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  Sue
  
  GB Shaw defined working class as"party of the propertyless proletariat". I suppose I define WC as those who do manual labour or work for hourly wages rather than fixed annual salaries.Normally factory workers,farm labourers,miners and builders etc. But times are a changing and a recent survey showed that 57% of Brits still considered themselves to be working class even though they owned property had a salary and office job and sent their kids to University. But is this just inverted snobbery?. As John Lennon once sang 'Working Class Hero' maybe we all like to be considered a hero and WC.
  
  Karl Marx...famous for his films Duck Soup and a Day at the Races..... said WC was those who had to sell their labour to survive,the antithesis of the borgeoisie in Marxs class analysis. In the survey mentioned above the 'lowest class' were considered to be those who have never worked or are long term unemployed or as you call them.."those who live on benefits.." Have you ever asked why they are on benefits and what caused them to end up that way?.
  
  Or as you would say "propping up those on benefits" but your analysis of the labour party hanging on to power by keeping the underclasses down doesn't hold water as you go on to say a nanny state.You can't be a party that helps those on benefits to aspire and obtain employment and supports them through retraining programmes and apprenticeships and then claim that the 'labour party cling to power by keeping the underclasses down.Its exactly the opposite the Labour Party are trying to help the 'underclasses' its the Tories that will withdraw the benefits and scrap the back to work programmes and cut nursery places therefore ensuring that the underclasses always remain at the bottom of the pile with no hope of climbing out of the trap.
  
  So Sue why do you think the Tories fare so badly in Scotland? and whats your definition of working class without the usual rhetoric of "in my day or I had to work 25 hours a day and get up 2 hours before I went to work then go to bed if you could call a box a bed" type quotations.
  
  The Labour Party for all its mistakes is still the only party for the people and more than any other party recognises the difficulties that some sections of society have in getting on in life,securing employment or improving their educational demands for the less abled and those with learning difficulties without throwing them on to the scrap heap and referring to them as benefit scroungers.

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