to be offended that, because I can string a sentence together and don't use txspk, people assume that I must be middle class?

[colditz]

There is nothing at all wrong with being middle class. It's a nice state of being.

But I get very upset when my friends, or posters her, say things like "Well, you are quite middle class, aren't you!"

I'm not. I'm quite intelligent, I'm quite well read, I'm quite moral and I'm getting on for quite old, but I'm not at ALL middle class.

It's as if to be working class (which I consider myself to be) you have to be ignorant and a bit dim, thoroughly uninterested in the world beyond the TV and actually, that's insulting. Some working class people are ignorant and a bit thick, but the same could be said for any class of people. Look at the Duke Of Edinborough!

I can be working class and quite bright, I can be working class and quite well read, I can be working class and able to vocally assert myself without cursing. Working class is not synonymous with "incapable of functioning properly outside of a greasy caff"

YANBU in the slightest

but you are in NO sense "getting on for old"!

Can I ask if you are English? Because I think Scottish and maybe Irish people sometimes value education as a way to "get out". I have noticed in England that people can look down on people who are working class and well-read because they are not true to their class or have ideas above their station or whatever. I know some Black kids here get it in the neck for "acting White" as well.

But why, if you see how ridiculous it is when people lump working class people together, are you seemingly doing the same with middle class people?

no, she isn't

there are no generalisations about middle-class people in the OP

simply that she is not one of them

look at david cameron

I haven't. I assume that middle class people are just as capable of being dim, ignorant, immoral and vocally incapable of making themselves understood. I get angry at the assumption that the above are solely working class attributes and that as I don't have them, I cannot be working class.

I think it's a daft thing to get worked up abut tbh. It never occurs to me to wonder what class I am. I just am. A comment like that wouldn't even register.

You are just you, I am me.
If other people want to assign class/stereotype leave em to it.
MN is full of people desperately trying to prove their posh/snob credentials, revel in being a conundrum that doesn't fit the parameters.

I don't think it's a daft thing to get worked up about

it's not acceptable for working class people (or any group, for that matter) to be subject to insulting assumptions. It should be challenged.

I am working-class, clever, posh and snobby. How does that work then?

who cares?

It is only the likes of the people who go on Jeremy Kyle who would make that assumption because you do not use 'text speak'. Anyone with half a brain would not make any such assumption irrespective of their class. Not all working class people use text speak and I would just assume you were not a teenager.

YADNBU I completely agree. Annoys the hell out of me

YADNBU

I think there is a whole new class nowadays that is under working class. We live in a world where more than one generation of family has never worked or bother to even try to how can they be 'working' class. No i dont mean anyone without a job either.

YADNBU. I'm reasonably well spoken (very well spoken if you consider where I was born and bred! :o ) and worse still now live in an exceptionally affluent, picture-postcard type village. I'm also past 40 and some of the things I believe in and/or enjoy are quite MC, such as independent education, the opera and collecting antiques.

However I'm working class and vary proud of my roots and it annoys the hell out of me when people assume otherwise.

I don't like it and I ain't 'aving it no more!

I meant very proud of my roots. I think there's a Freudian slip there!

YABU

Who fucking cares what class you are and what class other people think you are?

Only middle class people get so worked up about other people thinking they are middle class

Well Colditz, I agree in principle, but it's vair complicated y'see - was it the chicken? Or the egg? It's all far too long-winded to explain, but you know, deep down, how it works as a general rule, don't you?

If you don't then you've not been paying enough attention to the copious MN debates
on the matter.

There are plenty of bright working class people.

I didn't really read your first post as indicating you were middle class really at all.

Colditz you are semi-middle-class..

Is that the same as lower middle-class, Mumcentre? Because that's a rubbish one to be. All the others laugh at that one. They are the ones who are least comfortable with who they are, and fret endlessly about getting it all wrong.

Better to be properly WC or UC. Then you don't have to give a flying fuck either way.