to wonder if mumsnet is a haven for very well off and slightly blinkered individuals.....?

[preparetobeflayed]

Obviously I have changed my name on this thread as I am prepared for the onslaught.....

Threads about Boden, how sad they are that their jumper from Boden has been pilling, 'oh woe is me my nanny has called in sick', 'I am hard up now the tax band has increased (although I am still earning £170,000....

Where are the rest of the population who reflect most of the parents I meet. I also wonder whether some people are able to look around and see what else is happening in the world....?

(Just having a bit of a rant about some of the other threads I guess......

So if I meet my PM targets I go onto the UPS, that is fine although will people not just set themselves low targets? Or will it be down to your observation, again will people not ask for their easiest class to be observed. I have always asked for my hardest class to be observed thinking that is where I need the most help.

I really don't know, might be worth asking your union. I would imagine the person who co-ordinates PM would have more of a say in the targets you are set?

I am sure I should do but I just dont care, I go into work do my job and as long the bills are paid and there is food on the table I am happy.

hun you missed me effusing about tesco children clothes

i am lady McStingy.good with money

yep some loaded burds but some regular too

Buying expensive brands is common and working class/nouveau riche surely? Gucci etc.

I buy very few very expensive brands for the sake of it. But tend to avoid very cheap things that I suspect have involved the exploitation of others. I tend to buy a lot second hand.

I suspect that is why dd thinks we are so poor.

It is a fairly recent phenomenon I think, this concept of moving between classes. I bet it rarely happened 100 yrs ago. I don't know the facts and figures but that is the feeling I get.

It seems to me, looking at a lot of these posts, that education, not money, is the key to class and that the lines have blurred because people are regularly exceeding the education their parents got and therefore moving out of their class. I know I certainly did (my father was a postman so very WC but I have degrees and for a while persued a MC career). It will happen more often as more and more people go into higher education.

There seems to be some difference of opinion on whether class comes from where you came from or where you are now - another reason for the blurring of class lines.

I have been thinking about this this evening and I don't think I would place myself in any class. My father is definitely WC and I suspect my boys will be nothing other than MC but I don't fit anywhere. Can't say as it bothers me - it isn't like it is an issue anywhere other than on MN. I suppose I am sort of the change-over generation!

We are very very lucky in the uK that there is quite good social mobility - I noticed it at my mother's funeral where we met some of her relatives for the first time (big class divide achieved just from her childhood to ours). If you're an untouchable in India (that caste) or in many other countries it is much harder to move classes. 100 years ago it was much harder.

What is class in the UK? If you're very working class you probably think everyone with an expensive car etc is posher. It's an interesting issue . I meet lots of people, often very successful businessmen through work. Many were from very poor humble origins. Some seem to become middle class, their grammar, world view, opinions, families move the class. Others stay very much working class in terms of accent, children staying in state schools, mixing with working class friends only, still have big big gaps in their education in terms of general knowledge whether that's about painting, literature or whatever. So yes I think education as well as accent and views plays a part in what is your class and if you choose to move class.

Interesting thought on accent.

Again I don't fit as I don't have one. I was born in London but you wouldn't know it. I now live in one of those London overspill towns that are often the butt of jokes on TV and where estuary English is alive and well in certain parts. I went to a school which had feeders from the council estates where the London/estuary accent was predominant but my school was in a catchment where all the homes were privately owned (my parents were a head of their time (and class) on home ownership) and we didn't have accents and stood out like sore thumbs. We got called the posh kids although we really weren't, not compared with real posh people!!

Thinking about it it might be more of an issue down South than up North. I went to University in the North and everybody has an accent up there, no matter what class they are. University professors often did for a start, lawyers and such like. Down South the very MC often don't have an accent at all.

Its a complicated issue. What is your class? Is it what you feel and believe it to be or what society and other people feels it should be? The two don't always tally.

Thinking of my mother's brothers too - same upbringing, same parents, same schooling, same level of schooling, both with good responsible jobs, both home owners, but one will be WC until the day he dies and the other is as MC as they come.

