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.

@MrsFussypants1
I'm 47 in 4 weeks.

I wouldn't have had any of those holidays abroad if it weren't for my wonderful (relatively new) Step-Dad helping fund the holidays.
The few years my Mam was a single parent, holidaying abroad was but a dream.

I went on a plane several times. I have family who live abroad, and so I'd argue my circumstances may not have been typical.

There were people I was at school with who had never been on a train until a school secondary school trip.

49 and went on a plane for the first time at 18 when I paid for the holiday. It was a week in a caravan no more than 3 hours from home until then. Poorer than average though.

Where do you think most middle-class children go to school OP?

Only about 8% of the population go to private school (a higher % in the SE / a lower % elsewhere). Most counties don't have grammar schools and haven't done since the 1970s.

It sounds as though there are an awful lot of very average, ordinary people who you would have 'considered posh'.

Nobody ever defines themselves as poor though, do they. Always 'ordinary'. The mistake is to conflate that type of euphemistic 'ordinary' with average, which it is not.

It sounds as though there are an awful lot of very average, ordinary people who you would have 'considered posh'.

Interesting. Back then there were fewer middle class people than now. But also, part of what I was discussing - and it's really interesting to see the replies- is how commonplace flights were at that time. It's obviously very different now. But my experience was of it being a rare and notable thing to go abroad by plane. People did go by ferry, although UK trips were more the norm.

Nobody ever defines themselves as poor though, do they. Always 'ordinary'. The mistake is to conflate that type of euphemistic 'ordinary' with average, which it is not.

Yes, I wouldn't have said we were poor. For instance we had a car, and we'd eat out occasionally eg birthdays.

I think the Liz Truss anecdote was interesting. If I'd managed to get myself on a plane I wouldn't have minded which badge I got. So it said a lot to me about young Liz she must've been fairly confident and perhaps a frequent flyer.

I'm the same age as her and went to quite a deprived secondary school. I went on a plane for the first time aged 14. By then many of my friends had been on package holidays to Spain etc. They weren't rich kids - they came from working class backgrounds.

Back then there were fewer middle class people than now.

More manual labour and factory work, fewer office jobs, yes. But there've always been a lot of teachers, nurses, doctors, solicitors, local government staff, opticians, pharmacists etc. Professionals who would mostly have sent their children to state schools.

Flights were a more expensive in the 1980s than in the cheap flights era of the late 90s / 2000s. Ferries commonly used (later displaced by the chunnel). But package holidays were also very common - and most commonly taken up by working class and lower middle class people. Flying to Spain was very normal, very ordinary, in the 1980s.

Then your family could have afforded a car ferry ticket and a week in a Eurocamp in Brittany, or a package holiday to Spain.

The fact that your family chose not to, doesn’t mean that those who did were “posh” - loads of people have been on here saying their parents had jobs like plumbers, nurses or council workers and afforded it.

I honestly don’t understand why you are sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “lalala plumbers were posh in the 80s”

@flingingmelon I went to school with the Millibands in Leeds. Both primary and secondary. He's never kept quiet where he went. Even visited a few years a go. It was in the YP. But hey lets distract from the shit show Truss has caused.....

I think it’s worth remembering that UK holidays were not as luxurious or enjoyable as they are now. Dd was asking me what was it like to stay in a caravan when I was a child. Well it wasn’t like it is now. No plumbing, no toilet, no shower. Having to shower in a central block, putting 10p in and panicking that the water would run out before I had washed the shampoo out of my hair. No swimming pool. No organised events. No reliable tv, only a small tv where the picture kept fuzzing. No computers, iPads or electronic devises. Memories of sitting shivering on the beach in the cold. No wonder my parents saved up and took us away to the med on holiday! My mum has said it was after a wet, miserable caravan holiday that she said to my dad, “That’s it, we are going abroad next year.”

THIS

I'm actually laughing at 'comprehensive' school being some kind of byword for 'posh' when the whole fucking point is that it includes everyone. Talk about missing the point by a country mile.

OP, yeah, I still think it's an odd thread. If it helps you at all I went to a comprehensive in a leafy shires county (it converted from a grammar - the same grammar that Teresa May attended, in fact). There were no grammars in our county by the time the 90s rolled around.

At my school there were a real mixture of students from varying backgrounds, many from social housing, many from big houses in £££ villages. The person who sat to my left in English lived in a 2 bedroom social housing house and the person on my right lived in what was basically a mansion with a swimming pool.

Like I said it was a COMPREHENSIVE school. So odd that that you see that term as some kind of working class badge of honour.

argh some kind of byword for POOR that should have said. Thank you dyslexia.

I'm 50 and never went on holiday, anywhere, as a child, let alone travelled by plane. I've only been on a plane once, a domestic flight in the 90s for work.

I've still never been on holiday!

She's just cost the economy £64bn because she made a useless mistake that could easily have been avoided. In any other job she'd have been fired on the spot but the Tories reward reckless arrogant failure these days.

The woman is PM and objectively wrecking our economy so leaving her alone is the last thing anyone should be doing. She needs constant accountability and scrutiny because she is clearly capable of waging massive further damage on us all through her incompetence, arrogance etc.

I'm not sure you can tell anything about LT (confidence, being a frequent flyer etc) simply from the badge.

Once upon a time, pre 9/11, flight deck visits were very run of the mill, a way to pass the time and almost an standard part of the flight for the kids. As a result once any initial meal service had finished there was almost always a procession of (mainly) youngsters trooping to and from the flight deck.

Most airlines used to produce branded badges/stickers for the crew to give away on the flights and especially on such visits.

Visiting the flight deck and getting a badge or sticker didn't require any special skills.

I went to a comprehensive school and went on a plane every year at least once from the age of 18 months. My parents hated holidays in the UK!

Working class. North west.

@mintywinter bloody hell OP how to make someone feel like they grew up in the dark ages! She's 47 not 97 🙄.

Yes at my local comp (and I'm 6 months older) lots of people went abroad 🤣

Sorry should have said I'm a similar age

I went to a comp and it was a real mixture. We always drove to France or the UK for holidays but a lot of people flew and some never had holidays.

She is a year older than me and no l didn't go on an aeroplane until l was 16. It was definitely only a rich kid thing.

No. Only one caravan holiday, and one camping holiday in the Uk in my childhood.Most of friends the same. Only a few in my year in school would have gone abroad. I didn’t go on a plane until I was 21 I think.

I’m 5 years older than her and we started having regular foreign holidays in 1981. In Scotland so no grammar/comp system, but we were far from wealthy.

mn never ceases to amaze me in the way that some members believe that their lived experience is how it is for everyone.