class

I dunno about the rest of you but I'm of the class Mammalia, the order Primates, and the family Hominidae, and I have no ambitions either up or down. [%sig%]

I have chips every night?

I have been in many classes my favourite was 3G with Mrs Gregson, she let us draw a lot.

Spag, just goes to show how much I know about Lennon. But it doesn't detract from my point that having money changes your class. I can't remember the guy's name but he lives in Swaffham and has featured in the national press. He was a petty thief and won a few million on the lottery. The money didn't change him (apart from buying a swank house and so on). A year later he was banged up for stealing a car or something and now has to wear a tag. Presumably he could afford to have it custom made. Ely, weren't you a bit young to be on the dole?

Stormy I know the guy you mean, they did a documentary about him. He sent his kids to private school. Can you imagine their shame? He said that he couldn't resist the challengeof stealing the car, even though he could've bought one cash. Reminds me of that trite saying, "you can take the boy out of the street..."

yes, my brother went to school with him but I'm buggered if I can think of his name. It's the cold cure stuff damaging more braincells than the alcohol. :-) I hate it when people do smileys.

:-), :-D You're an old softy at heart :-)

As a rule, I tend to be against things that place people at a ‘higher level’ than others. Grouping people into different sections may only set people apart from others even more. I was involved with some sociology questionnaire thing at school once (as a pupil/student!), and went about the place with a couple of others, asking some teachers to fill in our lovely form. Only one teacher considered himself middle class, whilst the others thought they were working class. That made me think; that particular teacher has a bit of an opinion about himself. Anyway..! Ultimately, I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about class. It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t even warm terribly to the word class. It conjures up images of unhappy, bored faces in schools and an image of someone who once said a Depeche Mode concert I also saw was ‘class’. Not that the person was evil on the eye, I just thought at the time; what a weird description of a rock/pop concert. So, I am of the Allegedly Living Class. Anyone can be in it, as long as they ain’t dead. And a sense of humour wouldn’t go amiss : )

the trouble with defining class is that.... it threatens the identity, because we inhabit the illusory world of the Individual; as Individuals we are embarrassed by our relatives (maybe not constantly, but frequently) class is supposed to be defined by work and status in society so if you are working class you can be proud of being working class and if you are upper class you can be happy to be posh but if you are middle class you have no aspirations and no pride because you are in the middle and being in the middle is somehow pathetic with no class at all....

she was a primary school teacher, and anyway, I'd paid my taxes!

I'm working class in terms of background, outlook, experience. Being the editor of ABCtales I suppose falls slightly outside of Marx' analysis of class. I do see the world in working class terms, but as to what my kids (if and when) will be I'm not sure.

I consider myself working class. Though middle class has been levelled at me. Does it matter, do we need pigeonholes?

i didnt say it mattered, sabelle ... i am just interested how people might define themselves and why ... i wasnt suggesting we all leap into pigeon holes ... it is to do with identity and belonging i think ... i know i feel more comfortable with people when i have things in common with them ... in particular with common ways of thinking ... this means i find commonality with people who have a working class background, education and an interest in words ... i think it accounts for many things and is a complex subject and we could have an interesting discussion about it ...

I think class these days has much less to do with income and wealth (hence nasty terms like nouveau riche) and more to do with culture - the food we eat, the things we do in our spare time, the sports we support, the music we listen to, where and how we were educated etc. There is also a trendiness in wanting to be a class that you're not. I have difficulties "classing" myself (which probably makes me middle class) but I think this comes from not growing up in the UK. Therefore, is class a very British thing or is it just different for different countries? Am not being very articulate but it's an interesting question about kids. What would you like to class your kids as? Something different to what you were growing up or would you like them to know their roots?

How many definitions of class are there and what are they? I just think there are more than three now.

I think a lot of middle class people say they're working class - and would be horrified by genuine working class existence. I think it's somehow perceived as being "authentic" to be working class. This is why you get gobsh.ites like John Lennon saying he's a working class hero. My hero? My a/rse. As far as classes - I saw a great World in Action the year before last that talked about the various divides - starting with upper, and then going through upper middle and middle and lower middle and all of that bull before talking about "the working class" which was - what, low income / middle class sensibilities - something like that - and ending with the underclass, which are those people looking up at the bottom rung. How many underclass people on ABC? Not many I'd expect. How many people would describe themselves as "working class"? Quite a lot. How many wealthy people describe themselves as "middle class"? A whole lot. If you think about class, it's because yr without (I don't mean "without class" I mean "without things"). If you don't think about class, it's because it's never been an issue for you.

