Tea Time in an Astin Martin, A Year in London, England.: Me and my life in England

Me and my life in England

Blog post: 2

Author: Dardan Badivuku

Hello blog! Its Dardan again and I’m bringing you another great blog about me and my life in England. These last days I have been relaxing with both my school friends and my new family that actually brings out something of what I am going to talk about. My school friends! Well, were they are from.

My school-friends at Paddington Academy, aka the best school ever!! Are first of all amazing, they treat me great and I can feel like my self when I’m with them. As all of my blog readers know is that I attend Paddington Academy at great, big London. Well, back to the case! My friends, or mostly of my school-friends are from many several countries and the School just brings out many several cultural backgrounds , witch also is one of the reason we chose to attend Paddington, we (me and my boy Are) thought that we could fit in, because we are just like the others, with different backgrounds and a lot of different cultural traits, for an example my self, I am from Norway (obviously..) and I have many cultural moves that I my self brought from Norway, while my friend Jack who is from Canada have other cultural features than my self, so even thought we all, or again mostly of us are from different countries, we fit together into a whole new society with a lot of differences and similarities with the British traits. So I would say that my school has an huge influence on some of the multiculturalism that rules some parts of England through the later years.

So as I said England have throughout the later years had an huge influence by the multiculturalism, witch now have settled for generations and will keep on settling, so we could today say that the UK has become a melting pot of different cultures, especially after the colonies became independent. In London schools, there are now children with over 160 different mother tongues. Including my own school as I have mentioned a couple of times so far. Actually the minority ethnic population is 4.6 million people, 7.9% of the total population. About half of the non-white population was born in the UK. Despite democratic ideals and anti-racist laws, the country has not yet solved the problems of a multicultural society, but so far today people can easily immigrate to the UK. The emigration to the UK have only gotten bigger throughout the years, today the country with most emigrants to the UK is the Indians, Pakistan and Asians, mostly from China, but even thought so many countries are affecting UK, it still has it own, great traditionalism that could symbolize the country in a way.

England or actually the whole UK have many traditions that stands them from other countries around the world. We have many underthems that can go under the category traditionalism, but I chose to talk about the class consciousness. We could first off all start off by splitting England in what we call “the Great Divide” this separates the north side with the south site, actually these to sides have so many differences they could have been to different countries. So as I said the English often talk about the Great Divide between the North and the South. There are many differences in culture and attitudes. Whereas northerners are seen as being more open, talkative and sociable, southerners are considered more withdrawn, treating strangers politely and correctly, and I will know look further inn to it.

The North of England or also called the industrial North. The north is called this because of their hard times with many different industrials, for an example with coal factory, mine factories and also the textile mills. They were then often overworked and underpaid and lived in crowded conditions in the smoky, industrial cities. Liverpool was once a port employing tens of thousands of men, loading and unloading ships trading with Britain's colonies and North America. Later on, or since the 1970’s the North of England has experienced a heavy economic recession. The majority of the coalmines closed, and Britain no longer had automatic access to cheap raw materials, as it had long since lost all its colonies. This have again led to that the unemployment that ruled the north before have slowly disappeared. This shows and tells some of the way you could spot if a guy is from the north, we now know that the northern are from the industrial classes and needs to work , but since we have learned about the northern side, we also need to see the southern side and see if there are any similarities or differences.

The south aka the place I live!!! Is the greatest place ever (just kidding). The South of England is renowned for farming, modern technology and economics. Many of the new industries, such as high technology and service industries, have developed here. It is also the area most visited by foreign tourists, mainly because of London. The capital city. This means that the Southern people of England dress much more “fashionable” (don’t know the word to explain it) and that they are the people of England that are more into them self, unlike the northern who are more talkative and open to strangers. The southern have the newest technology and economics, even thought the northern part have reached the southern sites through the years, but even though the great divide divides the northern and southern part , we could still divide the whole people living in England into 7 different classes. Before there where 3 different classes, but throughout the years they have grown up four more classes, seven in total. These seven different classes will be describes in a table below, and you could also take a test to see what class you are, so lets look at the different classes. These different classes basically symbolizes what class you are in the English society.

1. THE ELITE

Percentage of population: Six
Average age: 57

Most privileged group with savings of more than £140,000 and top university education. Their income is £89,000 and their home is worth an average of £325,000. They enjoy the theatre, art galleries, museums and jazz.

2. ESTABLISHED MIDDLE CLASS

Percentage of population: 25
Average age: 46

Second wealthiest and largest group, with household income of £47,000 a year, a house worth £177,000 and savings of £26,000. A quarter of the population fall within its ranks and it might be seen as the comfortably-off bulwark of British society.

3. TECHNICAL MIDDLE CLASS

Percentage of population: Six
Average age: 52

Prosperous but with little interest in social or cultural events. It makes up only six per cent of the population but is prosperous – earning around £38,000, with excellent household savings of £66,000 and houses worth an average of £163,000.

4. NEW AFFLUENT WORKERS

Percentage of population: 15
Average age: 44

Young group on moderate incomes, owning homes worth £129,000 with small savings. They prefer playing and watching sport, computer games and social networking to traditional pastimes. Few have been to university but most work in private sector.

5. TRADITIONAL WORKING CLASS

Percentage of population: 14
Average age: 66

Oldest group, with house values of £127,000 but with incomes of only £13,000. There are few graduates and traditional working class jobs like lorry drivers, cleaners and electricians are over-represented as are menial white-collar jobs like secretaries.

6 .EMERGENT SERVICE WORKERS

Percentage of population: 19
Average age: 34

New, young urban group with modest household income of £21,000, likely to rent and only having modest savings. They work usually in the service sector, for example, bar work, chefs, customer service occupations and call centre workers.

7. THE PRECARIAT

Percentage of population: 15
Average age: 50

The poorest class, with a household income of only £8,000, negligible savings, and likely to rent. Most deprived on all measures including social and cultural. They represent 15 per cent of the population and tend to be located in old industrial areas.

Here are all the different classes that today are included in the English society, these have seperated the English classes that earlier ruled in England.