My MN name says it all...

[notashamedtobemiddleclass]

...and I am fed up with people saying/inferring that my family are not "normal", "ordinary", "hardworking" people because our household income is more than £50,000.

DC isn't a bad person, out of touch with the "real world" because he went to Eton and came from well-off parents and my hubby and I aren't bad people out of touch with the "real world" because we are so-called middle class! There's more to the "real world" than struggling to make ends meet.

I'm sorry but this sort of attitude is just pathetic and self indulgent. What do you expect? Shall we form a little pity party and bemoan our awful lot, with our nice houses, cars and comfortable lives. there are bigger fish to fry out there in the world. Why don't you take a look around you? people have real problems.

I am 'middle class', by the way.

YAB entirely U.

Actual Middle class != tory.

Hyacinth Bucket, obsession with social status, that awful woman on that B&B program last night , middle class = tory.

The first group have nothing to be ashamed of the second lot are just unpleasant and weird.

Anyway, I thought we were all middle class these days?

Stealth taxes are the little nibbles taken out of your disposable income but without changing the actual rate of income tax. Like increasing the ceiling for paying NI, increases in duty on products, changes to road tax, changes to personal allowances, changes to stamp duty, losing tax relief on things like health insurance, extra charges on council tax.

Some affect everyone, others affect only those on middle-incomes. People on low incomes tend to be cushioned with compensation in other ways e.g. WFTC... people on higher incomes just pay up and suck it up. It's fair, of course, that those with more pay more but the 'nibbles' over the last 13 years have added up to quite a lot. And so when you are not only asked to pay up but excluded from the description 'hard working family' - and then compared with Hyacinth Bucket to boot - it's not surprising people feel annoyed.

I always understood 'hardworking families' to mean any family with working parents, who aren't in the top 10% of earners. I consider myself to be part of a hardworking family, even though I only earn 10k a year. I also consider the senior teachers where I work as hardworking and ordinary, on 38k+.

What I find more annoying is reading some tak like the daily mail telling us that anyone who earns a small salary and who therefore cannot save/get a mortgage/pension must be lazy.

sorry I should have said 'ordinary hardworking families'

soz, I still think a family on 50k+ is not exactly 'ordinary', but they can be hardworking, and more often than not deserve their good fortune. Not because they have worked hard necessarily, but because they have worked cleverly.

'Ordinary Hardworking Families' means YOU. It's a way that politicians can make you think they have YOUR interests at heart, becuse of course, YOU are part of an Ordinary Hardworking Family. Aren't you?

"Ordinary Hardworking Families" always makes me laugh. It's very "blah", isn't it?

But when they say.. 'we are giving all hardworking families this' (whatever 'this' happens to be)... and then you check the small print and find that 'this' doesn't apply to you. Well then you conclude that logically, you are not quite as hard-working as you thought.

But you are not an ordinary family. You earn more than teh majority of people in the country.

You may not be out of touch with the 'real world' but you certainly can't know what it is like to live on teh breadline.

That's it exactly Chil1234!

oh well then, I guess if I'm not ordinary, I'll just have to be extraordinary!!!!

Exactly! No-one is saying that you are not hardworking or normal, but ordinary is like average, and you are not average. It's not a problem apart form politicians who like to generalise as they will generalise the majority.
Not really worth getting worked up about imo.

We are earning more than 50k for the first time ever (still feeling a bit giddy TBH). We are hard-working but don't particularly want to ordinary. And DS#1's teacher informed him that our family is middle-class (so it must be true ). But the most important thing we are is LUCKY! Very very lucky. And people inferring things about is isn't going to bother me at all. Why does it bother you?

Oh and I've been struggling to make ends meet before and IMO there isn't much more 'real life' than that, barring serious illness or death. It saps your energy, your will and your happiness. It impacts on other core areas of your life - it can affect your relationships, mental and physical health.

I can't help feeling that any politican who tells us how to conduct our lives should try it from time to time.

notashametobemiddleclass. Don't give a fig, about what others think. My DH is on £150,000, and I don't work. Couldn't careless what others think, married well...
so what.