To think that if you are working class you are NOT irredeemable worthless scum?

[GetOrfMoiLand]

Lots of lovely attitudes shown on the 'is breastfeeding a middle class thing' thread.

How smug can you get?

Hands up if you are working class and not a stupid, uneducated, druggie, selfish, malnourished and mindless waste of space.

Maybe we should invent a new class, somewhere below 'working class' for the wasters? I rent a small house, have a seven week old baby, but I also have a degree... Deffo working class, and offended by the idea that the smug ones hve lumped me and my family in with the wasters...

What class should it be? 'non-Working Class'... 'Fecking Lazy Wasters with nothing better to do than have sex, take drugs, and go on Jeremy Kyle...'

I am working class. I might use big words and have a 'posh' accent but put me under stress and the broad Yorkshire comes through...

One of my first posts on mnet iirc was a rather snippy comment to a woman who very sweetly said that actually some people who live on council estates work very hard and are nice, they're not all criminals and benefits cheats...Well DUH!

I was raised on one of the worst council estates in Europe (at that time) and it was truly truly shite, the level of poverty and social ishoos was plain to see. It also ranked as one of the worst areas for animal abuse according to the RSPCA and also for child abuse and neglect, according to NSPCC at the time, and the social workers who worked with my mother had a very tough time.

It was fecking awful and I thank that I have more reason to be a smug bastard than anyone who is middle class as to me they don't live in the real world. I am not talking about the lovely middle class people who are empathetic and down to earth and real iykwim, I am talking about people who live a blinkered life revolving around wine bars, overpriced apartments and very very oh so important jobs in the city.

I am turning into a bit of a fascist in my old aren't I?

We've already got that. Those people have been called known as the "Underclass" for decades.

(Although perhaps we, as a society, should probably be looking into they reasons that people become so, rather than just denouncing them as the "Jeremy Kyle Class")

Traditionally, the class structure was thus

Upper class: Landed gentry/ aristocracy who typically made money through their assets

Middle classes: Professionals, merchants, people in non-manual (white collar) jobs, mill owners etc

Working classes: Manual labourers

However, those definitions dont really work now because, at least in the UK, there is not a lot of manual labour left, so you need to re-jig the boundaries to take account of changing working practices- there was a good article a few years back arguing that call centres are the new textile mills.

Class has never had anything to do with income. Historically, it has been a useful concept- the emergence of a middle class in any economy has been a feature of economic development (change from everyone either being a landlord or a peasant)but I'm not sure it has much relevance now, especially as most middle class people seem to want to claim to be working class and vice versa.

"In truth, think will define it as people who (traditionally) had low paid menial jobs, always counting the pennies, no way of saving, being down trodden and exploited historically."

That's all of us these days don't kid yourself the supposedly middle class are any better off.

Gawd, I stayed away from that thread for precisely those reasons. Like all those people who cite 'well, it sounds a bit common' as reasons for not choosing a baby name - I don't really care if people think I am 'common' or not.

It's all relative anyway. I was always the posh one in my school-on-a-council-estate, but compared to all my new NCT-type friends I am very definitely not (too much swearing).

I tell you what makes me fucking angry - the fact that people used to be PROUD of being working class, and that working class people WERE interested in politics and literature and all that, and now it's a fucking INSULT it makes me SO MAD (can you tell?!)

There's this incredible book - can't remember title or author sorry!) - by a woman brought up in the 30s in the New Forest. Proper working class, as in, her father was a manual labourer, her mother took in washing - and one of her most abiding memories is of her Dad reading them the Pickwick Papers, and buying Socialist newspapers and instigating long debates on politics.

My Dad was born and brought up in a South London slum (more or less: it was one of those endless rows of terraced houses that got demolished in the 50s) and left school with no qualifications, but that didn't stop him going to the Proms for tuppence ha'penny or whatever.

If ONE MORE PERSON uses the phrase 'Working Class' to suggest ignorant, ill-educated, feckless etc. I will fucking COMBUST.

You know what's worse than being WORKING CLASS? Being fucking VULGAR, that's what. Actually caring what people think of your shoes, or whether, if you turn the kitchen lights on, everyone can see your new granite kitchen worksurfaces, and buying a fucking 4x4 to take your children to school three yards round the corner, and being rude to waiting staff, and clutching your pearls at the thought of buying stuff second hand...

Lots of love from Headbanger (Owns her own piano, can make patchwork quilts, about to finish a PhD, but has NEVER BEEN SKIING and gets her toasters from Argos not John fucking Lewis and is, quite proudly, WORKING CLASS).

And I'm spent.

Sorry, I have nothing to add about breastfeeding

I totally agree with you, Headbanger.

Depends if you're asking a Tory or not.

