Societal constructs

[paddy555]

My OH won't come in either. I love it in there. We go to Lidl and buy what we can there and then to Waitrose (simply as it's the closest) to get what we couldn't in Lidl. I won't shop in our local Morrisons or Asda though, they are really rough. God knows what that says about me!

it says you are partly middle class in Waitrose and clearly working class in Lidl. I wouldn't be so rude to comment on your Asda and Morrison remark although I suppose "snob" could come to mind.

I shop with Asda simply because it is the only on line supermarket I could get a weekly recurring delivery slot when covid started. Very occasionally Asda fail to turn up so I am left to use click and collect and I am totally embarrassed to say this is at Morrisons. I chose Morrisons because I could avoid the most people in lockdown.

I am looking for a stone to crawl under based on your final line. I must be the lowest of lows of working class by my supermarket choices. So so ashamed, not sure I should even be amongst the working class on here.

 

[flying_high]

it says you are partly middle class in Waitrose and clearly working class in Lidl. I wouldn't be so rude to comment on your Asda and Morrison remark although I suppose "snob" could come to mind.

I shop with Asda simply because it is the only on line supermarket I could get a weekly recurring delivery slot when covid started. Very occasionally Asda fail to turn up so I am left to use click and collect and I am totally embarrassed to say this is at Morrisons. I chose Morrisons because I could avoid the most people in lockdown.

I am looking for a stone to crawl under based on your final line. I must be the lowest of lows of working class by my supermarket choices. So so ashamed, not sure I should even be amongst the working class on here.

I am wondering if the supermarkets in suburban Surrey are different? Or maybe I am just completely oblivious.

There really isnt much difference between the shopping experience in the large Morrisons in Reigate, the large Asda in Tadworth, the large Tesco near Gatwick or the large Sainsbury's near Redhill.

 

[Cortez]

I am wondering if the supermarkets in suburban Surrey are different? Or maybe I am just completely oblivious.

There really isnt much difference between the shopping experience in the large Morrisons in Reigate, the large Asda in Tadworth, the large Tesco near Gatwick or the large Sainsbury's near Redhill.

Gosh, it's soooo complicated isn't it?

 

[Pearlsacarolsinger]

The OECD needs a definition based purely on income, to be able to compare populations between countries.

But I'm sure that the term "middle class" as it is used in the UK is not as linked to wealth or income.

We talked a lot about class in the "design for living" course in comprehensive school, and I remember that one of the markers for being middle class was having a current account and cheque book or having access to credit.

Then there is how the Two Ronnies saw the question.

In those days, only people with a decent amount of money had a current account and a cheque book. theywere most likely to be paid monthly. So it was linked to income and wealth.

 

[flying_high]

Gosh, it's soooo complicated isn't it?

Gosh, it's soooo complicated isn't it?

Yes see supermarket, that I am driving near by on the way to or from somewhere else, park go into supermarket.

 

[paddy555]

what I love most about class is to see how it rises and falls over the generations in a relatively short period of time.

In 1815 on OH's side 2 village basically agric. lower class married in a tiny Dartmoor village. By the age of 90 he ended up so poor he died in the workhouse.
They had several children. One daughter moved 30 miles south presumably to work as a servant. She was illiterate and I guess had had very little education if any as the daughter of 2 such poor parents. All very lower working class by that stage

She married what I guess was her employer. He was part of a large, certainly middle class family. Of their several children one went on to become a millionaire many times over, owned and built considerable property and hotels.

That woman, Susan, had a father who died in the workhouse and a son who died a multi millionaire. What a strange contrast.
She was illiterate and her grandchildren were all educated at private schools as befitted their status as an upper class property owning family..

 

[FestiveG]

There is a local saying, clogs to clogs in three generations. One person makes a lot of money, their offspring take over and by the time it comes to the grandchildren, they are back down to counting the pennies, having frittered the lot away

 

[ArklePig]

I have no contributions to make to discourse on the British class system, I just can't believe the amount of people who do their own shopping. I've had a weekly delivery since I moved to Belfast in 2016. Life is too short.

 

[Cortez]

I have no contributions to make to discourse on the British class system, I just can't believe the amount of people who do their own shopping. I've had a weekly delivery since I moved to Belfast in 2016. Life is too short.

Some of us live in the country....

 

[ArklePig]

That's fair Cortez, I was thinking of my parents who live in the middle of nowhere in rural Ireland and get a delivery too but I appreciate that's not possible everywhere! I have a serious aversion to supermarkets, don't think it says anything about my class just my tolerance levels.

