Middle class indicators 2022 part 2

[Pullandpush]

Current thread has 1000 posts so restarting.. Was asked at the end of the last thread what I would identify as & I am solidly working class due to working hard to pay our mortgage, kids in state school & having a very modest lifestyle.

There are lots of kids round here (London) who are at private schools on partial or 100% bursaries, at some schools its approaching 50% of pupils. The family I come has to be less that 48k to qualify for 100%. Not sure all of them are mc. One family I know the parents both work in a supermarket. And the dc have friends at private schools that have been bought up in the local gigs rises by single mothers. Equally I know a lot of working class families that value private school. One family I know own a debt collection and car clamping company whcih is very lucrative. Another are connected to an alleged drug dealing family. Every premiership footballer or influences kids in the land are at private school.

I'm not sure private school is the UC or even MC indicator it used to be.

@LouisCatorze I would be interested to know what you consider "not the cash strapped MC"? Household income of?

@sunja I have no idea because I reckon it would vary very much depending on where you live for starters, how big your mortgage is, how expensive school fees are, etc. Possibly £500K+ to do live the life @Pullandpush is talking about? But I am no expert.

I know a MC family who had that type of lifestyle but they were kind of ex-pats and the DCs' school (top rate boarding) fees were paid as a perk by the DH's company.

@LouisCatorze £500k seems excessive. I imagine many people live the life @Pullandpush describes (including sending kids to private school) on quite a bit less than that. Maybe £500k for London, but definitely not for outside. I live in the Midlands and think you could afford that life of £200k

Hiking/camping is not MC. Hiking was traditionally a cheap weekend activity for working class folk - manual workers would take the train from industrial northern cities like Manchester and Sheffield to the Peak District for a weekend, camping or staying in youth hostels.

Just because many MC people do it does not make it a MC class identifier.

What class were the people who participated in the Kinder Mass Trespass? Listen to the Manchester Rambler and ask yourself what class of individual is depicted there.

@Octomore read the lyrics - clearly WC. However, MC do now tend to hike and camp as hobbies. I do agree that it isn't an indicator of whether someone is MC but doesn't mean MC people don't do it

I agree, plenty of MC people hike, but it's just not a class marker/identifier.

Walk up Snowdon on a sunny weekend, and you'll be surrounded by a variety of accents - the most common is often a very WC Scouse accent because snowdonia is the nearest national park to Liverpool.

I hate the way these threads often end up stereotyping any hobbies that are remotely wholesome as being MC, when in reality they are far more mixed than that.

But I guess that doesn't match the stereotype of WC people all being vulgar, uneducated, Love Island obsessives.

Like the claims in the previous thread that growing your own veg was a specific MC identifier.

Granted, if you live in the centre of a city without a garden, you obviously can't grow veg. But it's not a particularly MC pursuit where I live. Not by a long chalk.

WC people all over the country have been growing veg for centuries, and still do. My great-grandad was solid WC and the whole garden of his ground floor council flat was devoted to growing veg.

Plenty of MC people watch LI. It's discussed at length in my office

I know, but you wouldn't know it from these threads! 😂

On these threads it's all, "Oh, you can tell the MC because they read books / play musical instruments / go hiking / grow organic food."

Which I'm sure many of them do, but the implication that the WC do not do these things (so that it's a MC identifier) is downright insulting.

I mean, if the WC don't do music lessons, how were pit bands (as depicted in Brassed Off) ever a thing?

(I know the film was fictional, but the existence of pit bands which played to a high standard was not.)

This one was annoying me. I grew up in the country we grew our own fruit and veg. As an adult I now grow my own fruit and veg, it's normal and natural to me. As is having a lovely flower garden and a wildflower patch. These are things I have been doing for 15 years since I got my own house. I'm solidly working class and shock horror have no aspirations to be middle class. I'm just doing what I was shown growing up. We don't all have sofas in our front garden so we have somewhere to sit when we drink our beers and smoke our fags.

