What things are considered trashy if you’re poor but not if you’re wealthy?

[mummysmagicmedicine]

As someone who has been both, I am intrigued to hear what people think!

Posh hotels often do booze with breakfast. I went to gleneagles many years ago for a work gig at 19 and was offered champagne or a Bloody Mary with breakfast.

I was very much not rich but I assumed that this was how the other half lived.

Churchill was known to pour whisky over his breakfast sardines before eating them, and wash them down with champagne.

And then go to meetings with drunken cat breath.

Living on an estate.

Ancient plumbing
Secondhand furniture
Poor GCSE results (looking at you Royal family)

Flagpoles
Tax dodging

Addiction (of any kind).

Day drinking wearing grubby smelly clothes in public (horse people) house full of animals ordering in

Really pale skin (porcelain skin if you’re rich, pasty skin if you’re poor)

I’m pretty sure what a poor person finds trashy a wealthy person wouldn’t… example: poor person finds owning 5 staffies trashy, wealthy person wouldn’t own a staffie.

( wait for the bite at a staffie comment)
( I love staffies)
( I love poor people & wealthy people)

Consuaginity

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5360835-next-door-sex-noises-with-kids-in-house?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

I've hesitated over including this as I can't quite put my finger on where it fits in.

Anyway, the OP is unhappy and probably reasonably concerned about her modestly incomed neighbour's noisy sex, unruly children etc...then casually drops in later in the post that they are keeping a monkey in a cage.

At this point it all went a bit surreal but I have been trying to think of rich people who keep/have kept exotic pets and it not being thought cruel or unusual.

Only I do think that it's considered unacceptable at any level in society.

Michael Jackson and Bubbles the chimp.
All those Russian and Middle Eastern rich folk that keep big cats. As in tigers and panthers.

I think George Clooney just about got away with having his pot bellied pig.

Unless you go the whole hog, (no pun intended) like our old friend the Marquess Of Bath and supply yourself with a safari park.

(See my previous post.)

As a footnote, even before we had been subjected to the his private appartments and his wifelet paintings, my dad and I took some kind of boat cruise on Longleat lake to see the gorilla island. The guide told assembled company that the gorillas were given a television to watch to cheer them up in their isolation.

This being the late nineties, we pictured the poor souls stuck in front of Richard and Judy. Who knows what that did to them.

Grubby clothes. Clapped out car. Millions of dogs. Loads of kids. Swearing.

This is my favourite post on the thread, as it’s not any of the obvious cliches but at the same time SO TRUE. 😁

Reminds me of a guy who set up a snacking business, referring to it as a “start up”, as if he’d invented AI software and will be exiting through a sale to Google in the next few years. It was two flavours of crisps and the funding he’d raised came from his parents. I have nothing against people doing this (I’m envious to a degree, must be more fun than a 9-5!) but the way they are almost always talked up as some high-risk entrepreneurial venture does make me laugh.

@sashhand @PondUnderTrees listen to the podcast Nice White Parents by the New York Times , and one of the topics it looks at is how languages are rated by the white majority countries, and how that is internalised by children of the global south. One excellent example is how many private schools in the US have French as their secondary language despite the majority of the children from ethnic backgrounds speaking fluent Spanish, and the Spanish speaking countries being some of the US’s closest trading partners. Most children in the US won’t have any interaction with France or the francophone, yet the language is preferred over any other second language. It takes for the status quo to say “let’s value language X” before it is given a financial value in terms of the economy.

I'll look that up, thank you.

I did a couple of units of sociolinguistics as part of my degree, such an interesting topic.

I got my dad interested and sent him a couple of David Crystal books, well worth a read if you don't already have them.

This!

The difference is that benefits are paid for from our taxes.

Inheritance isn't - the money already belonged to that family.

In fact with Inheritance, the state takes a cut- so the UK state gets money with Inheritance but gives money with benefits.

@sashhyou seem like my dream dinner party guest! Sociolinguistic background? Well read? Come on over! 🍷 🍾 thanks for the tip, I’ll definitely look up those books.

Giving a job to your kid: totally normal and expected in the trades - even apprenticeships, which are very in demand and set you up for life.

Not at all accepted - even a summer internship which doesn't lead to a job - in a professional job.

Not sure about that. Maybe not directly but gifting them a job through a different family member or friend is pretty common.
Just thinking of Glasto, Rod Stewart and Gary Newmans kids often come on stage to play with them.

That's true about famous people: it's accepted for either the working class or the mega-rich. Only the middle class can't do that (assuming their friends and family are also in middle class professional jobs rather than pop stars).

Small business owners can still employ family members too.

Way to prove op point 😊 as long as it's fancy booze all is good?

Swearing.

Example: Miriam Margolyes gets away with being a fishwife and people find her hilarious. If she dropped C bombs with such frequency but had a Sheffield accent rather than RP and came from a working class background people would find her coarse.

A curated ear. Otherwise known as “lots of ear piercings”, if you’re poor.

What's an RP?