Royals Titled Upper Class Upper Middle Class Middle Class Lower Middle Class Upper Working Class (white collar and blue collar) Working class Lower Working Class Unemployed for all of the above Homeless Students That's the English class system currently! Except the one Royal who is a "student" at the moment, that make him the most popular Royal ever!

I used to hold up the working class banner but now I think class categories are too simplistic, especially since you can argue the working class was destroyed by consumerism, Margaret Thatcher, Blair, and, who knows, maybe it fell away so easily because it never existed except in an intellectual, purely theoretical sense. Certainly, you have poor people and rich people. But working class. I dunno. People never remain in neat categories and the stereotype of working class solidarity was something I've never experienced, not growing up in London anyway. The idea strikes me as, if anything, a middle class fantasy. But then if working class doesn't exist, neither does the middle. It collapses like a deck of cards. I suppose it depends on what u mean by class. Unifying state of mind for a sociel tier? Wage structures? Home owners? Drivers of skodas or audis' or owners of bus passes? Eaters of cap'n birdseye fish fingers or Waitrose quail eggs? Givers of Tizer to screaming, sticky faced infants on brown bricked council estates or peach melba smoothies to well behaved darh'lings on Primrose Hill? That's probably killed "the discussion" dead.

Berks, you put students below homeless in your hierarchy. I doubt it!

I was born into a working class background but as soon as my dad became a curate I was regarded in the community and school as middle class. I try just to be myself whatever that is, but working class people sometimes make me feel poncey and middle class people sometimes make me feel common. I used to use it as a vantage point - it was revealing and sometimes disappointing how peoples attitudes would change if I said what my dad did. I suppose if I look down on anyone it's that sort of respectability freak. Aspects of all the classes get on my wick. The stolid and stubborn working class, the smug shelteredness of middle class people and the taking privileges for granted of the upper crust. I think it is an outmoded way of judging people which doesnt work any more and it's best that it should be confusing.

Yeah I am of a class. I think we all are. Most people on this site are middle class, that has nothing to do with backgrounds but more to do with ambition and lifestyle. Its a tricksy one this and one I argue about often. We are still the most class ridden society in the world. Julie Burchill writes weekly about this in The Guardian on Saturday. ralph

My mum states we are Low middle class. My dad came from a working class family. My mum came from a middle class family. So who knows. lol

Class defined by ambition is a weird idea given how a so-called working class profession can pay a damn sight more than a so-called middle class one. Maybe it's about expectations, as opposed to ambitions.

Marc See, thats where the argument really surfaces. A working class profession that pays really well results in the worker having ambitions of middle class trappings. Thus they become middle class by definition. It called laminated floor syndrome! Ralph

Over here we pay lip-service to not having classes but it's a bunch of baloney. While it's true that the "common man" can move up in the world, money still talks (though I'm not sure if the British classes always involve money...or maybe it's money a family previously had, but then lost, but the family would still be in the upper echelons...feel free to enlighten me). What I like exploring is how the whole idea of one's social class often has little to do with classiness. Donald Trump is very, very rich, and yet he still married Ivana. Leona Helmsley's a billionaire and still a foul-mouthed walking mummy dripping in jewels. Even Barbara Bush, Dubbya's misunderstood granny of a mom, is a millionaire and "secretly" known as one of the meanest women in America. We in the States also use the word "classy" in the most ridiculous ways: "That strip joint is real classy." "They gilded their dining room chairs with gold paint and it's SO classy." "I'm just looking for a classy man who will treat me nice but drives a Ferrari." It seems to me, at least, that the term "class" has little to do with taste (and please don't take that as me extolling my own tasteful virtues...I'd like a nice man with a Ferrari, too, though I'd make him trade it in for a more comfortable Honda Accord).

P.S.: I'd like to hear more on that "laminated floor syndrome." That sounds interesting...how did they come up with the term?

I've said it a million times on here, but here we go: I'm from a working class family (dad: joiner, mum: housewife, ex-factory-worker) brought up in a middle-class area (due to my dad being a devoted family man, wanting the "best" for his kids) , I'm now a teacher, educated, so possibly even less working class than the editor of abc tales. If it doesn't matter (as Sab implies), why do people hate saying they come from a middle class background? My best friend is the opposite of me: dad - editor of corporate business magazine (he started out on the Red Star) and mum - embarrassingly liberal psychologist; yet, he grew up in a council house in Camden (his parents owned it, natch) so he insists he's working class. I say, bollocks. Class is to do with the atmosphere, the attitudes you were brought up with. And maybe, what you've done with yourself since. I like to think of myself as (rather than "new money") "new brains".

