How middle class are you?

Raised by working class parents - factory worker & school librarian.

Given a private school education through the assisted places scheme & then University.

Now Airline pilot married to a lawyer.

My kitchen has 2 dishwashers. Hobbies cycling cricket and sailing.

Also reminds me our previous neighbours he was middle management she played the piano. He was having none of it when I told him by definition he had to get up and go to work every day therefore he was working class 😁😁😁

All this reminds me of those immortal words in the song " You like to think your shit don't stink " 😁😁😁😁

I’m conflicted. Or just confused.

I still buy an actual print copy of the Guardian every Saturday morning but when I open the food supplement and read the latest Ottilengi recipe, I have absolutely no idea what half the ingredients are

So northern working-class monkey with the odd middle class affectation

I do own a 20 year old estate car, but it isn’t a Volvo and I don’t have a Labrador to go in the back of it

Well put it this way, I wasn't allowed to watch Grange Hill or Tiswas as a child as they were 'too common'.

I’m always amazed how a few of my colleagues earning circa £70k (up north) claim to be working class

All depends on whether you can change class or are always the class you are born into? I was working class (dad lorry driver, mum part time dinner lady), lived in roughish area and went to crap schools

Have done the BBC 'assessment' in the link and I am Elite (This is the wealthiest and most privileged group in the UK). While I am relatively wealthy I do not see myself as the most privileged group based on my upbringing.
Yes I am privileged being white male/stable parents/genetically intelligent but when I went to a Grammar school to do A levels I felt not privileged at all so all relative.

According to that BBC link

Result: the class group you most closely match is:
New affluent workers
This class group is sociable, has lots of cultural interests and is in the middle of all the class groups in terms of wealth. According to the Great British Class Survey results, lots of people in this group:

Are young
Come from a working class background
Own their own home

Which is balderdash.  MY parents were firmly middle class.  I'm 62 3/4

lol i made Elite... although i didn't do any of the activites apart from 1, i also only knew 1 type of the people socially.

Did the BBC survey. I'm "Technical Middle Class" apparently. Must be something to do with my National Trust membership and not playing computer games.

Before, but verrrry slowly…my wife’s family tradition was tearing into the pile like a pack of hyenas fighting over a carcass, so we had to work out a compromise.

Yes that's my family and my children. Definitely not the OHs family....

Same with the barbeque 🤯😱 😂

According to that BBC thing, technical middle class.

Never thought about it much but I’d go for working class. Hit quite a few stereotype bingo cards. Father was a labourer on building sites. Liked a drink and to terrorise his family. Step father was a miner and again not a top notch parent. Grew up on council estates and to this day I occasionally stand in front of the fridge eating things directly out of the packets!

I have a sort of proper job after years of doing all kinds of work. Think that any day now I’ll be discovered as a big fake and sacked! My kids have it better than me so they’re probably lower middle class if that is even a thing.

Despite not watching TV and admitting to listening to hip/hop&rap, that BBC thing thinks I am Elite (whatever that means). It might be because my social circle is very varied though; I ticked every box on that list. I don't feel Elite. I barely feel middle class, but the test cannot lie about these things. IT probably uses AI or something

Blimey, Countzero just wrote my early years, and I had a brummy accent as a handicap too. The secondary mod was a bit rough but gave me a ticket to university on a full grant and somewhere along the way I aquired all the middle class trimmings - but not the attitude, I still detest the Tories and posh accents make me itch.

I used to love breathing on the window glass to clear a patch to look out and see if it had snowed because if it had it wa sledging up the Lickeys and building an igloo.

Poopascoops test must be faulty, I came out as Elite, whereas in reality it’s Alan Partridge with second home in a sunny country aspirations*

*we wouldn’t mix with the Benidorm bacon and eggs expats, maybe that swayed the result…

That BBC thing is about 12 years old. Doesn't mean it wasn't a load of rubbish at the time (I remember doing it when it first came out) but also the questions like value of property and savings are a little out of date now.

I’m always amazed how a few of my colleagues earning circa £70k (up north) claim to be working class, maybe they grew up working class, but educated to degree level and in white collar t-shirts and jeans

I know a university professor in a science subject who’s father was a biochemist who used to claim that he was working class. 🤣

I’m aware that the statement above also makes me extremely middle class.

