To ask what makes you working class? (Lighthearted)

[MissAlabamaWhitman]

So, the whole 'what makes you middle class' has been done to death hasn't it?

We're all pretty au fair with avocados, elephants sodding breath, the ubiquity of joules et cetera.
And lovely as it is to have such knowledge of the middle classes, none of it applies to me.

I'm working class and I'll explIn to you that which denotes this in just a minute.

Incidentally I heard that there's a few of us about so perhaps we can make our own list of our very own class signifiers.

Who's in?

I shall go first.....

Love of charity shops, this week I picked up a leather Hobbs bag for 3.99 and a couple of Abercrombie & Fitch tops for DD1 1.49 each!

Love of Iceland/Heron foods/Home bargains/B&M. Yes I know I could get everything I need in Sainsbury's but I actually prefer scrabbling around for bargains and topping up at Lidl.

Chardonnay. I love it, tastes fab. I can't be arsed to pretend that I prefer a Beaujolais or Cab Sav. I don't.

One bathroom/toilet in a five bed house.

Regional accent which I take pleasure in.

Children who play football and wear replica kits whilst doing so

Girls who wear pinkI draw the line at bloody Jojo bows though

Getting drunk at barbecues and performing impromptu Karaoke.

Allowing my children to 'play out' in the cul de sac from age seven.

Cleaning my own house.

Holidays at Center Parcs rather than overseas.

Owning a Huskita

Letting my children watch TV and eat crisps in full view of other parents.

Having a 'pop man'

Listening to LBC rather than R4

Not really giving a fuck about trans, one way or the other.

I'm sure there's lots more besides which I'll try to remember.
How about you?
What makes you sit back at the end of a hard day and think 'yep I'm a fully paid up member of the old working classes?'

I always thought I was solidly middle class but I love shopping in charity shops and my dc played out in the cultural de sac we lived in when they were small. I don't own a single piece of Joules clothing although will admit to so Boden items in my wardrobe. We can't afford centre pars though!

On the other hand I have no idea what the pop man is and I've never heard of LBC.

Maybe I'm middle class with working class undertones?

Can someone explain the Christmas present thing. The concern about quantity and spend,and who gets what. Why is it so important and why spend so much of the family budget on it?

Center parcs is expensive no way would i payCP prices

Being from the US, I find this stuff fascinating. I see it too around me. You guys with just a glance or a phrase can sort people into categories.

It is a bit like the film The Matrix, everything looks normal, but with a code running in the background.

The main difference I've noticed from growing up and living in a WC area to a MC is kids playing out.

In my old WC neighbourhood, kids are always out in the street (no gardens), go to the corner shop alone from around age 5 or 6, all walk to the same school on the street etc.

In MC area, children are all in their gardens, not allowed out until they're about 30 years old and all get driven everywhere. It's a shame.

We played out not allowed to come back till teatime and regarded as a nuicance (sp) if we hung about as it disturbed the house cleaning

I'm working class and I don't really do any of the stuff people mention here. Certianly don't clean my own house or shop in Aldi or whatever.

For me it's about a different mindset borne of how I was brought up in working class community.

John Prescott did a programme on the 'working classes' and visited a council estate and asked a young woman 'what makes you working class?' She looked totally blank and said 'but I'm not working class - I have never worked in my life!'
So to be working class you do actually need to be working for a living.

I think i might have rebelled a bit with my own children my wc childhood was all about stuff and show same as most of my friends we never went anywhere but had new toys or clothes I know i sound ungrateful and looking down on my parents im not, but we took our kids places to look at things my mum used to be baffled when i said we were at such n such museum or an animal park on a random sunday. I don't know if that makes any sense but as a kid if i wanted to go see something i was told no you can have instead. Sorry to bring the thread down

Me and my husband have to work to keep a roof over our heads. I would say that's pretty working class.

Most of us can tell pretty quickly someone's class in the UK. It is a mixture of factors. Grayson Perry did a good series of 3 programmes on it on c 4 - all in the best possible taste. He did seem to get to the heart of the 3 main classes.

I am not working class and I currently clean the house. I would say it is aspirational trying to move from working to middle class where people seem to worry about stuff and how it seems. I am perfectly happy looking scruffy, with my £1k car and am as at home in Tesco as Waitrose and happy to talk to anyone anywhere. I feel very comfortable with where I am with nothing to prove. I went to fee paying school from age 4 as have done my children and their cousins. I would say we are probably upper middle class or just middle of middle.

Radio 4 of course. Read the FT. Fairly gender neutral childhoods for children although that is not particularly upper class in the UK where girls have often gone to useless schools and boys get the real education in the past. We are professionals I suppose, doctors, lawyers kind of class (not that there aren't people from working class backgrounds in that professional class of course).

It's just a joke though isn't it? I hope all of us treat everyone with respect wherever they are from which is one of the hall marks of the UK and why so many people want to live here, our tolerance and fair treatment of everyone whateve their class. Queen Victoria summed it up - eating a smart dinner when someone picked up all his food in his hands, his meat I think... she didn't sneer or anything like that. She just copied him and did the same to make him feel comfortable. That is what I hope most of the British are - kind to others whatever class or background anyone is from.

What a great thread! Here's mine:

Kids wear new clothes rather than hand-me-downs (even if it costs 20p a week for the rest of my life from the catalogue).
Call my grandmother 'Nan' or 'Nanny'.
Clean my own house.
Used to eat bread & dripping sandwiches as a child.