i like the idea of a unified state of mind, marc ... so maybe that makes it less of a hierarchy and more of a tribal thing ... if you stick people in a list with some at the top and some at the bottom then it really maintains and strengthens the divisions between people ... not sure about ambition and lifestyle ... or wealth either ... one of my cousins is a roofer in essex he is utterly rolling in cash ... he has a plush lifestyle loads of holidays and a big expensive car ... his ambition? i dont know ... but i have another cousin also in essex and she is hoping to move to spain ... her and her fireman hubby have loads of dosh too ... i dont feel like i have anything in common with either of these relatives ... they dont have to worry about what they spend in the co-op ... i think freda defines herself by the way others make her feel which is interesting ... and maybe some tribal ideal wouldnt work as it is human nature to compare yourself to the person next to you and feel better or worse ... what confuses me is that some cultural differences are celebrated by order and others are just sneered about ... maybe yes it is all some middle class construct ... so the middle classes can sneer at pram faces and then feel marvellously virtuous about some sorts of non racist or non sexist type behaviours ... and jab ... laminate flooring syndrome replaces the now outmoded references to sundried tomatoes ...

Oooohhh...that's very good: "new brains." I'm going to steal it if that's okay with you. I know a lot of people who fit that description perfectly...

Ralph: I disagree. Money has f**k all to do with class. If a plasterer earns a £90,000 a year, that doesn't making him W.C. If he starts reading the Guardian, going to wine bars, the theatre, celeb restaurants, waxing intellectual about Camus, then maybe. If his only real pleasures are 9 pints of bitter, The Sun, bad-mouthing "wogs" and "the missus", and egg and chips for tea. he's still working class. Okay, stereotypes, but you get the idea. Money doesnae equal class. Laminate and wood floors are popular amongst all classes now (witness the throngs of shellsuits in IKEA) ; more due to the huge concentration of house makeover shows (run by middle-class designer types) than "aspirations" I reckon.

Be my guest, Jab... I made that up when I was off my head on Saturday. Good innit.

Oh balls, I mean: "That doesn't make him M.C (ie. middle class)." Bah, that screwed up my flow completely.

If an American wins the lottery as I understand he automatically moves into the upper echelons of that society simply by virtue of having lots of money, which is the key driving force of that society. If a Brit wins the lottery he too can buy all the trappings of upper-class lifestyle but he doesn't fool anyone; he's still the class he was previously. The most hilarious and far-fetched example of this in my opinion is Harry Enfield's Waynetta Slob character, a sluttish woman of the lowest class who wins money and buys a gold-plated toilet complete with footman employed to wipe her bum. Even an American should realise that's not "classy"! Class is to do with family background, education, career, outlook, tastes ... it's a bit indefinable, you just recognise it. The person we bought our house from had far more money than us, he was a builder, and he soon moved up into a big house in a very middle-class street but his wife was friendless there, she was only a builder's wife after all! Unlike a Hindu caste, you CAN change class - I reckon I moved from working-class to middle-class when I went to grammar school at 10 and got a reasonable education - but it takes time and you can't short-cut it with money. [%sig%]

We all want laminated floors thus we all aspire to move up in the world. Thacther was the turing point and Blair has just continued the notion. I do strangly come from a family of plasterers in Essex who earn a fortune. They read 'The Sun and 'The Star' go to the ballet and opera too. They go dog racing and one is even a member at Lords Cricket Ground. It's an odd one Theo and totally messed up. Thacther ran a doctrine that we should all enjoy Avocado pears regardless if we actually did. And those who freely admited that they did not were they wading around in the peel. Blimey that was bollocks! Ralph

I refuse to lower myself by joining in this discussion.

I have a theory that class is related to pre-existing formal and informal networks. Someone who is born into a working class background and makes a shed load of money may still not have access to the formal or informal networks that someone born into a middle class or upward background does. I means this on the level of 'who you know' and 'what you know'. You can be penniless, but coming from a middle class or upward family you can have connections which allow you to leverage advantage for yourself in terms of jobs, access to information, access to limited levels of influence etc. The great power that a working class background used to confer was ability to leverage advantage in the local community sphere, the 'we used to see each other alright' notion. This in many places has disappeared. From my own experience, I felt like the things that I thought I might like to do were mightily beyond my reach, because there was no-one in my family or the friends of my family or my own friends who had done similar. This made me unsure and uncertain of myself, my hopes and my abilities. It's not commonplace to say you want to be a writer when no-one anyone you know has ever come into contact with someone who writes. I, to put it simply, did not know that it was possible to get from my world into that world. I suspect if you are born into a background where such things are commonplace, or if not commonplace possible, you don't start out with that self doubt and you don't start from scratch. This I suppose links class to social status, which could be viewed as proximity to decision making, rather than income. I suppose money can buy you out of having decision made about you, but it doesn't necessarily buy you in to a position where you can influence decisions made about you. Phew. Chew that bugger over. [%sig%]

Middle class is buying alcohol (preferably wine,) and having it in the house when you don't intend to drink the same night.

