Another division in British society has been exposed by a report from the City and Guilds, which shows that almost 25 per cent of the richest British entrepreneurs and business executives who started out by getting “their hands dirty on the shop floor” are Scottish in origin. Since the class system seems less rigid in Scotland than in England, this may support the belief expressed by Larry Siedentop in Democracy in Europe that here “Being someone rather than doing something (has) became uppermost, with sad results for innovation and competition in Britain”.
City and Guilds is the country’s leading vocational awards body.