Thank You For Participating In The Disadvantaged Business: Fill & Download for Free

As a former working-class person (now sort of lower middle class), I think I have had myriad experiences with people from all classes ranging from working class to upper class. My opinions are highly subjective so I apologise if they come across as generalisations.Middle-class people have an excessive need to appear more patrician than they really are. In the workplace and in higher education they correct you, talk over you, ignore you or dominate you. They are confident. They almost always name their children a classic Victorian name such as Florence, Christopher, Iris, Thomas etc. Their houses are almost always period properties with fireplaces and original features.In the workplace, they are very professional, as if they were born speaking like that and born with those manners. The modern office, school, hospital, courtroom is like their natural habitat. They are very objective and sometimes harsh in how little they care about people’s personal circumstances and resort to logic and rhetoric. But also, some of the nicest people I know are middle class. They are mild-mannered, polite, liberal and quite enlightened. They don’t show extreme emotions such as anger, which makes them seem easy going.As Lynsey Hanley states, the middle class speak English with fluency. They are used to being listened to and they speak in a commanding way. They also speak in a way that is universal and standard. By this, I mean that they can be understood by everyone because they speak objectively and logically, assuming that the other person doesn’t necessarily know what one is talking about, so they elaborate and talk precisely and accurately. They can make the most ordinary thing seem very clever and original just by talking with an RP accent. They feel like they can do anything that they set their minds to, and they are usually correct in that assumption because the world likes people like them. A big factor of middle class children speaking confidently and eloquently is the way they are raised. Middle class parents bring up their children according to the method of concerted cultivation. This involves talking to children about current affairs and a broad range of topics the way you would speak to a grown-up. It means treating them as an individual. it means getting them to do lots of extra-curricular activities like sports, drama, music, chess, a language. It means identifying a child’s potential and helping them explore it. The children often spend a lot of time with expert adults and have more supervised activities, which give them skills in speaking with adults as their equals. They learn how to speak clearly, confidently, using subtle and detailed concepts and they learn to negotiate, to appropriately challenge authority. They get taught how to speak to waiters in a restaurant, how to explain their medical problems to a doctor, how to ask their teacher for more homework…etc.Upper-class people seem really interesting to me because often, they can be more eccentric and unique because they don’t really need to fit in the way the middle class do. They speak with an RP accent too but it’s a bit posher than the middle-class RP accent. I once interviewed to work as a nanny for a family who were real princes and princesses because they were Croatian royalty and the wife was from a Jewish banking family. They lived in a 3-bedroom house in a very posh part of central London, but their house was kind of shabby. There were photos of the various travels they had embarked on. Their children didn’t have names like Henrietta or Rupert. Instead, they had foreign names that sounded weird in English… so weird that they sounded great because they were unique. I noticed that I was more ostentatiously dressed than they were. I had aimed to look posh and professional and they were wearing old but good quality and elegant clothes. Upper-class people in the UK tend to wear a lot of wool, cotton, silk and other natural fabrics. They like the countryside and traditions. For some reason, they are almost always slim.But there was something I really liked about them. They made me feel like a unique human being, probably because that’s how they saw themselves and the feeling was reflected on to me. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear back from them about the outcome of the interview and I became annoyed. I realised how little they thought about others and weren’t used to thinking about the feelings of underlings. They were self-absorbed in a different way to the middle class. They were otherworldly. As if they spent all their time thinking about esoteric things within the finance world. There was something organic and natural about them and while they came across as lovely people, there lurked something dark behind that pleasant exterior… maybe there was nothing unpleasant there at all, but their thoughts were very inaccessible. They lived such private lives.In the UK, it is very rare to befriend someone of a different class. All of my friends have ranged from working class to middle class but not above. When I lived abroad for 3 years though, it was