Shooting and social capital

Today is the Glorious Twelfth, so I finally have the opportunity to share this image with you:

It's the cover of a magazine which was in our room at a Melton Mowbray bed and breakfast a few weeks ago.

Melton and the surrounding area is prime shooting territory, and our hosts at the B and B were keen shooters.  I know as much about shooting as I do about astrophysics, except that I know that astrophysics isn't an indicator of the rigid class boundaries that exist in our country.

That, at least, is my assumption, my prejudice.  The people who ran the B and B were perhaps the poshest people I've ever met.  They had a picture of one set of parents on the wall and they could well have been minor royals, all pearls and smart knitwear.  They were charming and made us very welcome, but might as well have been from another planet, not just another part of the country, and another social class.  All of our cultural reference points were miles apart.  

As you'll guess by the fact that I'm writing about this, this kind of thing bothers me, although not as much as it once did.  It goes beyond whether the last meal of your day is supper or tea.  It's about social mobility, and about the rigid boundaries that still persist in our country - which are partly to do with money, but are more to do with more subtle barriers - who you know, how you perceive your place in the country etc etc.  Witness the ongoing debates about social mobility, public schools and Oxbridge admissions.

Yet I couldn't help but be impressed, and be slightly envious, of what people like me would call social capital. And shooting appears to be one of the principal ways to build that social capital, with the Glorious 12th at its heart.     Our hosts never tired of telling us stories of their friends and acquaintances, and how one thing led to another - a job offer for the husband, some work experience for their daughter, and an invite out to a villa in Portugal for the family.  I know it's a terrible generalisation, but the upper classes look after each other.  (Maybe we all do - but the stakes are higher when you have more money and power)  This, of course, is part of the problem we have in society, as social capital turns to nepotism.  

As someone into wild food and the idea of taking responsibility for the food that I eat, I should be into shooting.  I'm more likely to do a part-time degree in astrophysics.  What does that say about me?  And what does that say about our country?

Comments

[David Floyd]

"This, of course, is part of the problem we have in society, as social capital turns to nepotism."

I don't think there's any 'turns' about it. Nepotism is a form of social capital. That said, I don't think very posh people are a significant barrier to social mobility these days - partly because, as you suggest, they really do live in a parallel universe.

I'm more concerned about those middle-class professions - such as the media - where the fact that mummy or daddy can get you work experience or an internship, and question of whether you can afford to work for free a year or so to establish yourself, makes all the difference to your future prospects.

In fact, some of the bigger charities, have some big questions to answer about the social mobility implications of getting people to full time jobs for free and describing them as internships.

[Liam Black]

I know what I'd do with those guns given half the chance! Despite my advanced age and my hard won middle class status - and having pulled many strings for the young people in my big famliy - my hackles bristle when this class of people hoves into view!! What's the glorious 12th by the way Rob? One can only hope that the headlines on the mag are ironic. If they are being played straight it's astonishing! Slightly dodgy sex references, dogs and guns. Your actual nobility summed up right there!?

One of the most effective things Wavelngth does is hook social entrepreneurs up with the people they need to know so they can build their businesses. We do this very deliberately in the sure knowledge that it's not what you know, it's whose mobile phone number you know.

It's what we did at Fifteen, enabling troubled young people with no-one of any use to them in their mobiles, to break into networks which can advance them not fuck them up more. There needs to be much more of this. nepotism or whatever you want to call it will continue to exist s long as people have kids. We just need to make it work for all!

and by the way i have to confess - and in so doing recognise my hypocrisy - that shooting guns is brilliant fun. I lived in canada for two years after leaving college during the jurassic period. we were in the middle of nowhere in British Columbia and would skidoo out to the boonies and spend hours using hand guns and rifles to shoot at cans etc. I fully understand the attraction.I went moose hunting once and when the time came I couldn't pull the trigger on the huge gormless beast before me. A fatuous act of ill thought through inter species solidarity which disappeared in the hail of gun fire unleashed by my less squeamish Canadian mates.

hmm. this post isnt wholly coherent is it? I'm like that more and more. sorry Rob!

[Rob Greenland]

Thanks for your comments. David the middle classes point is a good one - and internships are a long term bugbear of mine. There's a good debate about it on New Start's blog:

http://www.newstartmag.co.uk/blog/article/interns-make-tea-for-free-get-a-job-maybe/

Liam, The Glorious Twelfth is the traditional start of the grouse shooting season - I have my farming today podcast habit to thank for that bit of knowledge. You're right about the sexual tension in the magazine cover - it made me laugh out loud. You make a good point about what you did at Fifteen - as you say we need to make it work for more people. And I suppose that's at the heart of my problem with the upper classes. The drawbridge has well and truly been pulled up. But as David points out much of the middle classes are guilty of that too. I suppose that's where a commitment to social justice or whatever you want to call it comes in. As you say, I'll do all I can for my nephew niece and Francis to help them to get ahead - but I hope I'll do things for other kids too.

I do quite fancy shooting - the nearest I've got to it was archery at that middle class bastion, Center Parcs. Maybe we could organise a shooting party for social entrepreneurs?

Blog posts lend themselves to incoherence....

[Woody Wilbury]

The woods are full of 'cock. Says it all really; pity the irony may be lost on them.