to think that most of us have worked behind a bar/ in a factory/supermarket/ as a cleaner at some point, HAVEN'T we?????

[bejeezus]

Came up in conversation today in the office, that I have worked as a barmaid; my colleagues where and I was equally that non of them have...I thought EVERYONE had worked behind a bar at some point in their life???

Ive had variousjobsinmylife, including factory work, working in kitchens, dog kennels, cleaning, callcentres; and now Im a professional

it gotme thinking--i went to uni and worked holidays/ evenings and weekends...now i think about it, hardly anyone else did that!

Am reading 'Chavs' at the minute and the author makes that very point....very large majorityof politicians have never done that kind of job and so cannot relate to the working classes AT ALL. It really hit home, how very far removed from normal folk, politicians are these days

But,most of yous have done/do these kind ofjobs-right?

No, I'm not convinced that most people have Tbh

everyone thinks they are middle class now though if they work. It does my head in

THAT is the problem!! anyone who has worked hard and got a white collar job, is now deemed Middle Class- so reducing the image of the working class to the unemployed/lazy/ scumbags.

Its a ploy

The tories have always vowed to exterminate the working classes

I have held a professional job from the age of 35 (5 years ago) I definitely still describe myself as Working Class. As does my dad who also put himself through university in his late 20's. He didnt work hard to escape 'being working class'

@beejesus in fact lots of people have said this. EnglishEponine's post up the page is only the most recent example. There are plenty of others.

It's a completely spurious argument to say that unless an MP or anyone else for that matter has worked briefly in a supermarket, a factory or a bar, or has done a cleaning job, that they won't have any empathy or understanding for anything other than a middle class life. There are an awful lot of non middle class lives that don't involve any of those types of work. Equally, what makes you think that the MPs we have currently do understand MC life? As far as I can see MC life comes in an infinite number of varieties.

@Agincourt yes, it does my head in a bit too. I am clearly not MC in anything but education and then, actually - I'm posh. My salary is in the top 2% but I swear like a trouper and have had massively different life experiences than most of my colleagues. And not in a good way. Am I posh or not? Truth is, I'm neither fish nor fowl, educated so far beyond my station I can't even see my station in the rearview mirror but terrified I'll be headed back there if I ever stop running as hard as I can, career-wise.

I think class is how you think not how much money you have. It's not an absolute definition.
And my your reasoning OP I should never be an MP as I've never been on benefits,been homeless, been a single parent or equally been rich.
I've just been lucky and you can't legislate for that or ban people from being MP's simply because of their parents choices.

@bejeesus what profession?

I am the only person at work who has done these jobs. My posho colleagues have never done them. The only one who claimed knowledge of the real world as a result of his student job (singular) turns out to have spent 3 months 'helping' some equally posh English people on their Kenyan farm.

I think class is how you think not how much money you have. It's not an absolute definition.
And my your reasoning OP I should never be an MP as I've never been on benefits,been homeless, been a single parent or equally been rich.
I've just been lucky and you can't legislate for that or ban people from being MP's simply because of their parents choices

Come on......Im talking about a bit more balance

Some of seem fairly confident mps are an ivory tower dwelling bunch. I know a Tory mp who used to sell ice creams, amongst other jobs. And not whilst at university. He's never been to university.

How do middle class people think differently to working class people?

Yes but you can't ban people from becoming MP's nor can you force people who have done lower paid work to become MP's.
It's a matter of choice and inclination. I can't think of a worse job, never getting anything right, being blamed for everything by part of the population and having your parents choices re education ridiculed in the press.
How do you propose to redress the balance?

@Agincourt I don't think you can possibly generalise. For myself, I would say I have less confidence in benign providence than many of my colleagues. I also have less of a sense of entitlement and more of a sense of 'goodness but I've been lucky' than they do regarding the way life is panning out right at this minute. And that's another thing - they think things are set fair forever. I worry things will go tits up tomorrow. Or even, this afternoon. BUT that might just be me.I'm not certain that worrying is an exclusively WC trait.

