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Very!
son of teachers, Nurse by trade. Speak pretty much received pronunciation
Middle middle tho 🙂
Very
I make my own pomegranate molasses as one can never trust the provenance of the variety available at my local independent grocer
My car is ancient and I do have a television but it was a hand-me-down. Make of that what you will.
finbar
Free Member
My car is ancient and I do have a television but it was a hand-me-down. Make of that what you will.
You're the ex Tory minister for Science?
Eminently.
I refuse to accept any notion that I might be middle class - I shall forever be working class and proud of it.
T5.1|T6
woodburner
Santa cruz
Money rich, time poor
Oscillates between austerity/watches as an investment
what am I missing?
Didn't know what adverts were until I left home. Never had fish and chips until I got my own place.
Mmmmm, love a good cup of hand coffee - as long as you sieve out the fingernails
Never had fish and chips until I got my own plaice
FTFY
Wasn't allowed to watch ITV at home when I was a kid. Too common, apparently. When my dad eventually buggered off it was open season though. Even had our dinner on trays watching, like all the other riff-raff.
I have a boiling water tap.
I thought the key indicator was whether you unwrap your Christmas presents before or after lunch?
Before, but verrrry slowly...my wife's family tradition was tearing into the pile like a pack of hyenas fighting over a carcass, so we had to work out a compromise.
Lower middle, I think.
Dad was a BT engineer who liked to listen to radio 4. Mum was an office temp who thought curry or pasta or risotto were "queer food" and dishwashers were for the type of lad-di-dah ponces who were too up themselves to wash their own dishes. This was mid 90s, mind.
My folks do, now, have a dishwasher. Of course they do.
Before, but verrrry slowly…my wife’s family tradition was tearing into the pile like a pack of hyenas fighting over a carcass, so we had to work out a compromise.
We are exactly the same, for exactly the same reason - I was struggling to find an appropriate simile for the savagery - thank you.
While we're on the subject - when I was younger (i.e. teens, in the 90s), my dad's great horror was the prospect of "Looking like a bunch of yobbos". For instance, walking around eating fish and chips, instead of sitting down to eat them like decent people.
I always thought this was because he was a bit middle class. MrsDoris sees it as working class insecurity, and the middle classes wouldn't have given a shit. What say you?
We surpassed that, we often don't even have presents on xmas day.
We weren’t allowed to watch Grange Hill
Oh, I remember that as a thing. My Mum actually encouraged it as preparation for high school. I guess it inspired us to go to Grammar!
Dad was very much the judge of what comedy was suitably high-brow enough. He went to Ealing Grammar which was next door to the Ealing Studios so he would see the start of the day coming in and out of the studios. Not a great deal of ITV happening in our house.
I always thought this was because he was a bit middle class. MrsDoris sees it as working class insecurity, and the middle classes wouldn’t have given a shit. What say you?
I'm inclined to agree, but I wound prefer to think of it as aspiration rather than insecurity.
I watch a documentary ages ago called "status anxiety" which covers this sort of thing really well - it's really stuck with me, particularly the (perceived) link between success and effort in the US vs class in the UK.
I wasn’t allowed to watch ITV as a child. And I ate avocado yesterday. But I’m solid working class. My children, however, are not (I’m a professional but my father was a tradesman).
Working class:
Son of a Chemical Worker.
Live in the Boro.
Drink John Smiths.
Like Mushy peas.
Ride a Carrera.
Vertically challenged.
Enjoy the delights of social housing.
Work on the Capital markets🤔🤷
Status Anxiety (the book) was written by Alain de Botton - now he's middle class!
And I ate avocado yesterday
It's virtually free where I live - grows on trees don't you know.
I caught the teenager complaining about the selection of couscous we had in the cupboard the other day and thinking she was genuinely hard done by - we’ve raised a middle class monster!
i’d guess I’d call myself middle class now (white collar Finacial services job, drive a sensible estate car, live in the Peak District), but grew up in a fairly poor working class environment and became steadily less poor as my dad got himself educated - started as and industrial boiler fitter at 16, retired as a professor of sociology
Before, but verrrry slowly…my wife’s family tradition was tearing into the pile like a pack of hyenas fighting over a carcass, so we had to work out a compromise.
