To think lockdown has revealed a glaring class difference?

[TexanBlueNeck]

Filled in a survey & read some of the latest "lifestyle" columnists in UK (digital) newspapers.

No, some people are not using lockdown to browse around buying clothes and home accessories or patter about experimenting with new recipe ideas from inventive food combinations or try out a new food box delivery service.

Some of us are at breaking point between juggling childcare duties, supporting vulnerable or elderly relatives and neighbours, working from home or not at all, using the last tin of smartprice tomatoes that could be bought at an empty supermarket shelf (in person, because full-time worker parents aren't a priority group). While worrying about job security. Not whether to buy new sofa cushions while the cockpot experiment cooks!

I honestly think some commentators' experience of lockdown isn't even on the same planet as a huge portion of the rest of the (working class) UK

Re the point about writing about bumpf it’s no different now. The amount of CV related dross that is out there is just digital noise to fill space. Ie don’t take any notice.

"Many middle class are trying to juggle wfh along with home schooling. Which is 100x easier said than done when you have a distractable child and a 3 to distractor!"

You could be a white collar worker so can work from home, but be low paid and not have a garden or a big house.

I don't know why anyone wouldn't have been aware of income differences before this???

DH and I are working 14hr days opposite each other in frontline healthcare work that's fucking brutal whilst also trying to parent a 5 and 3 year old trapped in a London flat (luckily with a small garden). We aren't using school as childcare because we'll get covid at some point from our PTS so it doesnt seem right, esp as 6hrs of school makes no difference to our ability to work.

I think we're probably middle class but I'm going to age a decade in the next 3 months.

On the other hand we are very lucky not to feel stressed by money.

I’m not as poor as I once was, but I still don’t have any class.

Well I guess I’m middle class but I am spending my days nagging my teen ds to do work, trying to do loads of work from home (I know I’m lucky to be receiving full pay) for a college, convincing elderly relatives that they really shouldn’t go out and I should do things for them, while Dh goes out to work for long hours each day dealing with various dodgy things at crime scenes (sadly more deaths as more people are committing suicide in the current climate) and then he is on call practically every night.

Yes we can afford food but I’m consciously not going out to shops - Dh is trying to fit it in as he already is out for work.

I don’t think anyone is finding it easy and I’m certainly not browsing for new clothes

I don't actually think it's a class issue. If anything many working class are more likely to be furloughed or actually working. Many middle class are trying to juggle wfh along with home schooling

A lot of working class people are on zero hours contracts or in the gig economy. Many have simply lost their jobs rather than being furloughed.

People actually working are taking an enormous risk with their health. They are absolute heros.

It's a privilege to be juggling working at home with childcare. However frustrated I am at the situation, I'm increafably grateful that everyone in my family is indoors, has enough to eat and is not yet sick.
Many many people ate in worse positions.

I'm doing both

Thank you for your work Redinthefacegirl

This is a ridiculous thread, everyone is screwed one way or another.

After all this over we will have a absolutely mega deficit and I think it will take 10 good years to recover.

However, those with high levels of existing debt, irrespective of class, will come off worst.

I agree with @MarshaBradyo

It all depends on what you do for a living & how old your kids are.
You're OK if your job can be done at home, and your kids are old enough/mature enough to not want total supervision and can knuckle down to their school work. Or you're an essential worker.
Then your income most probably won't be affected.

If you can't work, and thus drop income, or you could work but have to supervise your kids, or your income is cut because your working hours are cut - then it WILL affect you more than the above group.

If you have dependent relatives to shop for AND have to work but are not an essential worker, then your time to shop is severely limited (as the queuing is difficult. Especially if you have to queue twice due to not being allowed more than 1 bottle of milk for example. Likewise if you are a single parent and have to take the kids - many shops won't allow this. However I will say there are PLENTY of offers for help on Facebook - at least in my area.

A lot has been put in place by the government to help those on lower incomes and incomes that will just dry up due to lack of work, but it won't help every family, and it won't necessarily help just the lowest earners nor will it help everyone that's lost work/a job/income. The benefits have been put in place to help enforce the view (and soften the financial blow) that we ALL need to stay put for 3 weeks minimum so the NHS doesn't get swamped, and we do not lose too many lives.

