Who is the real snob?
From H.O. Mounce
Sir: According to Charles Moore, it is snobbish to criticise the existence of cheap flights (The Spectator’s Notes, 14 October). For it is these flights, according to him, which, by allowing ordinary people to travel abroad, release them from a confined or impoverished life. My parents never travelled abroad. It was only on a handful of occasions, in fact, that my mother travelled outside the town in which she was born. Am I to conclude that she led a confined or impoverished life? Indeed, until recently, the majority of human beings lived as my parents did. Am I to conclude that the majority of human beings have led confined or impoverished lives, simply because they did not have the opportunity to go abroad for their holidays? This is itself snobbery. It is chronological snobbery, i.e., it is the assumption that people in earlier times were inferior to us because they did not live as we do.
H.O. Mounce Swansea
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