scrubbedexpat141

Nah I take it back actually.

Scum can't write books.

littlejimmy

Plenty of politicians have written books.

co durham boy

Recruitment Consultants from Southampton could never be middle class

scrubbedexpat141

Bugger. Rumbled.

Ethos83

Can someone establish the parameters that makes a person middle class, please.

Mogs

don't worry, you would pass.

kittycat1

Well in old terms;

Working class used to be those in laborer style jobs- the sort of jobs that keep a country running.

Middle class would be middle/upper management

And Upper class would be the ones who owned everything and made lots of money from the working class.

These days there is less and less production and people are far more educated than years gone by- my grandad left school at 11 to support his family by working at the local factory. That would obviously never happen now. So is there a true working class now- no, not really not to the extent there was before the 1980's. It all changed when production stopped in the UK.

I think people view money as putting you into a class which isn't really right as look at all the footballers earning more than lots of lords and ladies. I think class is about family values. I was bought up by a working class family and still have those values but I work in a well paid job and would certainly be considered as middle class by most I suppose.

That's why being seen as middle class is a slur-I was bought up in an old labour house and if Thatchers name was even mentioned in the house my grannies blood would boil. When labour is voted out for conservatives and libdems to have power together I think you can say the class system is no longer relevant.

Bring back production to the Uk, get rid of the minimum wage, bring back council housing and you'll get working class again.

co durham boy

The person must own a pair of beige cords and use a decanter

Ethos83

I don't care about me.

It's that these days 'class' seems to mean both nothing and everything, oddly enough.

Do we really even have a class system when most of the richest people in the UK aren't aristos, working class footballers have millions and most people in between seem to have generally the same kind of lifestyle. It's just the choice of schools or clothing or neighbourhood or car or the colour of your furniture or whatever that differs. But it's still irrelevant at the end of the day, isn't it? That's why banding about 'class' is silly and pointless.

(

LaLaLayla

I disagree. Maybe in the US you can transcend the class system, but certainly not in the UK. Not using traditional classifications of class, anyway.

Ethos83

Ah, but the traditional classifications of class really can't be applied these days, can it?

Would you call Carole Middleton working class because she was born into the working classes, or successful middle class because she established a thriving business and seems to live a very comfortable life in the horsey quadrants of Berkshire?

Mogs

This sums up the current meaning quite well IMO....

(quoted from the Oxford Dictionary of Politics)

The class or social stratum lying above the working class and below the upper class. It is a term that everybody uses every day, but hardly anybody ever defines. The earliest use of it recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary was by Queen Caroline of Denmark in 1766; however, she denied its existence in Denmark. The term settles into something like its present meaning by 1843, when George Borrow talks about ‘the middle class, shopkeepers and professional men’. The middle class are distinguished from the working class by occupation and education. They are distinguished from the upper class, apparently, by seriousness, moral purpose, and earning a living. Nowadays, a large proportion of respondents class themselves as middle class—as many as 80 per cent in typical surveys in the United States.

The term clearly refers to status rather than to class. People are judged to be middle class or otherwise more by their level of education, the physical conditions in which they work, and/or their consumption habits than by their relationship to the means of production. An example of each follows:

(1) Education. In Victorian Britain, when the present system of school-leaving examinations supervised by the universities was introduced, they were sometimes called the ‘middle class examinations’. For a century from the 1850s to the 1950s passing such examinations was regarded as a passport to the middle class.
(2)Physical conditions. ‘White collar’ is a near-synonym for middle class, and ‘blue collar’ for working class. Thus a job is middle class if it is done in clean conditions and does not involve heavy manual work. A working-class job is perceived as one done in dirty conditions which require protective clothing. This distinction is also fading with the rapid change in the nature of work since the 1960s.
(3)Consumption habits. The commonest measurements of class are those used by the advertising industry to classify those who read or watch particular media. But advertisers are interested only in consumption habits, not in class properly defined.

The basis for the commonly expressed view that ‘we are all middle class now’ is therefore: (1) that many or most of us call ourselves middle class; and (2) that the old badges of status of the working class are no longer reliable.



Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/middle-class#ixzz1iane6sqr

Boomhauer

Working class ---> plays and watches Footie.
Middle class---> wants to be known as the Rugby and Cricket type.
Upper class---> plays Polo

shiva

The one I heard which I've always liked was the middle class have to buy their furniture the upper class inherit theirs

lullabelle

There's nothing more likely to send my stepdad into an apocalyptic rage than call him middle class.

He sees the fact that he came from a relatively poor bg and that they were staunchly labour as the defining part of him being working class, despite the fact he's never done manual work in his life. Neither did his parents - grandpa was a teacher. And he went to uni, as did all his brothers.

To me a retired arts organiser who lives in his own home in France and who paints his days away is middle class. but he sees working class as an ideaolgy. Becoming middle class goes against every bone in his body.

Now my grandad was properly working class - brickie, no money, industrious work ethic, cleaner wife, no car, council house, daughter who gave birth at 17 (to have me) etc. And if you'd called him middle class he'd have just laughed
and said that class was something only idiots cared about. He didn't label himself anything but he was working class through and through I guess.

I knew i was working class when i grew up. I went to an academy in Edinburgh where class to me meant those who lived in the nice bits of town - the parents owned their own home (yeah I knew there was a difference,
NOBODY would have bought in Niddrie/Greendykes) they had more than one school skirt, they even seemed to have better hair... I was always made very aware that many of them considered themselves better than me. I never felt like them. They seemed so privileged.

But I can't be working class now... Meeja whore with mortgage, living on a
****ing man made island, preference for mid 20th century modernist furniture? I must have middle class written all over me. Or tosser. Something like that.