Do Sloane Rangers still exist

[Arbesque]

There used to be a lot of talk about them in the early 80s. Young people from wealthy families living rent free in expensive parts of London. The girls often worked in easy going jobs- helping out in a friend's gallery or somesuch, to pass the time until they married some Rupert or Hugo and moved back down to the country. The men walked into high paying jobs in banking because of their connections.

Jilly Cooper used to write brilliantly about them. Do they still exist or are they an extinct breed?

I was amused by that Red Trousers song. The sound quality is quite poor but I’ll find it elsewhere so I can hear the words better.

And in any event it is different punching down and you know it is, stop being so disingenuous.

RodigsnReed

Ok so I made the point above about my step daughter being bullied at school for being posh. Another poster said that any sort of bullying at school is unacceptable.
When people grow up is it ok to bully them for being posh - say at university or in the workplace, - as it’s punching up and therefore not bullying?

SW London is Sloane heartland. I live amongst many of them and the sense of entitlement can be infuriating - the older ones have huge cars completely unsuited to narrow Victorian streets and big basement conversion projects and the student/graduate incomers have very noisy parties and don’t react well to being asked to turn the noise down from experience. The hypocrisy is galling - lots of bad behaviour which would be completely frowned upon if it was done by a kid in a hoodie from a council estate.

It’s all very ‘what do you do?’ And people qualifying you to make a judgement about whether you’re worthy, rather than taking you at face value.

About 15 years ago, I lived in Dolphin Square in Pimlico. SW1V postcode, five bedroom apartment overlooking the Thames with a massive balcony and jacuzzi. It was my boyfriend’s parent’s flat - no way I would ever have wound up there on my own. MPs and Princess Anne also had apartments there. Chock full of Sloane Rangers because we lived with my boyfriend’s sister - his parents lived in LA for tax reasons 🤷🏻‍♀️ His sister was nice but they were all carbon copies of each other. Shopped in Peter Jones and the King’s Road, “slummed” it in Balham and Clapham, Hunter Wellies and skinny jeans, lots of yoga teachers or working in PR etc etc

They used to have parties and me and my boyfriend would sit and chill in our room. There would be lots of banging on bedroom and bathroom doors demanding access to the coke, lots of crying and drama, lots and lots of braying 😂 I’m sure as individuals they’re nice enough but as a homogeneous group, they were super annoying.

Bullying (the victimisation of a targeted individual) is always wrong but this isn't bullying, its a group of adults discussing a class-based phenomenon. A class of people who ostensibly hold a lot of power and wealth and therefore should not be beyond scrutiny or satire.

Sorry, that was in reply to @38thparallel

Look up Alice Naylor Leyland on
Instagram.. Mrs Alice in her palace, maybe more aristo than sloane but her insta is unreal...

I'm about as LMC as they come but got laughed at for being posh at primary just because I spoke well. Then bullied at secondary because my dad was a shop keeper. Kids are cruel.

We've all met hooray Henry/ Henrietta types. We sneer at them because they sneer first. The prevailing attitude is one of superiority

Definitely. I beat a red-trousered man to the last reduced Charlie Bigham fish pie in the Little Waitrose in Pimlico. His mistake was thinking I would defer.

A lot of them go into gardening round here. It's because you have to be clever to be a doctor and this way they're never going to run into a patient more intelligent than them

@38thparallel Ok so I made the point above about my step daughter being bullied at school for being posh.
So actually you are happy to define your SD as posh, differentiating her from the bullies that weren’t.

Which is exactly what this thread is, pointing out a demographic.

You obviously feel that oik and chav are derogatory terms because you’ve asked if I would call someone that. What if I define myself as a chav? I do in fact hit about 95% of the criteria and on my estate we have no problem using the term either jokingly or as an insult.

As for your examples of sneering in the thread, the Sloanes get “thick as mince” “yahs” or “ braying” which are all nice euphemisms. No one wastes jolly descriptives on the loud men and women outside the cheap pub. Thick, common, loud. Do you see the difference? The difference between sneering and actually sneering.

Do you see the difference? The difference between sneering and actually sneering.

No I don’t see the difference. Sneering at someone because of their background comes from the same place - presumably it makes people feel better in some way.

I’m thinking of the ‘I saw you coming’ Harry Enfield sketches (YouTube). Sloane Ranger types a few years down the line.

Check out Yohanna Hanburys Instagram (wife of polo player Charles Hanbury) their country pile is just wow & their little girls are stunning.
Also Marina Fogle (Ben's wife) sloaney in a very horsey way

When you say rent free, you mean their parents are paying for them?

So true. We live very near to where Susanna grew up, she still comes back often and is good mates with the local duchess. I'm on nodding terms but no more than that.

But yes, our village is brimming with gaunt, braying women with poker straight, white blonde hair driving fuck off sized Chelsea tractors. They all ride. They all wear Fairfax & Favour boots and real diamonds. All own proper, working labradors.

Quite a few are in my book group. They're all a bit dim, to be honest.

The girl on big brother got called one, her name was Grace Adams Short. She ended up marrying the guy she bagged in there and they have four children together.

I believe every part of London is going downhill and the royal borough did not escape. I used to work around there. It was lovely and the bars were very fun.

@peaceandove what sort of books do you read in your BC?

Edinburgh's New Town is full of red trousered types.

My room mate at university was one, well close to, worked on the make up counter at harrods after university and was married to an appropriate gentleman within 3, years of graduating, though it turns out gentleman wasn't correct, she ended up at last count in a flat in London with 3 kids following domestic abuse, her parents both now passed away it turns out were mortgaged to the hilt and huge debts.

I do feel for her because she simply didn't seem to know how to look after herself financially, and was attracted to her ex's money rather than him (we suspected it was a controlling relationship before marriage but she wouldn't listen) so sad

A bit of everything.

@ElephantGrey101 I'm sorry but your typo "a alone ranger" has me in tears 🤣 thanks for the giggle 💐

Bumping this thread, love learning bout posh folk!

Got a Jilly Copper book off audible on the back of this thread - it was bloody awful, felt like it hadn't aged well, so I sent it back. Not sure if they still exist but that novel really did feel like another century.

it hadn't aged well

Completely agree. I'll always have affection for the books because I so enjoyed them at the time but there is so much in there that would absolutely horrify a modern reader (the whole Tory/Jake plotline, for example, where she wins him back by stopping eating and attempting suicide by taking belladonna, which makes her look really pretty ).