different. In Turkey, I had an upper-middle-class friend who seemed out of this world. She was so beautiful and glamorous. Her whole life was a work of art. She spent most of her time in bohemian cafes and would have affairs with risky men, all the while married to a good but less attractive rich man. She was like Madame Bovary or Belle du Jour. For her, money was never a topic. She would eat out and drink in cafes all the time but never found it special because it was an everyday occurrence. She enjoyed eating ordinary and plain food at home. Food that was very expensive and organic, but simple stuff. She took herself quite seriously, her way of dressing, her manners and her speech were all very exquisite, like in the song ‘Killer Queen’ by Queen or Peter Sarstedt’s ‘Where do you go to my Lovely.’ She laughed often but never actually joked about anything.I have noticed that upper-middle-class and upper-class people don’t joke about sex or bodily functions. It seems that they don’t joke much because they are quite serious.Some of the best comedians come from a working-class or middle-class background.Finally, the working class. Working-class often people experience a lot of stress and uncertainty about the basic things in life such as shelter, food, utilities, health. As such, they seem to be carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders because they are more vulnerable to exploitation. Granted, we don’t have this level of poverty on a large scale anymore but it does exist, especially since the austerity cuts to public services.The working class are fiercely loyal to their friends and community. They are usually less likely to get ahead because of class loyalty. They have a collective identity and are less individualistic. Often they have a fatalistic approach to life, due to inheriting all the latent worries of previous generations or due to having many disadvantages that hold them back. They often have self-fulfilling prophecies about themselves. Imagine if you were so poor that you didn’t have any toys, enough food to eat or frequently became ill because your house was cold or unsanitary, you’d be living but not thriving. Being working class is about being pushed this way or that by forces outside of your control. The world is very cruel to those who don’t have too much money. After a while, you start to internalise this and begin to think that, at your core, you are not worthy of anything good because the feedback you get from the world seems to confirm this.They name their children very cuddly names like Molly, Rosie, Ryan, Shawn etc. They are warm and loving towards their kids. Often hugging them and dressing them in cute clothes that are gender-specific. This is because they like certainty, comfort and family. Their wealth comes from family and community connections because they usually lack financial capital (this isn’t the case with families who have businesses in the trades sector such as construction, plumbing etc. Such people are quite affluent).They also show more extreme emotions and swear a lot compared to the other classes. They are more straight-talking and honest. The working class speak English in a native but non-fluent way. Their speech is much more particular and less universally understood and only those within the class or social group will understand. They have their own linguistic subculture with its own grammar and lexical features.It is worth noting that in the past, the vast majority of people were poor and therefore it was mainstream. You could be poor and respectable at the same time. It was only in the late 70s and 80s when coal mines and heavy industry started shutting down and moving overseas that the traditional working-class no longer had any means of supporting themselves or a secure identity. That’s when they had to rely on welfare.Instead of being a productive part of society, the working class became what Marx refers to as the ‘reserve army of surplus workers’, which in Marx’s time referred to the homeless, drunkards, prostitutes and other members of the lumpenproletariat. These were the people who were ready to take on jobs if there were any strikes from the existing workers. Except, something a bit different happened, these new members of the lumpenproletariat became overreliant on welfare and stopped participating in the workforce for many different reasons. Chief among them was that the wage they would earn from working a full-time would still keep them in poverty if they were unskilled workers or those lacking in self-esteem so they continued living on welfare as a lifestyle.EDIT:I am humbled by your upvotes, I never expected this answer to get this many likes and views. Thank you for your interesting comments below and thank you for teaching me things and sharing your experiences.Peace out! :)P.S. the images are there to add a bit of fun to this post. They don’t entirely represent the complexity that is/was the British class system.P.S.S. I haven’t added ethnic minorities into the mix because that would complicate things further. Except that Chinese and Indian professionals earn more than white British professionals. The worst paid workers are Bangladeshi.

