Not to know what is middle class

[Goldchilled7up]

Inspired by another thread in chat, what does middle class mean to you?

I seriously don't know. Aibu?

I'll never forget a girl in my uni saying she was middle class because her dad had 'a good job and a mortgage'. Ha!

wasn't there a joke on the BBC website from the Edinburgh fringe about the definition of working class - your TV is bigger than your bookcase!

That's interesting WorraLiberty, I think about almost everything in terms of class. when I'm writing essays, not in day to day life that would just be wierd.

ceeveebee I love Watching The English I find it really relaxing for some reason, I always read a chapter if I can't get to sleep.

Didn't see the thread but YANBU. It is completely screwed as a definition. Half the stuff people seem to reference as being "middle class" is actually only available to the top-earning 5%-10% of the population. How can eg private schools and skiing holidays possibly be "middle class" on any meaningful metric?

A class discussion - how frightfully gauche

claiming you don't believe in class is quite a middle class thing to do

Nah, it's an educated thing to do. And nowadays education has nothing to do with class.

AFAIK it goes on parents' occupation- so I am MC as my parents were a teacher and a SW... Yet my parents are WC as their parents were labourers/shop workers.

"claiming you don't believe in class is quite a middle class thing to do."

Exactly

I think you can try not to recognise class, but I doubt that you can truly achieve it; we are very far from being a classless society.

Middle class means university educated. Obviously there are other stereotypes but that is the crucial factor in my opinion.

I must get the book.

You can claim you don't believe in class but how others self define is their own business.

Call it what you like but there are distinct divisions in our society

I genuinely don't recognise it.

I recognise wealth because it can be in your face...ie big houses and cars etc

But I couldn't tell you what class anyone is or isn't supposed to be in....even if someone explained it to me I'm still not sure I'd 'get it'?

I've never been on a skiing holiday but I know lots of people who have (including DH) and I wouldn't have thought they were in the top earning 5-10%.

I don't believe in class until I meet people that are upper class and then I'm under no illusion that there really is a different way of being. People who literally have generations of family members that have been outrageously successful (starting businesses in the last century that are now well known names for example). They have been to fantastic schools, have fantastic self esteem and for the most part are pretty nice people. It's bad manners (and quite middle class) to complain or slag off other people judging by the conversations I've been party to.
Middle class is now everybody else who doesn't fall into "chav" or whatever you call the underclass. Reckon working class has had it's day.

University educated? So if you have a sports science degree from the local shit uni you're middle class? No.

im pretty sure that if you are happy to say something like "oh bollocks who do i need to fuck around here to find some decent none french wine" in waitrose then you are probally not middle class

scarlettsmummy I didn't go to university but qualified as a chartered accountant and now work at board level in a large publishing company. I live in a period house in an affluent area of SW London, drive a 4x4, shop in waitrose and dress my DCs in Boden.
I have WC roots but pretty sure I am middle class now.

'oh that is so middle class' has been an insult for a long time hasn't it?

So if you went to the shitty University down the road and own your ex council house, that makes you middle class?

For me it's not so much about your occupation nowadays, but about your how you spend your leisure time and your general aspirations. If you think going to Bingo is a great night out and that 'The Theatre' only includes panto and musicals you are my inlaws definitely not middle class.

Nah. Class is more complicated than wealth. Maybe you can split it into overt snobbery and inverted snobbery?

I kind of meant skiing holidays as a regular thing and not as your main holiday IYSWIM.

Top 10% is about £40k income from memory (think that's individual, not household).

eh? what's wrong with a local uni and a council house?

A lot of middle class people do live in ex council houses. There are many council houses in villages near good schools. They also tend to be a decent size and have larger gardens than many other kinds of houses.

ceeveebee By the strange standards of how the British use the term "middle class" you are, but you might be a good example of someone who's nonetheless in a very high percentile earnings-wise (and probably wealth-wise too). It doesn't make any sense, really, calling such people "middle" class. But then we are stuck with the idea that only proper landed gentry are the "upper" class

Divisions in society do exist, but they're created by social and cultural capital as opposed to jobs/education and suchlike. I have a Masters degree, I like reading, wine and classical music, but I'm unemployed just now and don't have a bean to my name!