Shop work, bar work, waitressing, had a go at all of those in my late teens/early 20s. The bar I worked in during my gap year usually gave me a few extra shifts during summer holidays when I was a student, and I went back and worked there for a while when I was looking for a full time job and having trouble getting one.
These days I do leaflet delivery, have done Avon and phone sex work too.
I do think it's generally good life experience to do unskilled work for a while but these days unskilled jobs are often so badly paid (and almost always involve zero-hours contracts) that I don't actually blame people for not taking them when they are better off on benefits. Why work to push yourself further into poverty, just so some smug wanker in a suit can pat you on the head and go 'Well of course you're not part of the Under class'.

Or a smug wanker who can say they did those jobs until they got a proper job

God I hate MN sometimes.

Well it certainly used to be the case that a lot of entry-level jobs were just that - you started out by running errands, making the tea, sweeping the floor etc but the understanding was always there that, in time, you'd pick up some skills and move up a level or you might move on to something else. Part of the problem with a lot of unskilled jobs is that they are all subcontracted to agencies via agencies who don't really give a toss about the people doing them, treat them all as stupid and expendable, pay them sod all and then complain that they have no 'work ethic'. There's a difference between thinking yourself 'too good' to take your turn at washing up or running the till or serving customers, and refusing to take a job with no prospects, no security, few rights, very low pay, for a large company that boasts about its mega profits but treats its staff like shit.

i wer down t' coal mine at 4 year old, looking after 16 brothers and sisters and making a meal out of a slilce of bread and a goldfish

Funnily enough on the 10 o clock live show today they were talking about elitism and MP's and it reminded me of this thread. It was Spencer from Made in Chelsea, Billy Brag and a political journalist talking to David Mitchell

For myself, I would say I have less confidence in benign providence than many of my colleagues.

It is hard to generalise, but having grown up in a family that was most definitely middle class I can confirm that this is definitely something I do have.

It's not as though I've never been in a situation of uncertainty. I paid my own way through university because my parents refused to support me after I dropped out of my first degree course. I have been in situations where I wasn't sure how I was going to pay the rent and I have had to eat baked beans on toast for ten days in a row before pay day.

But in spite of this, I never actually considered the possibility of this being a permanent condition. For some reason, I have always felt confident that getting stuck in a low paying dead end job while living on some rough estate just didn't happen to people like me.

It's not something I had ever considered before now - but your description felt oddly accurate.

I believe it was a Labour MP who said "we are all middle-class now".

Then a few years ago he was on a documentary where he was talking to 2 unemployed black girls from South London who claimed they couldn't be working class, because they didn't work, so they must be middle-class. I wonder if he ever regretted what he said?

Josephine, I'm not sure why you feel the need to mention the race of the girls in question to illustrate your point .
And given that it's so important to you, I'm not sure why you can't remember that the girl who made that comment to John Prescott

I Did some sort of job in the summer from age 10! Veg picking, in uncles garden centre, in hotel ( my dads), delivering papers, in a garlic bread factory, a chicken factory, bar work in USA, waitressing. We don't do not working in our family. My parents never just handed money out.

As for not gaining anything from them, I should add it was these so called low skilled jobs that enabled me to buy my first house at 21.

I was mollycoddled, so I only got my first job at 22. Happy to say, though, I haven't been out of work since.

Ive done

Bar work
Waitressing
Call Centre
Working in a cinema

They were my part time jobs while at college and Uni. I have also done them all as a second job too while working in accounts. I was made redundant a couple of years ago and have worked FT in shops too since. Currently I am out of work, but am going to be looking once the children start their new schools (I have recently moved) next week and not sure if I want to go into shop work or an office role.

I think (generalising of course) their aspirations can be very different (and those differences cannot be explained away solely by differences in opportunity, academic ability etc).

A few years ago we lived in a very mixed community (racially, economically and also along class lines) but where the majority of parents were working class, or not employed. I went to a community meeting regarding the siting of a new hospital. There was a lot of discussion about how this would be a good thing for young people locally, providing lots of jobs as porters and cleaners. It made me realise how differently I thought from most of my neighbours because if I pictured my children (then 1 and 3) working at a hospital, it was definitely in the capacity of a doctor or nurse.