dave Chappelle, that he will be the first black Sherriff of Nottingham. Blinkin, who is blind and played brilliantly by Mark Blankfield, overhears and says, ‘you mean he’s black?’ They had been travelling together for months and he had no idea.
There is something Men-in-Tights-ish about The University of Edinburgh’s recent seminar, addressed by Principal Sir Peter Mathieson, where he told the predominanty English student body not to be snobbish about the accents of working-class Scottish students attending the university. I could almost see some well-heeled and public-school-educated Anglo Saxons turning towards each other and saying, ‘you mean there are working-class people here?’
The issue of snobbery at The University of Edinburgh has been bubbling under the surface for a few months now. The occasional bubble has burst on the surface with The Spectator reckoning that there was, in fact, a problem of snobbishness against English people. Back in November the BBC reported on the issue saying that the university had, ‘warned students from privileged backgrounds not to be snobs towards their peers from Scottish and working-class backgrounds.’
Part of the problem may be that the university, in a misguided inclusivity drive, is, according to one source, guaranteeing places to people with minimum qualifications for whatever degree they choose if they come from one of the areas designated among the most deprived 20% in Scotland. Whether this has spurred a rush by middle-class parents to seek postcodes in those areas has not yet come to light. Also, it is not clear if the above applies to medicine. But, just in case, it may be wise to ask where your doctor trained, especially if he or she speaks with a broad Scottish accent.
But really, how snobbish are the so-called ‘snobs’ and how pathetic have working-class Scots become if they need to be protected from snobbery? In any case, how effective do the powers that be at The University of Edinburgh think telling someone not to be snobbish will be? Snobs are snobs, they rarely change and so what if they don’t? Out there in the biggest and widest of worlds wee Jeanie and big Archie from the arse end of Scotland will encounter plenty of snobs, and there will be nobody telling them not to be snobbish.
Police flakes
Perhaps the College of Policing will include ‘being snobbish’, ‘displaying snobbish tendencies’ or ‘threatening to be snobbish’ as non-crime hate incidents, and subsequently waste shifts tracking snobbishness. That is, if they have any time left after arresting and charging people for silent prayers, trawling through the social media accounts of people of interest and checking their thinking, arresting parents critical of their local authority schools and finding creative ways to avoid investigating robberies, muggings and shoplifting.
In news that appeared to be about five days late for April Fool’s day, it transpires that our thin blue line represented by those stalwarts in ‘The Met’ is to be protected from the danger of spinning images and loud noises in PowerPoint presentations. The reason given is that the images can trigger episodes of epilepsy and the loud noises – bangs in particular – could trigger a heart attack.
It begs the question of how loud a bang can be in a PowerPoint? And who has been using spinning images in their presentations? PowerPoint 101 dictates the avoidance of gimmicks and minimal use of moving images. PowerPoint has incredible facilities but, as a lecturer I learned, we did not have to feel obliged to use them all. Clear and simple text and images are the best way to convey information and to avoid overload. It sounds like The Met needs to hire some better teachers.
Presumably the guidance has been issued to London’s underworld not to create any loud bangs during a robbery or murder but to do it as quietly as possible lest, on the very few occasions when the police turn up to investigate, one of them gets a fright. Mind you, some of the coppers I’ve seen in recent years are several bacon sandwiches the wrong side of obesity. They look like a heart attack waiting to happen so, maybe it is better to be safe than sorry.
Meantime…
In parts of the world facing actual existential threats, Christians are having their heads cut off in Syria, bombs rain down on Gaza and hundreds, if not thousands, are dying daily in Ukraine. In these outbreaks of extreme snobbishness and loud bangery they must read the headlines in the UK press and wonder what kind of country we have become.
(Photograph: Chrysi Chrysochou, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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When I knew Edinburgh yonks ago the only snobbery that was bleedin’ obvious was that of the Scots who knew “fine well” that they had had, on the whole, a distinctly better schooling than the English youngsters.
That was long before the wonders of devolved government buggered up centuries of excellence.