I'm going to need help with this. I'm very much in the hyena camp and my kids have been brought up to follow the pack. My new partner and her kids are in the slowly camp. I suspect this kills any thoughts of a successful blending of households 😀
Explain how you compromised? If I start now, I may be able to make us look more civilised come December the 25th!
My children are called |Foraand Fauna.
I wasn’t allowed to watch ITV as a child. And I ate avocado yesterday. But I’m solid working class
Stop kidding yourself. I bet they made you watch 'Ask the Family' with Robert Robinson as your only quiz show, just like me...
Explain how you compromised?
Tear into stockings permitted. I was prepared to allow simultaneous opening and forgo the half-hour break for mince pies in the middle of the rest of the presents. Obviously allowed my son to take off his suit jacket and tie for some of it, too.
What is Tesco ?
I’m not sure owning a T5/6 makes you middle class. Quite the opposite, lower middle at a stretch
What is Tesco ?
I wasn't allowed inside a Tesco, or Asda until I was 13. Sainsbury's and M&S all the way.
There's an actual test for your class. Not there are 7 classes. The results are binding of course so you'll have to change your address, career and family if you've been living a lie. No pressure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_5093/index.stm
Not even close! My dad was a toolmaker at Westinghouse, mum worked at the OXO factory in town. We lived in a council house and had a small B&W telly, no telephone, no car, in fact the only cars in my street were at the posh, private terraced houses at the other end of the street. Failed my 11+ and went to the secondary modern like most kids.
During the winter of 1963, I’d wake up in the morning with my bedroom walls sparkling with frost!
Established middle class it seems.
Explain how you compromised?
Tear into stockings permitted.
Indeed. Stockings are from father Christmas and are opened as soon as the kids wake up. The presents under the tree are from actual humans, are opened after lunch, one-at-a-time with a modicum of **** ing decorum thankyouverymuch. It has literally taken us 7 years to establish this running order (which we will call a "tradition"), including the question of which presents are from Santa, and which are from us/relatives. Some families apparently work on the basis that all presents under the tree apparently?!?!?!
Well according to the bbc linky I'm an Elite.
No bloody way.
Established middle class according to that test.
Bit odd really, as I always thought if you needed to work for a living you were working class.
Brilliant childhood in a council house great company of scallywags and ragamuffins 😎The other side of the playing field was all the private houses , I was always intrigued by the one that had it's name emblazoned in huge letters on the wall above the front door. Then when I became a postie I had to deliver a parcel there . When they opened the front door wow I'd never seen such a shit pit of stuff strewn all over the place , my mum would never let our house get like that !
There's 5 of us mates who went to school together, reading this reminds me one of their dads was an industrial chemist he never hid his dislike for me because I lived on a council estate. His son became a BT engineer and is a radio 4 listening coffee snob who reads the New Scientist 😎 Far from trying to emulate him it's been my ambition to bring him down to my level 😁 I got him into MTBing when he retired now he joins me dicking about on bikes and has even done a few overseas trips with me 👍
I'm always referred to affectionately as council house scum , but Im certainly not at the Frank Gallagher level does that make me a council house snob ? Dear old mum thought I was getting ideas above my station when we married and moved 3 miles down the road 😁
Raised by working class parents - factory worker & school librarian.
Given a private school education through the assisted places scheme & then University.
Now Airline pilot married to a lawyer.
My kitchen has 2 dishwashers. Hobbies cycling cricket and sailing.
Also reminds me our previous neighbours he was middle management she played the piano. He was having none of it when I told him by definition he had to get up and go to work every day therefore he was working class 😁😁😁
All this reminds me of those immortal words in the song " You like to think your shit don't stink " 😁😁😁😁
I’m conflicted. Or just confused.
I still buy an actual print copy of the Guardian every Saturday morning but when I open the food supplement and read the latest Ottilengi recipe, I have absolutely no idea what half the ingredients are
So northern working-class monkey with the odd middle class affectation
I do own a 20 year old estate car, but it isn’t a Volvo and I don’t have a Labrador to go in the back of it
Well put it this way, I wasn't allowed to watch Grange Hill or Tiswas as a child as they were 'too common'.
