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

Aloha has hit the nail on the head. I live in quite a deprived area, and I never feel remotely hard done by until I read arse-fodder like that.

but then, I feel outraged and peasantlike. this is the mood in which the French Revolution happened!

They say the secret of happiness is to surround yourself with people who are a bit worse off than you are. Shame human beings are so predictable and status driven even if they're in a jungle comparing who has the biggest beads or breasts. I don't watch TV and I find that helps.

"They say the secret of happiness is to surround yourself with people who are a bit worse off than you are."

Xenia. Please remind me who these people are, and remind me to never to share any space with them. Maybe "the secret of feeling mean smugness is to...." works.

Besides which, they'll be forever cadging offa you!!

what kind of tossbag 'surrounds themselves with people worse off' than them?

I think they do it subconsciously. So if you earn the most of the people you are with whether it's in a Nigerian village or a Liverpool housing estate you feel better because people stupidly do comparisons with each other all the time, on looks, income, whose children are best grounds. They should all spend more time in church instead.

I actually look around at poorer people around me and feel pity, not smugness.

I like articles like this, because they make me laugh.

I think her husband should get off his lazy arse and get himself a 'proper' job that earns a good wage to support his family adequately.

I have only just realised that she is related to Boris Johnson.

That explains it all

They must create this family on some remote farm somewhere out of pigshit.

VVV, I think from what she was writing last year her husband might be very seriously ill if I remember rightly.

On the relative point I didn't make it up...

"A new study has confirmed what social scientists have known for decades: happiness comes from success relative to one?s peer group rather than from the level of success itself.
MONEY might indeed buy you happiness, but only if you have more money than your peers. New research shows that the richer people are compared with others in their age group, the happier they tend to be. ?It creates a kind of treadmill of consumption,? says Laura Tach, a sociology graduate student at Harvard University who conducted the research. ?We earn more money, but so does everyone else.? The results of this monetary race seem to affect happiness more than a new car or a bigger house.

Researchers assessed age, health, total family income and the general happiness of approximately 20,000 20- to 64-year-olds using data gathered from 1972 to 2002 in the General Social Survey, a national survey conducted every one to two years. Tach and collaborator Glenn Firebaugh, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University, found that physical health was the biggest predictor of happiness, followed by income and education. According to the findings, an individual who earns $20,000 more than the peer group average is 10% more likely to be very happy than someone who earns $20,000 less than the average. The absolute size of an individual?s income had only a small effect on happiness."

Yawn.

I got so sick of Americans' obsession with money, materialism and status.

Then I moved here and quickly discovered the apple certainly didn't fall too far from the tree in that sense.

How insufferably dull and unoriginal, another moan about money and stuff.

I'm perishing of boredom again.

I think you should all come over to Meath. Nice big houses for the price of a one-bed flat in London.
Hunker didn't know you'd sold your house! Well done!

Agree with chipmonkey. All go over to Meath, and stay away from the beautiful Peaks, ya bunch of moany-arse, lower-middle-class, southern gits, with ya 4X4s, foccacia breads and ya bad attitudes...

or move into crappy corby...dirst cheap, even the brand new houses...now comparing to london prices...and only 1 hour by train

aloha is right (again)
i live in a very affluent northern town where despite fantastic state schools the majority of my friends choose to go private
house prices are not good and we are currently looking a 6x 1 income to buy a house
My dp came in from work the other day and said to me ' what is wrong with me - I have a nice house nice car £xxxxx income and i still feel poor
Its all about that. Sometimes we all need grounding

Pann - OMG Me and dh lived in OT (7 sisters? Osprey COurt ). Know Ayres Rd well, best mates (now married) lived on Kings Rd and Leighton Rd dh hails from Gorse Hill.

We moved to Wigan then back to Sale - this was all in 70's 80's though! We've managed to move up the property ladder quite well but I guess we're your baby boomers!

I know Osprey...well done!!

Ours was facing St John's church, the big red-brick one half way down.

It's only been posh since we left!!

Hmm, Osprey - laverly!

oh good grief. poor? she doesn't knopw the meaning of the word. [anger]

she should try living with the rest of us

She's Boris Johnson's sister. What more do I need to say.

as for average wages sorry salaries [sarcastic emoticon]

we had combined income of apx 20,000. we couldn't afford even a 6x mortgage and we wouldn't have qualified for first time buyer discounts. yet what makes me angry is that the rent of 525 is paid each month on time and yet no-one will give us a mortgage.

my friends, who are buying theirs, pay a lot less.

Xenia, I was being flippant.

Even so.....its a stock response given to the lower classes who moan of lack of money, I figure - it could work for all

fransmum, we had the same prob in the end have had to buy our council house and live in it for 3 years and then hopefully should sell it for enough to be given a mortgage for a different house

I don't know though, in real terms, lots of things have really gone down in price.

Washing machines, TV's, cars, etc., clothes, bedlinen, towels, furniture all those domestic things, have all gone down in price.

Even in the last 5 years or so, there has been a dramatic drop in prices for various things imo. I was in IKEA the other day and noticed how the sort of tables which were £400 5 years ago are now £200.

And the price of food relative to income has also dropped (except for the poor, of course, who spend a larger percentage of their income on food than the rich).

Fuel has gone up, but no higher relative to income than it was 30 years ago.

Nothing has come down in price so much as to outweigh the astronomic leap in housing costs though.