Which "class" - Lighthearted!

[dingdongdahlia]

So, my dh is very proud of his roots and is quite happy to tell everybody and anybody about how we're a working class family. Personally, I think class is quite an outdated concept but definitely think there are some things that are still considered wc/mc/us.

I've explained to dh that it's not as clear cut anymore and while he works a blue collar job, it's as much about lifestyle nowadays as your employment.

I say to my husband he's probably closer to middle class now because of tiny little things that make up our lifestyle but he denies it vehemently. I come from a very traditionally middle class family and he says he "dragged me down" (with a cheeky smile).

So, in the most lighthearted way possible, what do you think?

Dh works a very skilled manual job, he has an element of responsibility and although he achieved his role through an apprenticeship I would say his level of knowledge is pretty close to a masters in engineering. He calls himself a spanner monkey.

I have a professional role that is traditionally a middle class career.

We own our own home in a suburb of a city in the south coast. Four bed with garage, almost paid off (we're early 30s).

We eat out at least 10x a month at naice places and stay in nice hotels frequently as a couple (disclaimer: directly linked to my job).

We shop at Ocado and local independent butchers, greengrocers etc. Christmas meat is always bought from the butcher.

We have at least one foreign holiday a year with several other UK breaks throughout the year.

We have a cleaner (he hates this but hates a messy house more).

We have a bean to carafe coffee machine.

Our kids are young but it's looking like we will potentially send them to private school for secondary.

He snowboards and skis. Trying to convince me to take the kids on a skiing holiday (I'm not keen).

We own Barbour jackets (the wax variety that don't have the logo emblazoned all over it).

He's voted Tory in the past.

Obviously this is very lighthearted and a bit of a family joke. Just wanted to see what people think.

I got 'Established MC' which I can assure you I am not, I have a regional accent FFS

We got Elite too. We're not. I come from a very much WC background, dh borderline lower MC. Since growing up we have moved to a more affluent lifestyle, with higher household incomes, etc. but we are not elite lol! Tough that BBC link says it now based on other factor, seems to me its still mainly based on current income and savings than anything else.

I've been out all day. Can't believe this is still going. I just did that quiz and came out as Elite.

I think the fact everybody has such varying views of what everything means that it's definitely not cut and dry.

Also, having been sniped at up thread for deeming my (rather vague sounding) job as professionals I decided to dig around a bit at what the general consensus of it was. Apparently it's deemed to be a role that is either "classless" or the "most exclusive middle class profession". So.... that's confusing.

Had a few good laughs on this thread though.

...so we're off to drink a lot of bean to carafe coffee and book some theatre tickets. Byeeee

It doesn't account for background/ upbringing which is at least as relevant as your economic status when categorising your social class.
I am a professional who enjoys the theatre and ballet, my social circle is varied and I own property, but my parents were a dressmaker and a police officer and I talk with a regional accent.
Precisely nobody who met me would categorise me as established MC, it really is laughable.

Mine came up as elite haha, I’m an immigrant, my dad was a taxi driver and my mum worked in a cornershop.

I’m elite too . My dad was a dustman and my mum was a cook in a factory and I lived on a council house . I went to grammar school but left at 16 . Never been to the ballet , opera or a stately home .

A journo

Oh dear

God OP you seem like a ridiculous parody to me

I'm apparently EMC

Even threw in a few red herrings

'Like hip hop'
'Video games'

Such fun

I think the BBC is trying to convince us that 'we're all middle class now'.

Only we're really not at all.

Crushed

I completely agree

Very amusing little quiz though

These conversations have been cropping up on MN for years and they always make me cringe so fucking hard.

I'd love to know where slipperorchid is from that has no class system!

Class markers tend to be pretty country specific don't they.

I did a Politics degree, which is seen as a doss subject in Italy.
OTOH Media Studies is known as 'scienza della communicazione' and is seen as hard/well respected.

'Emergent service worker' here - even though I'm friends with a solicitor, a scientist and go to the ballet

Class threads always make me think of this Tracy Ulman sketch:

Fair warning, it's a little dated wrt LGBT* tropes.

@bsc I don’t think Ireland has much of a class system. Certainly not like the UK!

The class system in Ireland is complex and interesting.. In the “old days” the upper classes in Ireland were the English...... The Irish RM makes interesting reading/viewing ...

Um. I know. 😂

And going back a few decades the protestants were very much the ones with money and privileges.

But we’ve moved a long way away from that now and as I said, it’s certainly not as prominent as in the UK.

The Irish RM was a tv series written by a novelist!

The only class system in Ireland was one driven by the Anglo Irish which thankfully is sneered at nowadays. There are of course people who believe they are ‘a class above’ others 😀

Like everywhere there are rich and not so rich (I’m hesitant to say poor because Ireland is a well off country) but currently due to the housing crisis in recent years there are now many homeless people. It is scandalous in a rich country like Ireland. While many homeless are the more typical drug abusers, many are now families who lost jobs and can’t afford to rent or buy property. It is said a large majority are just two paychecks away from homelessness which is a stark realism.

I did say “in the old days”!

Media Studies is known as 'scienza della communicazione' and is seen as hard/well respected

Off topic, but I never understood why media studies wasn't taken seriously as a subject given that people'sown lived experience of the world is vastly smaller than the "experience" of the world that comes from they see/hear/read in the media*

In paranoid moments, I wonder whether it was entirely accidental that "Media Studies" became the small-c conservative shorthand for a joke degree across popular culture, thus ensuring that the brightest minds were discouraged from taking a good,hard, analytical look at it.

I wonder how social media would have developed if our brightest minds had already been turned to how media impacts society before Facebook got off the ground.

(*As a simple example, take kitchens. Before TV, most people's mental concept of a kitchen was based on their own (if they were lucky enough to have one), possibly various employers', and a handful of friends or customers. Above a certain class, people (esp men) might never have even seen one. Now between adverts, dramas, films and the odd kitchen-related news story we see hundreds, maybe thousands every year, most of which are not real but pretending to be. So when you need to make a decision about your own kitchen, you are basing it on a concept of "kitcheness" that is skewed because almost all your examples are fake. Now replace "kitchen" with "disabled", "muslim", "banker", "gangster", "liberal", "social worker", "detective"....)

The class you identify with is more the one you were brought up than are now I think. How you were brought up will always be there no matter how you live now

This 100%. I firmly believe that you remain the class you were born into for the rest of your life.

And class really does matter, so, so much.

A working class baby can expect to die much earlier than a middle or upper class baby.

A working class baby is much less likely to go to university, or earn enough money to not have to worry about it.

A working class baby will have to contend with prejudices over their accent at both university and job interviews.

A working (and middle) class baby cannot look around its class members at school and realistically think 'yes, a few of these kids will almost certainly end up in the Cabinet and running the country'.

The idea that class is unimportant and should not be discussed is along the same lines as claiming racism and sexism is all sorted out now and people shouldn't complain about it.

Leafylow Is your post tongue in cheek? It certainly made me chuckle 😀😀😀

Which part did you find funny?

Was Margaret Thatcher not the daughter of a grocer? So working class who became prime minister? Tony Blair, Gordon Brown would all be middle class at most, certainly not upper class, and were prime ministers. Ditto John Major.