Adair - me too. At school I was like Frasier Crane's long lost sister dropped into a world of Vicky Pollards. (no idea where the Crane tendencies came from, my parents aren't like that)But when I joined the NCT I realised that I was actually WC scum through and through (what with not think CBBC is the work of the devil and all)

Good Post Headbanger.

I come from a long line of miners. Can't get much more working class than that.

And yet, none of us were/are ignorant, stupid, lazy, sponging, dirty, SCUM.

We have always been hard working, clever, educated, clean, working class WORKERS.

Oh, and my father was VERY clever and went to grammar school, and university and got a VERY GOOD JOB in London, which is lifted our part of our family out of the mining town in which all of our ancestors had lived, and where all my family still live now. I went to grammar school and have a good job, own my own car, am a homeowner, shop in Waitrose blah blah blah. I also have a strong SARF EAST LANDAN accent. I am no better or worse than the rest of family who stayed in that mining town and have continued to do manual jobs (the very few that still exist in Wales - THANK YOU MAGGIE FUCKING THATCHER)and I consider myself and my family as also PROUDLY Working class.

"Proper working class, as in, her father was a manual labourer, her mother took in washing "

but what was she?

Is her class difined by that of her parents?

My mum's mum was a seamstress and her dad a school Caretaker and yet I would call my mum Middleclass.

Does our job really define our class? or does the fact someone's dad was a miner mean that all their children will always be working class?

Hey I wanna know if I'm middle class or not...

I have a "working class" job yet I am good at it and therefore demand a high rate of pay.

I don't like football and find football fans vulgar. I do like snooker and darts.

I have a full set of (middle class) Le Crueset pots and pans HOWEVER none of them are on display, they are all hiding in a cupboard except for when they are being used which is every day.

I would never ever eat KFC or Macdonalds and only drink fine wines.

I hate the fraction of (working class) white van men who are abusive and aggressive drivers.

I am always on the hunt for a bargain and try to "never pay retail". I spend about £200 per year on clothes.

Can anyone tell me?

I think I'm a bit of a hybrid. Very working class upbringing: Dad an engineer, Mum worked as a secretary, dinner lady, anywhere really that fitted in with our school hours. But I've got a degree and a profession so does that make me working class?

To be honest, I'm not bothered. The bulk of my life so far has been working class but...ah God knows. All I do know is that my upbringing has instilled a good set of values and I am not ignorant. (I hope)

I think ignorance is the difference here. Doesn't matter what class you are in this supposedly classless society, it's bloody ignorance that does the damage and that can affect anyone.

Yes, excellent post Headbanger, I totally concur. (ha!)

I consider myself to be working class although my dad would have a fit if he heard me say it (he spent his whole life becoming middle class).

But the fact remains that he left school at 15 and worked as a mechanic. My mum comes from a farming family (not huge acreage) and although I have a degree, postgrad degree, own home, I still have grandmothers called 'Nanny' and parent's friends called 'Auntie' and 'Uncle'.

And I ebf'ed both my dc.

So ner.

(And they can fuck right off, and when they get there fuck off some more).

Can you be common and rich as well?

I have never been able to get a decent answer to how class is worked out.

The whole concept confuses me.

I am working class but married a very middle class man. Am like a fish out of water with his friends and family, and with most of the people where we live. I was brought up to speak properly, and I did actually go to a grammar school myself, but I am very aware that I have been brought up with a different opinion of how life is and I coudnt give a monkeys about material things. When I was little, we had nothing, we were beyond poor but I remeber being so happy, which is what counted. My dad says that he was never as poor as he was when I was a small child, but that it was the happiest time of his life. Dh remebers always having the best of everything, but with appearences and high achievement being the benchmark of happieness for his mc parents, he and his brothers were miserable most of the time.

It's served him well being married to me though now that the shit has hit the fan financially. I feel sorry for all his work collegues who married similarly middle class women who are now fuming that shopping budgets and weekends away in country houses have to go to save money. I never wanted those things anyway, so never did them. I haven't whinged and have just taken on three cleaning jobs to help male ends meet. One of dhs work mates was horrifed that I was 'reduced' to cleaning. What a knob!

My dad was a gardener, my mum a nurse. We had a small house, always had the 'big christmas', no car, but had a piano, original paintings, a decent wine cellar, and went on long backpacking holidays to crazy places. Also lived in several different countries.

As for me, I briefly owned a lovely Georgian conversion flat in a cliched part of London but have since gone back to my roots up north in a squishy 3 bed terrace and love it. No idea what I am.

Are you allowed to be other than working class and "a stupid, uneducated, druggie, selfish, malnourished and mindless waste of space"?

Just wanting to get the Venn diagram right.

One thing that does piss me off though is this 'Middle class idea' that aspirations are a middle class thing.

Bettering yourself, having dreams and ambitions? How very dare we.

is the bulk of the population working class or middle class?