self entitled middle class??

[sweetsoulsister]

As an 'out of towner' can people explain why the middle class in this fine city of London feel they are so god damned righteous?

I'm standing in a queue with my children at the local swimming pool, and judging by the car park, it's busy. We go in and join a long queue. A couple of the families in front of me take their turn at the counter, turn around in disgust, and pace back and forth, argue with each other and work themselves up into a frenzy. Assuming they are going swimming I ask what has happened with the pool. One of the ladies says, 'The pool is at capacity and if we want to go in we will have to wait until someone leaves,' her voice rises another octave and she continues, 'This is completely unacceptable!!'

Really? Unacceptable? If you were the first family in the pool and it got too crowded because they let everyone in would you just suck it up because it's unacceptable to let everyone in?

This is not the first time I've encountered this outrage and it always seems to be what I've deemed the 'self entitled middle class...'

Explanations please???

Meh sod them. I was wearing Converse and Superdry first. Not my fault they want to walk around looking like an old gimmer such as my self.

'I was walking behind someone who was obviously working class / on benefits as they were overweight and wearing a track suit. They dropped their empty fried chicken box on the pavement. Working class people are so rude and entitled.'

Nope that doesn't sound nice does it OP? Some people are just rude whatever their class. I could have added the person's race for even more generalising and stereotyping.

I do not understand why people are desperate to be middle class
I am working class. I talk with a regional accent. I think it gives me character. I am not a drone, I am a human being
I have a degree. It hardly makes me middle class, not do I want to be! Why Are people so insecure?

I'll add this to my list- a nanny is an employee not a grandparent.

Ds and dds nanny is a grand parent.

Oh I have cons, and superga's and nikes.

I bit like you Owllady but you sound a bit more sure, I feel confused.

I have a regional accent that belongs to a different one to the one I live in.
Im from a very WC family. I have a degree, we have a certain level of income and do certain things. At heart I am WC living a MC lifestyle. I say the latter as I think some people would be offended if I dientified as WC on one level as I dont face some of the related difficulties certain WC people may face. (note not all)

Someone once said to me if you have to work for a living, no matter what level of income then you are working class by definition that you work.

currently breathing in the fumes of MC outrage & disgruntlement

ahhh keep it up :) I love it when class comes up on here

I like a good class thread too. Always fun.

Middle class through and through here ...

Twats come in all shapes and sizes and the unholy brotherhood of twatdom completely transcends class bounderies ( Trust me, I work with the public, I know! )

Anyone can have a bad day OP - I'm usually the soul of reason but I had a spectacular PMT and no-sleep fuelled meltdown in the queue for the Snow Dome having waited for 45 minutes, got to the front and being told I should have booked - The kids still reminiss happily about The Day Mum Lost It In Milton Keynes!

Fairly solid indicators of Middle-Classiness are radio 4, china tea, fair trade coffee, expecting your kids to go to university and cringing when people say serviette/ toilet ( Also apostrophies! An unquenchable desire to sort out other people's punctuation is very MC ... )

if you do not like London, then move out, do not blame your negativitiy on one stressed up person at the swimming pool!
I bet you are from up north and are always on that predictable script of how lovely and friendly northerners are and how cold and ghastly everyone from the south is.....

Not sure what the AIBU question is here.
AIBU in making sweeping assumptions based on some sort of jealousy based chip on my shoulder?
Yes, yes you are.

Oi Nigella, stop being so Southern and unfriendly!!!

I don't agree at all with the argument that class in the UK operates like race in the US.

Race (in the sense of your ethnicity) isn't alterable, whereas there is some class mobility, or the possibility of it. Also Amy 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother' Chua's new book is about why some ethnic groups do so well educationally and economically when they enter the US as immigrants, compared to others, which is an interesting intersection of class and race. Plus ideas about class in the US seem far more closely allied with income than in the UK, where you can be a penniless aristocrat, so different things are being talked about.

OP, your posts are becoming odder and odder. In fact, you sound massively 'self-entitled', to borrow your own term, in that you seem to feel people owe you some kind of explanation of UK social class, even after you made some hostile and rather mad generalisations about a country you're not native to....

cannot help it hoppinggreen it's in me blood

Don't make me set my whippet on you!!!

Nigellas, isn't the OP Canadian?

