or maybe

Class Fool

Thx, I am glad that we agree about, why put yourself in a box? There seems to be an obsession about it (especially here). On a forum yesterday, one bloke was asking another (several times) to identify which professional, background, inside trouser leg box he was in!!! Strange, isn’t it?

What I found puzzling about this particular ‘test’, was that at the end it told me that the ‘elite’ classes mix with all sorts of people from different backgrounds and professions. Where in reality, the economic elite simply don’t. Yet somehow feel qualified to comment on others. There’s a diffrence between thinking you know about stuff, and actually knowing about it.

Some folk base all of their ideas of society from figures and statistics. Strange, isn’t it? 😉

I don’t think this fits me at all.

Tehnical Middle Class like many on here but that seems to be mostly as I don’t know a wide range of people – mostly professionals. Otherwise I pretty much match the Elite graph.

Maybe it considers me a failure 🙂 in previous generations my family were upper class and I went to public school.

It’s just a bit of fun on the BBC website, rather than some definitive work…..

I like to think of myself, as Elite, sub class ‘Dangerous’

I’m going with my Grandpa’s classification:

“If you work with your hands in clothing made for the job – you’re working class. If you sit on your arse most of the day and go home as clean as you started, you’re middle class. If you tell people sitting on their arse, to tell people working with their hands what to do, you’re posh.”

Charles E Torr.

It’s a ‘bit of fun’ that helps reinforce social boundaries though, in a time when society is becoming increasingly fractured and divided.

I have neighbours who look down on other neighbours, because although they may be in a similar income/wealth bracket, the first group do not accept the second as ‘true’ middle class. They feel threatened by the johnny-come-lately interlopers, who they believe will devalue their own status. Snobbishness is rampant amongst the insecure.

Snobbishness is rampant amongst the insecure British.

FIFY

Traditional class identification is often easiest using language as a test – do you say loo or toilet? Sitting room or lounge? Pudding or Dessert?

Technical Middle.

Quelle surprise.

Refuses to take the test.

Traditional Working.

Which is hilarious for those that actually know me…

Traditional class identification is often easiest using language as a test – do you say loo or toilet?

One would never use such vulgar terms. Perhaps, ‘water closet’, if one really must refer to that particular convenience (such as when needing to instruct persons employed to service said facility, but seldom on any other occasion, and certainly never in front of a lady).

Of course we probably wouldn’t all still be so obsessed with class in this country if we weren’t still operating under the feudal system.

One would never use such vulgar terms. Perhaps, ‘water closet’…

Oh Wikipedia have more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English

Mmn. It does look a bit arbitrary. I had miss read the bit about savings, added my pension and suddenly I’m Elite. Bollocks.

‘established middle class’ – yay! I think this officially makes me the King of Crumpsall! I’m off out to claim my lands 😀

I had miss read the bit about savings, added my pension and suddenly I’m Elite. Bollocks.

You have a pension. QED 😉

I don’t see how I can be Service Class when I’m self-employed and can tell you lot to **** off any time I like…

It’s seems to be primarily based on Wealth/income and home ownership. I decided to re-run it with lower income and both renting or claiming to own a sub 125K home, but kept all the other entrys identical and it labeled me “Traditional Working Class” pop in my actual financial circumstances and I’m suddenly “Established middle class”… the truth is I’d have probably labeled myself as “Technical Middle class” without reading the definitions but apparently my house is too cheap or something…

The other thing I noticed is that they’ve applied an average age against each group (I’m almost a Decade ahead of myself apparently) suggesting that far from being ‘Just’ social groupings there are more life stages and that you can chart a sort of social/Ecconomic/cultural trajectory for people, seems a bit more like what marketeers like to do, subdividing the population by class, income, cultural interests and age to help them target better…

TBH as a society we are probably are well past the old sociological definitions now, but I think that online class tester is a shade clunky, I’m sure the full survey and work on interpretation they did was a bit more in depth… Right?

I do love it when clearly Middle class people deny their middle class-ness and Start up with the “I’m Working class” nonsense… You work in IT, Drive an Audi, live in a £300K house and ponce about listening to Puccini, A Miner you ain’t. Accept it and and move on.

I’m a right old pain the (cl)ass.

The Swedish Chef – Member
Elite……
Must have been the jizz.

Yeah, they do say for the Upper Classes it’s all in the breeding… 😀

Amazed to find out I am in the elite 😯 . The classification seems a bit weird tbh, just because I know a CEO, few professionals and own my house I am magically elevated from scumbag to prospective tory parlimentary candidate.