As a child in the early 1990s, I had the great honour to play a few friendly sparring games against GM Wolfgang Unzicker. If you haven’t heard of GM Unzicker yet, in the 1960s until the early 1980s, Unzicker was arguably the strongest German player and, for over two decades, ranked among the world’s top 50 players. However, what is more remarkable is the fact that he was a professional lawyer and only played chess when time permitted. To participate in tournaments on the world stage and competing against other enlightened chess beings, such as, for example, Spassky, Petrosian, Najdorf, Fisher and Karpov, Unzicker took annual leave from his busy life as German judge. Despite a severe handicap to a competing world class player, Unzicker displayed a remarkable performance against some the best players at that time and, due to his sheer talent, Karpov even nicknamed him as the “World Champion of Amateurs”.I was at the tender age of 13 years and engrossed in the beauty of the game that I loved so much. For over two years I had studied chess theory almost every day, attended a chess university where I had been drilled with strategy taught by IMs and regularly participated in national tournaments. My tournament ELO performance was peaking at around 2050 that year, but I often showed a tendency of being inconsistent due to childish impatience and an unnecessary risky attacking style.I was perhaps a bit of a bragger and not afraid of sometimes wildly attacking or taking unnecessary risks due to my talent of being very creative and my occasional unorthodox play. My confidence had been recently inflated by having drawn against some FIDE Masters in open tournaments. Against my club’s finest, who were ranked at about 2150, I was at least able to keep a game suspense until barely losing in an all-deciding end game.However, I have never played a GM before — but this was about to change now.At the end of his career Herr Unzicker decided to pay a philanthropic visit to a little chess club in East Munich that I happen to be a member of. At that time our A gents team was just promoted to a lower regional division. Our club’s president invited Unzicker to play a few friendly games against me — after all, I was the club’s greatest talent and pride. Having occasionally seen and replayed some of Unzicker’s games in books before, I was very enthusiastic for this golden opportunity bestowed upon me. I remember how I stared at this highly reverent authority of this majestic game with the big dreamy eyes of an innocent child, almost beholding a descended archangel who was sent from chess heaven on a mission to recognise more of their kind. Unzicker had the power to lift and take me with him into their realm — so I thought — finally, the grandeur of my raw talent will be recognised and maybe even picked up by some local newspaper!I still vividly remember my first game against the grandmaster. I was playing Ruy Lopez with White. I came out well through the opening and my figures exerted some pressure on the centre. I castled long against Unzicker’s short castling to give the game a more offensive spin and was already luring into Black’s kingside fianchetto. At some point in the middlegame, I did the offensive Pawn move H2-H4, initiating a flank attack in the hope to soon open a line for my Rook. A strategy that seemed natural and that I have acquired by carefully studying lookalike games and reading commentaries in chess books. The entire club was kibitzing how I was daringly unfolding my attacking plot against this grandmaster. People were holding their breath!This is the moment where Unzicker sporadically remarked in front of the entire club: “What a blunder…” and continued to explain to everyone in the club how this Pawn move has been shortsighted, weakening my flank and creating a positional disadvantage for White beyond repair.I was looking in utter bewilderment, a bit embarrassed and obviously hurt, but also built up a fiery ego to prove him wrong. My Pawns were marching naturally towards the Black King’s fianchetto and my King was appeared in safety. I felt I was well developed and had the initiative as White. I could not disagree more with his almost mocking remark, but kept quiet and continued my victory march towards heaven.In only turned out to be a march to hell. Only 7 moves later, or 25 moves in total, I was dead in the water. My flank crumbled like a leftover dried-up cookie in a school bag. Alas, a similar thing happened also in my next two games against Unzicker.Unzicker had shown an understanding of the game that was far beyond my own comprehension. I am honestly struggling for words here how to give justice to a realistic comparison.If you are a strong club player, you know that beginners in chess will often overlook moves that will result in obvious trouble, such as, for example, forks, skewers or pins and this will almost always translate into a material advantage for the stronger player. Masters playing against decent club players have a more refined understanding of the game and will apply their positional advantage to start choking their opponents until they are forcefully cornered in the same way beginners are. Now imagine GMs and their understanding of the game when playing against Masters.Chess statistics teaches us that for a difference in the ELO rating of 100 pts, the higher ranked player will win approximately 2 out of 3 games (thank you Brad!). An IM who is 300 ELO pts above a strong club player is already winning 85 out of 100 games. Similarly, a grandmaster at 2600 pts who is challenged by an IM at 2300 Elo will win with a similar probability. The difference between a Grandmaster and a strong club player on the other hand is out of this world. The gap is tremendous and so the subtlety of understanding all aspects of the game at a high level of abstraction. If you are a mathematician, imagine how big is the difference between arithmetics that you learn in school and differential calculus at university? Or take a strong tennis player who can smash a serve at 100 mph and has a killer forehand, but what is the difference between them and Federer?Verily, many intermediate chess players have built a robust understanding of the game, but are still predominantly looking at the board through a material lens — they can evaluate how a move might result in a material advantage in the future. Stronger players have a more refined positional understanding and the ability to translate their superior position into a material gain and vice versa. However, grandmasters comprehend the game through far more subtle energy channels than just looking at the material plane and the position of the pieces on the board. Chess is, after all, a game of energy potential and the position in front of you is merely an imperfect reflection of this and for your brain to gauge the situation at a superficial level. Yet behind the scene hides a complex vortex of energies. Each move on the board shifts the the fragile balance between matter, time, space and momentum at all times. Grandmasters understand how to seamlessly translate these energies across as much as Einstein taught us with his famous equation E=mc^2 that energy and mass are interchangeableSo while as a young learner of the game I memorised a rule — H2-H4 to initiate a Pawn attack in a familiar situation — I understood that grandmaster are beyond and above rules, they are the very law that these ever changing rules are derived from. This is how it is like to play against a GM in chess.Sadly, Wolfgang Unzicker passed away at the age of 80 on the 20 April 2006. I will never forget the ephemeral lesson he taught to a small schoolboy that will last for a lifetime.

