****Please note: none of the following links is safe for work, or for those with delicate constitutions.****Like most quiet, bookish middle-class girls with secretly filthy minds, I had always thought that the Soggy Biscuit Game was an urban legend/ a teatime accident/ something that Stephen Fry made up. According to the internet, this is not the case. According to the internet, it really happens.
For those across the pond/ around the world/ living in a cardboard box on the M6, the Soggy Biscuit game is, well. It's a game that posh public schoolboys are supposed to play. It involves wanking, and public humiliation, and a biscuit. Oh, bloody hell, just check the Wiki.
This is another thing that makes me inestimably glad that I was not spawned amongst the upper eschelons of society. I'm not trying to suggest that toffs are any more degenerate than the rest of us, but bog-standard, everyday sexual deviancy and experimentation is ...well, it's supposed to be fun, isn't it? That's the point, isn't it? I mean, if I were going to get my knob out in front of my peers, I'd want either mood music or money, and preferably both. I'd want a little less of the gag-inducing public shamefest. But apparently, at Eton, you get what you pay for, and that means culture, class and extremely speedy ejaculation onto small pieces of confectionery.
Hat-tip to Spiritof1976 for pointing out that this means that this man has almost certainly played Soggy Biscuit.
White, 'well'-bred public schoolboys are frequently cultish, is what I'm trying to communicate here. They are a strange and self-referential race, trained from boyhood to administrate tenancies, shoot defenceless woodland creatures and come on cookies. Some of them are doubtless able to defy the expectations of their upbringing; but surely not every single one of the disproportionate hordes of the creatures currently running the banks, the civil service, the regions and most of the government, and if the Tories maintain their 20-point poll lead, soon to be running even more of the country? Does anyone else make this calculation and find themselves questioning the natural order of wealth and heredity, if it means that the men who still have almost all of the money and power are overwhelmingly the bizzare, fetishistic, feckless, greasy-haired oiks whose parents have paid hundreds of thousands for them to take part in Soggy Biscuit?
Interviewed by Decca Aitkenhead today, equalities commissioner Trevor Philips said:The task today is not to shout for black people or women, but to break the grip of white men who went to public school. And that's why I'm here.'
The photo above is a picture of the Bullingdon Club, Oxford University's most exclusive drinking society, open to all members of the swaggering upper classes who like to get drunk and smash things. These young gentlemen, already displaying early signs of Tory jowlage in 1987, include several prominent barristers and businessmen, one bank director, Our Beloved Shadow Prime Minister (top row, second from left) and Our Beloved Mayor (bottom right).
Oh, Boris. Oh, you've eaten the biscuit, I'm sure of it.
Look, we're not asking for much. We're not asking for rows of potatoes to be planted on the lawns of Balmoral, or for Buckingham Palace to be turned into the country's largest publicly-owned hostel for those made homeless by the credit crunch. Not yet, anyway. But can we have some semblance of sense? Can we have someone in charge who's not a developmentally damaged, cultishly co-opted, biscuit-eating over-privileged princeling? Someone who understands what poverty, what hopelessness, what bad luck might mean in a recession? Someone who spent their university career being involved in student activism, or - god forbid - doing their work, rather than joining elitist drinking clubs and throwing bread rolls at waiters? Look at those lads. Look at their little white wing collars. Look at the nonchalant smirks on their terrible pasty faces. They don't care what they do with power as long as it's them who get to have it. And by the time we remember how very dangerous that can be, it may well be too late.
Dear me Penny this really is a load of tosh. Worse than the last post.
ReplyDeleteWhat are the chances that people will take a look at this post and realize that the "meritocracy" is a myth?
ReplyDelete"Look at the nonchalant smirks on their terrible pasty faces. They don't care what they do with power as long as it's them who get to have it. And by the time we remember how very dangerous that can be, it may well be too late."
ReplyDeleteTrue, but I rest content in the knowledge that there's a good chance that they've been forced to eat each other's semen. Puts a smile on the face.