I met my first ever whippet last week. In - shock - DORSET. I didn't think they were allowed south of Derby.

hush now and go and clean t'pigeon loft!

Interesting funny thread.

Op you say upthread that you are 'self-reflective', however your posts don't come across that way at all more like shit stirring.

The woman in the swimming-pool incident may or may not have been mc (actually driving a rr in London is more 'nouveau' than mc imo but whatever). Maybe she had a shit day or was really stressed out, who knows? I don't think huffing "this is outrageous" is particularly rude, who are you to judge her anyway? Actually, in a way you seem self-entitled by presuming that all mc people are that .

Anyhow, what might come across as 'self-entitled' could also be not just accepting whatever shit system or service you are one is dealing with. That's not necessarily a bad thing is it?

Anyway, if you are genuinely interested in psychology, go to the open university. That is more likely to "enlighten" you than posting on aibu.

Oh, yaby, hth.

Yaby? Yabu, there!

I'm originally a northerner but been in the big smoke 14 years now.

I hate having to deal with 'friendly' northerner's when I go home more like fecking nosy bastards wanting to know all my business just because I have sat next to you on the bus or train. Give me cold uninterested Londoners any day

I do think there's a kernel of truth behind the idea of the 'self-entitled middle-classes', though it doesn't correspond to anything said by the OP.

I'm working class and a foreigner, and I was very much aware when I first came to live in the UK and began to make middle-class friends, of - say, how much work middle-class parents would do to research and get their child into a good school, appealing decisions if they didn't get in etc, and being far more likely to go and talk to teachers or complain if something wasn't satisfactory. There was a sense of unembarrassed entitlement in the sense that they felt they and their children deserved the best that could be obtained.

Whereas my working class experience in my home country was that you just sent your child to the nearest school, whatever it was like, and that to do otherwise risked looking as if you were 'getting above yourself'. Much more of a sense that you got what you got and you put up with it, and a much more passive 'my social superiors must know best' attitude. Obviously, I'm generalising, but there's an element of truth there in my experience.

Also, the sharp-elbowed middle classes can be seen in a particularly pure form shoving their way to good-quality secondhand Boden at an NCT nearly new sale. I still have the bruises...

bakin, I know what you mean. It's liberating being in the big anonymous smoke isn't it? I left London a few years ago and moved to the leafy judgy burbs. I miss London where everyone apart from the op seems too self absorbed and in a hurry to care much about what you do.

Ahh... nothing like a good class thread on AIBU!

Another vote for Jilly Cooper's Class - it may date back to the 70's but it was unerringly right about the nuances of the English class system.

She invented a group of families from various class backgrounds and took them through various stages of life. I've been entertaining myself by wondering how they'd post if they were on MN...

Caroline Stow-Crat wouldn't start threads very often, as she is so supremely self-confident she doesn't feel the need to ask for advice about anything. She might well spend a lot of time in The Doghouse, advising people kindly but firmly what to do about their Labrador's or Cocker Spaniels behaviour. She would also give very similar advice in Relationships about what to do with a straying husband's behaviour.

Samantha Upward would spend a vast amount of time on here, agonising about her pfb Zacariah's failure to get on to the Gifted and Talented list at the dear little village school they're using while saving to pay for Uppingham or Rugby when he's turned 11. She rather liked the twigs and pebbly shit she used to have decorating her sitting room, all of which she and the children had collected on holidays in Cornwall, but felt forced to replace it all with white wickerwork hearts and gingham bunting. And now she's having to take all that down too, as bits and bobs of it are on sale in Asda.

Jen Teale would be constantly on Good Housekeeping and Style and Beauty threads, worrying about how to keep her hubby's shirts immaculate. She'd also spend a lot of time worrying about how to ensure her little princess got to meet only naice other children.

Mrs Definitely-Disgusting would turn up from time to time, giving very sensible advice about how to keep your Old Man out of the bookies.

And Mrs Nouveau-Richards would be constantly in AIBU wanting to know if it's really too much to ask to expect her Croatian nanny to hand wash all of Tracey-Diane's frocks, or what is the best way to keep the 22 carat gold taps in the second guest bedroom's ensuite lovely and shiny?

:) Nigella !!

How does class come into it? There are tossers everywhere. I think there is no such thing as the middle class any more anyway.Anyone who works is working class, whether you're a professional or you work in a shop. It's all the same ×××× different day.