the working class voice

 Why we the Working Class need our own voice

If you've ever listened to a politician (any of 'em) on the box and thought, “I don’t speak like that?”—there’s a reason for it.

Back in the 60s, a bloke called Basil Bernstein figured out how people talk in two types of the same language: restricted code and elaborated code.

(Working class) Restricted code is how we talk down the pub, on the shop floor, or round the kitchen table. It’s direct, shared, relies on context, and gets straight to the point without needing big dictionary words to make a basic idea sound clever.

Elaborated code is what the middle class lawyers, academics, graduates, and politicians use. It’s full of abstract jargon, self-important framing, and formal grammar designed to make simple things sound complicated—and keep regular folk out of the loop.

I managed to blag my way into teaching in a brace of universities for years, and believe me, I heard, read and wrote it first hand. They (the middle class) think if you don’t speak in elaborated code, you don’t know what you're talking about. They’re wrong.

We are split into socio-economic groups

In the 1960s market researchers split us up. Into the NRS social grades (A, B, C1, C2, D, E); they were set up mid-last century by advertisers and market researchers.

Grade Social Status Occupational Types

A Upper Middle Higher managerial, administrative, or professional

B Middle Intermediate managerial, administrative, or professional

C1 Lower Middle Supervisory, clerical, junior managerial/administrative

C2 Skilled Working Skilled manual workers

D Semi Skilled Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers

E Unskilled Casual workers, state pensioners, unemployed

Market researchers didn't design these to be polite; they needed them to reflect cold, hard reality so companies knew who had the cash to buy what. If their model was fake, their clients lost money. So those grades mattered—they showed who held the cash to spend on what, who had a secure trade, and who was scraping by. They are still used today - what group are you in? I'm an old pensioner down at the bottom end, me!

The Last Proper Labour Government

Looking back, Harold Wilson’s 1964–1970 administration was probably the last true Labour government. It was rooted in the old trade union tradition and looked after the industrial working class. Every Labour government since—from Blair right through to the modern setup—has bought into neoliberalism. Instead of backing working people and public ownership, they started managing the market, cosying up to big business, and treating public services like private firms.

1968: The Peak of the Working Class.

(I actuall think 1969 was the peak of humanity, but you are probably to young to remember)

In 1968, the year the five-day working week became standard across British industry, the socio-economic makeup of Britain looked very different from today.

• AB (Middle & Upper-Middle Class): ~12%

• C1 (Lower-Middle / Clerical): ~22%

• C2 (Skilled Manual Working Class): ~31%

• D (Unskilled Working Class): ~26%

• E (Lowest Earners / State Support): ~9%

Back then, the manual working class (C2 and D combined) made up nearly 60% of the country. A bloke with a trade in C2 could earn a solid living, buy a home, support a family on one wage, and expect a decent pension. C1 was distinctly "white-collar"—clerks and admin staff who felt a cut above the shop floor.

Thatcherism and the Race to the Bottom

Then came Margaret Thatcher in 1979, bringing in the harsh economic philosophy known as Thatcherism—or neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism is based on dog-eat-dog: grasp and grab. (I’m quite good at it to be honest).

It smashed the unions, sold off public assets, deregulated the banks, and destroyed Britain's manufacturing base. The result? Secure jobs with proper pensions were replaced by gig-economy shifts, zero-hours contracts, and agency work. It systematically forced wages down and turned the job market into a permanent scramble where working people carry all the risk while the top takers rake in all the profit.

The Scene Today: The Great Assimilation

If you look at the socio-economic breakdown in modern Britain, the shifts tell the whole story:

• AB (Higher & Intermediate Managerial/Professional): ~27%

C1 (Junior Managerial, Administrative, Clerical): ~28%

• C2 (Skilled Manual): ~20%

• D (Semi & Unskilled Manual): ~15%

• E (Casual / State Support): ~10%

On paper, it looks like C1 grew and C2 shrank. But here's the reality: the old C1 group has been completely assimilated into the working class.

