Equality: class divide and fear

English culture is my mind has always suffered from too much class dividie.

As a boy growing up in a middle-class liberal atmosphere in the 80s, I was taught that class a historical feature of our culture but we were moving to a less divisive age where the priveleges of the upper classes were being slow removed and that the working and middle classes were intergrating to a large degree "everyone is becoming middleclass". This was the optimism of the time and as a teenager it was a comforting thought. 

It was like everyone had seen and undersood the joke and pettiness of clash riddled world so brillantly played out in the famous "Two Ronnies + John Cleese" sketch on class:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0DUsGSMwZY

(check this out on youtube - it is still very funny)

Unfortunately with constant radio 4 chatter about the growing underclass who have nothing to loose and the "filthy rich" who need incomes of over £1 million per year to sustain their lifestyles, I look back on my optimism of 80s regarding the end of class with a smile.

Still we used to worry more about the cold war and an apocalyptic end? 

apocalyptic |əˌpäkəˈliptik|

adjective

describing or prophesying the complete destruction of the world : the apocalyptic visions of ecologists.

• resembling the end of the world; momentous or catastrophic : the struggle between the two countries is assuming apocalyptic proportions.

• of or resembling the biblical Apocalypse : apocalyptic imagery.

DERIVATIVES

apocalyptically |-ik(ə)lē| |əˈˈpɑkəˈlɪpt1k(ə)li| adverb

ORIGIN early 17th cent. (as a noun denoting the writer of the Apocalypse, St. John): from Greek apokaluptikos, from apokaluptein ‘uncover’ (see apocalypse ).

divisive |diˈvīsiv|

adjective

tending to cause disagreement or hostility between people : the highly divisive issue of abortion.

DERIVATIVES

divisively |dəˈvaɪs1vli| |dɪˈvɪz1vli| adverb

divisiveness |dəˈvaɪsɪvn1s| |dɪˈvɪzɪvn1s| noun

ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (as a noun denoting something that divides or separates): from late Latin divisivus, from Latin dividere (see divide ).