Well, perhaps not theirs. But the point stands.
So the bigotry referred to in the title is yours? This post reeks of it.
ReplyDeleteDisapproving of someone simply because they are a Toff is the same as disapproving of someone because they are female, or black, or have an arm missing. All it does is perpetuate a culture of prejudice.
By all means attack Boris and Slippery Dave on their politics, but attacking them because they are toffs, and they might once have eaten come? That plays right into their hands by going along with the culture that says you can judge a person's worth by their family background.
I might not be able to judge someone by their family background, but if their idea of fun involves smashing up a restaurant and then paying for it, I'm going to draw some obvious conclusions about whether or not I want them to have state power over me. GWB has already given us some idea of the damage that can be caused by over-privileged kids who have always brought themselves out of trouble, and think that the world owes them a living.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is not Eton, the problem is what you do with yourself when you're an adult and you've left the place. Act like a metaphorical wanker, and it's fair game to remind the world about the situations in which you've been a literal one.
Chris Williams
Yes, Chris, but Penny isn't talking about actions that have ANY consequence in this post. The soggy biscuit game might be a bit silly, but it harms no-one.
ReplyDeleteJennie:
ReplyDeleteI think the Soggy Biscuit Game is strongly relevant to the type of leaders they might make.
This is because what it reveals is a culture in which the people who are supposedly being groomed for government and power are being socialised through emotional brutality and extreme reinforcement of hierarchy.
I hope you can see how that might impact directly on the types of decisions and policies they might make when in charge of the country in an extremely negative way.
I can't stand the Tories, but really?
ReplyDeleteYou think some Tories might have possibly, maybe, played Soggy Biscuit in the distant past, and therefore they definitely aren't fit for Government? Really?
Yeah, whats wrong with eating come? We`ve all done it.
ReplyDeleteIf it`s how they get their jollies, good luck to them.
If this were a bunch of gays rather than a bunch of (gay) publc school boys, i`m sure you`d be taking a different stance.
that photo is priceless. what a bunch of wankers.
ReplyDelete(heh...sorry couldn't resist)
Jennie: respectfully, I disagree.
ReplyDeleteI would like to point out that the primary point of this post was to make some knob jokes to reward people for trawling through the socialist ranting in the previous post. But, that said -
I am certainly not suggesting that merely haven eaten some come on a cracker makes you unfit for public office. Variants on the theme would certainly disqualify most of our most able politicians. I was merely using this particular strange and curiously sexless sex-ritual to illustrate the ridiculousness of the highly exclusive background from which these people come. I don't think it's classist or bigoted to suggest that the upper classes and those who inherit money do not automatically deserve to have power.
The ultimate judgement of these men will and should be on the basis of their politics - but I can and I do attack them on that on this blog and elsewhere. But I also think it's important to look at what sort of people our politicians are, at whether they are in power because they're the best and most responsible people to run the country or because of an intensely anti-meritocratic, self-selecting overclass. It's that, in this post, that I'm questioning - and not the politics itself.
Then, with the greatest of respect, you want to word your posts more carefully, because this sounds exactly like the sort of bullying that got meted out to the "privileged" people who had been to private schools on my course at uni, who got regularly roasted for the crime of being posh.
ReplyDeleteIt's not bigoted to suggest that the "upper" classes don't AUTOMATICALLY deserve power, because nobody automatically deserves power: but what this post says is that if you are born to privilege, you don't deserve power ever or at all, and that's a different barrel of beer altogether, and is EXACTLY the kind of prejudice that keeps the whole prejudice train careering along the tracks.
And the "lighten up, it was only a joke" defence? Oh come ON.
It wasn't meant as a defence! More as an apology for the hast with which it was dashed off. I will see if I can re-word it to make my point more clear, but quite honestly? I don't think it's bigotry to question someone's fitness to wield power on the basis of their activities at school and particularly at university. I don't think minor transgressions like the occasional bit of drug use count (unless the politician is trying to impose drug sanctions), but I do think membership of a cult - and I consider the fetishistic power rituals of the upper classes to function in many of the same ways as a cult - should be taken into account. It's not their genes - it's their mindset. Especially if that mindset remains unquestioned.