I’m always amazed how a few of my colleagues earning circa £70k (up north) claim to be working class
All depends on whether you can change class or are always the class you are born into? I was working class (dad lorry driver, mum part time dinner lady), lived in roughish area and went to crap schools
Have done the BBC 'assessment' in the link and I am Elite (This is the wealthiest and most privileged group in the UK). While I am relatively wealthy I do not see myself as the most privileged group based on my upbringing.
Yes I am privileged being white male/stable parents/genetically intelligent but when I went to a Grammar school to do A levels I felt not privileged at all so all relative.
According to that BBC link
Result: the class group you most closely match is:
New affluent workers
This class group is sociable, has lots of cultural interests and is in the middle of all the class groups in terms of wealth. According to the Great British Class Survey results, lots of people in this group:Are young
Come from a working class background
Own their own home
Which is balderdash. MY parents were firmly middle class. I'm 62 3/4
lol i made Elite... although i didn't do any of the activites apart from 1, i also only knew 1 type of the people socially.
Before, but verrrry slowly…my wife’s family tradition was tearing into the pile like a pack of hyenas fighting over a carcass, so we had to work out a compromise.
Yes that's my family and my children. Definitely not the OHs family....
Same with the barbeque 🤯😱 😂
According to that BBC thing, technical middle class.
Never thought about it much but I’d go for working class. Hit quite a few stereotype bingo cards. Father was a labourer on building sites. Liked a drink and to terrorise his family. Step father was a miner and again not a top notch parent. Grew up on council estates and to this day I occasionally stand in front of the fridge eating things directly out of the packets!
I have a sort of proper job after years of doing all kinds of work. Think that any day now I’ll be discovered as a big fake and sacked! My kids have it better than me so they’re probably lower middle class if that is even a thing.
Despite not watching TV and admitting to listening to hip/hop&rap, that BBC thing thinks I am Elite (whatever that means). It might be because my social circle is very varied though; I ticked every box on that list. I don't feel Elite. I barely feel middle class, but the test cannot lie about these things. IT probably uses AI or something
Blimey, Countzero just wrote my early years, and I had a brummy accent as a handicap too. The secondary mod was a bit rough but gave me a ticket to university on a full grant and somewhere along the way I aquired all the middle class trimmings - but not the attitude, I still detest the Tories and posh accents make me itch.
I used to love breathing on the window glass to clear a patch to look out and see if it had snowed because if it had it wa sledging up the Lickeys and building an igloo.
Poopascoops test must be faulty, I came out as Elite, whereas in reality it’s Alan Partridge with second home in a sunny country aspirations*
*we wouldn’t mix with the Benidorm bacon and eggs expats, maybe that swayed the result…
That BBC thing is about 12 years old. Doesn't mean it wasn't a load of rubbish at the time (I remember doing it when it first came out) but also the questions like value of property and savings are a little out of date now.
I’m always amazed how a few of my colleagues earning circa £70k (up north) claim to be working class, maybe they grew up working class, but educated to degree level and in white collar t-shirts and jeans
I know a university professor in a science subject who’s father was a biochemist who used to claim that he was working class. 🤣
I’m aware that the statement above also makes me extremely middle class.
I’ve never understood why some people seem to be ashamed of their backgrounds, whether privileged or not.
There’s an actual test for your class. Not there are 7 classes. The results are binding of course so you’ll have to change your address, career and family if you’ve been living a lie. No pressure.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_5093/index.stm/blockquote >
Doff your caps, peasants!
I suspect it’s because the survey is from 2013 and using current property and savings values is skewing the result. I’m about as middle class as they come really, although for as long as I need to work for a living, I maintain I’m working class.
I've never really got/understood the class thing and how it seems to define people and their interactions with others.
My upbringing was "unconventional" * and its resulted in both my brother and I, very much doing our own thing and not really giving a flying monkeys about societal constructions like class, and clubs and doffing your cap to the higher ups etc...
* mums side of the family was very posh and she caused mayhem by becomming a nurse, dad was abandoned to an orphange where horrific things happened due to the lovely christian people running it and had to make a start of it, as very dmamaged person with no understanding of how humans really worked, but a bloody brilliant drive for learning.
He ended up as a mad research scientist, travelling the world and folks from nasa dropping in to see his stuff. It also meant i'd come home from school to share dinner with some total geniuses who were bonkers, from all over the world.
