To think Toby Carvery is working class ?

[JoanneTeresa]

I went this week and was looking around at the likely demographic

Ultimately if you don't like it.... Don't go?

I feel comfortable in a lot of working class places being from that background myself. Our local TC is really downmarket though and more underclass than working class. It just seems like overeaters anonymous to me. I like a proper pubby pub as much as the next person but it isn't like that at all. It's rough, poor quality and unpleasant, which I don't equate with working class.

I’m extremely middle class and I love Toby Carvery. Mainly because I like loads of veg with my roast and no gravy, and cranberry sauce with the ‘wrong’ meat. My partner likes a much beiger roast dinner, we like different meats, and we can both be happy.

Yes, DS is definitely having an entirely different childhood to mine or DH’s. He has parents with professional jobs and a comfortable income, and lives in a big house in an area where lots of the neighbours are medics, architects or academics. When he has to do work experience for school, we’ll be able to get him all kinds of opportunities. People having yachts isn’t alien to him. But, on the other hand, unlike many of his established MC/UMC friends, he has grandparents and aunts and uncles living in small council houses, and working as delivery drivers, street sweepers, builder-labourers etc. He knows the people who empty the bins, who clean the school after hours, who pick up the litter because they’re family, not some category of ‘people who do jobs that I don’t have to think about’. That still marks him out as ‘new MC’.

Yes I would say it’s very working class, though I’ve never been to one personally, because it gives off the impression of being working class and I wouldn’t like that very much.

💯 this

It's not catching you know. 🤣

I'd say you are middle class in that case. Too well off for help but not well off enough to live, because of the cost of living rise.

You think anyone not on benefits is middle class?

this is absolute madness.

One nibble of a Toby Carvery Yorkshire pudding, and you’re magically saying ‘Cor blimey, strike a light, guvnor’ and prancing on on rooftops with a cohort of tapdancing chimney sweeps, I tell you.

it's only social mobility if you believe that factors such as education and interests like Radio 4 or reading books are middle class rather than working class, so back to the offensive stereotypes.
I don’t. I said, I believe it's based on income, as this is what truly separates us. I think there's only a divide if people make one. I have friends from different classes. What divide? It's just an interesting discussion?
I don't agree that’s all that trips them up.

I'm working class. I work but claim UC and I'm as well off financially as someone on 30K. I'd say we're both working class.

I would put anything above 40K as middle. Because anyone earning 30-40K is going to be absolutely fecked in this economy. Trapped in work, unable to take more than maternity leave off. Unable to afford much.

So you're about to be upper class. Good on you. I'm from a working class background and my parents were actually from a middle class one.

But class isn’t about income

Like the one I spoke about earlier then

I'm saying I think it is.

It's not tangible.

You didn’t reply to me asking you what it is? If it’s not income but also not the interests/hobbies that get mentioned on here?

I earn under 20k lol

Because it’s far, far more complex than chucking a few lines on a mumsnet post. It’s also the accumulation of a number of factors, nuanced, not black and white.

I think this poster said that there are two, upper and lower basically. Independently wealthy, and needing to work.

I agree, but also think you can break it down further into clear categories that affect our actual lives, which are:

out of work - absolute poverty
under 60K working class - barely scraping by (me)
over 60K middle class - doing okay (her)
100K and over - upper (soon to be her)

either as an income or in a situation relative to that of someone who has that income. So hers is from pensions and she will be able to give up work, which is highly unlikely an option for someone on under 100K

But if you think it is… what does that mean? Nothing?

there are so many examples of traditional working class and middle class jobs at very different earning levels that make a nonsense of what you say.

What about people who earn more or less over their lifetime? Do you think they slip around classes? What about when you’re made redundant, what class are you when you don’t work at all? It has too many holes to be an indicator

So middle class people have to be guilt tripped for having an average income while people on 60+k on here claim to be working class and claim their life is so much harder and we should feel sorry for them based on something you refuse to define?

Are you suggesting that eg a bricklayer who lives in a council house and earns over £100k a year is upper middle class? For that alone?!

But that hasn’t happened.

Seen it happen on other threads, the average wage is about 30k that’s the middle. But I’ve seen people on here claiming to earn 60k but it’s all “boohoo I’m working class my grandad worked in a factory you don’t know how hard I have it”

Just means that’s what I think and it is an interesting discussion to have.
Yes, I read quite far into a book about it being based on jobs, and as I agree with you that wages vary wildly for professions, as I actually said in my original post, no, you cannot base it on profession. That’s why I say it's not based on profession, but on income, as in the amount you earn.

Yes I think people are socially mobile, (slip around classes). As I say, my parents both grew up middle class. I was brought up working class. One parent is now middle class and another is out of work, so the 1st class I mentioned in my little list, which is not definitive nor does it have any intrinsic meaning. It's just a fun little discussion.

What about when you’re made redundant, what class are you when you don’t work at all? Depends on how much money have access to. My parent who I call middle class does not work. Though when they didn't work when I was growing up he was (let’s just call it) lower class.

Yes that's my suggestion but I'm not submitting this to some official office or anything.

I think that bricklayer is upper middle because of the lifestyle he and his family will be enjoying. He can probably afford to retire his wife if she wants and have more than 2 children. That's due to his income.

What's it based on for you? What class is Jim the bricklayer? I find this really interesting.