Camping is becoming a strong class indicator.

WC Camping: main holiday. Massive tent, blow up sofas, satellite dish, TV, electric hook up with slow cooker, induction hob etc. Do ironing and use hair straighteners. Holiday Park sites with pool, club room, children's play area.

MC Camping: Weekends or long weekends to supplement two weeks in a villa with pool in chic but rural area of France. Bell tent, campfire, tripod to cook over campfire, compost toilets, off grid, kids described as 'feral ' and play in the woods rather than 'play area'. Much talk of no screens. Pay huge fees for an isolated site with no facilities.

See, I say breakfast, lunch, dinner, pudding etc.

Sofa, what was that, never pardon. I suppose it's the way my mother taught me how to speak, even though she was from a working class background.

I currently have a piece of broken furniture outside my front door

Only just got rid of the broken trampoline, hacked up bits of a car dog crate, and squashed cardboard boxes that have been outside our house for at least a couple of months. But when we took them to the tip (where OH is known by name...not sure what that means) we did come back with a pair of ski poles that were perfectly fine and I don't know why someone threw them away!

And DD reached the milestone of first solo trip to the corner shop at 6.5 the other day, though she went to get a carton of eggs for me rather than a packet of fags or sweets

I've always been WC, although I grew up in a more comfortable WC life than I have now. Had no idea what MC was growing up (parents owned ex-council house in a council house area in a deprived town, always comfortable enough for latest gadgets, didn't go without, DF worked a manual job).

I live in a HA property
Work part-time in a low-paid job and receive tax credits as a top-up due to recent single motherhood
Holiday at Butlins
Don't always pronounce "t" eg wa'er instead of water
I shop at charity shops for myself but buy brand new for DS, usually from Next
I survive mostly on fizzy drinks

In comparison to my WC childhood, I now live in an affluent area, albeit in a HA flat. So my DC goes to a school in an affluent area and mixes with lots of MC children. His accent is much nicer than mine!

We say breakfast, lunch, dinner because that's what everyone said growing up, despite everyone we knew being WC. Must be a regional thing.

We have cheap laminate flooring instead of real proper wood.

Our garden currently looks like a junkyard.

Neither DH or I have ever bought a car newer than 8 years old.

DSD(7) watches the Simpsons every day.

Not one of my parents children, grandchildren or stepgrandchildren were planned (sods law that DH and I spent a long time TTC what would have been the only planned one and we can't have a baby!).

We don't have a cleaner anymore

My lovely DP is working class because he refers to my sitting room as 'the lounge'.

Sky telly, full package.

Say no more.

Whole family living in the same area is a very WC thing. I envy this. My MC family are far and wide.

I find cleanliness is something the lower classes are snobby about...rather than calling someone "common" as my mother would say disparagingly, WC OR lower middle class would look down on someone they consider dirty, or slovenly and are obsessed with cleanliness, cleaning, laundry, decorating and this a way of putting yourself above others.

Also if you drop in unannounced at my Dh's sisters (solidlyworking class), the house will be sparkling but they will look a fright (hair messy and no make up, old tracksuit) whereas if you drop in on me, I will usually look the same as I always do and the house will be ok but not immaculate.

They really dress up for a night out/family occasion too.

DonaldStott I don't think you can say if you have to work to ensure you have a roof over your head then you're WC not MC.

Nearly every MC person I know works to pay off a mortgage. I only know one person who has enough inherited money not to work.

Dh and I are pretty middle class I think. We both work full time though, and if we didn't the mortgage wouldn't get paid and we'd lose our home.

I still don't know what LBC is and why it's a WC thing. Can anyone enlighten me?

I completely agree re the living in one place determinant.

Almost all of my extended family so, aunts and uncles, cousins and their children live in one City.
My cousins went to university in that city and then settled within a mile or so of their parents.

My parents moved to a suburb which is only ten or so miles away from the city and honestly, we may as well have emigrated to mainland Europe as far as the family is concerned.

I have an auntie who moved to London to work for 'the big breakfast' in the nineties, remember that?!?
When she comes home she has a stronger regional accent than I do!

My Dad travelled the world in the merchant navy and yet he retained such a broad accent that my friends from the suburb in which we lived struggled to understand him when he was home on leave.

So even if you move away/ travel the world it seems to be, anecdotally at least a sense of 'selling out' if you lose your accent.

I have never lost mine despite now living somewhere and socialising with people who do not speak with the accent to anywhere near the same degree which I do.

Truthfully I do not want to forgo it, it signifies my class and my heritage of which I am unerringly proud.

LBC is a talk radio station.
Broadly speaking it discusses current issues/affairs but has presenters of sometimes wildly disparate political leanings.
It's very London centric as it used to be a London station but it's now national so long as you have access to DAB.

I say it's WC in the main by virtue of 80/90% of the callers and therefore the inferred listeners being WC.
As defined primarily by their regional accents.

Vulgar lady this is the downside of my life spent wandering in the early adult years.

I definitely came from a MC background, grew up listening to R4 etc. but dad was one of those try-hard lower MC trying to distance himself from his WC upbringing whereas mum was foreign so a class of her own (not sure what class really, poor but land-owning farmers and she went to grammar school)