As I say, a difficult concept to capture.

Niecie - I think your idea of the 'change-over generation ' is a great one and certainly applies to a lot of people I know. It's not a catchy enough phrase though. If you come up with a 'better' one people might actually start using it - I know I will.

I dont think that people with an expensive car is posh and dont aspire to an expensive car. Been there done that, we have an estate which is a few years old which tends to smell of sand and walking boots.

I have a northern accent which down here I imagine makes me sound common. I do play on it, I like my accent. When a class is playing up I go very northern as it gets there attention. When I have worked in the north people think I sound southern and posh which is not true.

I think the only way you can tell someone's class for certain is to have sex with them. If the sex involves dressing as a baby, being spanked with a pure bristle paddle brush or galloping across the bedroom stark naked, then they are probably upper class.

at swedes

LOL @ swedes

I think there has been very good social mobility in the last century but I believe that is slowing down now. Whether that's a result of the cost of further education nowadays or the fact that most teenagers I've met seem to think that they're going to be hurtled to super-stardom by passing Simon Cowell on the street, I don't know ...

Re accent, in my experience there is a lot more snobbery about estuary English/Essex accent than any other regional accent in London. One of my colleagues had 'very strong Essex accent' written on her interview notes - I doubt she would have had that if she'd had a Mancunian accent

Teehee...what's working class sex then Swedes?

we lather each other up in chip fat and shove pork pies up various orifices. We love burberry condoms and whip each other with gold chains,

Spicemonster - you had me confused a bit for a second there when you were talking about the last century - I was thinking of the 1800's but of course you mean the 1900's and I still haven't got used to the new millenium yet!

You maybe right about education but I think another factor is that if 50% of the population are going to go to higher education, as I believe is the plan, then the value of taking a degree has got to have lessened and won't automatically catapult you into the bosom of the middle classes.

Also the mobility may have slowed up a bit because the children who were the first generation in their families to go to university and make the move towards to MC are now the ones sending their children off to university so those children are already MC if their parents were the in-betweenies

(thedolly - haven't come up with a name for them yet other than 'the in-betweenies' but frankly that is a bit naff)

You are right about the prejudice to the Essex/Estuary accent. People do get snobby about it. I know my mother corrected us all the time if we dropped an aitch or a 'w'. She wasn't a Londoner and I can still remember her saying it was common.

I doubt she would have done that if we had her native Devon accent or a northern one.

Not every one from the North has an accent. We were brought up in Newcastle but don't and never had the accent.

The poshest bloke I ever met was from Manchester

I'm sure you are right Xenia but still think more people have an accent up North than in the South ime.

I quite like the Geordie accent. I can't imagine you with one though, not from the very little I know of you!

Sorry Niecie - had to think there for a bit too! That is a very good point about the dilution of the value of education and I'm sure that's another factor. I wonder if education will cease to be a marker for class in the future? Actually, what I suspect will happen is that we move to a society where there is a very swollen middle class, with some people being massively over-qualified for their work, with thin wafers of the properly posh and the underbelly either side. There are parts of the country where there are generations of people who have never ever worked. How you escape from that I don't know

xenia - I have friends from Northumberland/Newcastle who have no accent. Did you go to private school? That's what tends to give the 'no accent' thing IME (I don't have one either - I didn't grow up in the UK so I have a very generic accent)

I sit openmouthed at some of these threads from the rich netters but they're well in the minority. I remembered being so shocked at the price someone paid for a turkey on one of the christmas threads and always am at how people can afford to shop at Waitrose and Boden and even Next, but each to their own. I'm a Asda's Smartprice girl myself, just til I win the lottery Just avoid those threads if you don't like them because it's not their fault they're rich and can afford these things. Good on them for having that kind of money, I say!

I'm afraid I've never had working class sex so couldn't possibly shouldn't comment. I imagine it involves the geezer whispering, nay shouting, in the woman's ear: "You are well farking out of order and you 'ave what's coming to you." But please correcy me if I'm wrong.