In 1968, sitting in an office typing memos or answering phones placed you in a secure lower-middle-class bracket. Today, call centre staff, junior admin workers, and basic desk workers in C1 face the exact same low pay, high rents, job insecurity, and lack of control as traditional manual workers.

Real middle-class status today belongs strictly to the AB group—the senior managers, and graduate professionals who own property, hold capital, and set the rules.

Why Westminster Doesn't Speak for Us

And that brings us to a core of the problem: who sits in Parliament today?

The vast majority of current and recent Labour MPs come straight out of the AB group. They went from university to special adviser roles, think-tanks, law firms, and PR consultancies. They were raised on Bernstein’s elaborated code—they speak in polished, focus-group-tested, academic policy-speak.

Because of this language and class barrier and it is a class barrier - whether this is Marxist or not Benrstein identified the number one class barrier. The two groups literally cannot understand each other. Labour MPs cannot communicate in the restricted code of the working class.

They don't know what it’s like to work on a shop floor, run a machine, or worry about next week’s shift pattern, be dog-tired after nights and still not have the time or money to look after kids. When they try to talk to working people, it sounds patronising or completely fake. They think they're representing the working class, but they're just AB professionals managing a system that keeps wages down and real power out of our hands.

Until we get our voice in Parliament who speak plain, direct code and know what a day's real work feels like, nothing's going to change.

That’s why it is no change from Burnham

https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/.../bernstein.../

Keynes and funtional spending will grow Labour's plans

 Consumers are the engines of the economy. Our wages are the fuel. If the government uses its muscle to stimulate demand through prudent functional spending, the 'market' will look after business.

Labour should follow Richard Murphy

 

Why Labour Should listen to Richard Murphy

dump Thatcherite austerity and follow his economic path

1: The Myth of "No Money"

• Sovereign States Are Not Households

• The Treasury is not a piggy bank that needs tax revenues before it can spend.

• A government with its own central bank creates the money it spends into existence.

• Key Takeaway: Believing "the cupboard is bare" is a political choice, not an economic reality

 2: Focusing on Real Capacity

• Money vs. Physical Resources

• The true limit on state spending is not digital numbers, but real inflation constraints.

• If idle labor, materials, and equipment exist, the state can and should put them to work.

• Key Takeaway: You can't fix an NHS staffing crisis by withholding paper funds.

3: Tax as an Inflation Drain

• Rethinking the Role of Taxation

In a modern sovereign economy, taxes don't "pay for" spending—spending comes first.

• Taxes exist to control inflation, reduce inequality, and shape social behavior.

• Key Takeaway: Taxing wealth prevents financial overheating and rebalances power.

4: Unlocking Trapped Wealth

• Redirecting ISAs and Pension Capital

• Trillions of UK wealth sit in unproductive, speculative global stock markets.

• Murphy’s proposals show how small tweaks to tax-free ISA/pension rules can mandate domestic investment.

• Key Takeaway: The capital already exists; it just needs a direction home.

5: Closing the Real Tax Gap

• Collecting What Is Already Owed

• HMRC vastly underestimates the tens of billions lost annually to tax evasion and avoidance.

• Investing modestly in tax enforcement staff yields immense returns in recovered public revenue.

• Key Takeaway: Tax justice doesn't require taxing workers more; it requires making wealth pay its share.

6: Public Services as Productive Assets

• Austerity Destroys Growth

• Cutting healthcare, transport, and education shrinks economic output.

• A sick, poorly housed, and undertrained workforce cannot generate productivity.

• Key Takeaway: Rebuilding public infrastructure is the precondition for private sector success.

7: Taming the "Bond Market" 

• Escaping the Treasury Straitjacket

• Mainstream policy panics over bond market yields, ceding control to financial speculators.

• Strategic policy coordination between the Treasury and the Central Bank maintains market stability.

• Key Takeaway: Elected governments, not bond traders, should decide democratic policy.

