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

279 replies

emkana · 18/02/2007 11:22

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

OP posts:
Judy1234 · 18/02/2007 14:18

My grandfather who was not rich by any means had a live in servant. Many people did. Those people were paid a pittance. Go to Kenya, China, India, Central America and you will get people who are paid virtually nothing to do all kinds of things for you. That is how it was here - huge gaps between rich and poor. We don't have that any more.

On living in London point we have never been able to afford to live in any bit of London we might have chosen to live in. It's just the way it is and always has been. You compromise.

In 1961 my parents bought a house and I was born. In the NE. It cost £6000. They were both working - consultant/doctor and teacher. It was a struggle. We didn't have a holiday for 10 years as they were funding 3 sets of school fees. I am not sure relative to consultant doctor's incomes in that area there is a huge difference. I think the house was valued at about £360k on my mother's death. I don't know what new consultants earned in the NHS in 1961 to do the right sum.

lucykate · 18/02/2007 14:22

hunker, don't be too scared about taking on a large mortgage, we did just the same in july last year, at the time it petrified me. but over the last few months we've got used to it. we're skint but doing the move, like you, to a bigger house which can also be extended in the future has made a big difference to our overall quality of life, we're not living on top of each other any more, the kids have room to breathe, we can have visitors!

good luck for tomorrow, x.

taylormama · 18/02/2007 14:23

of course i meant rosie millard not boycott -

Gobbledigook · 18/02/2007 14:24

I'm surprised at the number of people who feel they are 'worse off' than their parents. Is that mainly in London? Is it a house price issue again?

hunkermunker · 18/02/2007 14:28

Thanks, Lucykate. I am soooo nervous! I'm hoping that the fact this house needs work but is perfectly habitable means it won't appeal to people who want a wreck at a bargain, but it'll be too expensive for people who want to just move into it.

I'm kidding myself, right? Ohhhhhhhhhhh, I'm SO nervous! I may have mentioned that! [angst]

Leda · 18/02/2007 14:28

Sorry, I know I'm being dull but can?t help myself. Find it intolerable that anyone might think that she has even a vaguely valid point ---

Yes, teachers, doctors etc were better off, but there were far fewer of them. Houses were cheaper, but far fewer people aspired to own their own houses. University was funded, but only about 10% of people went.

Surely it's the fact that the 'middleclass' (whatever that bloody means) is much bigger now that means middleclass people don't have it quite as good as they used to.

I wasn?t even here, but I know that the 70s and 80s in the UK were not exactly blissful for the vast majority of people living here. Miner strikes? Thatcher? Is that really a time anyone can feel nostalgic about without being dangerously delusional?

hunkermunker · 18/02/2007 14:29

GDG, if we didn't have a mortgage that pretty much equates to one salary, yes, we'd be comfortably off. As it is, one salary goes on mortgage, the other on bills, food, etc. There's not much over, if anything.

Pann · 18/02/2007 14:35

Leda - I do think you are right.

She IS complaining about, amongst other things, the lack of relative poverty i.e. that SHE should be able to enjoy a v. comfortable life, and frankly sod everyone else......and the 1980s were good for a few people albeit..for the rest of us it was pretty awful, and good riddance to the lot of it (incl. the terrible bland music).

I was raised largely in a v. poor, multi-racial part of Manchester (Old Trafford/Moss Side anyone?), and did realise years ago that I couldn't afford to buy the house I was raised in, despite working in what is perceived as a 'middle class profession, and my father being an unskilled worker.

Gobbledigook · 18/02/2007 14:38

Blimey Pann - I thought 'are you sure?' so I looked on Rightmove adn you are looking at £200-300K for a 3 bed semi in OT!!

I was very surprised!!

Leda · 18/02/2007 14:40

Oo I did quite like the music Pann

Caligula · 18/02/2007 14:41

I disagree that the "working classes" (whatever they are defined as) have never had it so good. Any changes which have hit middle class lifestyles, have hit working class lifestyles twice as hard. People living in cheaper houses or social housing on lower wages, have exactly the same problems affording basic housing costs as the middle classes and I agree with Aloha, it all comes down to the cost of housing. (Nearly everything does!)

Pann · 18/02/2007 14:41

Fook!

ours was a Victorian tearrace, though on 3 floors (Ayers Road, to be precise)..so, what £300,000??

