Fuck! Apparently I'm The Elite!!!

[hopefullyhelpfully]

Genuinely a bit confused. At a Halloween party tonight when a friend of a friend who I know vaguely said that I was part of The Elite and so would automatically be biased towards maintaining status quo. She was sort of joking but not IYSWIM?

This is news to me. Do I get a badge? Is there a T-shirt? A handshake?

I suppose I'm interested in other people's opinions. Does the Elite now encompass the well off middle class whatever their background? I don't know anyone with any influence nationally....
In context I'm from Manchester, went to a bog standard Comprehensive. DH from Luton. Our parents are respectively a printer, teacher, nurse and warehouse manager. We both benefited enormously from free university education (Oxbridge and Imperial) and the house price boom (we're late 40s) and are in lucrative jobs London living in an expensive house. We privately educate both children for secondary but not for primary.
This makes me the poshest person I could ever have imagined as a child BUT surely not this nebulous Elite???
I'm honestly interested in how other people see this...
(DH just laughing. He's now drinking a cup of tea in his dressing gown and a bow tie!)

Elite (in my opinion) is never using state abythjng sending all your children to private primary, then £50k a year for school. Never NHS. Often £15M+ house. Not just that, but the alternative never being considered as an option.
Nothing to do with earnings. Any health issues, Bupa.
Most importantly though, being completely insulated from political change. Having a level of influence and property that means anything political is largely irrelevant.

I think elite means “never have to worry about anything, not truly worry”.

Obvs excluding things like ill health or accidents etc.

If you are in that category, politics doesn’t matter to you. That’s for people who have a vested financial interest in the outcome of an election.

"I think elite means “never have to worry about anything, not truly worry”"

Agreed. It's the wealthy (not middle class comfortable), truly insulated, tiny percentage of the population, that can be referred to as 'elite'.

Not read beyond the first page.

Quoting from a report I read today, ‘The wealthiest 10 per cent of households own more than 900 times the wealth of the poorest 10 per cent, and five times more than the entire bottom half of all households combined. Wealth is much more unequally distributed than income: whereas the median income in the top 10 per cent is around seven times the median income in the bottom 10 per cent, the median wealth of the top 10 per cent is 315 times the median in the bottom 10 per cent (see figure 12.1).” - so by owning a good sized property in London where house prices have risen so much your wealth is far beyond those on the lowest rung can ever hope to reach.

God i wish i was elite.to be that way in terms of money and lack of worrying about anything makes my inside squirm with aching for it!pathetic I know.😑trouble is I think I'd still prefer a sticky out island than a hovering one.(ha,how I just described it I think shows where I am in the class system😶)

You do sound quite drunk and quite hurt by a pretty ridiculous comment that you should have brushed off and forgotten within 30 seconds really.

Regarding Labour and private schools, Apparently they have to have another vote on what will go into their manifesto and it is expected that they will not sign up to banning private schools as they indicated at their conference they would. They probably will say they will take charitable status away from private schools.

But I'm probably just boringly well off as I don't know anyone with real power

Really? No one from your oxbridge days went into politics or banking, none of the other parents at the private school either?

I think the issue is your lifestyle has changed massively over a number of years but you don't feel comfortable with it as it doesn't reflect your original family background.

I can’t believe the number of posters on here tonight who think they’re amusing by will fully misunderstanding what elite means.

I’m surprised they’re not embarrassed to keep up the faux naivety since it’s not a complicated concept

Of course underneath is a desperate need to actually belong to the group they’ve been looking up to hopefully their whole life, even as they pretend to be clueless- “oh I’m the daughter of a miner who went to oxford, Turns out im the elite” .
No you’re not, but you probably got as close as someone like you can expect to. Well done you.

The BBC class survey puts me as elite probably on the strength of my public sector pension paid for out of my slightly above average but well below the 40% tax threshold salary because that translates into a pension pot worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

As I am a miners daughter living in an ex council house

Sorry pressed post too soon, it goes to show how meaningless that calculator is.

There are various elites:
Old money - new money
Social standing ( the social class you were born into)
Educational elite/ bog standard schooling
Money versus ‘class’ ( books versus designer items)
Cultural attitudes - liberal/ traditional
Wealth - high/ low income
And so on.

What is more, these things, unless you are born to money and social standing and stay put, are fluid.

I am aspirational working class. I was very poor, became a teacher and married a lower middle class journalist who worked on a national quality paper. We had a very high joint income for years (but saved rather than spending it on ‘elite’ cars and activities) , value traditional education and culture, filled our house with books and antiques and educated our offspring at prep and grammar schools. We are not wealthy but are comfortable and are burdened with old school values rather than modern financial aspirations. We are pretty snobbish about ‘fur coat and no knickers’ attitudes and are a bit appalled that we strove so hard to be middle class and have Mozart and Shakespeare when the middle classes now pursue ‘Bake Off’ and virtue signalling.

