to be sick of hearing the 'CLASS' card played on mn?

[mumzyof2]

Is it just me? Or is anyone else sick of hearing the class divide thing mentioned on here?
As soon as someone mentions disciplining children, supermarkets , etc, it turns into a big class debate!

Why?

Why, in this day and age, when there is such a MASSIVE range of people no living in the UK, do we still give a flying toot about peoples class?

For, what, the fifth? sixth? time I didn't say Tesco was a shop for 'poor people', I said that my daughter said that the value brands of tesco and asda are 'poor people's food' - a joke at nobody's expense but our own. From this I've seen so many repetitions of 'that dreadful woman who has brought up her children to see Tesco as a shop for 'poor people' and worse.

Until now I've found the mumsnet obsession with money/class and the desperate race to take umbrage on either side really very funny indeed. I was exploiting the humour in the tension between the two, obviously overestimating my ability to express myself clearly and the ability of some posters to read the primary source and decide for themselves. It's easier to respond to someone else's paraphrasing isn't it? Especially if it affords the opportunity to grind some ridiculous personal axe.

Oh Vacua, I knew there'd have been a misunderstanding. I am giggling at forswearing Waitrose for Lent.

As for finding the primary source, that's a good point but I wasn't very sure how to do that. I suppose I could have searched under Waitrose or something and read 10,000 posts.

Alternatively I could have typed middle-class and read 10 million posts ...

omg

Well said, Vacua. You have been taken out of context on more than one occasion, and I can understand why you're pee'd off with it.

yeah, it's all very circular but I felt so aggrieved even while I know that of the people I've met from here very very few know who I am in real life and it's just words on a screen and not important and 'don't take it all personally/seriously' so on, it still stung

more than anything though the idea that social stratification determines how much support a parent is such bollocks and so close to home at a time when I need so much support, 90% of which I get just from the distraction of mooching about on here taking a limited part in various threads of interest. And I thought, well I've fucked that now haven't I?

Message withdrawn

thanks desi and quattro and I think lennygrrl and I can't remember everyone's names but there have been others who expressed a bit of support/reason

how much support a parent needs* not is

Vacua, I don't mean you in particular are being circular, I don't know you tbh, just the whole thing.. I know you need to get things straight

It's just.. now it's all going one way, and then others will come back tonight, and it'll all go the other way..

and even worse I've stuck myself on this thread now ..

it's difficult to let it drop isn't it, even when you know hardly anyone from either 'side' is going to accept any other view but their own

I just don't get the 'sides' thing, I don't care how twee or pollyannaish it sounds but I really do think we're all on the same side and in keeping with the spirit of the mumsnet philosophy that we have more stuff in common than divides us

Oh Vacua. you must be a person of very little brain if you started that thread with no concept of it's potential for offence.. even if your daughter WAS joking (and I'm sure she was.. but YOU rushed to MN to start a THREAD about it. WHY?) (And I don't think you are a person of v.little brain which is my point..)

Aitch, my love (not said sarcastically because I do like you and your posts.. but you statutory right to continue to disagree with me is not affected ).. people really REALLY do sneer at Lidl and Netto... even when, sometimes they are stating, with surprise that you can buy "x y z" there and it's not half bad. Those posts are usually about non-food items anyway. People sneer at those who buy FOOD there, big time! I'm not making it up for the purposes of a pointless argument!

you are so right

and there's a certain element of "if you can't take it, don't dish it". People being sensitive about other people saying stuff when they are beyond outspoken themselves.

that's done for me too i reckon

never mind, off into the sunshine

Yes Stuffin, the sunshine is lovely isn't it.

As someone said before, you can ignore ignorant posts for a long time, and then one day you bite! When your week revolves around very careful bugeting (and believe me it's a art form to some of us) and trying to feed the kids in a healthily "good enough" fashion, there comes a point, one day, when you see the constant tedious banging-on-and-on of the Waitrose worship and the Tesco-sneering.. and you just snap and saying something!! And hey hey! Suddenly, you're a inverted snob^!!

I think class in itself, is senseless crap and so does NOT define who you are.. but oh yes I am so guilty of "playing the class card" on here because I am not as good as some at hearing people talking out of their supposedly Middle-class arses and leaving them unchallenged.

but i shop at lidl for food, so do the vast majority of my friends, i'd much rather shop there than tesco or whatever, as it frees my budget up to buy fish from the fishmonger etc. i've never felt in the slightest bit sneered at and participate in most of those lidl threads.

some people are surprised that the food is good quality, yes, but that's not sneering imo, that's just expressing surprise. clearly the sneering is in the eye of the beholder, but in future perhaps you should point it out on the thread so that i can see it too. because i suspect that the majority of the people you'd accuse might be horrified.

Yes but you are clearly don't have obnoxious tendencies to look down on people Aitch in fact until this moment I wouldn't have had a clue about your possible "class" status.. which is the way it should be.

Eg, I have on occasion stuck up friendships both online and occasionally in RL and later found out that they are actually quite loaded.. but I had no clue, it was just irrlevent! Because it IS irrelevant! But some people (a large quantity of Mners) seem to like to rub in in the faces of others, Perhaps they don't even realise they do it sometimes. If you haven't a clue about what it's like to penny-pinch, it wouldn't enter you head perhaps. I get what you are saying about the eye of the beholder but I honestly don't come on here with a chip on my shoulder looking to take offence it's just that some opinions are so thoughtless, ignorant or totally beyond the pale, that I am compelled to comment! (I'm a bit like that in RL I admit, it's not forum bravado).

Oh and if I or others pointed out, in the middle of a happy discussion of likeminded people talking about how they have no idea of why people want to shop anywhere but Waitrose, you KNOW what the response would be! I'd be accused of being an inverted snob because you could blink! It's happened several times

*struck up Freudian slip...

I've never understood what an inverted snob is. Is it a snob handing upside down from the ceiling?

I've been accused of inverted snobbery before now on a cleaning thread. I think I may get a badge made up!

Not classy to be preoccupied with class.

Sigh. I DO type a lot of shit. I mean my arguments may be sound (well to me ) but how can any one tell when I type the wrong words and deprive the sentences of any meaning!!??!

The last sentence of my last "sermon" should say before you can blink..

shiny you don't type a lot of shit you've been helpful to me before
but anyway i kind of meant the op when I said about taking it and dishing it

I buy the £1.99 Tesco chickens (see other thread). Can I have an honourary position as working class please?