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

360 replies

mummysmagicmedicine · 21/06/2025 12:13

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

OP posts:
Middletoleft · 21/06/2025 12:59

Obviously there are exceptions. I'm thinking more of the social housing brigade who motor between Tesco and Jobcentre (and yes I've seen this one, although not recently).

NameChangedOfc · 21/06/2025 13:00

Messy hair.

Redheadedstepchild · 21/06/2025 13:00

As the old adage goes, "If you're poor, you're mad, if you're rich, you're merely eccentric."

There are countless examples of this. The first one I came across in real life was when I was about twelve and visited Longleat with my dad. We paid extra to do a tour of the then Marquess of Bath's private appartments. This must have been in the late nineties.

Oh, my dears, the squalor! The filth! The nonchalant manner with which the guide showed us round a series of crazily Kama Sutra themed rooms, each one more unhinged and sexually explicit than the last.

And with bigger piles of dirty laundry and crockery in them. Often in very inventive places.

My poor Dad. He really didn't know what he was letting us in for.

The final flourish being the "Escape to sanity" scramble down some tatty back stairs, the walls hung with ghoulish portraits of his 'wifelets' done by mixing sawdust and oil paint together in a swirly-splodge nightmare.

I read on wikipedia just now that some of his wifelets were, "Sri Lankan teenagers." So make of that what you will.

If you had tried living like that on a more modest income...well, I don't what would become of you but you certainly wouldn't have the sheer brass neck to actually charge innocent members of the public a whole English tenner to see it!

SomethingFun · 21/06/2025 13:03

Not paying tax on income, saying racist things, letting your kids smoke, drink and take drugs, day drinking when most people are still at work, swearing all the time, being tight with money.

Rebecca1904 · 21/06/2025 13:03

Burberry!?

scotchbonnetface · 21/06/2025 13:05

Cocaine

SherrySherryLady · 21/06/2025 13:08

Second hand, charity shopping vs ‘vintage' clothes shopping
Living in your car/van vs Van life
Asking for money - begging vs fundraising

mummysmagicmedicine · 21/06/2025 13:14

MiloMinderbinder925 · 21/06/2025 12:23

Swearing. Having many lovers.

Edited

The lovers one is so true

OP posts:
FionnulaTheCooler · 21/06/2025 13:15

Betting on the horse racing.

Coffeeishot · 21/06/2025 13:19

FionnulaTheCooler · 21/06/2025 13:15

Betting on the horse racing.

Oh god yes! watching ascot yesterday with all the posh suits frocks and palava but I always imagine they snort at people going into the bookies !

sashh · 21/06/2025 13:22

PondUnderTrees · 21/06/2025 12:51

The awful thing is that many speakers of these other languages have internalised that view. I taught at a uni with with a significant population of ethnic minority students, and multilingualism came up in a seminar. The majority of the ethnic minority students said things like ‘Oh, I’m crap at languages’— but they meant French or Spanish as taught at school. It didn’t even occur to them to ‘count’ Urdu or Punjabi, or their ‘home’ language.

I had a similar experience with ethnic minority students.

And these were teenagers doing health and social care or childcare courses.

They had to produce a CV and I asked the about their language(s).

"But miss I didn't take a GCSE in it" - so? You still speak it fluently.

"I can speak it but I can't read / write it" - so put that you are fluent in the spoken language on your CV.

And I'm going to repeat this, they were doing courses where having community languages could be the thing that got them a job. I hope by the time I had finished with them they could see their languages are useful, even if they were not proud of speaking them (I was aiming to get them to that).

Redheadedstepchild · 21/06/2025 13:23

Being Roman Catholic. That's a very strange one, which kinds of follows on from the Boris Johnson theme.

thatsawhopperthatlemon · 21/06/2025 13:27

Tiddlywinksrus · 21/06/2025 12:54

Tax avoidance

Tax avoidance is legal.

The term you are looking for is tax evasion.

waxymoron · 21/06/2025 13:28

Tatty older cars. I had an ancient one but beacuse we're a bit 'middle class'(hate to say it), it was 'eccentric' and 'very you!'.
Truth is we're skint and can't afford new ones !!