ReplyDeleteThis is, also, not a photograph of any bunch of posh people. This is the Bullingdon club. I'd say membership of a loutish drinking club for people more interested in their own privilege than in doing their course work or, eg, any student activism, DOES put a question mark over someone's political career, actually.
But, all that said, I'll try to re-word it to avoid unnecessary bullying.
J - I've done an edit, and you were right, my actual stance on this definitely didn't come across right. It's fixed now, and I think it's better for it. Thank you for helping me clarify my thinking.
ReplyDeleteI just... When I was at uni in good old working class Prescottland Hull there was a Hemp Society, and although it was theoretically a green group, pushing for hemp to be used for cloth etc., the main purpose of it was to have regular trips to Amsterdam and get stoned. You wouldn't bat an eyelid at anyone being a member of THAT, would you?
ReplyDeleteSo why is a drinking club with soggy biscuits different?
You know, I GET that power and privilege has followed these guys about, and I GET that it's a bad thing if/when their only qualification is to be stinking rich. I'm by no means in favour of that. But if the Bullingdon Club is even connected to those problems, which I doubt, it's a symptom, not a cause.
All universities have clubs, and they all have their tribalistic rituals and initiation ceremonies, and some of them are pretty gross. That's part of being a teenager having flown the coop and being too stupid to know what not to do, not being posh.
Bleh. It's 2 am. Probably not the best time for reasoned debate. Sorry for going all ranty at you.
Nono, it was a good challenge!
ReplyDeleteRe 'You wouldn't bat an eyelid at anyone being a member of THAT, would you?' - well, in one sense, no, I have a feeling I'd probably get on with former members of that club much more than former Bullingdonites, and I'm sure I'd also make different assumptions about them - HOWEVER:
I think membership of a specific stoner society, with (to make it the equivalent) a continuing heavy weed habit might well make someone less fit for public office. I consider membership of the stinkingly privileged upper classes to be as much of a handicap to someone whose career is to deliver political justice as preoccupation with a class B depressant drug (saying nothing, of course, about Cameron, Boris, the Bullingdon Club, the Oxford Union which both were also members of, and the endemic cocaine use that's a function of both societies. Nothing at all. Oh no.) The difference here is that growing up a stoner doesn't involve a gradual drift towards power, whereas growing up an aristocrat does.
I`d like to suggest an alternative solution.
ReplyDeleteIf we reduced the power of representatives and instead had more direct power as citizens, we`d have to worry less about the backround of our leaders.
Also, I`d imagine that if we search for a leader on the basis of who best represents our interests and background, we are rather more likely to get another Tony Blair, all things to all men, type (hello david cameron) than a socialist firebrand.
Or perhaps, if democracy has been sufficiently perfected in this country, a George Bush.
Jenny, if you're in a bar in Amsterdam when the Hull University Hemp Society turns up, your evening is not ruined. If you're in a pub in Whitney when the Bullingdon Club does, it is. I don't like antisocial behaviour. As it happens, I wasn't prejudiced against antisocial upper-class tossers (NB - not the same as anyone who's been to Eton) before I encountered a few of them at Oxford. Not Dave and Boris's lot - I'm a couple of years younger than that.
ReplyDeleteChris Williams
"Then, with the greatest of respect, you want to word your posts more carefully, because this sounds exactly like the sort of bullying that got meted out to the "privileged" people who had been to private schools on my course at uni, who got regularly roasted for the crime of being posh"
ReplyDeleteMy heart fucking bleeds. Despite being so victimised, they still manage to have a stranglehold over the top jobs, which I suppose proves their superiority over working-class scum like us.
Where the fuck were "liberals" when we were fighting Thatcher? Nowhere, that's where.
