To think the middle class is shrinking?

[crunchymint]

I see jobs that were once solidy middle class such as bank manager, be downgraded with globalisation. The middle class is getting smaller, and there is a bigger divide between those below and above.

I don't think having dc in a private school implies that the parents are middle class. Plenty of moneyed working class types at my dc's independent school!

The fact that no-one can agree and many people have different 'factors' that are claimed to be either working or middle class suggests that there's such a huge overlap between working and middle class especially that class is just not significant any more for a lot of people.

For example, I am a graduate in a professional role with post graduate qualifications. I listen to Radio 4, like reading, cookery, travel to 'naice' authentic foreign places, the outdoors, museums and all that poncy middle class stuff.

But I live in an ex council house and do terrible scruffy things sit in the front garden and park a caravan on the drive. I may drink beer from a can while I am there.

All my older male relatives were miners and my female relatives were SAHPs, bar maids, cleaners, shop assistants etc, and most were grandmothers by the time they were 40. I am the only member of my family to go to university and I have never felt my working class background has stopped me achiving what I have done.

Teachers are definitely not middle class. God there are a lot of Sally Webster types on here that think because they own their own home and have a couple of cars that they are middle class.

To me, middle class is private education or easily affording a house in a catchment area for a top-notch state school, corduroy trousers, non-black shoes(!), a network of friends that can get their children into good roles at work, an inner confidence etc.

Gro that's upper middle class. And only a maximum of 7 % of the population .

Teachers are middle class! I am a teacher and have always thought of myself as middle class, went to comprehensive school (as do my children). I also don't have a network of infulential friends or inner confidence - I think that comes with going to private school. Working class used to be reserved for manual labour.

Wow there is a lot of ignorance on display here.
So, to recap the work of an oracle, a lottery winning labourer send his child to a private school and hey presto that makes him middle class! Lolol

...sends

I know a Labour peer whose children went to a comprehensive school. But no, of course he and his family are not in the least bit middle class. Hilarious!

Marx wrote in 1848

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians,
knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

Most people are getting poorer & the 1% are getting richer.

Class is defo not just money. Alan Sugar would describe himself as working class.

Teaching is a solid middle class profession.

Dh has a doctorate, went to private school and two prestigious universities.
Main activities are theatre/ballet/opera/walking/reading/community activities like church and charity work.

It's not about money - it's about how you spend your money, time, leisure activities, aspirations, holidays.

Reasonable article below - the bbc did a really good one a couple of years ago but I can't find it.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/12037247/the-seven-social-classes-of-21st-century-britain-where-do-you-fit-in.html

A teacher can be any class, it’s other factors that will determine it

What is the classification on your polling card? See below:
The grades are often grouped into ABC1 and C2DE, these are taken to equate to middle class and working class,respectively. Only around 2% of the UK population is identified as upper class, and this group is not separated by the classification scheme.

Mine is ABC1. I wonder why?

Absolutely - every fucker is jumping on the bandwagon, middle class is now solidly working class.

It's not about money - it's about how you spend your money, time, leisure activities, aspirations, holidays.

This ^

Well according to this thread, I am middle class. Weird though as I work in a very middle class organisation and the difference between them and I is very obvious to me.

Bet most of the middle class can avoid the comma splice!!

Taking the bank manager example - it ha moved from being a job with lots of responsibility and complex decision making, lots of trust etc to one where you are just a premium retail worker really.

So the job itself has had a downgrade, not just the pay.

I really don't see either teaching or nursing as 'solid middle class professions'. I see them as essentially classless - there are upper class, working class and middle class people working in both roles. If you're a working class person and you train to become a nurse, why would you suddenly become middle class? It doesn't make sense.

Yes, you don't stay the class you are born into. You move wiht your education status and employment. You cant call yourself working class if your are an Oxbridge professor in PPE just cos your parents worked down t'pit!

It's not about money - it's about how you spend your money, time, leisure activities, aspirations, holidays.

100% but I would aslo add on it is about your educational attainment level.

By the most recent classification, I
am Elite. Not in the southern part of England or, actually, any part of England! But hey.

I was a bank manager and my husband still is ( at a senior level now though) He grew up in a middle class family and considers himself to be middle class.

I grew up in a working class family and still see myself as that even though I have a middle class lifestyle.

It's all nonsense though really!

If you work for your living through necessity, as an employee, rather than being able to living off the income from your own assets or investments, you are working class.

The electoral roll bods clearly think it’s “all nonsense”...

A degree can vary massively in terms of its cache and effect on opportunities. Obviously a degree from LSE or Oxbridge is a world away from a sports science degree from an ex poly!