to think that "middle class" has become a derogatory term

[hijk]

and actually, most people aren't actually part of any class, really, they are just individuals who make their own way in the world.

I went to a grammar school when I passed the 11+, I was a 70's grammar school wc kid.

She made a good point though, Wits

I guess the UC, enormous wealth going back generations, no NEED to work as no mortgages etc and can live off their old family money puts them in a very secure place. They can do and be whatever they want, nobody will "catch them up".

That's not necessarily true of the MC, certainly not these days where so many claim to be poor. So it needs to be kept as a "closed group".

I am afraid I agree with Hak, the only people who get into grammar school today are m/c through and through, with pushy parents and private tutors

Thats not true, private tutors didn't enter the equation for us, or for many of my DCs friends.

I may be a pushy parent! But not more than average.

babycham those people are sixty to eighty plus years old.

That's true twice

TBH the traditional middel classes have far more in common with the working classes than they care to admit.

For all their naice ham and horror of the word toilet they are no more closer to the means of production than the average lorry driver.

True privilege is very hard to access without cold hard cash no matter how many times you correct your DC's grammar.

You don't get opportunities and experiences without wealth. Try asking any poor person about the experiences they have not had. I know people who've never had foreign holidays in their lives, who have not had any holiday for 5 years or more

That is a strange definition of poor! I wouldn't see going without a foreign holiday, or any holiday as deprivation. There are times in my life when I have, and times in my life when I haven't had holidays for 5 years or more.

I think it is down to attitude to some extent, whether you consider yourself deprived. My childhood was "poor" then my parents got richer, then my children have experienced a "poor" childhood, but I would never have considered us deprived.Struggling to pay the bills and that being the "norm" would have been my experience as a child, and my DCs experience too, being a single parent family, but we are not "deprived" and never have been.

I have certainly never felt any learned hopelessness, nor seen any in my DC!

I agree with you that learned hopelessness does exist, though, but I would suggest it is often a choice, rather than a necessity to feel it.

Then you get down to the deprived underclasses, where the only people with any wealth and status are the drug dealers, and hey presto a life of crime beckons.

And then you realise "crime" is just what the ruling classes say it is.

Like hunting in the Kings forest ....

I think most of us would agree drug dealers are criminals, also, research has shown they are often very badly paid....

Yes, that's my point, Sunny; they benefitted from the grammar school system that Tony Crossland destroyed. I'm not standing up for small pockets in Kent and Trafford, I'm suggesting that a national network of grammars would do more to enhance social mobility than anything else the government could do. True elitism, based on ability, not ability to pay.

WordFactory put it better than me.

As I'd expect

agree babycham, but real grammars not pretend ones

Babysham, I've just done a quick google. Portillo and Attenborough's fathers were academics. Humphries "didn't fit in to the middle class atmosphere" and left at 15. Noting I can easily find about the backgrounds of Currie and Bakewell.....

yabu

how can it be a derogatory term when so many aspire to be middle class or to be seen as being middle class

is pointing out the unfairness in our society and how we still have a class structure that allows better chances in life if you are from a mc or umc background insulting or simply pointing out the truth

I would rather be called cold and out of touch than chav or ignorant terms that are far more often thrown at wc and that is not something mc aspire to be

Hakluyt, fair point re Dickie, but Portillo's father was a Marxist refugee escaping Franco, most certainly not established British middle class. My point still stands.

Skiing is a good test for class.

agree, WordFactory from my (obviously limited!) observations, there's mostly just "folk" trying to get on within the mode of life that they have been conditioned to, most with some sort of ludicrous foible as to what is or isn't the done thing (which afflicts both the MC and the WC equally, I find!) and then there is the "upper echelons" - increasingly populated not necessarily by the UC public school sorts but by a global elite. I see more Indians, Americans, Swiss, Germans etc in positions of real power in the UK than bumbling Old Etonians har-harring at the cricket. That's the reality of where the balance of power in the economy is. And too many people, self-identifying as MC and WC, ignore that at their peril.

I'm "alright Jack" because, I'll be off with my chameleon kids who are English and not-English and my comedy English husband (as he will be seen elsewhere) if push comes to shove, because I've got somewhere else to go (thank fuck, because if Farage gets anywhere near office, I am outta here).

MrsDeVere

What doesn't make sense ?

yes maybe flabby, I remember my brother getting all incensed and twitchy when I told him I had been skiing, asking could I 'schuss' or something? Still Poland in an army jacket and adidas trackies was not Gstaad. lol.

He was a refugee- but he was still an academic. So not traditional English middle class but most certainly middle class. Currie's father had his own small business (he was a tailor) and the nearest to working class of them all- Bakewell- her father was a manager in a foundry.

They all came from either middle class or aspirational working class backgrounds.

I don't eat ham because I'm vegetarian so I wonder what class that makes me .

I was raised with separated parents. Father is a stereotypical guardian reading lefty and quite middle class and mother is an exceptionally narrow minded and stereotypical gullible daily mail reader that votes UKIP, proudly working class. So I have absolutely no idea what that means I class as. I guess because I lived with my mother 80% of the time it makes me working class but I very much take after my dad and am nothing like her thank you very much...

I rent, don't drive, can't afford annual holidays, went to the local comp school... I am, however, fairly well educated (albeit self taught), I speak well, wear Chanel no 5 perfume on special occasions, don't swear or smoke and don't use brown sauce or salad cream... Shop at Holland&Barrett quite regularly and my DC wear some Boden too .

Nah, really I don't care what class I am or for that matter what anyone else is. I do think middle class has become a bit of a derogatory term that means stuck up, snobby, sheltered etc though, yes.

flabby - skiing is not a true measure of MC if you follow the logic of this boy (an anecdote as told to me by DH via friend via his work colleague).

Posh boy from a posh school you will definitely all have heard of, when told that he wasn't going on a family skiing holiday because he was going on the school skiing trip instead:

"Why can't we go skiing? Even POOR PEOPLE go skiing!"