How the other half lives, what and when you learned

[tomorrowalready]

Reflecting from another thread made me realise it was not until my 20s I found out some people expected to have a private bathroom. I went to university then and shared with another mature student who had been married, divorced and said she found having to share a bathroom with unrelated people unpleasant. I had always taken it for granted as had live in jobs and rented bedsits before. She was a lovely person and also the first person I knew who had a glass of wine every evening and she introduced me to many new things - cooking with garlic, sherry, owning and using a car for shopping for example.

So what did you take for granted that surprised other people you met?

[Gwenhwyfar]

[quote ZednotZee]@queenmeadhbh

No, not at all.

The MC northerners and southerners whom I know personally have accents which would make it extremely difficult to place them to a particular region.

I have a regional accent, it isn't broad by any stretch of the imagination but it firmly denotes my social class as working class.

I would never think that somebody who spoke like I do had middle class lineage.[/quote]
But surely you can tell this is not true just by the proportions. About 90% of British people have regional accents, at least if you discount the home counties, and the middle class is about 50% so how do you get at no middle class people having regional accents?

[ZednotZee]

The middle class is 50%...

Oh the delusion

[RedToothBrush]

@ZednotZee

The middle class is 50%...

Oh the delusion

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-4443694/UK-middle-class-one-smallest-poorest-Europe.html

In Ireland, the middle class share rose from 60 per cent to 69 per cent over the two decades, the biggest increase.

Ireland also saw the biggest rise in average medium income across all classes compared to the other countries.

The UK’s middle class made up 64 per cent of the population in 2010, a rise of 6 per cent over the two decades.

The middle class in the uk has shrunk since then, but honestly I don't know why you are prattling on about delusions.

[Budapestdreams]

The proportion of people who were mc was indeed very small back in the Victorian era. Since then, the middle class has grown in size quite substantially.

[Insert1x20p]

The Scouse surgeon went to University and has a professional job. He's middle class, even though he likes to think he's "keeping it real". His parents may have been working class. He's not and his children aren't/ wont be.

[HaveringWavering]

@Insert1x20p

The Scouse surgeon went to University and has a professional job. He's middle class, even though he likes to think he's "keeping it real". His parents may have been working class. He's not and his children aren't/ wont be.

I agree with you but if you look further back in this thread you’ll see some ridiculous arguments that it’s impossible to change class within your lifetime.

[BeenAsFarAsMercyAndGrand]

Someone who thinks a surgeon is WC because they are scouse and have a regional accent isn't in a position to talk about delusions. Do you see Kier Starmer as WC?

The surgeon may have grown up WC, but their life has changed enormously. They have a high income, assets, higher level education, and is likely to have a lot of cultural capital. On a surgeon's salary, they could probably send their kids to private school etc.

Even if you see class in the marxist sense, as being about someone's relationship to the means of production, then your view still doesn't make sense. Because a lot of those with 'middle class lineage' do not own the means of production. They wouldn't even be considered petit bourgeois unless they owned their own business.

[Dindundundundeeer]

On a surgeon's salary, they could probably send their kids to private school not if they live in the south

[BeenAsFarAsMercyAndGrand]

@Dindundundundeeer

On a surgeon's salary, they could probably send their kids to private school not if they live in the south

But they don't live in the south. ZednotZee has said they live in the merseyside / Chester area.

[Dindundundundeeer]

But what? MC and remaining in the North? Didn’t happen.

[Antiqueanniesmagiclanternshow]

Sorry.....hang on a second. Are you saying there are no middle class people in the north?,

[Dindundundundeeer]

@Antiqueanniesmagiclanternshow

Sorry.....hang on a second. Are you saying there are no middle class people in the north?,

No that was sarcasm. However not too far a leap from some of the nonsense on here

[RedToothBrush]

@Antiqueanniesmagiclanternshow

Sorry.....hang on a second. Are you saying there are no middle class people in the north?,

Yep. Thats pretty much what she said.

You can't be middle class and have a regional accent.

So there's no scouse middle class, no manc middle class, no yorkshire middle class, no geordie middle class, no brummie middle class, no northern irish middle class, no west country middle class...

... and the middle class is apparently much smaller than all those researchers and academics who study class in the UK. And obviously doesn't include all those professions that the dictionary definition says it does.

And its just people who are snobby who are bothered by this. Rather than just posters thinking 'I can't believe what a load of absoluete bollocks are being spouted here'.

You have got what she's saying spot on.

[ZednotZee]

I have never met a scouse person who would willingly identify as middle class.

Class is not a measure of education or wealth up here and there is no shame in being working class.

I do understand however that much of MN are determinedly middle class seemingly because they have a degree and earn over 30K.

The scousers are laughing at you though

[Ddot]

What defines MC, can't be just cash surely

[EspressoDoubleShot]

Not solely cash,but income is linked to housing,educational attainment,health,mental health so it’s huge driver. Lack of money,inadequate resources is a hard and relentless way to get by

[ZednotZee]

Its not cash.

Its culture, politics, inherited belief systems, tastes and a myriad other things before cash even comes in to it.

