This is the kind of article that really has me spitting feathers

[emkana]

how awful not to be able to afford school fees and foreign holidays

"Let's assume the middle class family has a combined income of £100000" - who are these people?

grrr

£100k would barely cover my school fees/university fees bill before tax actually for five children.

Xenia, you don't have to send your kids to private school though - that is a lifestyle you choose. If that is the lifestyle you want, then of course you need to earn the commensurate amount to achieve it. Wanting and needing are two different things

I did a search on rightmove and there are lots of houses for sale in London that costs less than £250k. I guess it all depends on where in London you want to live that will influence whether or not you think you can't afford to live in London.

Glad I'm not the only one who checked rightmove - most seemed to be in Walthamstow - but there were plenty.

and you certainly don;t have to send your kids to private school to be middle class. that's just one of the most awful snobbish assumptions I have heard.

I didn't know you had to pay university fees. I thought the kids got a loan to borrow them.

I meant get a loan/ borrow in order to pay them.

Was in shock

Student tuition fees now don't have to be paid until after graduation (then added to student loan for repayment). If you wanted to pay them up front you'd find that the £3k per year would greatly exceed the amount you would receive in the autumn term.
The fees look like going up to £7k per year for many universities by 2010 (or so).

My search on Rightmove came up with over 100 semis and terraces in
Bromley
Plaistow
Mitcham
Walthamstow
Forest Gate
Mottingham
Woodford Green
Tower Hamlets
Tottenham etc

All for £250k or less.

These were 3 bed houses too.

Darling, nothing in Chelsea, Chiswick, er, other places?

Christina darling, only studio flats I'm afraid!

FioFio tut tut. The term one uses now is ahem... escort.

Rachel Johnson lives in Notting Hill which, as her novel points out, is not the real world. It's not even real London. It is the city's international financial district.

It is a place where you feel dissatisfied, envious and lacking even if you are rich. Because someone will be richer. I'd hate to live there: veg from Tom's deli at £2 a tomato etc. Nice for a visit and a cruise around the shops but my friend lives there and her nearest store is Paul Smith.

Studies have shown people are most content when they are doing OK relative to those around them, whatever level they live at. So that is why she s miserable and whingey.

She should trade in her house on a Notting Hill square, move half a mile out, release huge wedge of capital and she d never have to slum it in Sicily again.

Incidentally, how much longer is she going to use her one good joke - haves and have-yachts. Pulease. She's wearing it out. Boris used it in the Telegraph this morning (unattributed.

She's a proper writer too? (As proper as a novel would make you.) I'd never heard of her till yesterday when i got the Times for a particularly long tube journey across London. Heard of Boris. Who hasn't.

Oh god when I hear phrases like "haves and haves yachts", it hammers home the point that all the discourse in this bloody country is conducted about the rich and the very rich and most of the media just doesn't give a shit about analysing what's going on with the majority. And then they wonder why people who are being ignored by the political parties and the media, turn to loony fringe parties like the BNP.

You can be a house guest in our villa with a very private swimming pool.

This is a shockingly arrogant article. Her tone sounds petulant and a little bitter. I got the impression that what really annoys her is the fact that the gap between her type of people and those she considers beneath her has gotten too narrow.

I say this as someone whose DH earns over 100k but who has very little disposible income. Mainly due to a stupidly high mortgage of nearly 3k pcm (and this is in South Manchester not London) Also running 2 cars and putting away for school fees. However, this is totally our choice and of our own doing. I would never complain about our situation (only to DH ) and I always remember how lucky we are having grown up in real poverty on an imfamous council estate.

I disagree with the view that we are worse off than our parents. House prices may be out of control but so are our expectations. My parents could only dream of owning their own home and we didn't have a car yet these are thing that most of us (athough by no means all of us) take for granted.

Oh, and I love Sicily!

Most of us have much easier lives than our parents, I agree. Until I was 5 we didn't even have central heating. Yes, if RJ moved herself to a place like I was suggesting - terraced house £250k, zone 5 outer London, she would feel better than those around her etc etc

The have yachts need to work in the City and get big bonuses or buy and sell companies or whatever. I might have an island but I couldn't afford a yacht, a canoe may be....

Yes, school fees are my choice. I'd rather pay those than have a number of luxury items some people take for granted.

University fees - this is Blair's doing. Richer children's parents pay the £3k annual fees plus the maintenance and rent costs so they graduate without debt. Other children defer the £3k a year £9k on graduation and manage to get additional loans, grants, jobs etc to pay the other £6 - £9 a year cost they may have unless they choose to stay at home which is cheaper and what most people do abroad.

I agree - our lives are easier than our parents. Even if we have less than they did, life is still easier.

The mass redundnacies and subsequent years long job hunts of the early nineties were terrible for a lot of families.

But I would temper that with my belief that it is a bit rich for people who live in big houses to decide that other people don't need one to be happy.

If someone who really is a lot worse off than their parents would like to come forward and say how lucky they are.

Where is this island, Xenia?

I have a big house and a big mortgage. I don't think I need one to be happy but I don't want to give it up just to check my theory out.

The island.. don't want to say. Somewhere warm. Not to far from the equator. Not as luxurious as it sounds as it doesn't have a house on it (yet).