the working class.

if it’s North Yorks, Mrs T, then the scenery is spectacular.

Do you go huntin’??

When I was younger, it was a big thing among middle class kids and dropouts to get into the working class.

One thing about being born in the working class is that you want to get out of it, one way or the other – education to get out quick, working hard for more money or joining the union/Labour to create a classless society, you do need to escape and fighting your way out is the only way.

The last option seems to have gone out of fashion or relevance, sadly.

good on you, Mrs T…

and you’re not boring…

Leeds poverty was and is poverty..but Leeds people who fought to escape it never forgot their origins or the people who were left behind, at least the Leeds people I knew.

Mind you, weren’t they responsible for the worst crime of all??

I was once told by a guy who grew up in Salford that some Christian fundies had chanted Jesus-Killers at him and his mates. ‘No, no, you got us wrong,’ replied my friend. ‘It wasn’t us, we’re Salford Jews, it was the Leeds Jews what did it’

I do have a friend who moved to rural North Yorkshire from urban London and for the first time experienced vandalism to car and property. Bad things can happen everywhere.

However those values of hard work, community and generosity still exist more than many think, but community isn’t so closely identified with location as financial and career priorities change.

Unfortunately noble virtues are most easily shown to people we sympathise with. I have few illusions about any single group of people or nostalgia for the past.

Believe in, and demonstrate, the goodness of the human spirit and guard against meanness, whatever its source.