Read on the internet and thus must be true? Seems to be you would love it to be so. I have just spent ten years investing in eastern Europe. You want to come and see out here what socialism really does to people. Your comfortable middle class prejudices against the upper classes are irrelevant and merely nasty. My loathing for socialism and the ensuing damage to all societies it causes is not. Thank God we are almost out of this decade of insanity in the UK.
ReplyDelete"You want to come and see out here what socialism really does to people."
ReplyDeleteEastern Europe has had 20 years of capitalism now. Better than Stalinism it may be, but it's not much of an advert for anything, is it?
Get back to Russia, Willie.
CW
Willie,
ReplyDeleteSocialism and communism? Definitely not the same thing. Socialist democracy and stagnant communist dicatatorship? They aren't equivalent, luv.
The whole thing's an urban myth. It's like "rainbow parties". Except less fun (were it to be real).
ReplyDeleteI really do find this kind of inverted snobbery pathetic and hypocritical. It shouldn't matter what school someone went to. And, I should add, being stinking rich does not necessarily make them incapable of empathy and compassion. This is prejudice of the worst kind, penny red, because it is dressed up as egalitarianism. You should be ashamed of yourself. I'd much rather have someone in power that had a few brain-cells, than someone who hasn't even thought it through, and is blinded by their own prejudice, of whatever hue.
ReplyDeleteAnd as for sperm-eating, I understand that many females do this on a regular basis. Does it make them unfit for office? Is that what you're saying? Or is it one rule for the chaps, and another for the rest of us?
ps Tony Benn went to Westminster and Oxford. Does that make him unfit to inhabit the eschelons of power? Does that make him incapable of socialism? I think not.
ReplyDeleteOh, and pps, anyone who thinks brutally enforced hierarchies don't happen in state schools obviously hasn't been to one.
ReplyDelete"anyone who thinks brutally enforced hierarchies don't happen in state schools obviously hasn't been to one"
ReplyDeleteThat sounds plausible, I'm not sure Penny was implying that though.
That said, if we are going to talk about sexual deviancy in public schools, there are *far* worse things you could draw attention to than the (probably mythical 'biscuit game') but admittedly aren't so easy to make a joke of. I think you had a post about sexual bullying quite recently, in fact:
http://pennyred.blogspot.com/2009/01/gender-anti-fascism-and-fourth-wave.html
I do agree that clubs like the bullingdon mainly function to reproduce class loyalty etc. I'm not sure that the particular nature of the rituals is that important.
But something like smashing up a pub (and then paying off the owner to avoid legal repercussions - which is what differentiates it from what would happen if working class people did the same thing) is probably a more worthwhile thing to draw attention to...? The point is the immunity that comes with money to behave in certain ways that would otherwise be deemed unacceptable. Don't even get me started on drugs parties... which I don't object to per se, although I resent the fact that certain people can indulge with impunity and little risk, while the less well-off end up ruined, one way or another.
Dandelion, this is how gonzo journalism works:
ReplyDelete(1) Establish why somebody is worthy of ridicule.
(2) Ridicule them.
And the result is fun to read. Note, though, that if Dave And His Pals weren't claiming that they are fit people to exercise power of life and death over us, the chances are that we wouldn't be taking the piss. But they are, so we can.
Remember when you were at school, you used to hang around with a group of friends? Had a laugh? What are your friends doing now? Mine are engaged in a variety of jobs, some well-paid and a bit powerful, some neither. Sometimes we meet up, go bowling, and drink beer.
Dave's friends, though, the guys he hung round with when he was a teenager (along with some friends of friends, cousins, younger brothers, etc) are about to take over the 5th biggest country on the planet. It's got H-bombs and everything.
Isn't that a bit weird? Shouldn't we take the piss a bit? As it happens, the school was Eton, but if it had been Countesthorpe Comprehensive, it would still be wierd, and I imagine that we wouldn't be the only ones taking the piss.
