Middle class life

[Blueandsilver]

Not one of those goady or provocative titles. I suppose I see Mumsnet in this bracket although perhaps less so than maybe ten years ago.

I’m just thinking things like Downton Abbey, John Lewis, national trust memberships, NCT classes, Volvos, Labradors.

What else?

I absolutely understand why they didn’t mix- my point is that money doesn’t change your social class.

surely at some point it does though as it goes through generations?

Social codes apply to everything. If you don’t grasp that you are delusional.
And yes- I am sure the well off working classes didn’t give a toss! They had equally nice lifestyles- just different.

I think that reflects worse on the "superior" middle class personally. All that money and "breeding" but not enough class to help other people feel welcomed and included, just ridiculed and derided

whalleyt Only if you learn the code of the social group you want to do- which is hard to do if your parents don’t know it and it wasn’t embedded in childhood.

If the code means taking the piss out of WC people, then it's not a code I would want my children to learn.

SleepingStandingUp I agree with you. But it works both ways.
I was at a work event in a very socially deprived community earlier this week with a couple of colleagues who are solidly working class. The children’s entertainer arrived who was very middle class, well spoken and dressed in a quite different way. My colleagues did a lot of sniggering and mocking about her just as much as I have seen the other way round.

People with real class learn how to include others tho. If you have to protect the borders of your class so fiercely, you aren't as secure in there as you think.

I dont doubt that and i agree. But if the MC want to claim superiority of breeding and manners, surely they should strive to be better than the WC.

People will often mock those who are different to them.
Kevin Bridges does a very funny routine mocking middle classes in Glasgow. It isn’t offensive- it is just social observation.

@Janedoe82 so if immigrants are well educated & monied but don't know particular British clues cause ya know different culture what box are they squashed in?

Sleepingstandingup- why should they strive to be better??? No one is better than anyone else- it is a fluke of nature what lifestyle you are born into.
I know many people who are proud to be working class.

whalleyt they are known where I live as ‘newcomers’.
And again- they have their own sub culture.

Making jokes about strippers and drug dealers at the school gate “is just social observation”?!

It isn’t. Not unless they really were strippers and drug dealers. Even then it would be tacky to draw attention to it.

There are all kinds of different people. All we can do is be kind to those who obey the law.

Glad i don't live where you live. Here theyre just the new neighbours or the new family at school.

HinchcliffeandMurgatroyd my point was that even with money, if you don’t know the social code (in this case not doing the school run looking like a stripper), you will be identified as a different social grouping.

‘newcomers’ is the word used by local authority’s/ community organisations etc as opposed to migrants/ asylum seekers/ refugees as seen to be more inclusive and kinder.

Read most of the crap on these boards. Even the stuff about the Rooney kids being umc because they have manners. I'm wc, theres no grey area in that, my point is if middle class people want to perpetuate the myth that they're better than wc (see the things people associate with mc: no debt, delayed gratification, care about education, enjoy "cultural" endeavours as opposed to wc: the opposite) they should try acting it instead of the kind of rumours going around a pp's school that the wc parents are all drug pushers / users who take off their clothes to afford the fees

Apart from the issue of sheer rudeness, that seems to ignore the fact that the nouveau riche will be the majority in monied places soon.

Maybe you just need to spend less time thinking about this stuff and putting people in boxes. I def judge the Mom who wears the tights skin tone tracksuit several days in a row (or owns several) buy i judge her for poor taste not what social group within wc she fits into.

The middle classes aren’t better- they just think they are and often don’t grasp the early start in life is what got them the lifestyle they now have as opposed to anything special they have done.

You just told PP that that was your local term for educated, monied immigrants, didn’t you?

I'm impressed with all these women doing the school run in nipple tassels and g-strings. Esp m winter

My other reaction to that post, which I bit back, was “So what?”

So what if people can discern your class origins? So what if they can’t?

I am astounded that so many people care this much, much less allow themselves to be rude about it.

Yes- because where I am (and probably in other parts of the UK), people label anyone based on where they were born/ ethnicity and it is irrelevant what their social background was in the country they left. They are still seen as non Irish/ northern Irish.