8: Funding the Green Transition

• A Real Green New Deal

• Climate action requires direct, long-term state capital, not hand-waving market incentives.

• Investing in insulation, public transport, and renewable grids creates secure domestic jobs.

• Key Takeaway: Environmental survival and economic renewal are the exact same project.

9: The Electoral Imperative

• Caution Breeds Political Defeat

• Managing decline under conservative fiscal rules guarantees voter disillusionment.

• People vote for tangible improvements in daily life, not tidy balance sheet spreadsheets.

• Key Takeaway: Bold economic governance is the only path to long-term political survival.

10: The Bottom Line

• A Policy for Real Renewal

• Murphy provides Labour with a rigorous, practical, post-Keynesian roadmap.

• Abandoning self-imposed fiscal rules frees the government to rebuild the nation.

• Key Takeaway: The tools exist—Labour simply needs the political courage to use them.

The parachute problem in the Labour Party

 

The Parachute Problem and 

why Andy Burnham’s Vision Requires Local Working-Class Candidates

The political landscape is shifting beneath our feet. 

With Andy Burnham's decisive victory in the Makerfield by-election and his clear trajectory toward the party leadership, the public appetite for a different kind of politics is undeniable. Burnham doesn’t talk down to working-class communities; he builds them up. He understands that real economic growth requires secure foundations for the workforce and consumers.

But as we look to a future shaped by regional devolution and wealth retention, we run into a glaring roadblock: the centralized, top-down machine that governs how Labour party political candidates are chosen.

The Westminster Production Line

For decades, the candidate selection process has felt less like a local democratic choice and more like a corporate placement scheme. The central party machine regularly shortlists and "parachutes" middle-class, professional political insiders into regional seats, ahead of local working-class people who have spent their lives building the community.

This isn't just a complaint about fairness, 

it is an economic and cultural failure. 

When you populate parliament exclusively with people whose entire careers have been spent inside the Westminster bubble, think tanks, advisor jobs and the like, you lose the practical, ground-level understanding of what makes economies tick. When these bodies are filled with graduates who have never done a days work they can never be in touch with the reality of working class life and the lived experience.

the Labour party was founded to represent working class people

this requires working clas MPS

The View from Bournemouth

We see this dynamic playing out right here on the south coast. In Bournemouth West, our MP is Jessica Toale. To be absolutely clear, this is not a personal critique of her character or her work ethic. She is a highly educated professional with hard hard earned PPE degree doing her job.

The issue isn't the person it is the system that brought her here.

Prior to standing for Bournemouth West, Toale was a member of Westminster City Council in the heart of London. To the local electorate, this creates an undeniable friction. It sends a message that regional towns are merely career destinations for a mobile, metropolitan political class, rather than places that deserve to be represented by their own local people.

What We Lose: The Value of Local Roots

When the selection process closes its doors to local workers, it closes its doors to people like David Stokes.

Stokes the previous candidate for Bournemouth West is a local man, a member of Unite the Union, and someone deeply embedded in the social and economic fabric of Bournemouth for decades. A person with that background doesn't need a briefing pack to understand the housing pressures, the infrastructure bottlenecks, or the employment challenges of the BCP area. They live it. They have spent a career measuring out the costs of building a community.

When a top-down selection process freezes out people like David Stokes in favour of London-centric elitist professionals, the party detaches itself from the very working class reality it claims to represent and protect.

Rewiring the System

If the UK is to truly decentralize power—the very thing Andy Burnham has championed through the Bee Network and regional devolution then that decentralization must include candidate selection.

We don't need a political class that views local government or regional seats as a stepping stone on a career ladder. We need a system that actively recruits, supports, and values the working class people who are already on the ground doing the work. Until the selection process changes, Westminster will continue to feel miles away from the realities of towns like Bournemouth.

what can Andy Burnham do for Bournemouth?

 Burnham and Bournemouth.

