Classism

In the morning I strolled around Fort William, and it was very quiet. The water on Loch Linnhe was calm, the sun was warm, and I wondered where all the tourists were. I met Michelle on the train as it arrived from Mallaig, and we had another enjoyable journey through some of the UK’s most beautiful scenery, to Glasgow and then onto Edinburgh.

I’m truly ashamed at the fallout of the England match. I pity the ignorance of racists. In Edinburgh the taxi driver and I agreed on the shame of social media abuse towards the players who missed penalties. However, he was a verbal diarrhoea type who then proceeded to regale me about his former military service in Northern Ireland that was a ‘shower of shit’ and about how he ‘hates the Irish’. I wasn’t sure whether the shower of shit referred to Irish people, his army service in NI or the country in general.

Given his oxymoronic comments, it made me think how much we are all possessed with all manner of inbuilt prejudices that we don’t realise. A common prejudice I’ve noticed is ugly classism by people who purport to be progressive. This often comes in the form of prejudice towards certain suburbs or estates with classists treating deprivation with disdain, and affluence with praise. These types of views are damagingly and stupidly binary and it’s a life’s work to be introspective to eliminate them if we are truly going to move forward as a less judgmental world.

I did an enjoyable evening walk along the Water of Leith, which tantalised me for the week ahead of working from Edinburgh.