I'm working class, have a middle class job and above average income. I'm 40 now and still can't afford to buy a house. Britain is an incredibly unequal country.
My ol man was working class, got a uni scholarship (50s Ireland) worked two years as postman before going, so he had money and wasn’t a drain on the family - anyway, he always said middle class was a lie - ‘if you have to get up and work, you’re working class’. Unless you do nothing, shares, property, wealth, you’re really working class. The right will tell a person in an office on £40k, that they’re like them. They are in their whole. Last - Liam Cunningham worked as an electrician for my Da - wanted to quit his job and become an actor. Da advised him not to and worried for him - google Liam ❤️👍🏽👍☘️
The previous Duke of Westminster, when asked how he became so wealthy, replied that he was fortunate to have an ancestor very close to William the Conqueror.
@@JJLAReacts Many of these families have been exceptionally wealthy for a thousand years, and likely have lived in the same "house" for most of it. Not that hard to keep track of if you still live in your history.
Hey JJLA. I was watching a bit of your video yesterday and I picked up that you weren't 100%. Today's video just confirms it. You've got stuff going on. I'd recommend going and sitting in a garden with a good friend and talking through things or just chatting breeze (either will help). Stay safe.
He's wrong about England never having beheaded any kings. Charles I was executed in 1649 after the English Civil Wars. I understand why the video left this out as didn't have the same legacy as say France 140 years later, however it did begin the brief period when England (and Scotland, and Wales reluctantly) was a republic. This ended in 1660 with the restoration of Charles I son Charles II as King. What did change however was one of the early stepping stones to what the video describes, the beginning of the shift towards 'Constitutional Monarchy' whereby although the monarch retained ultimate constitutional power, the actual executive and legislative power lay with Parliament, and as you move into the 1700s increasingly with the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords.
The entire video was full of historical inaccuracies and factual events presented totally outside their normal context. The creator lacks historical understanding but because of how confidently they present their video people will defend him as being good.
So now I’m gonna need you to react to some/all of Horrible Histories. A British institute and you were laughing at the clips used in this, so you’d love it. I’d pay to watch Horrible Histories with you, especially the songs. You’d love the songs
JJ, thank you for doing this reaction, and thank you for your candour and empathy. I'm currently living as one of the underclass in the U.K. I'm coping, but things are tight, I have been worse off so, I look on it as acceptable, unfortunately due to ill health I am no longer able to work, but not severe enough to get a lot of benefit, I'm due to retire in just over two years so, I'm biding my time until then.
Love that you're looking into Jimmy's videos and educating yourself on how unfathomably rigid the British class system is. The Brits are romantasized as being this high class, posh society but that's the image history has given the world. In reality, we're one of the most unequal societies that has ever existed and life here is completely unfair for millions upon millions of people. Thanks for listening!
I like JTG and mostly agree with what he puts out. I think it's part of a wider global movement of "the rich" trying to segregate themselves further - yes, there's huge inequality in the UK, but it's not just here :/
The class difference is imo smaller in the uk because the wealth difference is smaller and you dont have many people homeless or living without clean drinking water, we all have and use NHS health care, local cheap food stores, decent public transport and decent benefits system, we all get 6 weeks off work, 1 year maternity, student loans are fair even posh twats shop at primark these days etc The class divide in the uk is much smaller than the usa imo where some people live without access to health care, transport, clean drinking water, any cheap healthy food, in run down deserted towns and forgotten cities.
@@MikeRees Most of them haha, name me many other countries with clean driking water, universal healthcare, 1 year maternity, fairly generous benefits system, 5.6 weeks paid time off, no confusing taxes under PAYE, fairly cheap car insurance, decent public transport, easy access to supermarkets with affordable meat and vegetables, free channels on the tv/radio even if you dont pay your license. Very generous grants for low income students, i didnt work when i was at uni and was able to party constantly thanks to the free money and my degree was free for the years i was in scotland and fairly affordable at my other uni. Lots of the people i was at uni with were also from lower middle class/working class homes. Our class divide is more cultural than about wealth disparity imo.
I'm from a poor, working class background. I grew up on a council estate. I am one of the fortunate ones who benefited from post-war social mobility. I qualified for a university place when the entire cost of that was a grant from the government, not a loan like it is today, so it never cost me a penny. My degree was technical, so I wasn't a highly paid professional. It took me until I was 40 before I got into a junior management position that paid enough for me to afford to buy my own home - a one bedroom flat (apartment). I was still single at the time. I doubt anyone in a similar job could afford to buy any property nowadays, even on two similar incomes. it was another 10 years and after marriage, so now with two incomes, that we were able to buy a house. It was a further 10 years before I got into middle/upper middle management with a higher income before I considered myself to be free of stress about money. And that was just 6 years before I retired. I still think of myself as working class, although others would probably consider me to be middle class.
In a country as wealthy as the UK, there should be no poverty at all, none! What we need is a universal basic income, but to the well off the idea of sharing the wealth is abhorrent.
And the fact that the rich know how to avoid paying tax by sending their cash to offshore accounts, getting cash through trust fund and dividends. All 'legal' but not really available to the average person.
Where is the incentive to work if everyone is paid enough to exist decently by right? Surely only those who are prevented through circumstances from working should be entitled to support from the state? Some people might actually give up work. Yes, I agree we need minimum wage levels and employment protection but a universal basic income might cause even greater shortages in the labour market than we currently have (one of the pull factors of large-scale immigration).
I think this is the conclusion people come to when they think about it for five seconds and hold a deep seated belief that everyone is scum and if given half the chance everyone would quit their jobs, eat chips and watch TikTok all day. When tested it turns out people like to be useful and that basic income is great but working for more to pay for that bit extra is ambitious and people don’t generally quit. But despite this the five second consideration does win out in debate. Anyone would think we are all ignorant and terrified of giving money to people that might deserve it but aren’t “entitled” to it. The aristocracy are the “non-working class”, remember, the working class are the ones that do most of everything.
There is a good reason why people with higher IQs are more prone to depression... if you can see the world as it truly is, you have to be made of stone not to feel the suffering. Class used to mean behaving in a nice way... those were the old days.
I wish i could turn it off sometimes which sounds cruel but its so heartbreaking seeing and feeling everything .. im not smart i cant articulate my thoughts into sentances but god i feel so much and it keeps me awake all night sometimes.
@@GeekyC.I read the comment you left on this video and I have to say, I completely disagree with your statement here. That was a well thought out, well articulated and heartfelt comment. Don't be so harsh on yourself.
@@alexandertiberius1098 Thank you so much that is very kind of you and means a lot .. its something i beat myself up about a lot so i truly appreciate your comment
I agree with that last lady. Working people are not 'benefits cheats': the employers are, because they don't pay enough for people to live on, which means employees have to rely on benefits to supplement their crap wages...in other words, benefits are indirectly subsidising mean employers who won't pay decent wages. But the employees are blamed.
Second comment, but I think what is depressing about class stuff for Americans is that you're starting to develop a class that essentially replicates the aristocracy. They've got all the land, all the money and all the power. And you're the country that was built on principles that opposed that kind of thing. A Republic slowly creating an aristocracy is awful. It must be dreadful watching that happen to a country you live in and love. America over the last 50 years has changed enormously. Reaganomics and the Patriot Act both did enormous amounts of spiritual harm to the US and it's supposed purpose. Not to downplay recent events. The symptom is not the disease though, and there is something very rotten in the US.
The sadness comes from almost coming into contact with the aristocracy who are only good for their eccentric behaviour and self delusion. Here, have a working class hug x
You also missed the point at 30:40. It isn’t about power and fame or money. David Beckham is incredibly wealthy but working class. Rishi Sunak is incredibly wealthy, (was) incredibly powerful, both are famous - neither are upper class. The class system in Britain is very different from the US and thus isn’t discussed in the same context. People do reference their class to other people because it isn’t a source of shame because it doesn’t reflect your status in life. Working class people can be incredibly rich, famous, powerful but they’re still working class and upper class people can be penniless nobodies but still fundamentally upper class.
Thanks for your explanation - the class system is still very much alive and kicking - it's just that the media 'reveres' celebrity and that's all we see and hear day to day. Regardless of celebrity success, money and/or influence these factors won't allow those people to alter their class. Class is as much about your family history and traceability as anything else. Foreign students sent to be educated in English private schools will be accepted for their money to pay their fees, but those children will never be admitted to our class system however much their parents pay. I would say in general, that's the difference between the US and the UK class system, although the very top tier of the American class system is very much about old money now.