@Octomore in reality though, LI is a social experiment which is very interesting to watch. Previous seasons were much better and more authentic, now it's all influencers and wannabe influencers which has really dragged the show down IMHO

@Choopi I don't think anyone is insinuating that WC want to be MC. I imagine many don't

It appears most people on the thread and the other one are talking about the (white) British middle class. "Interesting"

Being totally oblivious to the hugely damaging effects of mass immigration on working class communities and jobs. The people who support open borders and free movement are always well-off and privileged, and it's no coincidence.

You appear to have got distracted by my mention of LI, and missed my point entirely.

My point (which choopi clearly agrees with) is that it is insulting to the WC to say that any remotely wholesome or educated hobbies, such as growing veg etc, are MC signifiers. It's also totally untrue, as in my experience plenty of WC people do these things.

There appear to be many on MN who believe that being WC means you must have (as choopi put it) "sofas in our front garden so we have somewhere to sit when we drink our beers and smoke our fags". It's damaging, classist bollocks.

@Octomore that rather suggests that a lot of people on here don't know anyone W/C though! Maybe that is the ultimate MC signifier: that you don't have W/C friends or family? I'm being kind of tongue-in-cheek here before there's a pile-on.

Not knowing any WC people socially (i.e. people you'd voluntarily spend time with for fun) probably is a MC signifier of some kind.

Certainly, some of the posters on here do seem to base their understanding of "how WC people live" on stereotypes and guesswork rather than anything real.

The WC people I know participate in many of the hobbies that the previous thread pegged as middle class. Off the top of my head, I know skilled factory workers who enjoy road biking, painter/decorators who are keen hikers, retired manual workers who fill their backyard* with planters to grow veg, and play folk guitar to relax....

For me, whether or not someone is MC comes down to money, access to power (or access to people with power), level of social capital/influence, and certain type of cultural capital.

(* I say backyard rather than garden because it's a concrete yard of the kind seen behind many small northern terraces, with a ginnel behind.)

What a bunch of wankery. Typical mn- “I’m so working-class” camping in a berghaus air tent or more likely the epitome of wankery - a bell-tent. Walking in spendy technical gear. It’s not exactly a Sun £10 token holiday is it? Just fucking own it. The “working classes” don’t drive to the lakes in their hybrid and pull on £600 of clothing for a Sunday walk!

im middle-class. My parents were professionals, I went to naice schools, pony club camps and ski holidays.

im also taking my kids on a package holiday because I will shoot myself in the head with a family heirloom 😉 if I have to listen to “mum can I have 5 euro for a …?” 509 times over the course of a fortnight. Not because I’m xenophobic or “scared of foreign” - I spent half my life travelling ffs and speak 5 languages.

Typical mn- “I’m so working-class” camping in a berghaus air tent or more likely the epitome of wankery - a bell-tent. Walking in spendy technical gear. It’s not exactly a Sun £10 token holiday is it?

Who mentioned Berghaus tents or expensive technical gear? You know that affordable brands like Eurohike and Peter Storm exist, right? If you think WC people don't go walking or camping you are deluded - I know lots of WC families like mine that did.

I've also went on Daily Mirror token holidays as a child (my very WC, manual worker parents wouldn't have The Sun in the house). They're not mutually exclusive in the slightest.

Also, who mentioned driving "a hybrid" to the Lakes? The fact that you think £600 of clothing is needed shows how massively out of touch you are.

Plenty of WC people have cars (hybrids or traditional fuel), and live within a day trip of places like the Lakes, Dales, Snowdonia, the Peak. A train from central Manchester to Windermere takes less than 2 hrs.

I live near a beauty spot in a northern national park, and on a sunny Saturday the trails are full of WC people from places like Bradford, out for a fun day. They're my wearing £600 of gear, and nor do they need to.

Your post is actually massively offensive.

^ They're not wearing £600 of gear, and nor do they need to.

Exactly my point, I was asked what we did for leisure & I said camping /hiking very mundane things, I never said they were middle class, see my thread above to see my opinion of mc & it's not camping!