Being middle class based on what you own?

[BlancheBlue]

Anyone seen this "quiz" in the telegraph - aside from the fact that it is probably just to flog certain items, anyone agree with this list or come out with all of them.

Hot tubs ffs? "vulgar" no?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/23/how-middle-class-are-you-it-depends-how-many-of-these-items-you/

I got a solid 7. My MC attributes include a very basic BBQ and a collection of 80s LPs. I imagine many hipsters would shrivel up and die at the embarrassment that is my record collection.

Are we sure it's not a test of middle age?

Class confuses me.

My family are from the North and North East. All my male relatives from my grandfathers backwards were miners, so solidly working class and mostly actually poor.

My husband's family are from middle England. Old money, the right universities, talk posh, have horses and houses worth loads. My husband went to (a posh) boarding school.

Obviously he married down 😉. He works in a crappy minimum wage job and we get tax credits so we are obviously working class, but we have a nice house in a nice area which is way more middle class than we are (bought at the bottom of the market 20 years ago and has ballooned in value).

I got 2 on the quiz, but my mother in law would have probably got zero, and would have said most of the things on it are vulgar. She is definitely upper middle class hence my confusion!

What even is Middle Class these days, I grew up with manual worker parents, DH grew up in a council house, we have 9 of the things on the list, I still feel working class, we have a joint income in excess of 150k.

More to the point, who actually cares

Hmm I only have 5 but apparently that makes me 'solidly middle class'. And I would just like to make it clear I don't own a hot tub.

No. no, senua, coasters mark you out as being lower-middle-class, because you've bought your own nice, new furniture and are desperate to protect it against damage, rather than being able to be grand and careless about the priceless Sheraton tables you inherited from granny and are happy for people to chuck their glasses and cups about on.

Matching coasters, a Bar-B-Q and a hot tub used to be the height of naff where I come from. Have they suddenly become desirable?

Just seen, it's according to that Hanson bloke. Attention Seeking Twerp.

It's by William Hanson who does this stuff for the DM - all little pointers on how to hold your fork and wall to wall carpet is common while rugs are not.

I got one. Matching coasters. I'm definitely middle class but from working class roots from my mother. My father's family was middle class in the 1950s even - holidays to Spain, a Med cruise when gramps had pneumonia in the late 1950s etc. They were from working class stock too.

I have a degree, work in a profession (can sign passports but the rules on that have relaxed in recent years), sent DC to private school, still managed the odd holiday despite that, plus we have five musical instruments in the house. I wear my DC's hand-me-ups if they've still got wear in them (frugal) and don't buy anything I don't need - it's become a habit due to the school fees. I still buy mainly organic and cook from scratch. A new list is needed. A friend has about six - Samsonite luggage, Dyson, nutribullet, etc and goes for designer labels. She wouldn't buy a £30 fan like I did in the hot weather but had to buy a Dyson one! Much as I like her she's definitely not middle class but aspirational.

skittless I don't think it is just a MN thing tbh. I don't think anyone would say the UK is classless society and even people who say class doesn't mean anything to them, it does indeed affect how people "are" or think they are.

Why the hell would I want an Aga? That doesn't go with my modern kitchen.

Dyson vacuum - like the way my iPad changed it to Dysentery vacuum. Got one, horrible thing, always getting stuck under bedframes. It was supposed to be the thing for pet hair at the time. Much prefer my Hetty I bought for the hard floors.

And what about solid wood or solid stone flooring?

Why Mulberry? There are a couple of other designers I'd rather choose.

I don't want a spiraliser and a nutribullet. I prefer stir frys and use my food processor for cauliflower rice and Kenwood for smoothies.

This test is really rubbish. I came out with 7 as solidly middle class. Not fashionable or footballers wifeesque enough to get more.

Oh well...

I found it a really odd test. Hot tub middle class?

I got 2 on the quiz, but my mother in law would have probably got zero, and would have said most of the things on it are vulgar. She is definitely upper middle class hence my confusion!

You're not wrong, though - the quiz is 'wrong' in that it's slanted in favour of a very aspirational, materialist version of new-money middle-classness, and many of the things on it would definitely seem 'vulgar' to your UMC MIL.

a collection of 80s LPs. I imagine many hipsters would shrivel up and die at the embarrassment that is my record collection.

'Fess up. Do you have a single of Jennifer Rush's The Power of Love? (which I haven't stopped humming since that other bloody thread started...)

Gawd are we still obsessed with this bloody class bollix?.

Are coasters one step up from leaving plastic covering on your three piece suite to protect it?

tea Its funny though isn't it how people's definition of class differs so much. I agree the quiz is pretty crap but some people do indeed feel different if they can afford to them "nice" stuff and there is nothing wrong with that. One person's vulgar is the next person's good taste.

barbara does buying a three piece suite define class?

I don't know what most of those things are, and thanks god

Well I scored 11 and I was still class myself as the same as everyone else.

The word CLASS means nothing to me.

I got 1 / 16 so am not middle class but I vehemently disagree. I shop in Waitrose and listen to The Archers - how can I have fallen so low??!

I don't know Blanche. When I wrote that comment I was tying myself in knots with the sofa/settee/couch dilemma and also thinking 'does anyone actually buy a three piece suite any more'? That seems quite an old fashioned concept these days.

This sort of crap amuses me.

I identify as solidly working class despite:

Having a professional job (formerly in banking now in reinsurance);
Living (at weekends) in a detached former vicarage;
My STBXW driving a Landrover (I have a now ancient German saloon);
Kids attended private schools (prior to moving house); and
An aga (which is in a kitchen the size of our first flat).

I'm not stealth boasting, I'm just pointing out that these things might be seen as solidly middle class, but despite it all, I was still born and raised on a council estate in the East end. I have an estuary accent, will not eat olives and think that many of the 'trappings' of middle class (like the crap in the article) are for those that feel somehow less secure in their lives.

The most pernicious element of this whole class debate (to me) is that being middle class is somehow better than being working class. Your candle will not burn any brighter because you've snuffed someone else's out. I wouldn't want any of the middle class masses on here to ever wake up and think they were somehow better than me (or anyone else)

As you were.....

Barbara - I've never really understood the whole "sofa/settee/couch" thing? What is the MC term?

Lounge/living room/front room/drawing room.......

'Fess up. Do you have a single of Jennifer Rush's The Power of Love? (which I haven't stopped humming since that other bloody thread started...)

Sorry 'bout that :o

cuddles really though? I would say "class" in a broad sense has an affect on most people in the UK and on how we feel?

Interesting - I've always assumed you can change class. I am definitely now middle class by income and lifestyle, but I don't come from a middle class background and still have a lot of friends from school who are very much working class.

It feels wrong to claim membership of the 'working class' based on stuff that is out of date, yet it will always be part of who I am. I am definitely not entirely middle class, in the sense that I find a lot of the assumptions and practices of people who are solidly in that bracket weird and ridiculous. It is increasingly like having one foot on either side of a chasm. Many of my friends literally know no-one who is working class, except in service industry terms (i.e. they employ them). They have all kinds of assumptions (some positive, some negative) that I find quite funny at times, and depressing at others.

I also know no-one in real life who is desperate to prove their 'middle class credentials' - yet another way in which my real life doesn't match Mumsnetworld.