Having a crazy japanese chap explain polymer chemistry and the new catalyst reactions they were working on, over a fishfinger butty was an eye opener at 10 years old.
I guess it explains why ive always been an oddbodd
So what defines class? Your parents upringing, the house you lived in, the school you went to, the job you do, if like football or rugby?
All of these things are ephemeral and it seems so silly to live your life with a bias on this basis
I’ve never really got/understood the class thing and how it seems to define people and their interactions with others.
You don't understand it because it doesn't exist anymore. It's a myth. We live in a society where backgrounds are so diverse that trying to pigeon hole people into classes is futile and just leads to silly generalisations.
The BBC thing says I'm Elite but I think I'd claim established middle class. Parents met at Cambridge, we didn't watch ITV, I survived a minor public school, career in IT. Rugby not football. Stockings were from Santa and could be opened in bed as soon as they were discovered. Other presents were opened later, one person at a time, and the gifts were recorded in a book for reference when writing thank you letters.
According to the BBC quiz, Established middle class
I would disagree though
You don’t understand it because it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a myth. We live in a society where backgrounds are so diverse that trying to pigeon hole people into classes is futile and just leads to silly generalisations.
Exception being upper class which you can never change to and never change from.
You don’t understand it because it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a myth. We live in a society where backgrounds are so diverse that trying to pigeon hole people into classes is futile and just leads to silly generalisations.
Maybe 'class' as a thing doesn't exist anymore, but there are definitely 'societal groups' that you can probably broadly define by things like income, job type, hobbies, pastimes, cultural activities etc. But, obviously, it could only ever be a broad definition and it would be easy to find exceptions in every case
Quite, apparently.
We have a Qashqai just to cart the dog around in so the other car doesn't get clarty.
Definitively middle class, my dad was a dentist, my mum was a social worker. I went to grammar school and then university and ended up doing computer stuff for banks. My parents used to have dinner parties, a favourite starter was avocadoes which you could only buy from Marks and Spencers at the time.
We did have ice on the insides of the windows and had to pour kettles out of the window to defrost the sink pipes - the joys of a 1930s house that still had the original coal boiler and silk and rubber wiring in the 1970s.
There was a very strong ethos of service at my school. Lots of us ended up in the forces or police. At the time the majority of officers were still from public schools and very much looked down on anyone who wasn't. Might have changed by now, it was worse in my dad's time. When he was doing national service as a dentist his last posting was to a Guards regiment. He was quietly taken to one side and told that they understood he wouldn't be able to fully participate in mess life as he didn't have the background and wouldn't be able to afford the mess fees. They had a special scheme for doctors, dentists, engineers etc - not proper guards officers - where they'd top up the fees as long as you didn't try to pretend you were meant to be there.
I wonder if Crocs vs Birkenstocks is another indicator?
I have both. Crocs for feeding the rabbits outside, Birkenstock slippers!
few of my colleagues earning circa £70k
Earning a train driver salary doesn't make you middle class.
I make pasta with a hand pasta machine and know Tuscany a bit too well.
We weren’t allowed to watch Grange Hill or EastEnders.
90-120 mins prep. Television access strictly limited in a boarding school. I wonder how they are handling 'phones?
Tazzy - I have seen your pictures. You are as middle class as they come 🙂
Status Anxiety (the book) was written by Alain de Botton – now he’s middle class!
If you were really middle class you'd have read the original "The Status Seekers" by Vance Packard....
Maybe ‘class’ as a thing doesn’t exist anymore, but there are definitely ‘societal groups’ that you can probably broadly define by things like income, job type, hobbies, pastimes, cultural activities etc. But, obviously, it could only ever be a broad definition and it would be easy to find exceptions in every case
I'd say it was more beliefs (non religious) / attitudes than job / hobbies etc and then education level plays a big part.
add another question to that BBC survey more relevant to this forum,
anyone with N+1 purchased bikes is not working class ;0)
The English class system is crippling. Either sucking up or looking down.
Dad ran a car factory (so two cars), Mum was a Tax Inspector, watched the BBC and we had a dishwasher by 1970. We'd a cleaner too.
Set me up for the 'middle-class' lifestyle (according to the 'media') which I've lived all my life.