@ absolutely true everything you say but I’ll make a slightly contrarian point about the British class system. I’m an Aussie who’s lived in the uk for years now as does my brother. My sister used to but lives in the US now and has for nearly 2 decades. I was talking to her once and she was opining about the differences between the US and the UK and she made a really interesting observation. She said because class is essentially inbuilt in the UK. You’re born into it, as you say, and nothing that you do or don’t do in your life will change that. As a result, people don’t tend to conform as much to an ideal of what a “high class” person looks, sounds, acts like. In the US, class is a moveable feast. It is essentially tied to wealth, which is changeable. The effect there is that everybody is trying to portray themselves in a way as to give the impression that they are in the upper echelons of society - and therefore all manner of creative expression and how people present themselves to the world gets homogenised and “fake” in a lot of ways. Because people are always concerned with how they appear to others lest they be thought of as a lower class person. She gave an example that she was out for drinks in London somewhere and her friends pointed out some young guy who was like a lord or something - and he was walking around in a jumper with holes in it. Like it was flea bitten and had on like dirty old brown boots of some kind. She made the point that you never see something like that in New York or LA - especially from wealthy people. The guy in the bar wasn’t concerned with what people thought of him because he was what he was and his social status wouldn’t be affected by aesthetics. This also works the other way around as successful working class people are less likely to feel the need to alter their whole image, personality, way of speaking or distance themselves from the people they grew up with because working class isn’t a dirty word - because you can be incredibly successful and thoroughly working class. Your class isn’t tied to your achievements or success. It is much more a culture than an indication of standing in society. Her theory even went to suggest that this could explain why the Brits are so much more creatively interesting than Americans - why the music is so much better etc. because the Beatles weren’t trying to be something other than themselves upon becoming rich and famous.
It wasn't a revolution based on poverty conditions for the majority, it was mainly one man's desire to be our new 'King'. It was also overturned in a very short timeframe and we returned to the aristocracy.
The bulk of the Duke of Westminster's fortune is as a result of the marriage in 1677 of Sir Thomas Grosvenor aged 21 to Mary Davies aged 12. Mary had inherited tracts of marshland from her moneylender uncle. These areas of marshland are now the districts of Mayfair, Park Lane and Belgravia. Prior to this, the Grosvenor estates were largely in Cheshire, where their country house Eaton Hall, can be found today.
I think one of the reasons the uk class structure is still such a big thing in the UK it that it's not as mobile as countries like the us no matter how much money someone who grew up working class makes or someone that grew up upper class loses they will never drop or rise very much in class.
I had a similar wave of melancholy the other night, ended up sobbing my heart out after watching a dog rescue video where the dog looked like my dear departed pooch. It was a full, gathering from the buttocks, wailing sob fest that rather took me by surprise. Thought that would be it but it’s lingering. You’re probably right, the election and ongoing uncertainty is hard to ignore. Sending hugs in solidarity.
Im sorry you're going through some stuff right now, but thank you for not over-editing. Normalise it being ok not to be ok. You're helping a lot of people by showing your true feelings. Wishing you lots of peace and happiness. Also, I just donated to my local food bank because of this video. Here in the uk, you can add gift aid to donations. The charity claim back an additional 25% so your £10 is worth £12.50 to them.
I've watched so many of your videos, first time commenting (sorry) but this is my absolute fave in terms of your reactions. Reactions are not always happy, funny etc. I really appreciate you for sharing exactly how you were feeling and why. I love and appreciate you for posting the video - I get that it would have been easier to not do so. You rock, sweetheart. Much love, from a working class Brit.
People do indeed talk about their class - "proudly working class" is probably the most common (pun unfortunate and not intended) example you'll hear, as people generally don't want to appear like they're "above their station" or have delusions of grandeur, even if they become rich later on. Even people as successful as the Paul McCartneys and Ringos of society maintain that they are still the same class as their childhood neighbours in Liverpool. (Their former neighbours however might not agree.) This is when it becomes less about wealth and more about one's values and world view.
Thanks for doing this reaction. These are the sad facts and this why we collectively hate Thatcher because her economic reforms are what re-entrenched the hardships. Thatcher sold the council Houses making a lower cost option less attainable, She sold Gas, telecoms, Electricity, and Water companies, today the UK Government has withdrawn its winter heating subsidy for Pensioners. One correction to this is that Hereditary heirs have a ballot every time one of the 75 vacates a Seat in the House of Lords. Also Hugh Grosvenor was 25 when he inherited some of the more valuable real estate in London. Alan Sugar is the UK's answer to Donald Trump similarly hosted the Apprentice and went Bankrupt many times, Alan Sugar was made a Lord so he could be Enterprise Champion advisor to the Prime minister after the sub prime theft, the majority of his wealth came from Rupert Murdoch buying his AMStrad business, he now runs AMSProp instead which is a commercial real estate business. In the UK the hot topic of Debate is the Plan to change Private School Tuition fees so they contain a sales tax, also Land holding gentry are upset their "farms" values over a threshold will now be subject to an inheritance tax currently agricultural land is exempt.
There is one problem with this video. The claimed wage levels in the 1950s and other date are completely wrong. The 1970 figure is about 10 times higher than is was. Never trust information presented whoever is saying it. Sunak made some money in well paid jobs but his wealth comes from marrying into a very rich family.
Sending you a hug. Hope you feel better soon. I'll happily join you in watching some silly memes that we can laugh at or funny live TV bloopers, whatever. You've become part of my daily routine. As I grab myself a cuppa I wonder what's JJ got for today? I know whatever it is it'll be good.
Brother, I live, as the crow flies, approximately 3 miles from the UK's tactical nuclear submarine base and I'm still saying fuck Putin. You are so loved, let it out and carry on. Fuck all WE can do about it anyway. One love from Scotland. 💙
Brit here. Class is recognised almost subconsciously. There are ‘traits’ and behaviours that you see in people and even things like the way people dress, or their habits and hobbies, the kind of house you live in and the way it’s decorated… so many subtle clues. Stereotypes really, but it’s part of the reason you can’t ‘move’ classes is because it’s cultural from birth, financial factors only play a small role in it. Hard to explain really, it’s not really taught consciously, but all brits would understand and recognise it. You’re not the only one who’s sad and angry about 8t though. It’s a mess and the uk is a state.
Workhouses used to be divided into deserving and underserving poor who often had to do difficult and sometimes pointless labour - I used to portray an undeserving pauper in a Workhouse museum
The graph showing 1950s income was a lie. My father was earning less than £10 a week in the 1950s.he worked hard in the steel industry but still could not afford to buy a house and we shared my grand father's house until a council house became available when I was 7 and my parents had 4 children. I have no idea where those income figures came from as they definitely weren't reflective of working class peoples incomes Life has always been hard for working class people and we face so many obstacles in making better lives for ourselves and our children. I understand fully your political frustrations.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I’m not sure where the graph came from either, but your situation sounds more probable. Cheers to you, my friend 🍻
As the saying goes, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is what has been happening for quite a long time in the UK with the Conservative party (Tories) who have recently been kicked out of office after 14 years being a party primarily for the top 10% of earners and big businesses (although if you look at their most modern incarnation it is more like the top 1% of earners). Because they (having been the party most consistently in power since the start of the 20th century) tend to pass laws that make their lives and those of their rich mates better at the expense of the working classes (such as cutting taxes and paying for that by cutting benefits and/or services) this gap between rich and poor has been ever increasing. One particular example showing the cause and effect of this is that their voting base tend to own a large amount of land in the countryside and don't like new things being built in their area. We call theses people nimbys (not in my back yard) and because the Tories looked after these people primarily they made things like building more housing ever more difficult to get permission for. Until this year it was effectively impossible to create a land based wind farm in the UK because of planning laws the Tories passed in order to get these nimbys on their side.
The clip you didn't understand was a gypsy fight challenge, That's where one family will call out another and challenge them to a bare Knuckle fight.....and, yes, there are loads on youtube challenges and fights...............oh and Fulford appeared on a number of TV programmes like "gogglebox" (fly on the wall, us watching "celebs" react and watch TV shows)and "Four in a Bed, where guest house/hotel owners compete against each other by staying in each others hotel/guest house to see which is the best......I know......... it's a british thing..
JJLA, feel so bad for you. Don't take this the wrong way but the British aristocracy are few in number. Some are still very wealthy, others not so. I don't think many people in the UK envy their wealth or status. They are looked at as an aberration, a throwback to a different era, not relevant to today. Very few are in politics or aspire to be in politics. They have no power, except their wealth. Very wealthy Americans probably exrecise much more power by lobbying the politicians.
During the Peasants' Revolt, the King may not have lost his head but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury, did. His skull is kept in a cubby hole in the vestry of St Gregory's Church in Sudbury in Suffolk. Totally agree with you about the Duke of Westminster. He should use his wealth to do something about the existence of food banks FFS!
