Quote mark_m="mark_m"Just what is 'working class' anyway? I bet the people you are talking about still own a car, possibly there own home, go on holiday every year and buy the biggest flat screen TV they can find. Not 'working class' in my book; indeed are there any left?'"
Working class doesn't mean what it used to in the Marxist proletarian terms.
Socially van drivers, kitchen fitters, construction workers etc fit the same kind of identity that traditional working class men had. Then you also have blokes who do manual trade jobs who are self employed, eg plumbers, carpenters, some boiler repair men etc, they probably see themselves as working class but they aren't in economic class terms.
The economic working class today are often in office based or customer service jobs, call centres or retail etc, or low level admin workers. Even lots of graduates are in these types of jobs. They are not on subsistence wages like the workers of the industrial revolution and they are protected by employment rights but they are in a position where they are being forced to sell their labour usually doing jobs they hate, to pay the bills.
When latchfordbob says its a game for working class males what he probably means is down to earth northern blokes of low to medium incomes who have a shared identity and are not pretentious, they generally like going out for beers with their mates, watching sport etc. For them watching RL is an affordable form of entertainment and a way of socialising with others, in the way that going for golf weekends and drinking champagne would be a form of entertainment for bank managers annd lawyers.