Wahay first time Established Middle Class, then all I changed was people I socialise with to just a Scientist [Toxicsoxs you know what you are]

And suddenly I’m downgraded, thats last time I’m riding with him 😉

Coming from a very definite middle class back ground – from which I distance myself considerably im amused to see I come out as an emergent service worker

It makes me feel like I have really managed to escape my roots

But aside from that the test is rubbish as it doesnt acvount for single peoples incomes just taking a household – does that mean I will go up a class if I decide to settle down?

I prefer to think of myself in a class of my own – its not a brilliant one but its all mine 🙂

But aside from that the test is rubbish

It worries me that you thought a 5 question survey on the BBC website would be anything else…

seems a load of tosh to me– precariat according to their parameters…

Elite, but I don’t fit in.

Dont worry footflaps my intelligence does go further than that – it was a source of amusement for me just as for everyone else 😀

But quite a bit of effort seems to have gone into this:

BBC Lab UK’s Great British Class Survey was launched in January 2011. More than 161,000 people took part, making this the largest ever study of class in the UK

The Great British Class Survey was designed and the data analysed by Professors Mike Savage and Fiona Devine and their teams at the London School of Economics and the Universities of York and Manchester

What a bizarre questionnaire!

I’m “Elite”, apparently.

-by virtue of knowing all kinds of people and visiting museums, according to the results. Privately educated too, apparently, although I was under the impression that the comprehensive I went to was state-funded.

Who came up with this? A school pupil on work-experience?

I’m educated, inquisitive, have a technical bent and would regard myself as able to mix with most people, although I’m not sure that makes me anything other than “a person”.

Nonsense.

New Affluent Class. Strange as my leftover income at the end of the month does not seem to match the word affluent.

‘Some of my best friends are black’ though so that’s good.

But quite a bit of effort seems to have gone into this:

If so, it just shows how low the quality of BBC Researchers is.

The wealth questions just test for age (older people have more wealth) and when you bought a house eg anyone pre Thatcher could easily be sat on £500k or more for what was a £10k house back in the 70s.

Established middle class.

The labels are bollocks though; class as it used to be is becoming less and less distinctly broad and more granular. I just see myself as someone that works, but doesn’t own enough land to farm.

emergent service class here… wonder if that’ll change when I move into my bought property…

+1

Emergent service worker going on New affluent worker if I were to believe it.

I have absolutely no doubt in mind that this test/survey is completely out of tune with what’s really going on, tosh.

I’m warrior class,
I’m in a constant battle with the government, poor manners and other road users.

For instance, today I’m fighting the battle of paying Nottingham city council £10 to replace my wheelie bin which was stolen by a road user.

If I answer it as though I am part of a couple with someone in the same financial situation as me I then become elite – and apparently am likely to have been to uni

Why not just have the questions – are you single and have you been to uni?

It would give a more reliable result and a better reflection of the population

“I know my place”

Two things I noticed from this survey:

The UK now has people in two new classes of society below working class. Progress?

Education isn’t surveyed, but your social circle is key.
As ever, it’s not what yo know but who you know.

Education isn’t surveyed

No longer a differentiator.

When my parents went to University less than 5% of the population went. When I went, only 10% did, now it’s just about 50%.

Why? Because of the perceived ‘glamour’ associated with that notion, brought about through various mythical constructs created by those with a vested interest in categorising people within a society? Why allow yourself to be put in a box?

You’re looking at it from the wrong angle. It’s not that people, including myself, want to be associated with working class particularly (although the percieved ideals are another matter), it’s that we don’t want to be associated with the middle class.

Mainly because they appear to be a bunch judgemental, arrogant **** who think they own the place. I don’t want to be associated with a group of fairly useless middle managers with BMW’s and AUDI’s and 50 inch TV’s, who have kids named Tarquin and Flossy, wear red trousers and buy authentic hand made furniture from ‘farm sales’. I’m not like that so I resent the ‘box’ middle class.

I’m fine with working class because the ideals I would associate with working class (hard working, not afraid to get my hands dirty, support the masses etc) are ones that reflect my perception of myself.

How true any of the points are above is irrelevant. It’s why I don’t like the middle class box and I suspect I’m not the only one.

It’s all a bit of a laugh though, I admitted I’m middle class and I’ll just carry on operating as I am. Only the people are the far ends of the spectrum will take any class structure seriously.

Emergent service worker and over 40

Not good