People around Liz Truss's age

[mintywinter]

Who also went to a Comprehensive school, did you travel on a plane as a kid? I didn't and I was thinking about the bit in her speech where she says she got an air hostess badge, and thinking that anyone in my school who'd been on a plane would have been thought of as posh? In my school people holidayed in the UK if at all.

Not back in the 80s/90s she didn’t.
I went to the same school in the same year as Truss.
now it’s good area, most of north Leeds is, even the really rough bits from the 80s/90s.
lots of knife fights down at the local shops with Allerton grange

I'm a year young than Liz (but like to think I look 20 years younger than her). Inprimary it was rare for kids to go abroad, those who did often went by coach. By middle and high school it was more common. I first went abroad at 12, before then it was a caravan near Scarborough or similar.

I’m a similar age and went to a comp. Foreign package holidays were cheap when I was at school- my dm used to say it was cheaper than staying at home. It was definitely cheaper to go a last minute week to Spain in the summer rather than a uK holiday.

Yes, not many times but a couple of times. Nobody I was at school with would have thought it odd or posh to have been on a plane at least once when we got to secondary school. I think that the fact that she went to comprehensive school is a bit of a red herring. Surely loads of people went on foreign holidays in the 90s, when Liz Truss was at her comp?

I’m a few years older and didn’t fly anywhere or have my own full passport until I was 20. One overseas camping holiday when I was 6. Grew up in leafy Home Counties, went to a not great comprehensive. Hardly anyone went on holiday overseas, school did MFL exchange trips by coach and the posh kids got to go on the annual ski trip (organised by a teacher that loved skiing, also by coach).

LT's dad is a math professor. She isn't the usual definition of working class. She went to state schools because her parents are ardent lefties. I don't minder her being from technocratic class, but it is funny when she tries to claim she's WC.

She's much younger than me but I'm foreign so yes been on jet planes when she was still a toddler.

I’m a similar age. Grew up in a downmarket area. Plane travel was normal - it was the heyday of package holidays. Most children I knew would go to Spain/Greece/France in the holidays. What was uncommon then was unusual/long haul trips. I can only remember one friend who went to Australia and family adventure travel wasn’t a thing.

I went to a comp, I went on overseas holidays and I also went on a school ski trip. Granted not everyone in my class was able to go, but the school definitely had a very mixed demographic. Comprehensive schools are just normal schools in areas that don’t have grammar schools. Going to a comp doesn’t mean a child isn’t bright or that the parents have a low income. I knew plenty of kids who went to state grammar schools and were from lower income families.

Yes, but only twice ever, to see my family who are overseas.

I'm a little bit younger than her, not much. I first went on a plane when I was 10 and felt very grand indeed as we usually drove to France.

We knew people who flew every year, though, even in the late 80s. By the mid 90s it was incredibly cheap and normal to fly. You could get a flight on Ceefax for £10.

We were considered "well posh" at school. We were not really posh, but obviously had more money and a much bigger house than most people at our state comps. Parents were teachers. We were middle class. Actually posh people would find me very working class, probably so I can see how she might think of herself that way, if she's spending her time in rareified circles.

Im around that age. When I was 12 I went to USA with my gran. 3 separate flights and I didn't get any fucking badges.

Once, in my entire childhood, when someone left us some money, cos my parents were generally broke. That said my friend who lived in a council house with single mum went overseas every year including Disneyland. I was so jealous. Travel was cheaper then than it is now (ignoring inflation). It was $1.7 to £1 when I was 18.

It isn’t bad if Liz Truss had money as a child though. We’d all like more money. 😬

I'm exactly Liz's age and was educated at a fairly down-at-heel comprehensive. I didn't go on a plane till I was 17 but I remember that as being quite unusual. More people went on foreign holidays than not.

I remember going to a friend's house and they'd hired a sun-bed for a couple of weeks to start off their tans before their holiday which seems quite incredible in today's era of skin cancer awareness.

I'm calling bullshit.

We went to an ex-grammar-then-comp. All UK only hols. Nobody went abroad.
One lad in the 6th form (1989) went skiing with his uncle! 🤯
We were "northern" but only just.