Oh my goodness, that's the church where my late father, also a Sudbury boy, was baptised! (c December/January 1914/15) Fortunately he wasn't beheaded and went on to have me... 🙂
Sorry you are feeling sad, I am from England and I too feel it - the class system needs to change and we have a King that is effectively the very symbol of it. Try reacting or at least watching "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? | Harald Eia | TEDxOslo" (it's about 15 mins long) as it is quite informative and also very funny. This is now 8 years old but I think it still holds true that America is not one of the better places to pull yourself up and to succeed in "The American Dream".
I never quite managed to work out what class my family was in. Definitely working class roots, but living a very different lifestyle. I've discovered, through comments on Facebook by a friend of mine, how different her childhood in what was clearly a working class family from my childhood which was clearly moving up the middle class. Solved all those problems 50 years ago when we all moved to New Zealand. Class is no longer an issue - but that doesn't mean socio-economic conditions don't still create social groupings, with very definite divides between the haves and the have-nots.
I am from a working class background. No one ever swore in our family. Use of the word "bloody" would induce a fit of the vapours amongst female relatives. I resent some of the stereotypes in the video which, though having comedic value, are even less and less accurate in the modern age (e.g. Prince Harry's language recently). Aren't quite a number of UK billionaires foreign-born so not products of the British class system?
good video! I like his explanations for things... using video games is very clever and hilarious lol I thought, "THAT MAKES TOTAL SENSE NOW" lol. I'm sorry you're having such a hard time lately. I think a lot of us feel the same. I am pretty terrified and sad. Everyone in for a group hug! Sending love and light to all.
"The Peasants Revolt" wasn't Edward III, it was his grandson Richard II. Poor research. Also the Anglo-Saxons did not all live in "Mud huts". There are plenty of stone churches etc....surviving from that period, for that matter, look at Canterbury Cathedral. Wooden buildings were just more common back then, look at Danish builings of the same period. Great wooden halls, hardly mud huts.
Even the way the ‘mud huts’ thing was presented was wild. I did a masters degree in the traditional methods of building with lime mortar, wattle and daub, mud bricks etc and the buildings were of an incredibly high standard. His grasp on history was woeful.
The Anglo-Saxon period of English history is always marginalised and underestimated and the Norman conquerors given credit for things they did not invent but merely inherited (like "England", for example). The Normans spoke a form of French but weren't "French". The Kingdom of France was loosely organised and Normandy was essentially autonomous.
as a fun sidenote... the 19th century dynamic of the rising Capitalist/Merchant Class marrying into the Aristocracy/Gentile Class is what Jane Austen's classic "Pride & Prejudice" is about.. with Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley, two young and rising merchants, marrying into the Bennett family...
Every country has a class system, the British are just a bit more honest about it. Wherever humans live, you will always have the haves, and the have nots.
A point to remember is that the aristocracy in the UK have always sent their sons to be "educated" in boarding schools. Until recently (and possibly still so, to a lesser extent) these were places where sexual, physical and emotional abuse was carried out on an industrial scale. The number of middle-aged and older UK men in the UK living with the long-term effects of this is abuse is huge. The damage is incalculable. Please do not envy these people. They are living with the burden of this and their lives are often a living hell.
When I saw this was a long video I decided to leave until today, you get me through a pile of ironing, I think what you are feeling JJ is Empathy because you are that sort of guy 🤗 The woman who said the majority of benefits go to working people is so right, I was a single parent never out of work, but needed housing benefit to help with my rent ( which I was truly grateful for) every time I had a minimum wage rise the Government took 60% of it, they didn't care that prices kept going up, so in reality I was stuck on the same money year in and year out, I didn't smoke, drink, have holidays, I lived from week to week, I was so glad to become a pensioner because the help I got changed massively over night, I could understand some people thinking they may as well stay unemployed 🙁 take care JJ, watch something happy for your next videos ❤
keep in mind that everytime you see a british person talk about 'violence' its nothing compared to the usa. For example there was about 600 homicides in the uk last year in a population of almost 70 million. This is lower than the city of chicago in the usa alone at 800 per year. Theres over 20,000 per year in the usa with only 5x the people. People talk about knife issues in the uk when only 250 knife homicides and 3000 hospitalizations occur per year. (although oc we'd like this to be 0) just for perspective.
This was a great video. It was good to see your honest reaction even though you were uncomfortable. It’s because you are intelligent and you have empathy. We need to move as quickly as we can through denial, shock & depression and let the anger of injustice galvanise us into action. Be the change you want to see, model it and live it. Every tiny act of giving and sharing shifts the dial to the positive and shows others there’s a better way. It’s easy to be a social democrat in good times but right now, it takes grit. Don’t give up
A certain irony in you being shocked at the aristocrat guy joking "shoot the poor!", then getting riled up and saying "Do it! Yeah!" at the beheading of the aristocracy. How about we just don't kill anyone today. 🙃
Sorry in advance if this is a long rant - Theres nothing that makes me more depressed and angry and bitter than the class system here in the UK. Coming from a working class background on a "rough" council estate it makes me sick when these people look down on us and tell us how we should live and how we should act and be while they are in their gated communites and protected in their own land away from all of us. Many of them in goverment dont even know how to speak to us or help us because they have never struggled. We have more food banks open than actual banks for money in my town. Many homeless people and people being evicted from their homes mothers with children going homeless. Working a job that doesnt pay you enough to put up with the bills that keep going up because the goverment has investments in those companies so they benefit from our bills going up. Its disgusting. Now to say all that i love coming from a working class background and i am VERY proud of it. I love the council estate i was born on and the people as we as a community are very strong and come together in times of need. Like bonfire night for example nobody had much money but the local pub (run by a family who has been on the estate for 60+ years) and the locals all put money together to put on a bonfire and have food set up in a tent and a dj so all the families could come to together and watch the show. That night made me so proud of my community because we didnt rely on the council or the goverment or anyone else but eachother and it was a wonderful night. I personally get annoyed when the UK is seen as a posh dreamy tourist spot like we all live like we are in a Jane austin book or any other historical posh tv show and people say how wonderful and beautiful it is but never visit the lower class areas to see the real Britian (some tourists even take part in the classism that locals already do to us because they think its "funny" or not a big deal). It makes you very bitter and cynical. For me it makes me very judgemental .. if i hear a posh accent i tend to stay clear of them as much as i can as i already think "we arent going to get along they are gonna look down on me and not understand" which in a way isnt fair either but its how ive been conditioned over my 30 years of life due to being judged in collages and high school and jobs were im seen as below and a "chav" by these people when me and people from my community are very good people who just want to live. I just want to earn enough to have a roof over mine and my husbands heads enough for food and normal bills and maybe enough to go on holiday once a year. Now i have had to give up my dream to be a mother as we cant afford it and its also not safe in this country no more to raise kids. I will forever be bitter for the fact i cant be a mother just because i cant afford it despite how hard we both work. But hey as me Nan (Grandmother) always says "if you dont laugh you will cry" so il keep laughing before i let people see me cry. I have my health and so does my family and we have a roof over our heads and one another .. that is more than money or class will ever buy for me and im forever greatful for it
My baseline emotions were also quivery today. The class thing is a really sore subject at the moment. If you think the UK class system is bad, add being a person of colour into at and shit gets really fucking complex and likelihood of losing your shit really ramps up 😅😂 adulting sucks and its okay to feel crappy and sore about it! It would be weird if you were super positive about it 😂
Amen! Oh and people pretend there is no class system in the other UK countries. If you are black and brown, born and brought up there you can see it is clearly present.
wait!!! wait!!! I know!!!! i know, i've just realised it wasn't Fulford that was Stef and Dom..........The Fulfords were part of a reality documentary called "The F***ing Fulfords" (2004 Channel 4 cutting edge.)
It IS sad that people will happily exploit others for their own greed, and selfishness. But there are still many kind - hearted , compassionate folk, in Britain.