Chris Williams
"Can we have someone in charge who's not a developmentally damaged, cultishly co-opted, biscuit-eating over-privileged princeling? Someone who understands what poverty, what hopelessness, what bad luck might mean in a recession? Someone who spent their university career being involved in student activism, or - god forbid - doing their work, rather than joining elitist drinking clubs and throwing bread rolls at waiters?"
ReplyDeleteIf only, if only Gordon Brown was Prime Minister!
Then things would be all right.
All must have prizes, is that it?
ReplyDeleteI still maintain that this post is intellectually lazy, hypocritical and illogical, and brings the entire socialist endeavour into disrepute, if this is an example of its reasoning.
Chris Williams, I think you exaggerate somewhat. Not everyone in the corridors of power went to the same school, indeed not all of them even went to public school. If it were such a closed club, how could that state of affairs possibly come about? How could anyone else get a look-in?
I do wish people would turn their brains on before indulging in this divisive and offensive clap-trap.
Oh, and ps, I'd far rather the control of our country were in the hands of people who'd had a proper education, rather than the hate-filled, woolly-thinking types who would write a post like this...
ReplyDeleteDandelion, well duh - of course I know that not all the Tory front bench went to the same school. But quite a few of them did. And yes (sexual power-games aside) it was quite a good school. I know this because I went there on a course once, and the teachers (who probably taught Dave from PR) were very good. They were getting exactly twice what my teachers got, so they ought to have been. It was, and is though, a very expensive place to attend, just like Fettes, and some other schools (though not Countesthorpe College).
ReplyDeleteYou might not mind living in a country that's run, by and large, by the offspring of about 10,000 families. Me, I do mind, for a variety of reasons, only some of which are about philosophical fairness: others are about the ability of that sort of society to withstand social and/or ecological threeats.
Chris Williams
"You might not mind living in a country that's run, by and large, by the offspring of about 10,000 families."
ReplyDeleteBearing in mind only one Prime Minister from the last 45 years has been educated at a private school, I don't really see your evidence for this.
As you said, it's a good school - it makes sense that the children who go there get a better education and are more likely to excel in life than average.
I'm sure there is an element of picking friends for jobs, but then it's hardly restricted to Old Etonians - the current Foreign Secretary and Energy Secretary also shared a school, as well as a mother and a father and the Schools Minister is sharing quite a lot with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
Never said it was restricted purely to old Etonians, but now that you mention it, that's a good place to start:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/etons-old-boy-network-518455.html
17 current MPs went to Eton alone; of our twelve prime ministers since 1945, seven went to top private schools, of which at least three went to eton and one to harrow.
Of the 29 members of David Cameron's shadow cabinet, only did NOT go to top private schools. Of the remaining 5, 2 went to grammar schools, 2 to comprehensives, and 1 did not go to school at all.
Only 5 members of the shadow cabinet are women, and there are no women in key positions. One of the five, Sayeeda Warsi, is also the only ethnic minority member.
Happy?
Sorry, that should be thirteen prime ministers. Of whom ten attended Oxford university.
ReplyDeleteChris Williams: That's not gonzo journalism. That's taking the piss out of people. Gonzo journalism would be joining the Bullingdon Club, and writing about it, to ridicule them.
ReplyDeleteFirst time i've seen this blog and it really is a load of shite! Go back to the student union dear....
ReplyDelete"anyone who thinks brutally enforced hierarchies don't happen in state schools obviously hasn't been to one"
ReplyDeleteI was the one who spoke of the soggy biscuit game as described in the OP as indicative of being socialised to emotional brutality and reinforcement of hierarchy.
I went to a state school.
The important difference is that the OP describes a situation where everyone buys into the "game" of ritual humiliation; the violence and emotional cruelty of state school life is not socialised in the same way at all. Yes, you might very well learn to reproduce it in the rest of your life, but you don't see it as respectable: as a victim (my unfortunate role at school) you can clearly see the faultlines invovled; and I believe as a perpetrator you don't get the social approval - you get gratification from getting your way, or being the feared person, but you don't get told it's okay. the whole way that Eton and such schools operate, and have operated, reinforce the idea that not only is brutal power acceptable, but that it is socially approved by your peers. A bully at state school, one way or another, has to fight for his status, and knows he has to steer clear of "the law" (i.e. the school staff). A toff trained to bullying by his public-school experiences has no such lesson to hold him back. The idea that "the law" could apply to them too often doesn't seem to cross their minds.