 

[Keith_Beef]

In those days, only people with a decent amount of money had a current account and a cheque book. theywere most likely to be paid monthly. So it was linked to income and wealth.

Yes, that was another big marker of class when I was growing up.

Anybody paid weekly with cash in a pay packet (totally legal, the pay packet was typed, stated the worker's NI number and deductions) was almost certainly working class.

Anybody paid monthly by transfer into a back account could be either working class or possibly middle class.

I'm beginning to think that credit is like corpulence. Being fat (or at least, well-nourished) used to be a sign of wealth.

 

[Hepsibah]

I was very much from a working class family, my father was a coal miner. The idea of a pony for me as a child was completely mad as far as they were concerned. I might as well have been asking for a giraffe.
My family think I'm a bit of a social climber as I now own my home, two cars and a couple of ponies and live in sin with a lady with an RP accent.
Working class used to be the lower class. These days there's a whole new class of people who actively don't earn a living at all and appear to be shaking money out of their ears.

 

[Deltofe2493]

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

My sister showed me this

 

[lynz88]

They all thought that at work about me being 'snobby and upper class' when some young member of staff asked me about horse hunting and of course it got round to everyone that i was searching for a horse to buy and they all thought I was dripping in gold.

I managed to explain that everything is done on a shoe string and when I said that paying £115 every five weeks for a set of shoes and £500 to have your horse put to sleep they realised just how expensive it was! I said I'd had to raid my savings that I'd more or less managed to remain intact since 1998 and had been gifted some off Mum and they realised I wasn't 'a secret boss' or anything else!

I think they have a different idea of horse ownership now.

Ha ha ha! When I get the comment about how rich I must be to have a horse, I always say "no....you've got it wrong. I would be rich if I didn't have said horse!" That said, about a month ago, my boss and I did a cross analysis of costs - dog vs horse. He has to pay for doggy daycare and let's put it this way - it ended with him saying he wished he bought a family horse instead ???

 

[silv]

So.. I showed a colleague a pic of me & my horse at a show recently, and he automatically said ‘how very middle class’

I wouldn’t say I am.. I work 2 jobs to be able to afford the bloody thing lol but people do associate horses with wealth. In effect it is a ‘middle class’ hobby because of the expense.

I mean as long as you’re happy and healthy who gives a toss but was food for thought nonetheless and want to get other peoples opinions??

What a rude reply, I didn't know it was a crime to be middle class either.
Plenty middle class folks work their ar$$s off to be be able to buy nice things and be able to enjoy their hobbies. Sounds like a very disgruntled, ignorant person.

 

[Rumtytum]

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

My sister showed me this

Did it and allegedly I’m ‘technical middle class’ which is a bit of a misnomer as me and technology are ??

 

[lynz88]

OMG reading the supermarket comments....so funny!! When I lost my job just over 2 years ago and took me 5 months to find something else, I stumbled upon Lidl and couldn't believe how much I could actually save. I also wasn't aware of yellow stickers despite being here for 8 years at that point and began buying anything YS. I no longer need to worry about money in the same sense but I still stick to buying YS and shopping at Lidl (actually I prefer Aldi) and then picking up anything else wherever I can find it - Sains, Tesco, Morrisons....I don't really care. The funny thing is I've seen some VERY well dressed people in both Lidl and Aldi driving VERY nice cars so it can't be that much if a dump to shop!! (my theory is: why should I pay £2 for something when I can get the EXACT same thing for 50%+ less??)

 

[ElleSkywalkingintheair]

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

My sister showed me this

I got Elite in that survey and while I am most certainly firmly middle class (dispite a non affluent up bringing, I did attend private school and have a pony, that I paid everything for and looked after completely alone from age 15) I don't think am particularly Elite ?

 

[Keith_Beef]

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

My sister showed me this

Very amusing.

When I was checking the boxes for theatre, opera, listening to jazz and classical music, socialising with nurses, teachers, CEOs, and all that, I thought "here we go... I'll be put down as a middle-class, yoghurt weaving Grauniad reader".

 

[DabDab]

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

My sister showed me this

I'm apparently "established middle class" - probably fair.

One of my grandmothers was a terrible reverse snob. She was unimpressed that my mother even married someone who had gone to Oxford uni for example. And that is despite the fact that she herself was achingly middle class. She was brought up in a nice Quaker family with professional parents, and despite being born in 1923 had managed to qualify and spend a 40-year long career as a physiotherapist. No idea why she was quite such an anti-snob but people come in all shades of perculiar don't they.