I've finally had the time to watch the rest of this reaction. With the amount of foodbanks we have and need in this country we are slipping back to Victorian times. I really hope you are having a better time now (that sounds really simple) but I hope you are feeling ok now, as a working class woman over here you really do have to "keep calm and carry on" Though what made me want to scream was the bit with Jacob Rees Mogg saying he was a man of Somerset and a man of the people Aaaarrrgggghhh.
just have to point out that the class system in the uk isn't just about wealth or position, it's also about location. there was a point in this video where the guy said England, of course he meant the uk, but the rest just don't matter! they don't have the population to out vote anything. simple example, Scotland produces much more energy than they could ever use, it is transferred south and then pumped back up to where the Scottish people pay the highest rates for Electricity in Europe, which they produce green!! Oil which is in THEIR SEA and Gas DITTO! the bigotry and classism is strong over here. the numbers are something along the lines of Scotland producing 800 billion a year and made to feel like they're getting some kind of bonus for getting 300 billion back to pay for everything while the English press chant about Scotland getting more than their fare share! if you look at the figures of what government in each country is doing there's only one actually trying to level the playing field, so all manner of nonsense and legal wrangling has been used to silence and keep them down. it is Fechin Wrong!
totally with you all the way through this!!! and for that i thank you!!! :D at least there's a lot of us that feel the same. the amount of times i shouted PR!CK for each of them, the amount of times i clapped and cheered what you said. the wealth gap is disgusting. it's almost like they want a revolution or something... but then, every time there's been a civil war on earth only 3% take part.... and most of the time they win, so0o00o what happens when 20% say fuck this!? i've always been against those on the far left who chant eat the rich, at 55 i know i am now hearing them. globally this is a disgrace, locally, here? the poor and the infirm, the ill and the elderly are blamed in the press for EVERY thing that is wrong while the conglomerates and multinationals do their tax evading while the poorest pay the most tax of all (relatively) with the upper class paying the least! is that a sustainable model?? lol HELL NO! like i said, with you all the way on this one. and aye, it's enough to make a grown man cry! how the hell have we allowed this pish to happen, oh aye, that'd be the media othering every group they feel like to make us look at each other as the enemy while never looking up. Ronnie Corbett in the three classes sketch said it sooo clearly in the seventies, i've got a sore neck!!!
I think secretly a lot of people here (the UK) admire the class system, they understand it and understand their place within it. When I say UK, I really mean England, us Welsh and to some extent the Scottish think differently, as we've been trodden over by the English for centuries, and we still are. Here in Wales, there is a policy that schools must be bilingual, Welsh and English speaking, but of course you can get around that law by privately educating your kids. Guess who privately educates their kids in Wales?? I don't include the Northern Irish in these observations as Ireland needs unifying.
I’m Scottish I’m with you on that one, they have totally removed our native language so our two compulsory languages were English and french, I resent them for not knowing my own language it’s so embarrassing when I’m visiting the islands and highlands (central belt I’m talking about)
Im a scouser (Liverpool) and from an Irish family .. trust me we understand and get were your coming from. The stories me grandad would tell me about back home before he came here and how he was treated etc makes you sick.. add on the sly hatred for people from Liverpool on top of that you end up hating this divide more.
The criticism of inherited wealth is a fair one to make and thus estate taxes and tax rates in general are needed measures to address the issues. However, your diatribe starting around 25:00 is incredibly misguided in my view. For starters the wealthiest 1% account for approx 30% of the entire taxation of the country. This critique therefore would be better directed at large multinationals who do in fact structure their operations in such a way as to avoid taxes altogether in some cases despite considerable turnover inside the country. To put it simply, the wealthiest pay approx 30x their share - which is appropriate given their incredible wealth - but this “they don’t pay their share” is nonsense. Their share covers the 30% of the nation who can’t afford to pay theirs. Meaning; they don’t get 30x NHS care, school places (in fact they’re highly unlikely to get any benefit from state funded education whatsoever out of choice), they don’t get 30x more roads and motorways or fire brigade etc etc etc. Also, the Duke of Westminster directly or indirectly employs tens of thousands of people. His business is primarily building and running shopping centres, apartment complexes etc. Basically, what I’m getting at is that this instinctive “they’ve got cash thus they’re evil people who contribute nothing” is not only wrong but terribly counterproductive. There is a healthy debate to have about the level of taxation of income and estates etc. there are also, of course, as in any group of people, terrible, terrible individuals doing terrible things. There are working class pricks as there are middle class pricks and upper class pricks - and worse. But just because you are rich doesn’t make you by definition a terrible person nor is wealth a moral failing. This is all coming from someone who absolutely lives paycheque to paycheque. It’s just this instinctive reaction that being wealthy - or even simply having relatives that were wealthy once - means you are a bad person worthy of scorn is reductive and actually off-putting.
JJ, you're sounding like you need a break. Hows about some music? Modern Brit prog.... mix some Pink Floyd, some Black Sabbeth - and you get Porcupine Tree. Try _Trains_ or Hatesong or _Time Flies_ - have fun! :)
JJ i think everyones feeling a bit sad right now. We are at risk of being nuked, trumps president in your country and effects the whole world. Economies are shit. Its bad times. But genuinely the amount of quacks in that video made me laugh. All that editing dude. But chin up. We're in the same boat
There is a difference between class and money, you can be rich and still lower class and on the flipside you can be upper class and poor..........some of the oldest, most upper class families are poor..........
I'm paying somebody who owns a Porche and Range Rover £80 an hour to fix my Land Rover today :) I'm working class and have no problem with this. He's got a skill and all the equipment to do his job and I've got a skill and all the equipment to do mine and I value my own time. There are loads of divisions inside the working class as the powerful try to draw people like us into the middle classes and the vast majority of the media is trying us to get us to look down on people in 'lesser' jobs, out of work or recent immigrants. As this video clearly shows the upper class need to keep people subjugated to retain any power and they do that by trying to get working people to look down on other working people. The middle class is a myth created to keep the people who fought or fucked their way to a title in the 11th century in power. Jimmy is a good chap. His painfully honest discussions about how to almost fell into the far right are excellent.
about the monarch refusing to accept the prime minister - it wasn't William the 4th who did it last, it was his neice, Victoria. She caused a whole problem called 'The bedchamber crisis'. Victoria did the exact opposite of her uncle and refused Robert Peel, reinstating Lord Melbourne instead, and she liked him so much and wanted only those loyal to him around her that she refused to have the wives of his opposition as ladies in waiting, hence 'the bedchamber crisis'.
I felt like you needed a cuddle after this one. Such a big hearted person, i hope you got a big hug afterwards.
“Hang on I feel the urge to cry”
Literally me every day at work.
I'm working class, have a middle class job and above average income. I'm 40 now and still can't afford to buy a house. Britain is an incredibly unequal country.
Ditto!
Same
Same here!
My ol man was working class, got a uni scholarship (50s Ireland) worked two years as postman before going, so he had money and wasn’t a drain on the family - anyway, he always said middle class was a lie - ‘if you have to get up and work, you’re working class’.
Unless you do nothing, shares, property, wealth, you’re really working class.
The right will tell a person in an office on £40k, that they’re like them.
They are in their whole.
Last - Liam Cunningham worked as an electrician for my Da - wanted to quit his job and become an actor. Da advised him not to and worried for him
- google Liam
❤️👍🏽👍☘️
yep
27:58 referring to Jacob Rees Mogg as people seems a little generous.
Haunted Victorian lamp post covered in dairylea?
If you’ve never seen that Cleese, barker, Corbett sketch, I fully recommend it
Awh JJ, sorry you're having one of those days! Just wanted to say it's OK to not be OK. 🤗
The previous Duke of Westminster, when asked how he became so wealthy, replied that he was fortunate to have an ancestor very close to William the Conqueror.
Wow! Amazing that they’ve kept track of the lineage (and money)
@@JJLAReacts Many of these families have been exceptionally wealthy for a thousand years, and likely have lived in the same "house" for most of it. Not that hard to keep track of if you still live in your history.
Hey JJLA. I was watching a bit of your video yesterday and I picked up that you weren't 100%. Today's video just confirms it. You've got stuff going on. I'd recommend going and sitting in a garden with a good friend and talking through things or just chatting breeze (either will help). Stay safe.
Thanks 🙏
He can’t be the Dick of Westminster, we already have 650 of them in Parliament!
😂
JJ.....at the moment in the world it would be stupid not to be sad!
You’re so right, thanks 🙏
He's wrong about England never having beheaded any kings. Charles I was executed in 1649 after the English Civil Wars. I understand why the video left this out as didn't have the same legacy as say France 140 years later, however it did begin the brief period when England (and Scotland, and Wales reluctantly) was a republic. This ended in 1660 with the restoration of Charles I son Charles II as King. What did change however was one of the early stepping stones to what the video describes, the beginning of the shift towards 'Constitutional Monarchy' whereby although the monarch retained ultimate constitutional power, the actual executive and legislative power lay with Parliament, and as you move into the 1700s increasingly with the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords.
he seems pretty clueless
The entire video was full of historical inaccuracies and factual events presented totally outside their normal context. The creator lacks historical understanding but because of how confidently they present their video people will defend him as being good.