[EspressoDoubleShot]

Income determines where one lives,what one eats, education choices as large income can afford private school and or tutors, or onward uni You really cannot dismiss the impact of income

[Gilmoregale]

I learned a lot about how the other half live when I left my very working class background at 18 for a very green welly university (one of the ones that those who don't get into Oxbridge were very keen on at the time); even for the late 1980s it was a bit behind the times (formal meals once a term, summoning us to dinner with a bell, that kind of thing); I also learned what snotty snobby unhelpful ratbags some posh people can be. It wasn't until I earned a decent income when I worked overseas, amongst people who had grown up in other countries, that my horizons were really widened personally though - although at least I had read widely and had worked in a wide range of organisations with all kinds of people by then. People who have always had money have no clue, at all, about what it's like on a daily basis for those who haven't, and what it does to your health and self-esteem and expectations.

[EspressoDoubleShot]

@Gilmoregale

I learned a lot about how the other half live when I left my very working class background at 18 for a very green welly university (one of the ones that those who don't get into Oxbridge were very keen on at the time); even for the late 1980s it was a bit behind the times (formal meals once a term, summoning us to dinner with a bell, that kind of thing); I also learned what snotty snobby unhelpful ratbags some posh people can be. It wasn't until I earned a decent income when I worked overseas, amongst people who had grown up in other countries, that my horizons were really widened personally though - although at least I had read widely and had worked in a wide range of organisations with all kinds of people by then. People who have always had money have no clue, at all, about what it's like on a daily basis for those who haven't, and what it does to your health and self-esteem and expectations.

Excellent post Completely agree.

[roseinthedark]

@LepusLepus

As a child in the 60's money was tight but we weren't poor in that we went without anything - though we had to look after what we had, and if we broke something, that was it, we went without it until enough money was saved for a new one.

My mums favourite saying was 'soap and water costs nothing' which of course isn't true. But every night, to prove her point we were scrubbed and inspected to ensure no specks of dirt, imagined or otherwise remained.

At school there was a boy in my class who was - as I now now - undersized and underfed for his age. He always had a runny nose, dirty clothes and he smelled quite strongly.

Whenever we had to line up in two's, no one wanted to hold his hand, sit next to him in class, or invite him to join a game. I was one of the 'no-ones' because to the 6 year old me, he should have got washed every night then he would have had friends.

This boy lived in my street and one day news, awful news swept up the road from the top of the hill where he lived. He had run out into the road and had been hit by one of the very few cars in the street at that time. By the time he arrived at hospital, he was dead.

Suddenly everyone cared. People went to sit in his house to keep his mum company - my mum included. They took food, sent buckets of coal for a fire, had a whip round, and said out loud to everyone within earshot 'what a grand lad he'd been'. These were the same people that had whispered to each other behind their hands and over the garden fences about the state of him, but had never done anything about him, far less allow him into their homes or even give him a jam sandwich. Hypocrites.

He'd been undersized through hunger, unwashed and smelly because his mum was ill, and couldn't work, and his dad couldn't be bothered to work and took what little money that did come into the house for beer..

I remember afterwards looking at his empty chair in class and feeling what I now know to be shame. I was ashamed. I wished I had held his hand, and shared my breaktime biscuit that my mum gave me threepence a week for. I wished I had been his friend.

Derek. His name was Derek and I have thought about him often throughout my life. He taught me never to judge ever again. He taught me to care, always. He taught me a hell of a lesson at 6 years of age.

As an adult I have worked with children in school, many of whom were in his situation and worse. But this time and every time I did something about it, ranging from sorting out a breakfast from the school kitchen for a 7 year old, to, after seeing a mothers boyfriend strike her child, calling the police on him there and then, with his consequent arrest and charge, and giving evidence in court.

What have I learned? Just this - that 'Evil triumphs when good men and women do nothing'.

Thank you for sharing @LepusLepus 🌸🌸 RIP Derek

[ZednotZee]

Income determines where one lives,what one eats, education choices as large income can afford private school and or tutors, or onward uni You really cannot dismiss the impact of income

I think you will find that they are all choices.
Your upbringing, politics, background and social class are larger determinants of those choices than the blunt instrument of income.

[queenmeadhbh]

@ZednotZee you still haven’t explained how you think Northern Ireland has no middle class. Or if you believe it does, what “regional accent” means? Do you think the NI middle class sounds Home Counties?

[robotcollision]

@Gilmoregale

I learned a lot about how the other half live when I left my very working class background at 18 for a very green welly university (one of the ones that those who don't get into Oxbridge were very keen on at the time); even for the late 1980s it was a bit behind the times (formal meals once a term, summoning us to dinner with a bell, that kind of thing); I also learned what snotty snobby unhelpful ratbags some posh people can be. It wasn't until I earned a decent income when I worked overseas, amongst people who had grown up in other countries, that my horizons were really widened personally though - although at least I had read widely and had worked in a wide range of organisations with all kinds of people by then. People who have always had money have no clue, at all, about what it's like on a daily basis for those who haven't, and what it does to your health and self-esteem and expectations.

Very good post.

[DeleteSystem32]

[quote ZednotZee]@Ifitquacks

As far as I am concerned it is fact.

And I wouldn't consider anybody with a regional accent to be MC, however as I explained earlier the MC are much smaller in number than many on MN seem to like to imagine.
They are a distinct minority.

I think its a great example of how class consciousness is alive and well in Britain just reading redtoothbrush's reaction to my strongly held opinions.
Its as if the world will end if I don't, one way or another concede that she is indeed MC...[/quote]
What is a regional accent? Is nobody in Scotlsnd, Wales, NI Middle class unless they have a certain English accent?