Blimey, indeed!!

Caligula · 18/02/2007 14:43

But the poverty gap today is much wider than it used to be, so I don't think she's complaining about relative poverty.

The period she's harking back to isn't the thirties, is it? I got the impression she's talking about post war pre-Thatcher society. IE, a time when the gap between rich and poor was at its lowest.

Gobbledigook · 18/02/2007 14:46

The ones for sale in OT at £300K-ish are on Kings Road - so not far off!!

Gobbledigook · 18/02/2007 14:47

I am truly gobsmacked by that!

Any by your 80s music comment - come on!! I told you to listen to Duran Duran yesterday!!

Pann · 18/02/2007 14:51

I know GD, but I couldn't bring myself to actually do it!!!!!! Too many memories of billowing frilly white shirts and suede tie-up boots. And that was just me.

about to go searching for a Kylie download to i-pod,..... strictly for houseworking purposes you understand........

Caligula · 18/02/2007 14:52

Talking of 80's music, may I just recommend the new Hugh Grant/ Drew Barrymore film, it's fab. He plays an eighties has-been and he's hilarious.

Anyway. Back to middle-class whingeing...

Leda · 18/02/2007 14:55

Well I wouldn?t (and didn?t) say the working class have it great now. I am one of the people who can?t afford to buy anything, let alone the ?second home? RC moans about. But the reason house prices went through the roof (or at least one of them) is surely because more people could afford to buy houses in the 90s and on.

Is the Hugh Grant film really good? It looked amazingly naff on the (short) clip I saw.

Pann · 18/02/2007 14:56

Caligula! You and a Hugh Grant film..from what teeny weeny bit I understand of you..I'm a bit .

Caligula · 18/02/2007 14:56

No he's deliberately naff.

Chick-flick though, you have to like them

Caligula · 18/02/2007 14:58

Yes I don't usually like him. But he is hilarious in this.

And also, he's very wizened. Really has an ancient old man look about him. Drew Barrymore looks fresh and beautiful and radiant, and I couldn't work out whether it's because one is so used to Hollywood actresses having no flesh on them and having sticky-out bones and she doesn't, or whether it's because next to shrivelled ole man Hugh that she looks so gorge.

Sorry for frivolity on serious thread...

Pann · 18/02/2007 15:00

Always thought Drew rocks. And so damned interesting.

aaanyway, back to..erm..what were we talking about?

wheresthehamster · 18/02/2007 15:24

I wonder how much vicars/teachers/bank managers spent on their children in those days?

You can't get away from it, children are very high-maintenance now.

Apart from all the activities they do, there are the fashions to be kept up with, the latest gadgets for Christmas costing £200 or more, every child over the age of 12 has a bowling/swimming/cinema date most weeks, they all need credit on their phones, there are the 'voluntary donations' for school trips to Russia,Peru etc.

It's quite a sizeable percentage of take home pay that I'm sure wasn't the norm 40/50 years ago!

Judy1234 · 18/02/2007 15:37

Yes, RJ was packed off to boarding school where she probably had a fairly spartan life and wasn't around her parents to nag for money, clothes etc. We were at private schools but didn't have things bought for us except at Christmas and on birthdays. I think she just had too high expectations. I was happy to buy second hand clothes for my children in the early 1980s. We never bought orange juice because it's expensive. I don't often eat out and my parents never did.

In other words she should strip things back to how her parents had it and live where they did too. It has always been expensive to live in Central London which is why most of us can't afford to.

Aloha · 18/02/2007 15:41

As I said, I think our definition of 'essential' and 'luxurious' have changed beyond recognition. We expect new clothes all the time, our kids get so much stuff it's untrue, we expect gadgets - cameras, computers, washing machines etc. We fritter away so much money on Starbucks coffees and meals out. It's all quite new. And we compare ourself to people we don't even know becaues of the the lifestyle industry. Mags are full of people who have fabulous homes, designer clothes etc btu they are such a weeny minority of people. Read something about how many billionaires there really are (practically none) yet we know loads about how they live (yachts, huge mansions in central London, handmade clothes, staff cottages blah blah) and it makes it feel as if there are loads of them, and we should have all that too. The key is to not read about them, and live somewhere where people are at about your income level or earn less!