If Burnham become Prime Minister BCP council won't get a blank cheque to go and build council houses.

But they will get something like a reformed public works loan and low interest rates ring fenced to council house building. This is likely to be combined with the planning powers to build on council owned land like the old power staion or the old winter gardens.

Building council houses will in due course be an income stream for the council that will help in multiple ways.

Land owners can hang on to land or make outlandish claims about the value of vacant land. The Starmer government was making changes to allow councils to purchase land at realistic values and not at inflated claims.

In essence and it really is this simple, the government borrows money to build council houses at low (sovereign) interest. Then lend councils money at slightly higher but still low interest. Councils then buy the land and build the houses. In due course the loans are paid off and the council gets an income stream that goes to lowering council tax and/or paying towards other essential services.

Problem is Rachel Reeves said borrowing to build council houses isn't borrowing to invest. Well the nect chancellor should have more sense.

And Burnham is right. A decent house, a good place to live gives a family the security to build a good life on.

With council housing every body throughout the whole process wins.

The 'market' can look after the so called affordable homes, councils can look after families who have low incomes and insecure jobs where they can't get mortgages.

The one drawback. Building council houses could reduce private sector demand as people who could manage a mortgage prefer to rent from the council. This could reduce house prices and millions depend on the equity value in their homes.

But during the periods of major council house building such as after WW2 the private housing market was bouyant with a high demand for houses in both sectors.

Two of the biggest financial burdens on BCP Council is SEND and adult social care. The council are having to borrow £96 million to cover SEND. Adult social care takes up £165 million of the budget. It would take a while but income from council house rents could go towards and even cover these cost burdens.

(accuracy checked by and image generated with the help of google gemini)

So lets get building...

(accuracy of the post checked by and image created with help from google gemini)

M27 trapped at 50 mph

 

The Endless Roadworks: 

Why is the M27 Still Trapped at 50mph?

The cones are gone, the tarmac is clear, and yet the brakes are still on.

Back on April 21st—nearly two months ago—the long-running roadworks on the M27 east of Eastleigh were finally declared finished. For drivers who endure this route daily, it felt like the light at the end of a very long, very frustrating tunnel.

This isn't just any stretch of road. The M27 is a vital artery connecting the south coast traffic, linking two major cities, and supporting a massive social and economic network. We endured years of delays, missed appointments, and gridlock with the promise that a better, faster link was on the horizon.

Yet, weeks after the heavy machinery departed, a frustrating reality remains: 

the 50mph speed trap is still live.

The Real Cost of False Finishes

National Highways seems to view these lingering restrictions as a minor administrative detail. But for the people using the road, it represents a massive, compounding economic drain.

Every single day that these unnecessary restrictions stay in place, they inflict a measurable cost on:

• Local Businesses: Couriers, freight handlers, and logistics companies losing billable hours idling in artificial traffic.

• The Tourism Economy: Visitors heading to the coast trapped in pointless bottlenecks.

• Everyday Consumers: Commuters losing precious time out of their days for no visible reason.

"Testing the System" is No Longer an Excuse

When pressed for answers, the standard bureaucratic line is that they are "testing the system."

Let’s be reasonable: weeks have gone by. In the digital age, that is a lifetime to run diagnostics. If a system requires months of empty-lane testing while actively choking the flow of a major motorway, then the system itself is the problem.

A Call for Transparency

Drivers deserve clarity, not compliance for compliance's sake. If there is a legitimate danger on that road, National Highways needs to be transparent about it. If not, the signs need to come down.

We are asking two straightforward questions:

1. What is the precise, technical justification for maintaining the 50mph restriction today?

2. Where is the specific safety data that proves this restriction is still required?

It’s time for National Highways to either publish the data that justifies holding us back, or change the signs and let the south coast move again.

it is safer to cruise at 70 than choke at keeping to 50

Over to You

Have you been caught in the M27 post-work bottleneck? How much time is this "system testing" costing your weekly commute? Let us know in the comments below.