TwilightZoneRose · 21/06/2025 13:28

Redheadedstepchild · 21/06/2025 13:00

As the old adage goes, "If you're poor, you're mad, if you're rich, you're merely eccentric."

There are countless examples of this. The first one I came across in real life was when I was about twelve and visited Longleat with my dad. We paid extra to do a tour of the then Marquess of Bath's private appartments. This must have been in the late nineties.

Oh, my dears, the squalor! The filth! The nonchalant manner with which the guide showed us round a series of crazily Kama Sutra themed rooms, each one more unhinged and sexually explicit than the last.

And with bigger piles of dirty laundry and crockery in them. Often in very inventive places.

My poor Dad. He really didn't know what he was letting us in for.

The final flourish being the "Escape to sanity" scramble down some tatty back stairs, the walls hung with ghoulish portraits of his 'wifelets' done by mixing sawdust and oil paint together in a swirly-splodge nightmare.

I read on wikipedia just now that some of his wifelets were, "Sri Lankan teenagers." So make of that what you will.

If you had tried living like that on a more modest income...well, I don't what would become of you but you certainly wouldn't have the sheer brass neck to actually charge innocent members of the public a whole English tenner to see it!

It says he had relationships with over 70 women during his marriage.

vodkaredbullgirl · 21/06/2025 13:29

HippeePrincess · 21/06/2025 12:13

Drinking alcohol at breakfast

I work nights and have a drink before I go to bed.

Roxietrees · 21/06/2025 13:31

PondUnderTrees · 21/06/2025 12:17

But surely that’s largely situational? Buck’s Fizz on Christmas Day is obviously different to an alcoholic secretly slugging vodka at 8 am on an ordinary Tuesday?

And swigging a bottle of Glen’s voddie with your Shreddies is very different to a Moet champagne breakfast with caviar!

Toddlerteaplease · 21/06/2025 13:33

YSL bags

Steakbreake · 21/06/2025 13:34

Owning horses.
Owning big ass dogs and using them to attack other animals or people
Dressing like a vagabond
Smoking (rich people love cigars)
Guns
Swords/very long knives

CtrlAltDlt · 21/06/2025 13:35

Public, visible, violent arguments.

Dirty houses.

Dirty clothes.

Clothes that don't fit.

Truancy.

Drugs.

Booze.

Gambling.

Idleness.

Debt.

Sucking on the teat of public finance.

MammaTo · 21/06/2025 13:36

Tax avoidance

Steakbreake · 21/06/2025 13:37

FionnulaTheCooler · 21/06/2025 13:15

Betting on the horse racing.

Worked at horse racing tracks and this is so god damn true

MorrisZapp · 21/06/2025 13:38

Cleanestpuppy · 21/06/2025 12:38

Basically Boris Johnson. Lots of kids, affairs, was shit at his job , lied, hid in fridges etc and is a scruffy mess but it’s ok as he’s posh. If he was old BJ from the estate with the same lifestyle and choices he would be much more heavily criticised.

Yes it's weird how nobody criticised Boris Johnson 🤣

To me the double standard is sex based, not class based. An unkempt woman with multiple exes and well publicised affairs would never, ever be PM.

CtrlAltDlt · 21/06/2025 13:38

Cleanestpuppy · 21/06/2025 12:38

Basically Boris Johnson. Lots of kids, affairs, was shit at his job , lied, hid in fridges etc and is a scruffy mess but it’s ok as he’s posh. If he was old BJ from the estate with the same lifestyle and choices he would be much more heavily criticised.

I agree totally with your appraisal of him but if he was from a council estate he'd never have been PM. He'd have bounced around from job to job with periods of worklessness in between, same as the actual Johnson, but they'd all have been minimum wage, and that wage would have been garnished for child support.

SchoolDilemma17 · 21/06/2025 13:39

Lots of marriages and half siblings (see Lord Spencer or Mick Jagger)