So now I’m gonna need you to react to some/all of Horrible Histories. A British institute and you were laughing at the clips used in this, so you’d love it. I’d pay to watch Horrible Histories with you, especially the songs. You’d love the songs
Came here to say this. Needs to be the original cast though. The latest series aren't as good.
A burst of HH will lift JJs mood- that's for sure!
I was going to ask him to react to them too 😂
JJ, thank you for doing this reaction, and thank you for your candour and empathy. I'm currently living as one of the underclass in the U.K. I'm coping, but things are tight, I have been worse off so, I look on it as acceptable, unfortunately due to ill health I am no longer able to work, but not severe enough to get a lot of benefit, I'm due to retire in just over two years so, I'm biding my time until then.
Love that you're looking into Jimmy's videos and educating yourself on how unfathomably rigid the British class system is. The Brits are romantasized as being this high class, posh society but that's the image history has given the world. In reality, we're one of the most unequal societies that has ever existed and life here is completely unfair for millions upon millions of people. Thanks for listening!
I like JTG and mostly agree with what he puts out. I think it's part of a wider global movement of "the rich" trying to segregate themselves further - yes, there's huge inequality in the UK, but it's not just here :/
It’s amazingly unfair. I have hope for the Brits who I’ve come to love that things can change, but it feels like a steep climb.
Don't swing too far in the other direction. There are plenty of countries more unequal than us.
The class difference is imo smaller in the uk because the wealth difference is smaller and you dont have many people homeless or living without clean drinking water, we all have and use NHS health care, local cheap food stores, decent public transport and decent benefits system, we all get 6 weeks off work, 1 year maternity, student loans are fair even posh twats shop at primark these days etc The class divide in the uk is much smaller than the usa imo where some people live without access to health care, transport, clean drinking water, any cheap healthy food, in run down deserted towns and forgotten cities.
@@MikeRees Most of them haha, name me many other countries with clean driking water, universal healthcare, 1 year maternity, fairly generous benefits system, 5.6 weeks paid time off, no confusing taxes under PAYE, fairly cheap car insurance, decent public transport, easy access to supermarkets with affordable meat and vegetables, free channels on the tv/radio even if you dont pay your license. Very generous grants for low income students, i didnt work when i was at uni and was able to party constantly thanks to the free money and my degree was free for the years i was in scotland and fairly affordable at my other uni. Lots of the people i was at uni with were also from lower middle class/working class homes. Our class divide is more cultural than about wealth disparity imo.
I'm from a poor, working class background. I grew up on a council estate. I am one of the fortunate ones who benefited from post-war social mobility. I qualified for a university place when the entire cost of that was a grant from the government, not a loan like it is today, so it never cost me a penny. My degree was technical, so I wasn't a highly paid professional. It took me until I was 40 before I got into a junior management position that paid enough for me to afford to buy my own home - a one bedroom flat (apartment). I was still single at the time. I doubt anyone in a similar job could afford to buy any property nowadays, even on two similar incomes. it was another 10 years and after marriage, so now with two incomes, that we were able to buy a house. It was a further 10 years before I got into middle/upper middle management with a higher income before I considered myself to be free of stress about money. And that was just 6 years before I retired. I still think of myself as working class, although others would probably consider me to be middle class.
We might have been separated at birth.
In a country as wealthy as the UK, there should be no poverty at all, none! What we need is a universal basic income, but to the well off the idea of sharing the wealth is abhorrent.
And the fact that the rich know how to avoid paying tax by sending their cash to offshore accounts, getting cash through trust fund and dividends. All 'legal' but not really available to the average person.
The UK is not wealthy
Where is the incentive to work if everyone is paid enough to exist decently by right? Surely only those who are prevented through circumstances from working should be entitled to support from the state? Some people might actually give up work.
Yes, I agree we need minimum wage levels and employment protection but a universal basic income might cause even greater shortages in the labour market than we currently have (one of the pull factors of large-scale immigration).
I think this is the conclusion people come to when they think about it for five seconds and hold a deep seated belief that everyone is scum and if given half the chance everyone would quit their jobs, eat chips and watch TikTok all day. When tested it turns out people like to be useful and that basic income is great but working for more to pay for that bit extra is ambitious and people don’t generally quit. But despite this the five second consideration does win out in debate. Anyone would think we are all ignorant and terrified of giving money to people that might deserve it but aren’t “entitled” to it. The aristocracy are the “non-working class”, remember, the working class are the ones that do most of everything.
No we do not
There is a good reason why people with higher IQs are more prone to depression... if you can see the world as it truly is, you have to be made of stone not to feel the suffering. Class used to mean behaving in a nice way... those were the old days.
I wish i could turn it off sometimes which sounds cruel but its so heartbreaking seeing and feeling everything .. im not smart i cant articulate my thoughts into sentances but god i feel so much and it keeps me awake all night sometimes.
@@GeekyC.I read the comment you left on this video and I have to say, I completely disagree with your statement here. That was a well thought out, well articulated and heartfelt comment. Don't be so harsh on yourself.
Ignorance is bliss.
@@alexandertiberius1098 Thank you so much that is very kind of you and means a lot .. its something i beat myself up about a lot so i truly appreciate your comment
@@GeekyC. No need. Sometimes it's hard to see ourselves objectively.
Holy shit your wave of sadness was incredibly relatable. May I recommend watching a sad film and having a good sob?
That’s good advice, thanks! 🙏 ❤️
Big hugs my dude.
You're such a good guy JJ. Thanks for sharing, its nice to know others feel the same.
I agree with that last lady. Working people are not 'benefits cheats': the employers are, because they don't pay enough for people to live on, which means employees have to rely on benefits to supplement their crap wages...in other words, benefits are indirectly subsidising mean employers who won't pay decent wages. But the employees are blamed.
Exactly - if you can't pay your staff a decent living wage, your business model simply doesn't work.
Second comment, but I think what is depressing about class stuff for Americans is that you're starting to develop a class that essentially replicates the aristocracy. They've got all the land, all the money and all the power. And you're the country that was built on principles that opposed that kind of thing. A Republic slowly creating an aristocracy is awful. It must be dreadful watching that happen to a country you live in and love.
America over the last 50 years has changed enormously. Reaganomics and the Patriot Act both did enormous amounts of spiritual harm to the US and it's supposed purpose. Not to downplay recent events. The symptom is not the disease though, and there is something very rotten in the US.
I have no class. I lick my plate clean.
The sadness comes from almost coming into contact with the aristocracy who are only good for their eccentric behaviour and self delusion. Here, have a working class hug x
🤗
You also missed the point at 30:40. It isn’t about power and fame or money. David Beckham is incredibly wealthy but working class. Rishi Sunak is incredibly wealthy, (was) incredibly powerful, both are famous - neither are upper class.
The class system in Britain is very different from the US and thus isn’t discussed in the same context. People do reference their class to other people because it isn’t a source of shame because it doesn’t reflect your status in life. Working class people can be incredibly rich, famous, powerful but they’re still working class and upper class people can be penniless nobodies but still fundamentally upper class.
Thanks for your explanation - the class system is still very much alive and kicking - it's just that the media 'reveres' celebrity and that's all we see and hear day to day.
Regardless of celebrity success, money and/or influence these factors won't allow those people to alter their class. Class is as much about your family history and traceability as anything else.
Foreign students sent to be educated in English private schools will be accepted for their money to pay their fees, but those children will never be admitted to our class system however much their parents pay.
I would say in general, that's the difference between the US and the UK class system, although the very top tier of the American class system is very much about old money now.
@ absolutely true everything you say but I’ll make a slightly contrarian point about the British class system.
I’m an Aussie who’s lived in the uk for years now as does my brother. My sister used to but lives in the US now and has for nearly 2 decades.
I was talking to her once and she was opining about the differences between the US and the UK and she made a really interesting observation.
She said because class is essentially inbuilt in the UK. You’re born into it, as you say, and nothing that you do or don’t do in your life will change that. As a result, people don’t tend to conform as much to an ideal of what a “high class” person looks, sounds, acts like. In the US, class is a moveable feast. It is essentially tied to wealth, which is changeable. The effect there is that everybody is trying to portray themselves in a way as to give the impression that they are in the upper echelons of society - and therefore all manner of creative expression and how people present themselves to the world gets homogenised and “fake” in a lot of ways. Because people are always concerned with how they appear to others lest they be thought of as a lower class person.
She gave an example that she was out for drinks in London somewhere and her friends pointed out some young guy who was like a lord or something - and he was walking around in a jumper with holes in it. Like it was flea bitten and had on like dirty old brown boots of some kind. She made the point that you never see something like that in New York or LA - especially from wealthy people. The guy in the bar wasn’t concerned with what people thought of him because he was what he was and his social status wouldn’t be affected by aesthetics.