I think we're all in this shit together and for everyone struggling there will be someone holding out a helping hand. Just ask.

Luckily neither of our incomes will be massively affected, so I have already engaged an architect for some minor extension work, and asked for quotes for CCTV (don't really need it because the dog hears everything, but will pay for it to help someone out), new fences, and a new gate.

And when we are all let out of our homes, I for one will be

• booking a hairdresser for the first time in 15 years (I cut my own)
• buying a piece of art from an artist (I can take a picture down and replace)
• buying a piece of jewellery (I rarely wear it)
• visiting the local theatre
• visiting the local independent cinema
• booking a UK holiday for next year (we don't 'do' holidays really)
• in future years no doubt paying masses of tax and retiring 4 years later

I passed lord so and so, the other day, on his huge estate with fabulous lake stocked with fish and wildlife playing ball games with his children in the garden of his estate..and I just felt so envious of them waking up to all that beauty.

( I don’t envy what he paid for dredging that lake though )

They're on 80% wages so unless they were low income to begin with, that makes sense. Not all furloughed workers will be in companies threatened with closure.

Disagree, do you really think that all the people furloughed will have jobs to walk back into in a few months time?

and also 80% of your wage to a maximum of 2.5k will be a big income drop for many where I live.

No I don’t think so.

I am really fed up with being sent endless of amazing craft projects and science projects you can do with newly ‘home schooled’ children. My DH is a doctor and working as you expect is working long hours in a very stressful environment (but thankfully not dangerous yet) - but is obviously no help.

It’s my busiest time of the year (financial year end), my main project isn’t possible deliver and I have been on constant conference calls trying salvage things and the company chief exe is giving me no let up. So I am constantly having ask dd6 and dd5 to leave me alone to get on with work. But they are obviously scared and stressed to, dd6 particularly really misses the structure of school, so I can’t just relax and freestyle, she can’t cope without planned out days...

I would love to be furlonged instead. I am trying to reduce my hours but that will mean a bigger paycut than being furlonged but i can’t abandon what I have spent the last 2 1/2 years building up.

"Disagree, do you really think that all the people furloughed will have jobs to walk back into in a few months time?"

What do you mean you disagree. I didn't say that all of them will have jobs to go back to, I said that not all of them won't do.

"and also 80% of your wage to a maximum of 2.5k will be a big income drop for many where I live."

Surely only a 20% drop for anyone who earns up to 2500. If they earn more than that a month they're well off.

Yes, but for the second group if by middle class you mean that they're comfortably off, they should have been saving up while things were good so that they're not left with nothing straight away, whereas the people on benefits won't have been able to do that.

You live in a different world to me.

The one on benefits is able to save but isn't.

The people I know with mortgages often have nothing left at all at the end of the month to save

The reality is that there are some who live locally to me who are on benefits who are comfortable compared to some who rent or have mortgages who are really struggling.

It's a dynamic which is building a lot of resentment.

@TheWashingMachine perfect summary of the situation.

You said

They're on 80% wages so unless they were low income to begin with, that makes sense

I don't think it does make sense to spend £100 on wine when you have a reduced income & don't know if you will have a job to go back to. It does make sense if you have a safety net though.

I think people are underestimating the damage this is going to do to the economy. Even for those lucky enough to have secure jobs higher taxes & less disposable income will be inevitable.

Surely only a 20% drop for anyone who earns up to 2500. If they earn more than that a month they're well off.

Earning 30k a yr does not make you well off.

To everyone saying that it's income- not class-related:

a) the two are very strongly connected.

b) this, from the superb Francesca Melandri, writing from Rome, in today's Guardian:

I just hope the tax burden is shared equally.

"Earning 30k a yr does not make you well off."

More than average so yes, in the top half.

"I just hope the tax burden is shared equally."

I hope it's shared fairly.

nothing has changed for me. i. still disabled, still housebound and my mental health is shit.

on the plus side, my income, such that it is, is unaffected. i live in a tiny studio flat but i do have access to a garden.

so, you could say i’m fortunate in these universally straitened times. when the pendulum swings back the other way, i’m firmly at the bottom again.

(and i am very middle class. i’ve just had a shit life)

aWeapon - you might find people have more empathy with you being housebound now having seen what it's like.