Only the middle class and above think that Class isn't a thing any more.

[FindingMeno]

Just that really.
If you're working class it's as plain as the nose on your face.

This, but also social class is such an unspoken but omnipresent feature of life in Britain that it’s like asking fish about water. That people aren’t consciously aware of it a lot of the time doesn’t mean it’s not the element they live in. All threads about school choice on here are in large part about social class, not just the private/state ones. The frequent threads about ‘how can I replicate the effects of a private education?’are about how to achieve the social and cultural privilege associated with a higher class status. Threads about rugby vs football too. Threads about what ‘mums’ typically wear on the school run. Threads about the Middletons ‘social climbing’. Threads about moving area. Etc etc.

Blue collar/ white collar is a US thing.For me in the UK there are broadly 5 classes:

1. Landed gentry or independently wealthy/ celebrities- the idle rich
2. Professional classes- laywers, doctors, accountants, lots of media types eg: film makers- will have higher education. Will have mortgages, pensions, investments etc.
3. Office workers, secretaries, some IT roles, retail/ hospitality managment, skilled manual labour; hairdressers, make up artists, mechanics, chefs vocational qualifications- reasonable job security but often self employed
4. Unskilled - insecure work in retail/ hospitality/ casual labourers insecure work often cash in hand
5. The long term unemployed/ unemployable.

I would put all of 2 and some of 3 into the middle classes.

It's definitely not as simple as your job defining your class. Class is ingrained. Most wealthy footballers are working class, their wealth doesn't change the circumstances that they were brought up in.

Now, now, Karl! Back in your coffin!
Definitions of social class have changed
But means of id remain

Are you talking class, as in what job you do (or if you don't have to work - upper class?) or just how much money someone has? Do working class people work with their hands? Electricians, plumbers, bricklayers etc, these are well paid jobs or do you think this is middle class? I don't know how to even define it these days.

Yes. I’m a foreigner, and my 26 years living in England gave me a fairly comprehensive education in how omnipresent social class still is. Not that it doesn’t exist in my home country. But a different history produces a slightly different class system, and schools, for instance, are much more socially mixed because people mostly go to the nearest one.

@Lemonadeand oh I agree, but things are slowly changing.

Yes but once again their children won't be, especially if sent to private school. Is Brooklyn Beckham really working class ? Of course not he could have easily married an aristocrat.

I think he is, he might have money but he doesn't have the 'breeding'

I think he is, he might have money but he doesn't have the 'breeding'

Yes, their children won't be.

The ‘it doesn’t matter’ people really make me frustrated and sad. I’m WC and work in a very MC environment. I’ve been disadvantaged, looked down upon and experience micro aggressions all the time. It’s horrible and dehumanising.

I find it amazing that class bias is still legal and thriving. You only have to look at where the money and power is in this country to see it happening. Class ‘doesn’t matter’ when you stick in your lane, and I’m sure if MC people hang out with MC people they don’t ’see it’ or understand what people are so ‘obsessed about’. But I assure you, class discrimination against the working classes is very real. And it has real world consequences.

Brooklyn is middle class

I think it's time you all got over yourselves and did away with this nonsense. However I can see from the numerous MN threads on the subject that it's never going to happen and you will continue with your hidebound traditions forever. Some of you seem to postively revel in this outdated stupidity.

Class is very complicated and it’s often hard to work out which class people are, which I think may be partly why a lot of people say class ‘ isn’t a thing’ for them.

It’s dependent on a number of different factors, often listed as:
The type of work you do
Your wealth/ capital, eg owner occupier or not, other wealth
Your family’s wealth
The sort of culture you prefer
Your social connections, or ‘social capital’

To which I’d add, your circumstances growing up, since childhood is so formative, your educational background, and how much sense of entitlement you have.

So in respect to some people it can be easier to say they are, eg working class. I’m thinking of an in- law of mine…
council house
parents on benefits when a child
low waged work
no savings, no family money

But with a lot of other people, it’s harder: eg another person I know:

same childhood as the above person
excellent education and has 3 degrees including from Oxbridge
Professional job, not well paid
no savings
Homeowner in a mixed mc and wc area
prefers mainly ‘ high’ culture
no sense of entitlement , struggles with imposter syndrome

Which class are they? It really depends on which measure of class you consider the most important. If they’re all important, then you have to say they’re both mc and wc.

Oh, I don't think so
Too much like Rodney and his Upper Class girlfriend...

I'm not convinced. 'Class' now is just whether you grew up with money or not.

All the old ideas about breeding and so on have largely vanished from society. It's all just about money nowadays.

So then what class are the footballers kids?

💯👏

I'm not from the UK. So I don't have to do away with anything.

I'm very working class and alot of my extended family are what you'd call "underclass".
Think Jeremy Kyle guests. But more violent.
We have a huge culture of addiction, prison stays and generally being a pest to good people in my family.
I don't see most of them unless social services contact me to see if I'd like to look after a baby or child belonging to a relative.
I also have a very regional accent and have struggled with learning difficulties so left school with nothing but the ability to swing a decent punch back and thicker skin than I went in with.
I used to do agency work as a care worker and I've spent time in some homes that are quite elite, so lots of Lords and lady's, people of wealth and power who were very aware of the difference between our lives, carers aren't usually working 12 hour shifts wiping arses for the love of the craft, but they've always been very respectful to me anyway. Same as the homeless people who have come into a home I work battling addiction, always been very pleasant to me and appreciated being cared for.
I have only ever once had something said to me about being someone who has lived in poverty and worked nmw jobs.
It was a dig that I owed an expensive (it was a charity shop bargain fyi) vintage canteen of cutlery that I use at Christmas. Someone laughed at me because we were discussing things we were excited for this coming Christmas and apparently everyone had Christmas cutlery and it was weird I was even mentioning it.
I've had Christmas dinners that have been things such as toast growing up, that bastard can shush and let me enjoy my Sheffield steal knives 😂

The kids are middle class. They didn't grow up in the same way that their parents did.

David Beckham went to a high school and a prep school. His mother was a hairdresser and his father a kitchen fitter was David working class or middle class? They didn't seem short of money if that is the criteria.

Why would they not be upper class? Given they have access to vast wealth, the best education money can buy, masses of property wealth. Doesn't sound very middle class to me?

Absolutely. Wayne and Coleen Rooney and Jamie and Rebekah Vardy are working class. Their wealth doesn’t change that. Victoria Beckham is wealthy aspirational lower-middle class in origin. Kate Midleton’s background is aspirational wealthy middle-middle.