News that the one-time glamour model Jordan, now known primarily by her real name, Katie Price, was banned from bringing a group of friends to the Cartier Polo International may seem like a vintage 'silly season' item, but it's all over the national papers today for reasons other than space filling.

However you may feel about glamour modelling, there's no denying that Price has had a lucrative career. As she herself points out in The Times' 'Thunderer' column today, she is a prize-winning author and successful businesswoman - but her exclusion from one of Britain's best known social events shows that we are still some way from that classless society we hear so much about.

Price is convinced that it is her glamour model career that has led to her exclusion from the polo tournament, but as she herself says, there are plenty of aspiring actresses 'in miniscule dresses'on the guest list. I think it's down to class. Price just doesn't sound - or look - posh enough. And as she points out, being an accomplished, enthusiastic and committed horsewoman apparently isn't enough to gain her entry into a polo event, while tonier guests, who wouldn't know one end of a horse from the other, are already unpacking their picnic hampers and uncorking their champagne. 

It's 2008, so why are accents still so important? It's no longer the case that only the plummy-voiced have money or status. Indeed, as tax and death duties kick in, a growing number of British aristocrats are having to sell their stately homes to people whose ancestors tilled their land and swilled out their chamber pots.

If accents and class are stopping the likes of Katie Price from getting into posh polo parties, are they also stopping people from getting into the workforce, or from moving off the bottom rungs of the career ladder? You don't find too many chief executives who sound like Barbara Windsor ...

Read the complete post at http://www.personneltoday.com/blogs/human-resources-news/2008/08/not-posh-enough-can-your-accen.html