THE INDEPENDENT: In this anti-elitist age, snobbery seems ridiculously outmoded. But, argues John Walsh, there's an awful lot of it about ...Like a duchess unwarily revealing her pants to the world's gaze, Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister, reportedly let slip a tiny flash of bigotry. He was talking to Boris Johnson about whether there should be more airports when he allegedly said: "We don't want more people from Sheffield flying away on cheap holidays."
Instantly, he revealed himself as a ridiculously old-fashioned snob – the kind who assumes that Northerners are whippet-owning paupers, that the poor should be persuaded to stay in their place, and that cheap holidays are less acceptable than expensive ones in Letwina, or wherever the minister goes in August.
The besetting sin of snobbery is that it reduces people, places, things and behaviour to one dimension, which can be despised without further thought (Kate Moss – common; Birmingham – ghastly; Saturday TV – vulgar; brown shoes worn in town – not done.) With luck they will live, and converse, with other snobs who agree with their views, so they can share conspiratorial shrieks about Kate Middleton's family background or Osborne & Little wallpaper. Sometimes, though, they'll misjudge their audience (to be fair, Letwin was speaking to a fellow Old Etonian) and the cat will be out of the bag. » | John Walsh | Tuesday, April 05, 2011
My comment:
This excellent article sums it all up perfectly. Thank you! The British have cornered the market in snobbery, I'm afraid. There's no snob like a British snob. The English, in particular, are past masters at the silly little game. Nowhere else in the world – and I have worked in a few countries – have I observed snobbery as bad as in the UK. By the way, looking at that photo of Oliver Letwin, it's hard to see what he has to be snobbish about! – © Mark
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