This also works the other way around as successful working class people are less likely to feel the need to alter their whole image, personality, way of speaking or distance themselves from the people they grew up with because working class isn’t a dirty word - because you can be incredibly successful and thoroughly working class. Your class isn’t tied to your achievements or success. It is much more a culture than an indication of standing in society.
Her theory even went to suggest that this could explain why the Brits are so much more creatively interesting than Americans - why the music is so much better etc. because the Beatles weren’t trying to be something other than themselves upon becoming rich and famous.
@@goldboy150 yes, an interesting and valid observation.
As for music and the arts, I hadn't thought about that before, but it makes a lot of sense.
I agree, an interesting and valuable insight 🇬🇧
We didn't have a revolution ? Didn't behead a monarch ? Did I dream my history lessons in school ?
It wasn't a revolution based on poverty conditions for the majority, it was mainly one man's desire to be our new 'King'. It was also overturned in a very short timeframe and we returned to the aristocracy.
Ta
The bulk of the Duke of Westminster's fortune is as a result of the marriage in 1677 of Sir Thomas Grosvenor aged 21 to Mary Davies aged 12. Mary had inherited tracts of marshland from her moneylender uncle. These areas of marshland are now the districts of Mayfair, Park Lane and Belgravia. Prior to this, the Grosvenor estates were largely in Cheshire, where their country house Eaton Hall, can be found today.
I live in Chester and seeing their wedding at the cathedral made me feel so broke lol
I think one of the reasons the uk class structure is still such a big thing in the UK it that it's not as mobile as countries like the us no matter how much money someone who grew up working class makes or someone that grew up upper class loses they will never drop or rise very much in class.
I had a similar wave of melancholy the other night, ended up sobbing my heart out after watching a dog rescue video where the dog looked like my dear departed pooch. It was a full, gathering from the buttocks, wailing sob fest that rather took me by surprise. Thought that would be it but it’s lingering. You’re probably right, the election and ongoing uncertainty is hard to ignore. Sending hugs in solidarity.
🙏🙌❤️ thanks, and back at you my friend!
Grosvenor =
Grove - ner
Im sorry you're going through some stuff right now, but thank you for not over-editing. Normalise it being ok not to be ok. You're helping a lot of people by showing your true feelings. Wishing you lots of peace and happiness.
Also, I just donated to my local food bank because of this video. Here in the uk, you can add gift aid to donations. The charity claim back an additional 25% so your £10 is worth £12.50 to them.
I've watched so many of your videos, first time commenting (sorry) but this is my absolute fave in terms of your reactions. Reactions are not always happy, funny etc. I really appreciate you for sharing exactly how you were feeling and why. I love and appreciate you for posting the video - I get that it would have been easier to not do so. You rock, sweetheart. Much love, from a working class Brit.
People do indeed talk about their class - "proudly working class" is probably the most common (pun unfortunate and not intended) example you'll hear, as people generally don't want to appear like they're "above their station" or have delusions of grandeur, even if they become rich later on. Even people as successful as the Paul McCartneys and Ringos of society maintain that they are still the same class as their childhood neighbours in Liverpool. (Their former neighbours however might not agree.) This is when it becomes less about wealth and more about one's values and world view.
Thanks for doing this reaction. These are the sad facts and this why we collectively hate Thatcher because her economic reforms are what re-entrenched the hardships. Thatcher sold the council Houses making a lower cost option less attainable, She sold Gas, telecoms, Electricity, and Water companies, today the UK Government has withdrawn its winter heating subsidy for Pensioners. One correction to this is that Hereditary heirs have a ballot every time one of the 75 vacates a Seat in the House of Lords. Also Hugh Grosvenor was 25 when he inherited some of the more valuable real estate in London. Alan Sugar is the UK's answer to Donald Trump similarly hosted the Apprentice and went Bankrupt many times, Alan Sugar was made a Lord so he could be Enterprise Champion advisor to the Prime minister after the sub prime theft, the majority of his wealth came from Rupert Murdoch buying his AMStrad business, he now runs AMSProp instead which is a commercial real estate business. In the UK the hot topic of Debate is the Plan to change Private School Tuition fees so they contain a sales tax, also Land holding gentry are upset their "farms" values over a threshold will now be subject to an inheritance tax currently agricultural land is exempt.
Sold council houses so the working class couldn’t strike.
A council won’t evict you as quickly as a bank will.
@@spruce381The word is can't.
Both will evict you but for different reasons.
@@MsPeabody1231 when we went on strike collectively - council were never going step in like a bank would.
There is one problem with this video. The claimed wage levels in the 1950s and other date are completely wrong. The 1970 figure is about 10 times higher than is was. Never trust information presented whoever is saying it. Sunak made some money in well paid jobs but his wealth comes from marrying into a very rich family.
There is more than one thing wrong, it is littered with lies, misunderstandings, historical mistakes and lack of references. It was very poor.
Sending you a hug. Hope you feel better soon. I'll happily join you in watching some silly memes that we can laugh at or funny live TV bloopers, whatever. You've become part of my daily routine. As I grab myself a cuppa I wonder what's JJ got for today? I know whatever it is it'll be good.
Loving your work, appreciate you dude.
Brother, I live, as the crow flies, approximately 3 miles from the UK's tactical nuclear submarine base and I'm still saying fuck Putin. You are so loved, let it out and carry on. Fuck all WE can do about it anyway. One love from Scotland. 💙
Best one so far, i was cracking up, Thanks
These days will get you every once in a while... RIP Kevin
JJ, glad you put this up. Not for the reaction, but to show that you need a hug. Have an electronic one. Oh, and down with the aristocracy!
Thanks 🙏
Good work, glad you put this out. All the very best! Keep on!
Felt odd liking this, and I hope you're feeling better. This has been your most compelling content so far - thanks for sticking with it 😵💫
Brit here. Class is recognised almost subconsciously. There are ‘traits’ and behaviours that you see in people and even things like the way people dress, or their habits and hobbies, the kind of house you live in and the way it’s decorated… so many subtle clues. Stereotypes really, but it’s part of the reason you can’t ‘move’ classes is because it’s cultural from birth, financial factors only play a small role in it.
Hard to explain really, it’s not really taught consciously, but all brits would understand and recognise it.
You’re not the only one who’s sad and angry about 8t though. It’s a mess and the uk is a state.
There was a program all about Francis Fulford and his family. They were called the FUCKING FULFORDS because he swore so much.
Your Fulford bit was amusing as they had a show called the F*cking Fulfords
I find your videos uplifting everyday. Thank you
Okay!! I think we’ve got him!! We need to get him a passport sharpish!!! Lol
Irish 😂
Workhouses used to be divided into deserving and underserving poor who often had to do difficult and sometimes pointless labour - I used to portray an undeserving pauper in a Workhouse museum
The graph showing 1950s income was a lie. My father was earning less than £10 a week in the 1950s.he worked hard in the steel industry but still could not afford to buy a house and we shared my grand father's house until a council house became available when I was 7 and my parents had 4 children. I have no idea where those income figures came from as they definitely weren't reflective of working class peoples incomes
Life has always been hard for working class people and we face so many obstacles in making better lives for ourselves and our children.
I understand fully your political frustrations.
Thanks for sharing your personal experience. I’m not sure where the graph came from either, but your situation sounds more probable. Cheers to you, my friend 🍻
£10 a week was not that bad
@@JJLAReacts £10 a week was in fact a fairly decent wage.
That is a wage of £929 a week in today's currency. The average weekly pay in 2024 is £728.
As the saying goes, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is what has been happening for quite a long time in the UK with the Conservative party (Tories) who have recently been kicked out of office after 14 years being a party primarily for the top 10% of earners and big businesses (although if you look at their most modern incarnation it is more like the top 1% of earners). Because they (having been the party most consistently in power since the start of the 20th century) tend to pass laws that make their lives and those of their rich mates better at the expense of the working classes (such as cutting taxes and paying for that by cutting benefits and/or services) this gap between rich and poor has been ever increasing.
One particular example showing the cause and effect of this is that their voting base tend to own a large amount of land in the countryside and don't like new things being built in their area. We call theses people nimbys (not in my back yard) and because the Tories looked after these people primarily they made things like building more housing ever more difficult to get permission for. Until this year it was effectively impossible to create a land based wind farm in the UK because of planning laws the Tories passed in order to get these nimbys on their side.