Anonymous for obvious reasons.Dark truths:Salary is not decided by the amount of effort you put, but the number of years of service you have put in. Two people joining organisation at the same time at the same level gets same pay, even if one of them is an idiot when it comes to work. The downside is , those who put in effort are not rewarded appropriately.Politics, Unionism. If there is one thing I have to put responsibilty on for underperforming PSUs, it is unions. They have grown like cancer with rediculous objectives. They are run by power hungry low level dumb people with dumb members with an objective to hamper the work and derail the procedures. Members of union come and go at their whims and fancies and the superior who questions them will likely get a call from some idiot high level union member threatening them to mind their own business.SC/ST act abuse. Talk about it and you can find almost all PSUs crucifying some hard working members under this act. Those SC/STs whom you assigned some work might just get pissed off and put a harassment case against you. Good luck proving yourself innocent.If you put enough effort and are workaholic, no body stands by you. Trust me, nobody! Not even your boss. If you are dimwitted, and have popular support, with the help of that popular support that idiot can prove that all your works were done by them.Paperwork! That sucks. Almost all the important decisions will be taken on paper which can run into thousands every month. You are accountable for the signature you did, no body cares. Everyone wants you to sign on their paper to shed off their responsibility on you.You can chose to be absolutely not working, and be involved in extra curricular work like Unionism. No body gives a damn. The higher managerment seems to be avoiding any altercation with the union. So they will not ask you to work. You can also chose to come and go at your whims and fancies.You don't know a shit after 10 years of service if you do not have habit of working or self development. People in my office are 40+ and their life is practically a waste. They don't know anything except for their mother tongue.Affairs are a common thing. But it can turn against the males if they piss off the females they are involved with. The females can allege them to be involved in sexual harassment and it's done!Infrastructure sucks! No body cares. No funds. Political bosses don't care. They don't even know the basic of the organization they are made boss of.Every Tom Dick and Harry will claim of knowing some MP , MLA or being a sibling or child to them.Talk more , work less. People who talk more are considered more productive.You might have heard this dreamy line that new guys joining will eventually change the system. I'll just say keep dreaming. Those highly educated guys joining at clerical level through SSC and other low-level non management positions have their egos sky high and are too dumb. They immediately join union because, hey, you can be a watchman and still look into the eyes of management using unions. I say those young bastards are dangerous than snakes and they keep biting the management and exploit the system. They hardly work. Of course exceptions are there, as like anywhere.Call me sexist, I don't mind, I will say what's true. Let's talk about ladies now. Most of the females are a liability. Exceptions are there. Hardworking and non hypocrite females are joining and working hard, but they form minority. Many females , especially mid aged and old ones are a huge liability. They not only have this excuse of excusing them from work because they are “experienced” “females” apparantly, they threaten their bosses if they are assigned some work. One lady I know threatened my boss of harrassing her “tribe” (exact words she used) to get out of the work she was assigned. This is common. You have a women in your team, your life is practically a hell if you are honest and hardworking - she won't participate and would block every work if she is the signing authority. They will go on a long leave if assigned some work. Sexual harrassment at workplace allegation is a serious issue in government organisations. Cunning females make full use of it. As they call, sexual harassment at workplace allegation along with a SC/ST harassment case is a perfect recipe to spoil your career, life and what not. General / OBC(to some extent) are doomed. Thank you Ambedkar Saab!Ambedkar Saab is revered more than some Lord Himself. There will be a huge statue , painted in golden where some members will replace garland everyday and pray to him. Ambedkar Saab's anniversary will be celebrated with great pomp and show. Ambedkar Saab is the savior for many.Edits:As one gentleman here has aptly put, most of the unions are headed by a acting or ex-MP. It really sucks that people who should be working with hardworking guys are taking sides of stupid morons.Added point 12Edit 2:Added point 13,14