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/

1/16

I am the poster girl for middle class though.

I am fascinated by the fact that a number of people here appear to be upset at being told they are not middle class.

In my group of friends, if someone said "Oh you're so middle class" it would not be a compliment. It would mean you were inauthentic, out of touch, and kind of boring. Yet we are all middle class by income/profession, and we range from working class to positively aristocratic by background, but no-one is 'comfortable' with 'middle class' as an identity or sees it as connoting anything positive. (I'm not defending this, it smacks of all kinds of reverse snobbery).

Anyone else have this?

6/16, I would like a hot tub and a boiling water tap though. Apparently I'm solidly middle class... news to me; I'm from working class parents, lived in a council house majority of my life. I didn't finish uni, work in a manual type job but earn enough to pay 40% tax in a poor part of the country, and moving into a detatched new build house next month :S

Quiz is a load of bullshit, alot of the answers are probably only there due to advertisement revenue, I think he's done it in quite a few of his other articles, must be on the payroll of the companies to shoehorn their products in, for; as mentioned; aspirational middle class wannabes to think if they own it, they're better than everyone else.

If i get a henry vac and get rid of my useless dyson i owe none of them. Strangely i dont care. Think its american thing rather than british!

2/16 here

We're not really into Stuff, our money goes on the house, nanny, education for the DC and really good food. Personally I think that makes us more MC than having lots of Stuff!

Also agree that MC is not a compliment...

Yes, shove, I certainly see that all around me, and I would say the majority of my solidly middle-/upper-middle class friends find their class status rather embarrassing. I must admit to not quite understanding this, which is probably down to being foreign and WC in origin (though moving in a middle-class professional and social world these days) - it seems to involve quite a bit of eyerolling and joky self-loathing. (Is this in itself a more important constituent of middle class identity than what you own?)

Though admittedly, recently, at a UMC friend's 40th birthday meal where everyone present was an academic, medic, film producer, lawyer or writer, there was a (to me) quite bizarre conversation riffing about how every single middle class household had the same either IKEA or John Lewis (can't remember) shoe cupboard in their hall.

Maybe MC-ness can be defined according to what you own, but the Torygraph chose the wrong objects?

"Surely coasters just "are" tbh - are they not a generic thing that prevents marks to tables?"
I don't own any coasters, matching or otherwise. If I want to avoid leaving a mark on the table I'll use a book paper towel.

Posted too soon - meant to say that I don't own coasters because it's just not something it would occur to me to buy.

ninja is it Regina blitz now that is a mc paper towel

9/16 - 'very middle class' according to the quiz. I work in the arts, am educated to degree level, attend concerts and the theatre, live in a nice area, and (according to others) don't have an accent.

But I'm very proud to be working class. My DH insists that he is middle class. Meh!

I've never understood why people get so hung up on class distinctions. I'm more interested in intelligence and education tbh.

teahornet - yep, I think that discomfort with it is very much part of it!

Mumsnet, however, is more like this Fast Show sketch:

MW All right guys? Leave the girls here, go down the pub?
PW Oh God, Henry - you're so working-class sometimes! [slight pause]
MW I'm not working-class! Jesus, if anybody's working-class round here, it's you.
PW Huh!
MW I'm totally middle-class. My family have been middle-class for generations!
M1 Listen, I'm more middle-class than both of you. My father was an accountant, and I used to have piano lessons.
MW Well, I had cello lessons.
M1 Yeah?
PW Huh! Well, my family used to do recitals. Huh! With me on the viola. As a quintet.
MW I went to a very good public school.
PW Yes, and I went to comprehensive.
M1 Oh, my God! You are working-class!
PW No. My parents could easily have afforded to send me to a public school,nbut they were liberals. They chose to educate me at a comprehensive. That makes me much more middle-class than you two!
MW I am the most middle-class person here.
M1 No!
MW We have two holidays a year. One of them in Tuscany or Provence, the other one skiing. We always have red wine and water with our meals - right from when we were very small - and we always ate salad out of a wooden bowl!
M1 That is nothing. We were vegetarians.
PW How many cars did you have?
M1 Ha-ha-ha! Two, of course!
PW HA! Well, my parents got rid of their cars...
M1 Yeah?
PW ...and used to cycle everywhere in ill-fitting, multi-coloured, vaguely ethnic clothing.
[slight pause]
MW We were on "Ask the Family" with Robert Robinson. And... we won.
M1 Big deal. I got two Blue Peter badges. It was the only programme we were allowed to watch. Unless it was a nature documentary. And were weren't allowed to watch ITV at all!
[slight pause]
PW We didn't even have a television. We used to read, and I was bullied at school as a result.
M1 SCHOOL? My father taught me at home. I did my A-levels when I was eleven. [slight pause]
PW My parents had an open marriage. And we frequently went on holiday with my father's mistress and my mother's lover. And we had some jolly good games of Scrabble as well. [slight pause]
M1 Well I used to go to art galleries. Out of choice. And we always stood at the front for the Last Night of the Proms.
PW Yeah?
M1 Yeah.
MW Well, I'm secretly gay.
MW I'll get my coat.

shove grin]

Oh I only got three - not sure living in an apartment is condusive to owning SMEG, Aga etc

I had a similar experience (sold a contract with [x], used [x], then got billed for it at a v high rate as an extra).

Luckily I had sorted contact over the phone so you would think there was prof, but O2 had conveniently lost the phone records... in the end after spending hours and hours on the phone I got them to wipe the charges.

However if you did it in a shop it will be much harder to get back :-(

Wrong thread!

I thought middle class people hated big fancy TVs? If they absolutely have to have one, it's usually an 11" b&w one wedged somewhere incongruous like the kitchen

A forner colleague of mine had been a vacuum cleaner salesman and claimed he could tell a university lecturer's house at 50 yard as there would either be no TV or a tiny TV at a push, it would be the hardest wearing carpet on the floor and it would be fucking filthy.

I only have 1/16 but am definitely middle class.

I got 2 and one of them was a present that we never use! Still I think we would be called middle class. Just not very materialistic ones maybe

i consider class peoples family history. so what your great grand parents did? i think if a 30 year old for example had a great grand father who gad a degree and worked for the government while his daughter went to school in a limo that would be classed as middle upper class?

today anyone can get a degree, a friend of my fathers is a law profesor and he says the only people who don't have a degree in this country are the ones who don't want to

anyone can get to a point where they can afford a designer bag or a smeg

but dig deep into your family tree and you'll see what class you truly are

They've spelled barbecue wrong, for a start.

Hot tub - shudders - warm people soup .... urgh. Sorry to all those who have one or want one, but I can't imagine anything worse. I'm still traumatised from moving into a house with one of those allegedly fancy spa baths, and turning it on for the first time, and thick black mould shooting out by the bucket load. Ripped it out and swapped it for a nice normal, clean bath straightaway.

Love my old Dyson (now nearly 16 years old and still going strong). Also love my Mulberry. Bought it 8 years ago. Use it every day. Not bought another handbag since, and intend to pass it on to daughter (whilst son gets his dad's watch). We don't buy loads of expensive stuff, and put lots of thought into any purchase - if that makes us middle class, then so be it!

I got 3/16. I would consider myself middle class but I neither want, nor can afford most of those items.
Interestingly the only people I know who have a hot tub are the least middle class people I know, they sit in it drinking cans of Carling and singing football songs and the rest of their garden is full of rubbish!

An iMac? It's not the 90s! Surely it's a MacBook Air?

(NB: I am typing this on a MacBook Air in a minimalist kitchen in my period house in north London but NOT MIDDLE CLASS according to the quiz)