Common People #009
Helping Common People become more common in the creative industries
Hello Common friends
It has been a while since our last newsletter and we’re sorry about that. Our little team has been very busy working on some very exciting projects in the background. In September we delivered some training on class with Hobbs Consultancy for Billion Dollar Boy and presented at Wavemaker and Global radio. We've also been kicking off some exciting conversations with the Social Mobility Foundation and planning something special for 2024.
We’ve been talking about
The price of literally everything
We’re starting to feel a bit festive. Christmas lattes and sandwiches are back but they’re bloody expensive. But then again the cost of most sandwiches and coffees seem to have skyrocketed lately. This hasn’t gone unnoticed, the FT wrote an interesting piece about how expensive sandwiches are flawed economic indicators and it confirms how much the prices of our lunch staples at Pret have increased since 2020:
“Pret’s bestseller, a tuna and cucumber baguette, has risen from £2.99 in December 2021 to £4.25 today — an increase of 42%. The price of a chicken Caesar and bacon baguette has jumped about 32% from £3.99 to £5.25… As it stands, an undiscounted online-ordered Pret ham sandwich, brownie and Coke was £5.55 in 2020, £6.80 last May, and £9.90 today”
It isn’t all doom and gloom though, Greggs have announced that they have no plans to raise their prices before Christmas. Thank you Greggs. Iceland have also chosen not to release a Christmas ad in favour of investing the money into keeping prices lower. We’re not sure how true this is in reality, but it’s a nice statement to make vs the pomp and ceremony of the main retailers.
Social Mobility news and conversations
40 years of British Social Attitudes
The latest British Social Attitudes survey by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) revealed that in 2022, one in three of the richest people in the UK identify as working-class. This raised more than a few eyebrows. Does ‘Inverted snobbery’ mean the rich fool themselves about being working-class? The Telegraph thinks so.
Don’t just change your people, change your strategy
Jo Arden, Chief Strategy Officer at Ogilvy UK wrote a great piece for Campaign where she advocates for agencies change up their strategies:
“Strategy or planning is about two things – people and problem solving. Regardless of the discipline of the agency or the make-up of the client base, the job comes down to this and neither aspect is the preserve of an upper-middle-class mindset with a first in English.”
Interesting conversations about Schools and Universities
Do Labour’s plans for Britain’s private schools make sense?
Only 2% of private-school pupils come from Britain's poorest third of families:
“About three-quarters of children in the country’s private schools come from the richest 30% of families... The Labour Party is proposing to make Britain’s private-school fees subject to value-added tax, and to remove a discount these schools receive on business rates.”
Warning over unconscious bias against working-class pupils in English schools
According to the UK’s first professor of social mobility, schools in England must do more to challenge unconscious bias in the classroom against children from working-class backgrounds and we couldn’t agree more:
“To help level the education playing field lessons should celebrate working-class achievement and feature figures such as Stormzy, Tracey Emin, the 19th-century palaeontologist Mary Anning and the scientist Michael Faraday.”
Maybe not given how expensive they are especially as employers are starting to look more at skills than education.
Young people in England feel they must move for better opportunities
We know this piece will resonate with many in the group with 91% of 16 to 18 year olds in the North East of England saying they feel they have to move away to access career opportunities.
Why the young should go to the office
The FT published an interesting piece advocating for young people to go to the office more:
“For a graduate, those first few years of office life amount to an additional degree, in anthropology… Apart from dating, there is no better education in human behaviour.”
Interesting conversations about Britain and inequality
Is Britain really as poor as Mississippi?
Britain's economy is highly London-centric. Without the capital, the UK would be poorer per head than Mississippi…
“It will surprise nobody that London accounts for an outsized share of Britain’s output, but the magnitude of the UK’s economic monopolarity is remarkable. Removing London’s output and headcount would shave 14% off British living standards… Britain in the aggregate may not be as poor as Mississippi, but absent its outlier capital it would be.”
Has home ownership in Britain become a hereditary privilege?
Forty years ago it took the average couple three years to save for a deposit to buy a home in the UK. Today it takes nine, rising to 15 years in London. If this makes you as angry as it makes us, keep an eye on campaigns from Shelter and support them where you can.
Helping Common People
The easiest way to help is to share this with some Common People Like YOU. Whether they’re an industry leader, or someone wanting to break into the industry, we can help. Point them in our direction.
If you’ve got jobs or opportunities that you’d like to share, send them our way.
If you see anything interesting that you think us Commoners would like, send that too.
If you’d like to offer up yourself as a mentor or find a mentor, reply to this email and we can help.
If you’d like to support Common People by helping out, then we’re always looking for people to join the group that puts a lot of this sort of stuff together.
We hope you enjoyed our latest newsletter. Let us know what you think - we’re a friendly bunch.
And never forget, we’re Common People, and proudly a different class.
See you again, take care, and stay in touch,
Your fellow Commoner