The clip you didn't understand was a gypsy fight challenge, That's where one family will call out another and challenge them to a bare Knuckle fight.....and, yes, there are loads on youtube challenges and fights...............oh and Fulford appeared on a number of TV programmes like "gogglebox" (fly on the wall, us watching "celebs" react and watch TV shows)and "Four in a Bed, where guest house/hotel owners compete against each other by staying in each others hotel/guest house to see which is the best......I know......... it's a british thing..
JJLA, feel so bad for you. Don't take this the wrong way but the British aristocracy are few in number. Some are still very wealthy, others not so. I don't think many people in the UK envy their wealth or status. They are looked at as an aberration, a throwback to a different era, not relevant to today. Very few are in politics or aspire to be in politics. They have no power, except their wealth. Very wealthy Americans probably exrecise much more power by lobbying the politicians.
During the Peasants' Revolt, the King may not have lost his head but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury, did. His skull is kept in a cubby hole in the vestry of St Gregory's Church in Sudbury in Suffolk.
Totally agree with you about the Duke of Westminster. He should use his wealth to do something about the existence of food banks FFS!
Oh my goodness, that's the church where my late father, also a Sudbury boy, was baptised! (c December/January 1914/15) Fortunately he wasn't beheaded and went on to have me... 🙂
Sorry you are feeling sad, I am from England and I too feel it - the class system needs to change and we have a King that is effectively the very symbol of it.
Try reacting or at least watching "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? | Harald Eia | TEDxOslo" (it's about 15 mins long) as it is quite informative and also very funny. This is now 8 years old but I think it still holds true that America is not one of the better places to pull yourself up and to succeed in "The American Dream".
The people who revere it are the beneficiaries of the system.
This video made me just wanna give you a big hug. I can relate and I hope your okay. Love being sent your way from carshalton south London. Xx
I never quite managed to work out what class my family was in. Definitely working class roots, but living a very different lifestyle. I've discovered, through comments on Facebook by a friend of mine, how different her childhood in what was clearly a working class family from my childhood which was clearly moving up the middle class. Solved all those problems 50 years ago when we all moved to New Zealand. Class is no longer an issue - but that doesn't mean socio-economic conditions don't still create social groupings, with very definite divides between the haves and the have-nots.
I am from a working class background. No one ever swore in our family. Use of the word "bloody" would induce a fit of the vapours amongst female relatives. I resent some of the stereotypes in the video which, though having comedic value, are even less and less accurate in the modern age (e.g. Prince Harry's language recently).
Aren't quite a number of UK billionaires foreign-born so not products of the British class system?
Hi JJ. Adore you empathy and emotions. Wish we could have you here and make you a honorary Brit.
good video! I like his explanations for things... using video games is very clever and hilarious lol I thought, "THAT MAKES TOTAL SENSE NOW" lol. I'm sorry you're having such a hard time lately. I think a lot of us feel the same. I am pretty terrified and sad. Everyone in for a group hug! Sending love and light to all.
Big hugs from Australia, JJ.
"The Peasants Revolt" wasn't Edward III, it was his grandson Richard II. Poor research. Also the Anglo-Saxons did not all live in "Mud huts". There are plenty of stone churches etc....surviving from that period, for that matter, look at Canterbury Cathedral. Wooden buildings were just more common back then, look at Danish builings of the same period. Great wooden halls, hardly mud huts.
Even the way the ‘mud huts’ thing was presented was wild. I did a masters degree in the traditional methods of building with lime mortar, wattle and daub, mud bricks etc and the buildings were of an incredibly high standard. His grasp on history was woeful.
The Anglo-Saxon period of English history is always marginalised and underestimated and the Norman conquerors given credit for things they did not invent but merely inherited (like "England", for example).
The Normans spoke a form of French but weren't "French". The Kingdom of France was loosely organised and Normandy was essentially autonomous.
Sorry you are having a sh*t day JJ!
There's a lot to drag us down right now- but there's always some positives if you know where to look.
as a fun sidenote...
the 19th century dynamic of the rising Capitalist/Merchant Class marrying into the Aristocracy/Gentile Class is what Jane Austen's classic "Pride & Prejudice" is about..
with Mr Darcy and Mr Bingley, two young and rising merchants, marrying into the Bennett family...
Every country has a class system, the British are just a bit more honest about it. Wherever humans live, you will always have the haves, and the have nots.
Love your channel though. Great reaction, and stay real man! 👍More power to your elbow man, as my dad used to say!
Omg I think you’re brilliant. Soo many ducks had me in stitches. Sending positive love and vibes from Wales.
A point to remember is that the aristocracy in the UK have always sent their sons to be "educated" in boarding schools. Until recently (and possibly still so, to a lesser extent) these were places where sexual, physical and emotional abuse was carried out on an industrial scale. The number of middle-aged and older UK men in the UK living with the long-term effects of this is abuse is huge. The damage is incalculable. Please do not envy these people. They are living with the burden of this and their lives are often a living hell.
Fulford........"Who's gonna clean your house?"..........😂 His house is a fkn disgrace! 😂
When I saw this was a long video I decided to leave until today, you get me through a pile of ironing, I think what you are feeling JJ is Empathy because you are that sort of guy 🤗 The woman who said the majority of benefits go to working people is so right, I was a single parent never out of work, but needed housing benefit to help with my rent ( which I was truly grateful for) every time I had a minimum wage rise the Government took 60% of it, they didn't care that prices kept going up, so in reality I was stuck on the same money year in and year out, I didn't smoke, drink, have holidays, I lived from week to week, I was so glad to become a pensioner because the help I got changed massively over night, I could understand some people thinking they may as well stay unemployed 🙁 take care JJ, watch something happy for your next videos ❤
keep in mind that everytime you see a british person talk about 'violence' its nothing compared to the usa. For example there was about 600 homicides in the uk last year in a population of almost 70 million. This is lower than the city of chicago in the usa alone at 800 per year. Theres over 20,000 per year in the usa with only 5x the people. People talk about knife issues in the uk when only 250 knife homicides and 3000 hospitalizations occur per year. (although oc we'd like this to be 0) just for perspective.
I hope you have a better night tonight and are back to your sunshiney, upbeat self tomorrow JJ. Sending you big hugs. 🤗
Love your channel. 🫂😊
Always enjoy watching your videos. I'm sorry you feel sad. Take some time for yourself. Sending love to you ❤
This was a great video. It was good to see your honest reaction even though you were uncomfortable. It’s because you are intelligent and you have empathy. We need to move as quickly as we can through denial, shock & depression and let the anger of injustice galvanise us into action. Be the change you want to see, model it and live it. Every tiny act of giving and sharing shifts the dial to the positive and shows others there’s a better way. It’s easy to be a social democrat in good times but right now, it takes grit. Don’t give up
Hope you feel better brother ......its good to talk ✊️
I’m working class and proud of it! 😊
JJ, I've got your back. Sending virtual hugs now.
(Actually a brilliant reaction video, btw!)
A certain irony in you being shocked at the aristocrat guy joking "shoot the poor!", then getting riled up and saying "Do it! Yeah!" at the beheading of the aristocracy. How about we just don't kill anyone today. 🙃
fair actually hope he was joking and its not really his views but im not confident in it not being how he sees people
Sorry in advance if this is a long rant - Theres nothing that makes me more depressed and angry and bitter than the class system here in the UK. Coming from a working class background on a "rough" council estate it makes me sick when these people look down on us and tell us how we should live and how we should act and be while they are in their gated communites and protected in their own land away from all of us. Many of them in goverment dont even know how to speak to us or help us because they have never struggled. We have more food banks open than actual banks for money in my town. Many homeless people and people being evicted from their homes mothers with children going homeless. Working a job that doesnt pay you enough to put up with the bills that keep going up because the goverment has investments in those companies so they benefit from our bills going up. Its disgusting.
Now to say all that i love coming from a working class background and i am VERY proud of it. I love the council estate i was born on and the people as we as a community are very strong and come together in times of need. Like bonfire night for example nobody had much money but the local pub (run by a family who has been on the estate for 60+ years) and the locals all put money together to put on a bonfire and have food set up in a tent and a dj so all the families could come to together and watch the show. That night made me so proud of my community because we didnt rely on the council or the goverment or anyone else but eachother and it was a wonderful night.
I personally get annoyed when the UK is seen as a posh dreamy tourist spot like we all live like we are in a Jane austin book or any other historical posh tv show and people say how wonderful and beautiful it is but never visit the lower class areas to see the real Britian (some tourists even take part in the classism that locals already do to us because they think its "funny" or not a big deal). It makes you very bitter and cynical. For me it makes me very judgemental .. if i hear a posh accent i tend to stay clear of them as much as i can as i already think "we arent going to get along they are gonna look down on me and not understand" which in a way isnt fair either but its how ive been conditioned over my 30 years of life due to being judged in collages and high school and jobs were im seen as below and a "chav" by these people when me and people from my community are very good people who just want to live.