I'm a similar age. Grew up in a Yorkshire town, lived in a council house which my parents eventually bought, went to a genuine comprehensive school. Lived with both parents and two siblings, younger than me.

We didn't have any holidays abroad growing up. We went away in holiday for a week most years but it was in England.

My parents first holiday abroad was when I was 18y. I chose not to go as I wanted to stay home to go to the end of sixth form parties, etc. my brother and sister went. I went to France for a day trip with school when I was about 13y and I had day trip to Amsterdam with school in sixth form. Didn't have a passport, went on a school group passport.

Most of my friends didn't go abroad for holidays unless they had family abroad and even then it wasn't very often. We thought of people who could holiday abroad each year must be very rich.

Dh lived in the same town, but was more MC I guess and lived in a wealthier area I'm a privately owned house. He had foreign holidays but not every year. Some were to an aunt and uncle's second home, others to hotel resorts, all in Europe. Other holidays were in England and Scotland.

I saw

I am forty and I was one of the only people in my class who had not been on a plain-did not fly until I was seventeen!
My parents, very middle class but one income and prioritising savings and mortgage meant they did not have the spends!

I'm 13 years older than Liz Truss and went on quite a few plane journeys as a child - to Spain, Italy and France for summer holidays. My family was middle class but not wealthy. I would have gone to grammar school no doubt but ...

Grammar schools were abolished in my town two years before Liz Truss was born. So all the secondary schools were comprehensive, with children from a mix of backgrounds attending. That's the great beauty of comprehensive education. Silly woman doesn't see it. God she's awful.

So are you saying that the hotels of Benidorm were exclusively full of the privately educated? The Costas were full to the brim with UK tourists in the 1980s and it really wasn't only the top ten percent who were in them.

I’m older than liz and I had travelled abroad twice by the age of 10. It was unusual and I remember the teacher asking me to tell the entire class about it.
I didn’t go to a posh school either.

Thanks for the replies, all very interesting. I'd imagine someone of 40 to have been likely to have gone as that's about when flights seemed cheaper as I remember it, could be wrong, but LT is 47. Seems a lot of you went abroad though! Rich folks of MN

I remember my cousins ( also older than Liz) holidayed abroad all the time. I remember my auntie bringing the travel brochures to our house and us looking through them. Intasun, Cosmos, Thomsons were the brochures of the era.

I’m 44, and middle class, state educated. My mum worked PT for the council as a payments clerk, my dad died when I was young but worked for a bank before that. Comfortable but definitely less well off than Liz Truss’s parents. I was the first in my family to go to university, for example.

When I was in primary school most people went on holiday to France - usually ferry plus driving. Brittany, south of France, etc. We went to Holland a few times. Some people went to Spain, and presumably flew. We went to Malta when I was 8, which was the first time I’d been in a plane.

In secondary school lots of people went to Italy (remember when pesto and non-deep pan pizza became popular in the early 90s? That was partly down to the River Cafe and partly down to people going to Tuscany etc). We never did Tuscany but we did go to Rome and Naples. Lots of people went to Disney, and some went to New York. I had Jamaican friends who went back to Jamaica during the summer holidays, and a Chinese friend who went back to Hong Kong, but most people weren’t flying long-haul.

I took a year out between sixth form and uni (1995), and I went to Russia and Thailand, my friend went to Mexico and travelled around South America. It was normal to take a gap year and go to those places (we worked in Sainsburys all year to save up, our parents didn’t fund it), but not normal for normal families to go there on a two week holiday as it was too far away and the flights were too expensive.

I'm the same age as LT, went to local comp, didn't travel on a plane until I was 21. I hear you OP!

Oh this brings back happy memories, i remember my mum getting the brochures many happy hours spent going through them & comparing prices, I’m older than LT we went to Spain a couple of times when I was a teenager.
anyone remember Caledonia Airways?

I am older than Liz Truss and remember families in my class travelling abroad on package tours in the 60s. They weren't particularly wealthy families. I remember being very jealous as my family didn't have the inclination and probably not the money to do. There was a girl in my class who flew to Ireland every summer holiday. Her family were not wealthy and her mum was a single parent.

As her father was a professor of maths, it seems perfectly feasible that they were flying abroad a decade or so later.