Tag Archives: standard of living

David Boyle

Opinion: The demise of the middle classes

By David Boyle | Wed 22nd January 2014 - 8:55 am

I was on a policy panel recently, when I heard somebody dismissing the idea of ‘choice’ in public services as a sop for the middle classes.

Now, there are two rather odd aspects of this.

The first is that, depending on what you mean by choice – and every political party has its own distinct meaning – it isn’t actually true.

The polling I carried out during the Barriers to Choice Review showed that nearly 90 per cent want ‘choice’.  It is just that they are often muddled about what that actually means.

The second is that I hear this kind of sentence in …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 27 Comments
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Recent Comments

  • Chloe
    Mark; If a Nigerian care worker in her early twenties can travel 4000 miles to work for just above the minimum wage, & reside in an HMO locally near the hos...
  • Jana
    @Mark Valladares “ The hospitality industry in the South East struggles to find staff, yet housing is so expensive that nobody could credibly be expected to ...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    @Nonconformistradical - I think that's a big part of it. Everything in schools points at university, and those not heading that way get remarkably little attent...
  • Nonconformistradical
    @Pawel Urbanski "That is the disconnect nobody talks about: the jobs are there, the young people are there, and the pipeline between them barely functions. Bef...
  • Pawel Urbanski
    A real-world data point. I recently recruited for an apprenticeship in my business - £25k, four days' work plus one day's training, salary part-subsidised by t...