My MN name says it all...

notashametobemiddleclass. Don't give a fig, about what others think. My DH is on £150,000, and I don't work. Couldn't careless what others think, married well...
so what.

We are earning more than 50k for the first time ever (still feeling a bit giddy TBH). We are hard-working but don't particularly want to ordinary. And DS#1's teacher informed him that our family is middle-class (so it must be true ). But the most important thing we are is LUCKY! Very very lucky. And people inferring things about is isn't going to bother me at all. Why does it bother you?

Oh and I've been struggling to make ends meet before and IMO there isn't much more 'real life' than that, barring serious illness or death. It saps your energy, your will and your happiness. It impacts on other core areas of your life - it can affect your relationships, mental and physical health.

I can't help feeling that any politican who tells us how to conduct our lives should try it from time to time.

Exactly! No-one is saying that you are not hardworking or normal, but ordinary is like average, and you are not average. It's not a problem apart form politicians who like to generalise as they will generalise the majority.
Not really worth getting worked up about imo.

But you are not an ordinary family. You earn more than teh majority of people in the country.

You may not be out of touch with the 'real world' but you certainly can't know what it is like to live on teh breadline.

But when they say.. 'we are giving all hardworking families this' (whatever 'this' happens to be)... and then you check the small print and find that 'this' doesn't apply to you. Well then you conclude that logically, you are not quite as hard-working as you thought.

"Ordinary Hardworking Families" always makes me laugh. It's very "blah", isn't it?

'Ordinary Hardworking Families' means YOU. It's a way that politicians can make you think they have YOUR interests at heart, becuse of course, YOU are part of an Ordinary Hardworking Family. Aren't you?

sorry I should have said 'ordinary hardworking families'

soz, I still think a family on 50k+ is not exactly 'ordinary', but they can be hardworking, and more often than not deserve their good fortune. Not because they have worked hard necessarily, but because they have worked cleverly.

I always understood 'hardworking families' to mean any family with working parents, who aren't in the top 10% of earners. I consider myself to be part of a hardworking family, even though I only earn 10k a year. I also consider the senior teachers where I work as hardworking and ordinary, on 38k+.

What I find more annoying is reading some tak like the daily mail telling us that anyone who earns a small salary and who therefore cannot save/get a mortgage/pension must be lazy.

Stealth taxes are the little nibbles taken out of your disposable income but without changing the actual rate of income tax. Like increasing the ceiling for paying NI, increases in duty on products, changes to road tax, changes to personal allowances, changes to stamp duty, losing tax relief on things like health insurance, extra charges on council tax.

Some affect everyone, others affect only those on middle-incomes. People on low incomes tend to be cushioned with compensation in other ways e.g. WFTC... people on higher incomes just pay up and suck it up. It's fair, of course, that those with more pay more but the 'nibbles' over the last 13 years have added up to quite a lot. And so when you are not only asked to pay up but excluded from the description 'hard working family' - and then compared with Hyacinth Bucket to boot - it's not surprising people feel annoyed.

Anyway, I thought we were all middle class these days?

Actual Middle class != tory.

Hyacinth Bucket, obsession with social status, that awful woman on that B&B program last night , middle class = tory.

The first group have nothing to be ashamed of the second lot are just unpleasant and weird.

I'm sorry but this sort of attitude is just pathetic and self indulgent. What do you expect? Shall we form a little pity party and bemoan our awful lot, with our nice houses, cars and comfortable lives. there are bigger fish to fry out there in the world. Why don't you take a look around you? people have real problems.

I am 'middle class', by the way.

YAB entirely U.

And despite mostly hanging out on the politics threads, I've never found anyone that disparaging about being middle class. I was once called a champagne socialist, but if you're a Tory (and I'm guessing you are), I doubt you've had that problem?

you speak a lot of sense Chil1234 I HATE inverted snobbery/prejudice!

Eton is not middle class, love

Are we supposed to be ashamed of being middle class? Oh, crap, no-one told me.

Think the politicians say 'ordinary hard-working families' because everyone assumes they are talking about them. No-one thinks, "not me, my family is freakish and idle".

And funnily enough, the bright kids from well-off families generally end up doing well no matter what, so it's hardly surprising they're not offered extra help. I forget what age a bright, poor kid starts to fall behind a less-bright rich kid, but it's a bit of a shocker. Look it up if you're interested...

But by the way, if your net household income is over £50k, you are not 'ordinary', you are in the top 5% of UK families.
Statistically, you're more of an outlier, less of a Joe Average.

My household income is over £50k and probably am middle class. But still sobbed tears of misery when DC came into power. Am definitely leftish politics rise. Might even vote Labout next time.

PS Tony Blair was never left wing - he was a Tory.

It's precisely that no-one mentions the middle-class that's remarkable because it's a big section of the community. Labour always promised to support the infamous 'hard-working family' but, every budget, this description turned out to not be all-inclusive. Stealth taxes have chipped away at disposable incomes - which you'd expect from a party devoted to a redistribution of wealth. But if Labour wondered why they didn't do better at the polls on Thursday they'll probably find it's because they lost a lot of the public-spirited middle-class support that Tony Blair originally appealed to. They took them for granted.

Is it because most prisoners are male?