Details

1. "... nobody believed me whenever I said I was broke. I usually kept this to myself during my time in college, but sometimes, in strange circumstances, it would come up.

Once, I was shamed in front of a crowd for not donating to a society—even when I had donated a different gift just a day ago—and I confided my feelings to a close friend. His response: “What, so you’re upper-middle-class?”

In another instance, I was privately discussing with a professor the pros and cons of a Food Stamp reform proposal. After some analysis, I commented on my own experience with the program. His response was complete shock. “You don’t really mean you were on welfare. You just mean you were supported by your parents, right?”
...
And this is how I ended up offering a sandwich to a man with hundreds of millions in a foreign bank account."

From this often interesting article, which is really about the deplorable lack of noblesse oblige among the modern meritocracy.

2. Also on the meritocracy: 

"At one elite northeastern elementary school, for example, a teacher posted a “problem of the day,” which students had to solve before going home, even though no time was set aside for working on it. The point of the exercise was to train fifth graders to snatch a few extra minutes of work time by multitasking or by sacrificing recess." 

"In 1962, when many elite lawyers earned roughly a third of what they do today, the American Bar Association could confidently declare, “There are … approximately 1,300 fee-earning hours per year” available to the normal lawyer. In 2000, by contrast, a major law firm pronounced with equal confidence that a quota of 2,400 billable hours, “if properly managed,” was “not unreasonable,” which is a euphemism for “necessary for having a hope of making partner.” Because not all the hours a lawyer works are billable, billing 2,400 hours could easily require working from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. six days a week, every week of the year, without vacation or sick days." From here.

3. If you do very well in the meritocracy then you get to go to this nameless conference.

4. The people who do very well are in the 1%. What a shame Britain is so horrible and unequal, not like Germany, those lovely Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. What's that you say?

Oh. (See here.)

4. But at least we British have a sense of humour. "Once, it would have been absurd to claim that humor was the most prominent British characteristic, as if we archly established the world’s biggest empire, wittily squashed revolutions, and humorously prevailed in two world wars. But ..." "It has often been suggested that the British desire for Brexit has been driven by imperial nostalgia. I think Brexiteers are more nostalgic for its decline — for that little period of history where the establishment was strong enough to maintain order but weak enough to seem essentially comic. A time when Britons were not powerful enough to be imperial but self-assured enough to make fun of others as well as themselves. Looking back to when the market was strong enough to offer people comfort but not pervasive enough to have a stranglehold on life." From here, apropos of John Cleese. Is it fair to say that both Leavers and Remainers are nostalgic for the time when John Cleese was funny?

5. Also on the subject of Britain, The Old Vicarage, Emneth is for sale. You know, where Rev W. Awdry lived. And yes, there are toy trains there.