 

[Keith_Beef]

people come in all shades of perculiar don't they.

Or as we say (or used to say) in Yorkshire "there's naught so queer as folk".

 

[lynz88]

Omg this link is really funny. Apparently I am an established middle class...! (God forbid music be a deciding factor on your class ??)

 

[minesadouble]

I'm apparently established middle class too.
I was always led to believe that the working classes and upper classes have so much more in common than the middle classes do with either other category and I definitely think there's some truth in that!

When I think middle class I think 'new age lefty' which I most certainly am not!

 

[blitznbobs]

And to take that one step further, a female acquaintance asked where I shopped and on hearing Waitrose near Reading (the closest supermarket to me) she curled her supercilious nostrils and replied that she only ever used Waitrose at Wallingford as it had a better class of clientele ?

Where as the true upper class shop where the f**k they like, and couldn’t give a tinker’s cuss about what they look like (as evidenced by prince charles’ amazing coat of many patches. )

Ps (when tinkers cuss what do they say?)

 

[blitznbobs]

The supermarket thing is interesting and when you look at the stats not what you might think. Higher income people tend to be more price focused and more likely to show off their bottle of wine bought in aldi that ‘tastes just like Petrus’ where as lower income families are more likely to stick to ‘heinz’ or warburtons rather than shop brands as it would be ‘embarrassing’ to buy value baked beans’. My opinion is people who only shop in waitrose have been sucked in to a big con … the chickens come out of the same farms as the aldi ones, the ham sometimes literally has the same sticker on the back as the morrisons one … but all at double the price.

 

[Keith_Beef]

Whenever I go back to Sheffield, I'm struck by one of the very strong markers of class: accent.

When I was growing up in a very working-class population there was a definite accent and vocabulary.

Everybody was diglossic, by which I mean able to converse in standard English with teachers in school or with managers at work.

When I was back in Sheffield, perhaps three years ago, I accompanied my mum when she took my late brother's children to school one morning and none of the children in the yard spoke in the local way; all spoke a kind of vague South Eastern English, not quite what used to be called RP or BBC English, but very close to it.

I noticed the same with a few people I got to know when studying in Newcastle... People who had been born there and lived their whole lives there but did not speak like Geordies.

 

[LadyGascoyne]

The supermarket thing is definitely not based on sociological classifications but I think a lot of people use them as shorthand for working / middle class! In reality, I know a lot of people who shop across multiple supermarkets so it's far from accurate ?

What does it mean if you don’t shop at supermarkets at all?

I refuse to go into the godforsaken hell holes outside of an absolute emergency.

 

[lynz88]

The supermarket thing is interesting and when you look at the stats not what you might think. Higher income people tend to be more price focused and more likely to show off their bottle of wine bought in aldi that ‘tastes just like Petrus’ where as lower income families are more likely to stick to ‘heinz’ or warburtons rather than shop brands as it would be ‘embarrassing’ to buy value baked beans’. My opinion is people who only shop in waitrose have been sucked in to a big con … the chickens come out of the same farms as the aldi ones, the ham sometimes literally has the same sticker on the back as the morrisons one … but all at double the price.

Interesting and explains the type of people I have seen in Lidl/Aldi. I have a friend that has said a few times over: the people who have the most money are often the cheapest people you will ever meet.

 

[The Xmas Furry]

I have no contributions to make to discourse on the British class system, I just can't believe the amount of people who do their own shopping. I've had a weekly delivery since I moved to Belfast in 2016. Life is too short.

Lol, I go weekly as have tried home delivery a few times each and every year for over 10 years, but cannot cope with ridiculous substitutions nor short use by dates, so weekly it is plus emergency pick up from local mini but high price store round the corner

Apparently I'm established middle class ?
Types the old bat who does a weekly shop in the apparently scuzzy supermarket that I pass on the way home from yard. It was also the best/most strict one since 1st lockdown.

 

[Orangehorse]

I am not at all attached to any supermarket, I just go where is convenient. We have a Waitrose, a Morrisons, Aldi and Lidl, plus garage Sainsburys and M & S and a Tesco Express in the town and I simply go to which ever is the most convenient at the time, although the one I like least is Lidl.

I sometimes like to have a wander round Waitrose, and get a free newspaper, but I've paid for that several times over, I guess.