The rocket salad debate.

When writing of the "working class" I am a person who goes far enough back to a society which was less pliant, less influences by the media and more organic in its assuredness. 
The strength of the class of people we described as "working" was a misnomer since every class except perhaps the "idle rich" worked in some way or another. The fact that today we are faced with the ridiculous concept where people running our business's are worth, in remuneration 200 times more than some of the people they employ, because, it is argued their contribution, (work) is worth 200 times that of the ordinary worker, leans towards the belief that we have diminished the value we attach to the work a working man does rather than the value of the work a boss does. But I digress.
People growing up in the era before the reach of television were not subverted by its power to mould a people in virtually every facet of their lives. A persons identity, his or her characteristics were a function of the environment they grew up in and on the whole there was a healthy interplay of real time experience which was your own. Much was first hand and had the ring of home grown actuality about it, a 'commonality' you could share which not only bound you to your contemporaries  but reinforced you all by the 'block experience' within your tribal affiliation.
Working class values were down to earth. They were not based on the analysis  of an intellectual debate rather they were a rough assimilation of what worked for a society living in reduced conditions with little money to spare and none to waste, although I suppose 'smoking and 
drinking', whilst a relief were a considerable waste.
Simple pleasures and the ability to stay close to nature, walking and cycling to work rather than driving, brought a whole panoply of natural experiences which, whilst they cost nothing, gave one added perspective.
This is not romantic nostalgia and is tempered by the unpleasant memories of rain and fog. 
Yes I might have hankered after the warmth of a car but I would have isolated myself from the  connection to my surroundings, especially the people I met in the street or on the bus. Stevenson's Rocket was a milestone. It signalled the start of the 'industrial revolution', a break from the agrarian lifestyle and the beginning of the mass consolidation of people into cities. 
TV, was another milestone as it encroached into everyone's living space, converting our values and our lives, manipulating us to believe what we are fed through the medium. 
From a magnificent invention, a steam engine named 'the Rocket' to our whimpering in the self same media over the value of a Rocket Salad is but a short journey in years but by the yardstick of human achievement we seem to have come full stop.