What does middle class mean to you?

I was once invited to join a 'ladies' group. I was told it was for "people like us". Reluctantly went to my first meeting where they had a talk from a professor on 2 up, 2 down terrace housing (outside loo and a coal shed), their development and the lives of the people who lived in them. Lots of oohs and aahs and incredulity. On leaving there were lots of derogatory remarks about the old banger parked outside.
Guess where I was brought up and who's car it was (husband had gone to work on his bike)
Never went again. I know my place! (And they were all stuck up half sixers anyway)

Absent, what am I? I watch the tele in the front room.

Nfk, so Hyacinth Bucket really exists!

annodomini The reason that Keeping Up Appearances is so funny is that, like all best Brit sit-coms, it is just the slightest exaggeration of reality. Candlelit suppers and a riparian picnic are pure joy.

I don't think it has anything to do with large houses etc. My family is solidly middle class and none of us live in grand houses. That is money not class, a working class man who has done really well, won a lottery etc can buy himself a huge house with a pool,send his kids to boarding school take exotic holidays and so forth. He is still working class because of his background and those of his ancestors. David Cameron is middle class whereas the aforementioned John Prescott is working class - even though both were in government.
The working class are the artisans like carpenters,plumbers, brickies etc. They can be aspirational and even quite well off. The middleclass are the professionals like doctors,lawyers, accountants. Both can veer between the two types of work but accents,background and family will always determine who is whom.
It is a very British thing this aspect of class, hopefully in time it will die out, in the grand scheme of things we are all equal.

Thankfully, the book itself seems to be taking the mickey out of all this. does anyone still take it seriously?

Hyacinth Bucket is my mother!!

Who decides these things anyway? Can we decide for ourselves or is it just how others perceive us?

My daughter was teased for being 'posh' because one of her friends came round and spotted our big dining table. They totally missed the fact that we were a family of seven so needed a big dining table. We mostly eat in the kitchen!!

Well we are supposed to be classless here in Oz, but it ain't necessarily so. Accent doesn't really count, but area of abode is of the utmost importance, and how we eat our food and educate our kids.

Food
Middle class - home cooked meal around the table.
Working class - sometimes home cooked, often nuked freezer food in front of the telly.

Abode
Middle class - Huge brick monstrosity in a leafy suburb, or a classical colonial style home in a posh suburb, or a posh inner city flat.
Working class - flat, small house, or commission (council) house in a dodgy suburb with industry nearby.

Education
Middle class - private school then university
Working class - state school then apprenticeship OR university (because everyone who qualifies can afford to go: we have Austudy, similar to a student grant, and deferred fees repayable in the form of extra tax, if and when they earn enough)

We are a mixture of middle and working class - well, most people are: the borders are blurred. In fact in our family, one son sounds very posh and teaches at a private school, the other son sounds very Australian and has left the white collar job he got after getting his BSc, and has taken on an apprenticeship to be an electrician.

We ( DH and I) are tertiary educated, broad Yorkshire speaking lefties in a commission (council) house, who listen to classical music and eat home cooked food at the table. Gawd knows what that makes us.

The book looks like fun and it also looks like it's quite gently taking the p out of the upper middle class – rather like The Sloane Ranger Handbook of the 1980s.

And Jilly Cooper's 'Class'

Kittylester Bloody Jilly Cooper made a very silly remark in that book about posh girls not washing their hands after using the loo – unless of course, she was embarking on subtle class warfare using E. coli as her main weapon.

Class! Who cares anyway?

Not me - but it is very amusing! I have never lost my Salford accent and I found it funny when people tried to patronise me. I don't patronise easily!

You can say that again, Greatnan.

That's what I like about you, Greatnan...

To be judged so....

How can you ask whether class matters when we have a government full of ex-public schoolboys in the UK?

For me, there's only one thing that defines middle class: valuing ideas, the ability to think critically, education of any kind – all that kind of thing – above material possessions and fuss about trivia. Why? Because it's in the realms of ideas and what ideas 'produce', both in ethics and in the material world, that have 'made' the middle classes.

I probably haven't expressed that very well, but I know what I mean.

Having heard your, and your sister's, lovely Salford accents Greatnan, it was like listening to my favourite auntie who grew up a mile away fom you! A tinge of difference from my South Manchester accent, but discernible amongst so many variations around these parts

Bags Wise and succinct, as ever.

I think I agree with you, Bags, as far as the present generation are concerned, but my parents were both avid readers, politically aware and intelligent, but having had to leave school at 14 they never got away from their working class background. On the other hand, my father's brother, with the same lack of education, took correspondence courses and got himself a white-collar job in the Probate Office, bought his own house, and had holidays in Benidorm in the 1950s. He was what we call 'aspirational working class', whereas my father seemed content to do his unskilled job until he died.

I have long thought that the working classes started to lose out when more of them went to grammar schools , got professional careers and embraced the middle class lifestyle. It seemed that everybody who could have been a spokesman for the disadvantaged hot-footed it to leafy suburbs as soon as they could. (I know I did!)

It might be that the recent flood of redundancies amongst older people, middle managers, etc. will reintroduce a stream of articulate, intelligent people who will fight this wretched government.

I now live in a country where the people I meet cannot pigeonhole me because of my accent and I regard myself as outside the class system. I won't play the game.

...just a random thought...would I choose to be in the company of a "well-bred" ill-mannered person - or a "down and out" good-mannered person, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter.

I remember a neighbour of mine, who had sent her children to the very best of schools, told me that when her youngest child was under three, she used to wrap up old toys that had belonged to her siblings for Christmas presents on the basis that she wouldn't know they weren't new. I simultaneously thought at the time, "how incredibly mean but how incredibly middle class you are". I think that whole stoicism about not having the latest of what could be deemed as unnecessary stuff does embody middle class values, more books in the home and not necessarily the widest screen t.v. money can buy. The people that go over the top at Christmas are often those who can least afford it. I equate that whole must have status symbol thing as a bit down market.

I agree with you baNANA & Bags it is more about attitudes, 'values' * expectations that define a what is seen as a person's class.

I worked in schools in inner city deprived areas and many of the families were horrified that I shopped in charity shops for my girls & that they did not have their own walkman sets for Christmas! Could not understand how I could let my kids wear something that someone else had worn. My 'working class' SiL is like that..when they moved house he had to change toilet seats and the carpets.. no matter how new /clean they were..does not like byDD buying from ebay or charity shops! He feels it looks as if he cannot 'provide' for his family.

I suppose it is a question of self confidence - people who feel they are at a disadvantage because of their lack of education, etc. may surround themselves with possessions because it gives them a feeling of self worth.