Conservatives created the National Grid and then corrupted it.

 We are told that public ownership is inherently inefficient.

Yet, when Britain needed a modern electricity network to survive the 20th century, it was a Conservative government in 1926 that realized private enterprise was too fragmented, parochial, and inefficient to build it.

The National Grid wasn't born out of dogma; it was born out of absolute practical necessity.

Here’s a brief history of the National Grid up to the time of the disastrous election of Margaret Thatcher. Yes, there is no doubt that the election of Margaret Thatcher was and still is a disaster for Britain. The worst of it is the current Lino - Labour in name only government are carrying on the essentials of Thatcherism!

Brief history of the National Grid

The pre 1926 chaos

(and have we returned to this)?

It was an engineering supply nightmare. Electricity generation was entirely split between roughly 600 incompatible, localized private companies and municipal bodies.

The Problem

There was no standard voltage or frequency. If you moved a few streets over, your machinery or appliances wouldn’t plug into the wall. Because stations couldn't share power, every single local station had to keep a massive surplus of spare generating machinery sitting idle just to handle local peak times.

The Diagnosis

The government’s Williamson Report (1918) and the Weir Report (1925) both reached the same conclusion: Britain was falling way behind industrial competitors like Germany and the US because its power supply had a ‘parochial stamp’ on it. It was fragmented with too many localised generating suppliers.

The Failure of Voluntary regulation

The government tried to pass an Act in 1919 asking companies to voluntarily cooperate and merge. It failed completely. Private companies refused to surrender their local monopolies or invest in standardising their equipment and output.

The 1926 Act and the Taming of the Market

In 1926, Stanley Baldwin’s Conservative government realised that the state had to intervene.

They passed the landmark Electricity (Supply) Act 1926, which created the Central Electricity Board (CEB).

The CEB was a public corporation, and it did something extraordinary:

·         It forced the standardization of the entire British system to 50Hz (cycles per second).

·         It selected the most efficient power stations to generate electricity, closing down the wasteful ones.

·         It didn't buy the power stations yet, but it acted as a state-mandated monopoly wholesaler buying all the electricity from generators and sending it over a brand-new, publicly owned network of high-voltage wires.

The Economic Payoff

By the time the initial grid was fully operational in 1938, the results were an unassailable proof of the efficiency of a unified public system:

·         The amount of expensive spare plant machinery required nationwide plummeted from 80% down to just 15%.

·         The capital saved by not needing all that duplicate machinery paid for three-quarters of the entire cost of building the Grid itself.

·         Production costs fell by 24%.

 

1947 Nationalisation – The Golden Era of Coordination

While the 1926 Act created the grid architecture, the ownership of the actual power stations was still split. Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government finished the job with the Electricity Act 1947.

They swept up all the remaining private and municipal assets, forming the British Electricity Authority, which later evolved into the iconic Central Electricity Generating Board (CEB / CEGB).

This unified, state-owned system could handle massive fluctuating demands:

·         The Supergrid: In the 1950s, the state built the Supergrid (275\kV and later $400kV.

 

·         Instead of digging up and hauling millions of tons of coal by train from the North down to southern cities, the state built massive power stations directly on the northern coalfields and transmitted the energy cleanly down the wires.

·         The Price Drop: By planning the system as a single machine rather than a collection of competing profit-centres, the standard price of electricity in 1989 (just before the sell-off) was, in real terms, among the lowest and most stable in the system's history.

 

May 1979. Then came Thatcher and Thatcherism

It took Thatcher ten years to get round to smashing the electricity generating system. Although Gas seemed to be her first privatisation, her first victim was the steel industry. Followed by massive unemployment. So much unemployment that people were encouraged to go sick to massage the unemployment figures. It is worth noting that we still have Thatcherism to this day despite the damage that has been done – and is still being done to you and me.

In 1989 the destruction of the stable national grid started!

Even worse was to happen, and is still happening to you now, when George Osborne came along!