I think I was a bit abrupt, Fish. Sorry, was having a bad day at work. Yes it is an interesting subject, especially with lottery winners, football players & the like. Money doesn't always have a bearing on what class you are. I was reading an interview with a footballer called Julian Dicks, who is very much working class. His children went to a private school and enjoyed an upper middle class life. They had very expensive holidays, lived in a large house. Their school friends still saw them as working class because of their parents. Probably after they have finished their education with degrees and a professional career, they will be seen as middle class. Some people who I went to school with see anyone who doesn't live on a council estate as middle class. My children are probably seen as middle class at school because I have my own home & live just inside London and they're top streamed at school and expected to go to university. I don't know where I fit in, having a "career" in the public sector

Mmmm well as a student I'm not technically any class and as a mature student I can't even take my parent's classes as a guide (though they were both middle class, risen from working through their professions) But unless i bum around after i qualify i guess i'll be middle class too.. more's the pity always wanted to be upperclass....even royal;) It's hard to tell a lot of the time though isn't it? I mean a lot of people swap and change throughought their lives and people are often born into one class and maintain that perspective while professionally they've moved to a seperate class. My dad for instance, started out life a Yorkshire coal miner, after leaving school at 13, then he joined the marines. After a lifetime with the armed forces and the training they provide, plus woking his way through the ranks and becomming an officer, he became middle class and now hobnobbes with the uppers etc. But he's still got a lot of the working class predjudices and mentality and never feels completely comfortable, tho he's the first to admid he likes the money!

If class is defined by money then Beckham and Posh (hah!) are the new upper class. John Lennon according to Pete is not working class. Well, he started out working class and happened to make it. So what? He would be more condemned if he had turned round when he was rich and renounced the working classes and declared himself upper class wouldn't he? The class system is so outdated I can't believe people still get so het up about it. The system largely broke down after WWII and the boundaries have become more and more blurred until, over the last twenty years I reckon, it doesn't matter what background you have anymore. You will not be held back in this country anymore due to your class. You will, however, still be held back if your skin colour is a bit offish or if you are a woman, although these are improving (allegedly) Colin Tuff: Grandfather a painter (one of the emulsionists), Grandmother a doorstep polisher, both died penniless but I stil remember that great day my Nan hauled herself into her zimmerframe, took eight tiny steps across the lounge and gobbed on the TV whilst Harold Wilson was puffing his middle class pipe and telling poor people he was on their side Father, left school at 13, joined post office, worked all his life for them, went on strike (reluctantly) once, moonlighted as gardener for posh people and had an allotment. Mother, secretary in London until Me, gave up work until I was old enough to look after younger sibling then took temp jobs to pay for odd luxury items such as a new school shirt for me. Divorced Father when I was 14. I was pretty pissed off at the time considering we had finally got a colour TV and a car. So, by all definitions I have working class credentials yet I do not consider myself to be wc. I'm certainly not uc nor mc. In fact I've not thought of it much. Once again, I don't belong. It's all bollox anyway nowadays. It is who you are and not what you think you are or what your background is surely?

Nice one.

I think various backgrounds alter and limit expectations of what you can do and that remains a problem because it is related to money - i.e. kinds of opportunity and privilege. However, old beardy Marx and Engels could never have imagined social tiers as fluid and interchangeable and ironic as they are today - in the UK anyway, which does make the concept of "working class" obsolete, if not outright tacky.

In my bumble opinion there are only two classes - the working classes and the ruling class. Nothing lies in the middle except delusion. Durruti said: 'We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a time. For you must not forget, we can also build. It is we who built those palaces and citites here in Spain and America and everywhere. We, the workers, can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. There is not the slightest doubt of that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.'

John Lennon was born to a mother who was middle class and a working class father who both deserted him one way or another. John then went to live with his Aunt Mimi who was very middle class. Lennon, himself, acknowleged he was middle class and always had been and working class hero was written about the working classes actually working for something. So no John Lennon wasnt born working class and didnt become middle class later on Stormy. I am of no class and have no class :)