German Foreign Minister to British PM Harold Wilson - "Thank goodness for your English Class system, without it we would have to start worrying about your industry competing with ours"
Intelligence, skill, and experience count for nought -the best way to run a major firm in British industry is to be born of the right people. In England it's class. It doesn't matter if you're a black Jewish homosexual dwarf with the intelligence of a waffle, if you've got good breeding people will treat you with respect.
I can't stand any form of prejudice, skin colour, religion, disability all those and the rest stink. The Class System however, is the vile monkey that jumps on my back everytime I try to do anything in this society above my station (E.g. Go University, upper class girls, have an interview for a decent job, offer an opinion).
Class system in England is a prejudice primarily based upon accent - whenever a Briton meets another Briton he will base a library's worth of prejudices on the stranger from the style of the first sentence uttered. Most people know there are hundreds of regional accents in this country. The regional aspect is of secondary importance, what you must do is divide the regional accents into substrata of class. Rich-Farmer-Yorkshire. Quality-Hampshire-stock. Etc, etc.
Personally being vaguely pigeonholed into a working-class guy of Southish London because of a twang to my untrained voice I become one of the numerous pariahs of the class system. If someone speaks with a foreign accent in this ever-so-polite country people usually tolerate and make an effort to comprehende. As soon as they hear my working-class accent it's either a novelty, or they can't be bothered with me.
The class system is great if you're at the top. I'm not and I don't need to put up with this retarded millennia old establishment bullshit. I'm taking my expertise somewhere else ASAP, 'cos this country sure as hell doesn't deserve squat.