The OP is new money elite for sure. But does it matter?

Silly me. This is England. Of course it matters.

I'm top 1% and don't even have a kitchen island.

Not only that, but my kitchen tops are....laminate.

I do own quite a lot of Boden dresses though bought second hand on Ebay

Am I letting The Elite down?

Am I saved by shopping at Waitrose or does the fact that I cut my own hair because I'm too tight to spend money on hairdressers save me?

It's all so confusing

In all seriousness I'm in the top 1% (just) but had an abusive early childhood followed by being raised by a single Mum in Stoke. We were quite poor.

My father was an abusive unemployed drunk for most of my childhood, DM started off working in a Spar shop and then moved up to working in sales in the steel industry. My DGM (who was only 36 when I was born!) worked in a bingo / gambling place and my DGD was an ex-miner doing whatever paid the bills (taxi driver, handyman, security guard).

I went to state school, I use the NHS. My closest friend is a cleaner. When I have DC they will go to state school. I have bipolar disorder and have been in a psychiatric hospital twice.

My free time is largely spent pottering around my not particularly large garden wearing second hand clothes because I'm too tight to buy new very often.

I've never voted Tory in my life.

I get that my earnings mean that we have a more comfortable lifestyle than most people but I find the idea of me being some kind of elite who is out of touch with ordinary people pretty amusing...

I also think there is an intellectual elitism where a well read, well, informed person can live a life of freedom by thinking for themselves. You wouldn’t need a huge amount of money to do this.

If you are in that category, politics doesn’t matter to you. That’s for people who have a vested financial interest in the outcome of an election.

By that measure all the millionaire businessmen who make huge political donations can't be the elite? A lot of them are very financially invested in politics, it's just that they're hoping to get even richer with their guys in power.

Oh, I forgot to say that I also have a kitchen island, but I don't think the BBC survey asks about that.

My equally working class kitchen fitter/joiner who does normal kitchens from Ikea etc not those costing £20k+ from designer kitchen shops said he was fitting a lot of them when he did mine.

I also think there is an intellectual elitism where a well read, well, informed person can live a life of freedom by thinking for themselves. You wouldn’t need a huge amount of money to do this

That describes me quite well, but I don't see that as eliteism as it's something that's available to 'most' people. And to clarify, I don't mean 'everyone' but it's by no means a tiny minority.

Not having DC and living in an area where housing is affordable, plus being naturally frugal and not spending much money on a lot of the luxuries that many people deem essential, eg regular home decoration, beauty treatments, cocktails, bought lunches, expensive cars means that I have enough money to spend on the things that matter to me.

but very normally lovely friend came over and said 'ah not quite enough room for an island then so you had to anchor it to the wall

Amusing.

I also think there is an intellectual elitism where a well read, well, informed person can live a life of freedom by thinking for themselves. You wouldn’t need a huge amount of money to do this

Totally agree. I think living a life free of social media, reading a lot and taking classes/going to lectures/theatre and so forth is possibly one of the most desirable forms of elitism.

As for the more conventional sort of elite, I think your children must board or at least go to public school, and you must have a country house.

I think many of ‘the elite’ wouldn’t have a kitchen island if you paid them ! That can’t be the marker surely

The fact that you're from the North of England interests me because as a foreigner I did find it interesting that people from the south of England perceive themselves to be more elite. No matter what the actual circumstances. I think being from the North of England is a good disguise :-p You can have all the wealth and privilege and opportunity and advantages known to man but if you have a faint northern accent, you're let away with all of your privileges!*

Yes the North/ South thing is interesting. You have clearly never mixed with the elite horsey brigade in North Yorkshire. I think you would feel quite common darling.

is it the private education?

Oh dear, she must've been drunk or a bit confused. She meant to say you're middle class, possibly upper middle (if you believe in class mobility).
The elite are the top 3% of the country or something aren't they? You'd have been born into it.

Were you at the same party as me?!

I was questioned as to whether I’m elite, I’m not, I grew up in a single room in Pakistan, when we moved to the UK we shared a flat with another family in a really rough area of Nottinghamshire. As a teen I left home and sofa surfed for a while.

I did manage to go to Cambridge by working my arse off, I then managed to get a well paying job in the city.

I do have a kitchen island, our flats also have a concierge, and Islington is on the next street!

I do hope Oxbridge never has a reunion for all its Mumsrtting graduates. There won’t be room to swing a mortarboard.....