Page 8 | Is the Irish/Northern Irish social class system the same as UK?

merrymaryquitecontrary · 2024-09-13T16:41:51+00:00

Visited Ireland recently and was wondering if there is the same obsession with class as UK? If so, what would the signifiers be? Do people recoil in horror if you use a certain word instead of another 'posher' word? Eg red sauce vs ketchup in the UK. There's no point in this thread other than me just wondering.

Barbadossunset · 21/09/2024 17:44

@borntobequiet
My grandfather was head stud groom from 1915-1960 (ish) at a top racing stable owned by an old Anglo-Irish family - a very decent family, as it happens.

Were they the McCalmonts or the Loders?

BarbaraHoward · 21/09/2024 18:23

deeahgwitch · 21/09/2024 17:05

I think your last sentence explains why she voted for him @DeanElderberry 😉
That man !!!!!!
Mind you my mother and father love the free travel.

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We know a Charles Haughey who's in his twenties. The parents must've known. 👀

borntobequiet · 21/09/2024 18:36

Barbadossunset · 21/09/2024 17:44

@borntobequiet
My grandfather was head stud groom from 1915-1960 (ish) at a top racing stable owned by an old Anglo-Irish family - a very decent family, as it happens.

Were they the McCalmonts or the Loders?

McCalmonts!

Mount Juliet was an amazing place - my memories are from the late 1950s.

Soonenough · 21/09/2024 21:19

@impossiblejourneys I got married in 1990. DH didn't have to convert but he did have to sign a document stating that he would let me raise our future children as Catholic. Back then only place to get married was a church . Plus my lovely parents would have been distressed and it didn't bother us.

On Mercy nuns . My experience was very negative. Head nun licked up to parents with businesses and treated some girls from poorer backgrounds very differently. Not surprising as some of the nuns from WC backgrounds were given the domestic tasks in the convent whilst unqualified or ancient ones pretended to teach us.

playbadlycast · 22/09/2024 15:14

DeanElderberry · 18/09/2024 16:57

let's face it, that's the point.

I was in college with someone a bit socially aspirational/ snobbish (son of a GP, so lower than most people on the rcyc pecking order) who was very chuffed to be given a chance to crew one of the boats for a race, and was horrified when the Fastnet disaster unfolded around him and he realised just how little the lives of the crews mattered to the owners and racers. Put him right off that particular path into the upper echelons.

That is horrifying about the Fastnet disaster, Dean. I had no idea.

DeanElderberry · 22/09/2024 18:42

It was a grim couple of years around Cork - there was also the Buttevant rail crash that killed 18 people and the Whiddy Island tanker explosion with 50 dead. Anyone who ever complains about health and safety legislation deserves a very hard stare.

On the plus side, Cork now has a very good and very well practiced major accident response plan.

I remember being completely unable to make any adequate response to a young teenager I knew who was very disturbed because a friend of his had been decapitated at Whiddy - killed would have been bad enough, but I think he was haunted by the visual.

playbadlycast · 23/09/2024 17:55

DeanElderberry · 22/09/2024 18:42

It was a grim couple of years around Cork - there was also the Buttevant rail crash that killed 18 people and the Whiddy Island tanker explosion with 50 dead. Anyone who ever complains about health and safety legislation deserves a very hard stare.

On the plus side, Cork now has a very good and very well practiced major accident response plan.

I remember being completely unable to make any adequate response to a young teenager I knew who was very disturbed because a friend of his had been decapitated at Whiddy - killed would have been bad enough, but I think he was haunted by the visual.

That is horrifying and so sad. I'm sure you were as thoughtful and sensitive as your posts...but I understand your feeling of being unable to help adequately.