Conversely, in the posited soggy biscuit game (or any rituals like it) there is the clear subtext that "I take my dose, so there's nothing wrong with making others do so too". A bully in state school very often does not take his dose from his peers (he may do so from his parents, but that's a different story), so he has no sense of "taking his turn" at the bottom.
And that is why the socialisation that the rituals of humiliation are so harmful.
Such rituals do exist more broadly in male society, and are a part of holding the patriarchy in place; they are very damaging to men and they strengthen the sense of "old boys network" that directly impacts on women.
I have just spent ten years investing in eastern Europe. You want to come and see out here what socialism really does to people.
ReplyDeleteThere was never socialism in eastern Europe.
Historical materialism can show very clearly that the 1917 revolution was the capitalist revolution in Russia. The Stalinist "5-year plans" were designed effectively to reproduce as quickly as possible the effects of capitalism in western Europe over roughly 200 years prior to 1917. The consequence is that Stalinism as it appeared in eastern Europe was in fact a form of rigorously state-controlled imperialist capitalism, in which the Party became the de facto bourgeoisie. Eastern Europe is not a good argument against socialism or communism.
"Willie,
ReplyDeleteSocialism and communism? Definitely not the same thing. Socialist democracy and stagnant communist dicatatorship? They aren't equivalent, luv."
This has got to be funniest thing I've seen all day.
This is exactly the sort of rubbish I used to believe in my student days.
But really it just isn't true.
Well intentioned socialism isn't technically the same as stalinism. But it will ultimately always end in dictatorship because of Hayek's resource dilema.
Being that you can't get the whole of society to agree on how resources should be directed therefore a section of society will have to be forced to accept the will of the dominant group.
I would really advise you read anything by John Gray.
Or if you want you can come and discuss these issues with some liberals.
http://lpuksoutheast.blogspot.com/2009/02/alternative-convention-on-modern.html
TBR, what's your definition of the Hayek Event Horizon - the degree of state control of the economy beyond which the inevitable death-dive into dictatorship kicks in? Hayek's a bit woolly on this one, and in _The Road To Serfdom_ appears also to imply that cartels only arise as a result of government activity, which would have been news to Smith.
ReplyDeleteChris Williams
"One of the five, Sayeeda Warsi, is also the only ethnic minority member."
ReplyDeleteActually 3% ethnic minority isn`t too bad when you consider that 90 odd percent of the British population is white and that the figure increases the older the population sample (MPs aren`t generally primary school children).
Nice chip on your shoulder girlie
ReplyDelete" Penny Red said...
ReplyDeleteSorry, that should be thirteen prime ministers. Of whom ten attended Oxford university.
24 February 2009 17:46
"
You would prefer stupid Prime ministers then?
I am too poor to be a socialist
Nice picture of Blazin' Squad before they went "street"!
ReplyDeleteBut where's Kenzie?
Um... err... yes... now where was I? Um. Well, the "soggy biscuit" was... um... part of an initiation into... err... um... the corpus of older post-pubescent Etonians... as it were. Yes! Well, there you have it!
ReplyDeleteJust as well you thralls out there haven't heard what a "gobstopper" involved. Whoops! Now I've let the cat out of the bag... blow me down... erm... ah, well now.
So, back to abolishing the bendy buses and swearing at that sooty little wallah Keith Vaz. What an oink... and one with a touch of the tarbrush about him... sooty little grokle! Yes!
Who the hell in their right mind would want to be Mayor of "London, City of Fucking Sport and Shit"?
Click for sublime Conservative oration
Where did you go to school Penny?
ReplyDelete