Recliner wrote:
"Martin Edwards" wrote in message

Recliner wrote:
"Willms" wrote in message

Am Thu, 9 Jul 2009 23:57:05 UTC, schrieb Tony Polson
auf uk.railway :

You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability
of using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums
than the already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise
professional people's long distance daily commute.
You think that only unprofessional people should commute to work?
In the UK, "professional" implies reasonably or very well-off people,
such as lawyers and accountants.


Not necessarily. It sometimes refers to moderately paid people like
teachers and quite low paid people like nurses.

No, I don't think so -- maybe headteachers, but not your average junior
teacher, and certainly not nurses. I'm not saying they aren't dedicated,
hard-working professionals, just that the colloquial British use does
have a status/class/wealth implication. I was just trying to correct
Luko, who seemed to think that anyone not in this vaguely defined this
category is therefore being insulted in some way. I also made the point
that this was UK usage; it's different in the US.


There is a kind of shell game involved. They are professions when the
employers are trying to get something for nothing out of them, but the
matter is forgotten when a pay claim comes up.