I just want to earn enough to have a roof over mine and my husbands heads enough for food and normal bills and maybe enough to go on holiday once a year. Now i have had to give up my dream to be a mother as we cant afford it and its also not safe in this country no more to raise kids. I will forever be bitter for the fact i cant be a mother just because i cant afford it despite how hard we both work.
But hey as me Nan (Grandmother) always says "if you dont laugh you will cry" so il keep laughing before i let people see me cry. I have my health and so does my family and we have a roof over our heads and one another .. that is more than money or class will ever buy for me and im forever greatful for it
My baseline emotions were also quivery today. The class thing is a really sore subject at the moment. If you think the UK class system is bad, add being a person of colour into at and shit gets really fucking complex and likelihood of losing your shit really ramps up 😅😂 adulting sucks and its okay to feel crappy and sore about it! It would be weird if you were super positive about it 😂
Amen!
Oh and people pretend there is no class system in the other UK countries. If you are black and brown, born and brought up there you can see it is clearly present.
wait!!! wait!!! I know!!!! i know, i've just realised it wasn't Fulford that was Stef and Dom..........The Fulfords were part of a reality documentary called "The F***ing Fulfords" (2004 Channel 4 cutting edge.)
Wow JJ I hope you are feeling better now, it's rough when you are having a down day xx
It IS sad that people will happily exploit others for their own greed, and selfishness.
But there are still many kind - hearted , compassionate folk, in Britain.
I've finally had the time to watch the rest of this reaction. With the amount of foodbanks we have and need in this country we are slipping back to Victorian times. I really hope you are having a better time now (that sounds really simple) but I hope you are feeling ok now, as a working class woman over here you really do have to "keep calm and carry on"
Though what made me want to scream was the bit with Jacob Rees Mogg saying he was a man of Somerset and a man of the people Aaaarrrgggghhh.
just have to point out that the class system in the uk isn't just about wealth or position, it's also about location. there was a point in this video where the guy said England, of course he meant the uk, but the rest just don't matter! they don't have the population to out vote anything. simple example, Scotland produces much more energy than they could ever use, it is transferred south and then pumped back up to where the Scottish people pay the highest rates for Electricity in Europe, which they produce green!! Oil which is in THEIR SEA and Gas DITTO! the bigotry and classism is strong over here. the numbers are something along the lines of Scotland producing 800 billion a year and made to feel like they're getting some kind of bonus for getting 300 billion back to pay for everything while the English press chant about Scotland getting more than their fare share! if you look at the figures of what government in each country is doing there's only one actually trying to level the playing field, so all manner of nonsense and legal wrangling has been used to silence and keep them down. it is Fechin Wrong!
totally with you all the way through this!!! and for that i thank you!!! :D at least there's a lot of us that feel the same. the amount of times i shouted PR!CK for each of them, the amount of times i clapped and cheered what you said. the wealth gap is disgusting. it's almost like they want a revolution or something... but then, every time there's been a civil war on earth only 3% take part.... and most of the time they win, so0o00o what happens when 20% say fuck this!? i've always been against those on the far left who chant eat the rich, at 55 i know i am now hearing them. globally this is a disgrace, locally, here? the poor and the infirm, the ill and the elderly are blamed in the press for EVERY thing that is wrong while the conglomerates and multinationals do their tax evading while the poorest pay the most tax of all (relatively) with the upper class paying the least! is that a sustainable model?? lol HELL NO!
like i said, with you all the way on this one.
and aye, it's enough to make a grown man cry! how the hell have we allowed this pish to happen, oh aye, that'd be the media othering every group they feel like to make us look at each other as the enemy while never looking up. Ronnie Corbett in the three classes sketch said it sooo clearly in the seventies, i've got a sore neck!!!
Ah, the Titanic.
Where the poor people were locked behind gates below deck.
I'm sure they had fun up to a point.
I think secretly a lot of people here (the UK) admire the class system, they understand it and understand their place within it. When I say UK, I really mean England, us Welsh and to some extent the Scottish think differently, as we've been trodden over by the English for centuries, and we still are. Here in Wales, there is a policy that schools must be bilingual, Welsh and English speaking, but of course you can get around that law by privately educating your kids. Guess who privately educates their kids in Wales??
I don't include the Northern Irish in these observations as Ireland needs unifying.
I’m Scottish I’m with you on that one, they have totally removed our native language so our two compulsory languages were English and french, I resent them for not knowing my own language it’s so embarrassing when I’m visiting the islands and highlands (central belt I’m talking about)
Im a scouser (Liverpool) and from an Irish family .. trust me we understand and get were your coming from. The stories me grandad would tell me about back home before he came here and how he was treated etc makes you sick.. add on the sly hatred for people from Liverpool on top of that you end up hating this divide more.
Don't commit treason, simple as. GSTK.
The criticism of inherited wealth is a fair one to make and thus estate taxes and tax rates in general are needed measures to address the issues.
However, your diatribe starting around 25:00 is incredibly misguided in my view. For starters the wealthiest 1% account for approx 30% of the entire taxation of the country. This critique therefore would be better directed at large multinationals who do in fact structure their operations in such a way as to avoid taxes altogether in some cases despite considerable turnover inside the country.
To put it simply, the wealthiest pay approx 30x their share - which is appropriate given their incredible wealth - but this “they don’t pay their share” is nonsense. Their share covers the 30% of the nation who can’t afford to pay theirs. Meaning; they don’t get 30x NHS care, school places (in fact they’re highly unlikely to get any benefit from state funded education whatsoever out of choice), they don’t get 30x more roads and motorways or fire brigade etc etc etc.
Also, the Duke of Westminster directly or indirectly employs tens of thousands of people. His business is primarily building and running shopping centres, apartment complexes etc.
Basically, what I’m getting at is that this instinctive “they’ve got cash thus they’re evil people who contribute nothing” is not only wrong but terribly counterproductive. There is a healthy debate to have about the level of taxation of income and estates etc. there are also, of course, as in any group of people, terrible, terrible individuals doing terrible things. There are working class pricks as there are middle class pricks and upper class pricks - and worse. But just because you are rich doesn’t make you by definition a terrible person nor is wealth a moral failing.
This is all coming from someone who absolutely lives paycheque to paycheque. It’s just this instinctive reaction that being wealthy - or even simply having relatives that were wealthy once - means you are a bad person worthy of scorn is reductive and actually off-putting.
Hi. JJ. I really hope you are feeling better now. 😢
JJ, you're sounding like you need a break. Hows about some music? Modern Brit prog.... mix some Pink Floyd, some Black Sabbeth - and you get Porcupine Tree. Try _Trains_ or Hatesong or _Time Flies_ - have fun! :)
Your feeling what the British feel daily just get used to it and have a cup of tea
JJ i think everyones feeling a bit sad right now. We are at risk of being nuked, trumps president in your country and effects the whole world. Economies are shit. Its bad times. But genuinely the amount of quacks in that video made me laugh. All that editing dude. But chin up. We're in the same boat
There is a difference between class and money, you can be rich and still lower class and on the flipside you can be upper class and poor..........some of the oldest, most upper class families are poor..........
I'm paying somebody who owns a Porche and Range Rover £80 an hour to fix my Land Rover today :) I'm working class and have no problem with this. He's got a skill and all the equipment to do his job and I've got a skill and all the equipment to do mine and I value my own time. There are loads of divisions inside the working class as the powerful try to draw people like us into the middle classes and the vast majority of the media is trying us to get us to look down on people in 'lesser' jobs, out of work or recent immigrants. As this video clearly shows the upper class need to keep people subjugated to retain any power and they do that by trying to get working people to look down on other working people. The middle class is a myth created to keep the people who fought or fucked their way to a title in the 11th century in power.
Jimmy is a good chap. His painfully honest discussions about how to almost fell into the far right are excellent.
Hope you're doing ok mate,i get the feeling sad for no reason, it's bloody horrible just try to have positive thoughts i know it's not always easy❤
Some days are just weepy days. I thought it was just me. Big hugs.
about the monarch refusing to accept the prime minister - it wasn't William the 4th who did it last, it was his neice, Victoria. She caused a whole problem called 'The bedchamber crisis'. Victoria did the exact opposite of her uncle and refused Robert Peel, reinstating Lord Melbourne instead, and she liked him so much and wanted only those loyal to him around her that she refused to have the wives of his opposition as ladies in waiting, hence 'the bedchamber crisis'.
Hmm was that one of the total wars, or a different game? Anyone recognise it at 4:14?