I’ve never understood why some people seem to be ashamed of their backgrounds, whether privileged or not.

There’s an actual test for your class. Not there are 7 classes. The results are binding of course so you’ll have to change your address, career and family if you’ve been living a lie. No pressure.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/2013/newsspec_5093/index.stm

Doff your caps, peasants!

I suspect it’s because the survey is from 2013 and using current property and savings values is skewing the result. I’m about as middle class as they come really, although for as long as I need to work for a living, I maintain I’m working class.

I've never really got/understood the class thing and how it seems to define people and their interactions with others.

My upbringing was "unconventional" * and its resulted in both my brother and I, very much doing our own thing and not really giving a flying monkeys about societal constructions like class, and clubs and doffing your cap to the higher ups etc...

* mums side of the family was very posh and she caused mayhem by becomming a nurse, dad was abandoned to an orphange where horrific things happened due to the lovely christian people running it and had to make a start of it, as very dmamaged person with no understanding of how humans really worked, but a bloody brilliant drive for learning.

He ended up as a mad research scientist, travelling the world and folks from nasa dropping in to see his stuff. It also meant i'd come home from school to share dinner with some total geniuses who were  bonkers, from all over the world.

Having a crazy japanese chap explain polymer chemistry and the new catalyst reactions they were working on, over a fishfinger butty was an eye opener at 10 years old.

I guess it explains why ive always been an  oddbodd

So what defines class? Your parents upringing, the house you lived in, the school you went to, the job you do, if like football or rugby?

All of these things are ephemeral and it seems so silly to live your life with a bias on this basis

I’ve never really got/understood the class thing and how it seems to define people and their interactions with others.

You don't understand it because it doesn't exist anymore. It's a myth. We live in a society where backgrounds are so diverse that trying to pigeon hole people into classes is futile and just leads to silly generalisations.

The BBC thing says I'm Elite but I think I'd claim established middle class. Parents met at Cambridge, we didn't watch ITV, I survived a minor public school, career in IT. Rugby not football. Stockings were from Santa and could be opened in bed as soon as they were discovered. Other presents were opened later, one person at a time, and the gifts were recorded in a book for reference when writing thank you letters.

just to annoy tj, elite working class...

According to the BBC quiz, Established middle class

I would disagree though

You don’t understand it because it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a myth. We live in a society where backgrounds are so diverse that trying to pigeon hole people into classes is futile and just leads to silly generalisations.

Exception being upper class which you can never change to and never change from.

You don’t understand it because it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s a myth. We live in a society where backgrounds are so diverse that trying to pigeon hole people into classes is futile and just leads to silly generalisations.

Maybe 'class' as a thing doesn't exist anymore, but there are definitely 'societal groups' that you can probably broadly define by things like income, job type, hobbies, pastimes, cultural activities etc. But, obviously, it could only ever be a broad definition and it would be easy to find exceptions in every case

Quite, apparently.

We have a Qashqai just to cart the dog around in so the other car doesn't get clarty.

Definitively middle class, my dad was a dentist, my mum was a social worker. I went to grammar school and then university and ended up doing computer stuff for banks. My parents used to have dinner parties, a favourite starter was avocadoes which you could only buy from Marks and Spencers at the time.

We did have ice on the insides of the windows and had to pour kettles out of the window to defrost the sink pipes - the joys of a 1930s house that still had the original coal boiler and silk and rubber wiring in the 1970s.

There was a very strong ethos of service at my school. Lots of us ended up in the forces or police. At the time the majority of officers were still from public schools and very much looked down on anyone who wasn't. Might have changed by now, it was worse in my dad's time. When he was doing national service as a dentist his last posting was to a Guards regiment. He was quietly taken to one side and told that they understood he wouldn't be able to fully participate in mess life as he didn't have the background and wouldn't be able to afford the mess fees. They had a special scheme for doctors, dentists, engineers etc - not proper guards officers - where they'd top up the fees as long as you didn't try to pretend you were meant to be there.

I wonder if Crocs vs Birkenstocks is another indicator?

I have both. Crocs for feeding the rabbits outside, Birkenstock slippers!

 few of my colleagues earning circa £70k

Earning a train driver salary doesn't make you middle class.

