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!)

Op. You sound a tiny bit of a tit

The elite hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power or skills in society. Don't hide behind your parents' backgrounds or your childhoods, or ridiculous comments about kitchen islands. We're not talking about the aristocracy, or conspicuous consumption, after all. And don't pretend using private schools because the local state schools are not good enough is not elitist.

Absolutely walkaround. These kitchen island comments are ridiculous (where do you live that these haven’t been a common household item since 2013 🧐)

The elite hold power that stop you from getting the top jobs that would give you influence- do you know that 60% of employees of hedge funds are privately educated? And that’s not the managers. That’s all employees. High % in the investment arms of banks also. See politics, banking, high level music, Tv and media etc.

Take your kitchen island owning Boden wearing graduate child to the BBC and see if they give them a second look for a internship. Watch the elite get their children in.

Take your kitchen island owning Boden wearing graduate child to the BBC and see if they give them a second look for a internship. Watch the elite get their children in.

I guess you haven't heard. The beeb is aggressively recruiting state-educated women/minorities. Common accent obligatory.

Yep, and watch that one in reality. You should watch “breaking into the elite”- it’s a brilliant portrayal of a huge part of eliteism

Of course you are not the elite really. But the likes of NF, BJ, JRM etc who truly are, have managed to convince 'the people' that they are 'one of them' and people like you are being pushed as the elite. It is a divisive technique and is working well.

You just sound tedious. This faux humility and navel gazing. Painful.

OP you sound like me. We aren't the elite. I rubbed shoulders with some of the actual social elite at university (yes, another Oxbridge graduate...) and I've taught some of them too. Debutantes and suchlike, Daddy's second home in the countryside etc. We are absolutely not the elite.
However, we are the liberal intellectual elite, who think for themselves, talk about it and care about others and vote on that basis. We are also, by virtue of our intellectual eliteness and education, allowed to associate with the elite, perhaps at a party or school function.
That makes us very dangerous to the Tories. Thus, JRM and BJ would like 'ordinary people' (like we actually are) to think of us as dangerous and elite (as they actually are) and thus ignore us.
It's a very clever divide and rule strategy really, recognising that the 'elite' are not liked by many people but with talk of 'experts' subtlety swapping the (social) elite for the (usually liberal intellectual) elite as the baddies in voters minds.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why BJ is secretly actually quite clever.

Hi Rupert, having a slow day at the daily mail?

It definitely deflects from the fact that BJ is the elite. A Teflon-coated one. Someone put this elsewhere- how he has convinced people he, and his mates, aren’t is incredible.

But I think it was the op who had drank a few shandies to post this thread as it is a bit faux naivety

I love the idea of the elite having kitchen islands.

DD is obsessed with the things.

Ugh. Seriously. This whole thread is the epitome of smugness disguised as naivety.

“Moi? The elite? Surely some mistake!”

Being in the elite is a mentality. You don’t have it. Don’t worry, at best you’re in the economic elite. Definitely not a member of the intelligentsia or the old boys club, mind you many people aren’t even aware of how these circles operate apart from vague rumours and wild assumptions so it’s not surprising that some people might see money and assume a mentality, intellectuality and influence to match.

I think you're what I'd call 'new money'.

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

I think both this and the comment upthread that OP 'must have' known someone who is now a politician or a captain of industry at university show that there's this general idea that going to Oxbridge is much more unusual and powerful than it is. 7000 people graduate from Oxbridge each year. It's a very small proportion of the population, but it's also far too many of them all to be prime minister! Most of the people I knew (including me) do good but not incredible jobs. I think there's a misunderstanding here - the fact that the elite overwhelmingly went to Oxbridge doesn't mean that Oxbridge graduates are overwhelmingly the elite.

I am an heiress to scores of acres of Surrey countryside. I'm more elite than any of you Oxbridge attending, kitchen island owning upper middle class wannabes

Although disappointingly, money can't buy class and I am still rough as fuck.

Yeah! Kitchen Islands!

If I had a kitchen island you'd have to climb over it to get to the sink/cooker/fridge.

I don’t think the OP qualifies as ‘intelligentsia’ based on this post. Faux naivety is right.

7000 people graduate from Oxbridge each year.

Yes, and only 230 or so from Eton - maybe 1,000 from top public schools across the country. So it's not extremely exclusive.

No offence to OP but she’s not new money (as most people apart from that weird bbc quiz understand it) she’s no oligarch .

I hate to break to you Op but you are....

Normal

God why does everyone need to be put into a category!!
We have 3 properties, all mortgage free and one property in the Lake District. We don’t rent them out, they are for our use. Our main home has an island, dc are not privately educated because I was and DO NOT see the big deal about that I wanted to be a primary school teacher and nothing would change my mind. My dh was not privately educated either and neither of us went to Oxbridge or similar. So we have a combined income of approx 65k (I work part time), we are not elite and I so glad I am not.

You’re definitely more elite than me, but far less so than Rupert Murdoch... so that’s nice :D

You're absolutely right about it benefitting us but what annoyed me was the implicit assumption that I'd therefore want things to stay the same - we're ok, screw everyone else. My mum worked as a nurse full time for 37 years. DH's mum was a teacher. Neither mum would speak to us again if there was even a whiff of Tory....

Thank you. I’m glad to see occasional posts from wealthy people who oppose the Tory narrative - plenty of posters here who insist people like you don’t exist.

The way I see it, the more I have, the more unfair I feel it is that others don’t. Doing well financially doesn’t have to mean excising your integrity.

Pumpkinpie66 - you have just admitted there is an intellectual elite. Of course Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage are the Elite, but they are pretending to give more power to "the People." You need to decide whether you are a populist or an elitist. If you are actually an elitist, then fight more intelligently for your form of elitism and show how it is possible to separate it from the other form of elitism.