I make pasta with a hand pasta machine and know Tuscany a bit too well.

a favourite starter was avocadoes

All that fancy education gone to waste...

We weren’t allowed to watch Grange Hill or EastEnders.

90-120 mins prep.  Television access strictly limited in a boarding school.  I wonder how they are handling 'phones?

Tazzy - I have seen your pictures.  You are as middle class as they come 🙂

Status Anxiety (the book) was written by Alain de Botton – now he’s middle class!

If you were really middle class you'd have read the original "The Status Seekers" by Vance Packard....

Maybe ‘class’ as a thing doesn’t exist anymore, but there are definitely ‘societal groups’ that you can probably broadly define by things like income, job type, hobbies, pastimes, cultural activities etc. But, obviously, it could only ever be a broad definition and it would be easy to find exceptions in every case

I'd say it was more beliefs (non religious) / attitudes than job / hobbies etc and then education level plays a big part.

add another question to that BBC survey more relevant to this forum,

anyone with N+1 purchased bikes is not working class ;0)

The English class system is crippling. Either sucking up or looking down.

Dad ran a car factory (so two cars), Mum was a Tax Inspector, watched the BBC and we had a dishwasher by 1970.  We'd a cleaner too.

Set me up for the 'middle-class' lifestyle (according to the 'media') which I've lived all my life.

But does all that education really pay off ? I was walking home yesterday the traffic lights on a busy crossroads were out of action. A small group from the nearby private schools one of the top in the country were pressing the pedestrian crossing button wondering why nothing was happening 🙄

Ironic really as when they are working normally hardly any of them bother to use them . I think they think their lofty status means they are immune to car / person exchanges 😁

@TJ woohooo i'm socially acceptable- really must try harder not to be.

The English class system is crippling. Either sucking up or looking down.

My family background is a good metaphor for modern Britain I think.  Grandfather travelled down from the north east to the sarf for work in the 1930s.  Never owned a home.  Father graduated from engineering machine shop to lower ranks of management and was first in the family to buy a home, but never had much more than that - never a new car, all holidays in the UK due to cost. etc.  I went to comprehensive school and was talked into doing a polytechnic degree, and got two.  Career in finance followed and that BBC thingy says I am "elite".  That whole story is one of self-help and aspiration and a degree of social mobility, but one which looking at the history of my various nieces and nephews and offspring of friends i fear can't be repeated to the same extent; improving the hand you are dealt at birth looks more and more difficult.

According to the BBC quiz, Established middle class

I would disagree though

A classic trait of the established middle class.

Me… well I’m proper ****ing John Cleese according to the survey.

I was walking home yesterday the traffic lights on a busy crossroads were out of action. A small group from the nearby private schools one of the top in the country were pressing the pedestrian crossing button wondering why nothing was happening

Teenagers acting like morons, especially when in groups, is entirely class-agnostic

That quiz is a laugh, the only things on the activities list I could find were excercise and socialising at home but I still made elite. Opera? **** that! However my social life revolves around horses, skiing, MTBing with all the right sort of mates according to the quiz, they all sound normal though, the things that limit social mobility are more subtle in these parts; loads of people ski but not many ski in Courchevel. It's still jobs for the boys, networking, contacts, right university ( edit: scrub that one if you end up at the fac', a basic university, you weren't bright enough to go somewhere better or skilled enough to have a trade)... even after a revolution.

I view the whole class thing as unhealthy and it's one of the things that British society does better (worse) than any other I've lived in. The number of classes the quiz uses speaks volumes. Low social mobility (shared with many other countries unfortunately) combined with easily recognisable class codes in terms of accent and behaviour make Britain a very divided place.

Happily we can't hear each other on this forum, if we could it would make it even more conflictual than it already is. I'm sure that if I heard one member I'd tell them to **** off, and if they didn't leave the forum. That's how it works in real life. People moan about not seeing people's facial reactions and body language, or hearing the intonation in posts, I think it's a godsend.

I listen to r4 Today whilst hand grinding my specialty coffee in the morning.

But pour gravy on my chippy chips!

I need to work, so I'd say working class!

But pour gravy on my chippy chips!

I'd say that's a geographical marker rather than a class one.

But does all that education really pay off ? 

yeah, but its the connections not the content thats the trick