Are you top of the class?

It is impossible to tick both owning and renting property so I am totally buggered on the financial front in this quiz. It has decided that I am the lowest of the low – thanks.

First time I was traditional working class.
Second time I dropped the Facebook and reduced the number of types I socialized with still including a shop worker and postman...And came out elite.
No way is elite correct, referring as it did to private schooling.

But what about education? A poor but bright young person used to be able to 'get on' through our education system. Does that still apply?

Someone above mentions money as the defining factor of class - if you have money you can afford to go to a good school, then a good university, then into a well-paid job.

We need to bring back student grants so that the bright kids from poorer homes can go the same route. At the moment it is only those from wealthy families who are able to do so.

Sorry, I have probably gone off-piste here but I feel strongly that bright but poor kids do not have the same opportunites that they did when some of us were young - class mobility, if you define class by education, a route to being better off, is no longer an option.

Deeda

Ah, well I said I go the theatre, which is true, but that's where the pantomime is shown.

Well I was tradional working class which didn't seem to fit at all with the answers I gave. Obviously the working class are all reasonably comfortable homeowners who split their time between the theatre and ballet. Can't imagine what my East End working class father in law would have said. (Well actually I can imagine but couldn't write it on Gransnet!)

Tech middle at first. Then if I did the things I'd do if I wasn't disabled it changes me to elite?

As the OP says it is only for light relief , I am Traditional Working Class , no surprise there then.

Class is bunkum and these questionnaires and catagorising labels are utterly subjective and their flaws have been pointed out by several OPs. These class classifications are as beguiling as horoscopes and just as meritricious.

Wealth is wealth, a measure of income and capital. The more money you have the more power it buys you, break the law and it buys you the best (and most expensive) legal advice, give it away to charity or political parties and it gives you power over the recipients. It buys your children a good education and they have a headstart in the race of life. That power can be used to serve your best interests, regardless of their affect on other people. What money can buy, when money is no issue can be used for good and ill and, to be fair. many wealthy people do put their money to good and charitable uses.

A lot is made of our 'upper class' Eton/Oxford elite who govern this country, but behind all that is the money and wealth that paid for it. They went to Eton and Oxford and they now govern us because their parents were rich, not because they were 'upper class'.

Reverse the above for the effect of having little or no money, for the poor life is a struggle, get into trouble and you will be lucky to even get legal aid to defend yourself, you are likely to be badly housed, your children are more likely to be at the worst schools, live in the worst areas, have the worst health.

Schooling, housing, work and access to the best of services are the factors that dertermine peoples lives, not some silly subjective questionnaire that plays to the hopes of those who complete it.

Established middle class I came out as, which would be about right, I guess. Class is such an interesting concept. This survey did not ask about educational attainment which I tend to think of as the best basis for defining social class and allows for movement between classes.

That doesn't describe anything except their wealth. Wealth is not class and class is not wealth. Class is type.

Elegran, you are actually making the point I am trying to make. These social class definitions that try to define people by among, other things, cultural pursuits (or the lack of them) are grossly misleading, as Trisher points out.

If you just classify people by their income level none of these misleading and subjective denominators about aspects of life like cultural pursuits come into it.You fall into one income group and that will dictate the level of your expenditure on whatever you choose to spend your money on whether you are a celeb with lots of money and no brains or taste or a cultural aesthete of the finest order.

The celeb will be snorting cocaine and dressing her new born in clothes personally designed by the latest designer at Dior at £2,000 a baby gro. The aesthete will be in a box at Covent Garden or La Scala.

Further down the income scale the wannabe celeb will be shopping at Primark and binge drinking. The culture vulture will be watching DVDs or seeing Glynebourne productions on a Big Screen Cinema in their nearest big town.

I still have no idea why people find these definitions so interesting, especially as they apply to themselves.

I think they are actually trying to track the changes in definitions and perceptions of class - but you are right, they could have had more boxes to tick.

I came out as "Traditional Working Class". I think the survey makes a number of assumptions about the classes that doesn't really apply. Adding a couple of 'cultural pursuits' I changed to "Newly Affluent" (which I obviously am not.) Why is it assumed that the working class have no sense of culture and do not participate in things like "Listening to classical music? The working class brass bands and miner's choirs are evidence that ordinary working people appreciate and enjoy such things.

I was classed because I do not own my home and who I mix with socially, there were no occupations for my circle of friends so had to tick on people I meet daily such as my postman

Cut out "using their".

No, monica I think you are wrong there. Money is NOT everything. There are celebs who earn vast amounts of money and can afford anything they lust after, but they are still ignorant yobs with no social standing at all.

Someone in a lowpaid job and rented house with no savings who has inherited nothing from previous generations, but who enjoys using their reading, music, and eating well, can discuss current affairs without type-casting people with other opinions and treats those with both more and less money than themselves with respect has more social standing in the community - their own local community and the wider national one.

Surely the only accurate measurement of where we stand in the social hierarchy is income and capital assets, where the range would go from 'very poor' to very rich.

As the posts above show, social activities, cultural and sporting activities, none of these is an accurate measure of someone's place in the social hierarchy. The only thing that defines what people do is what they can afford. At the wealthiest end you regularly have the best seats in the house at Covent Garden and La Scala, Milan. At the bottom you take every opportunity to listen and here opera on the radio and television or on CDs and DVDs.

What nobody has answered is the question, why should anyone care about these silly and entirely subjective social distinctions. Memories of Hyacinth Bucket keep coming to mind.

Exactly Elegran or education either which I think is very relevant.

I came out as technical middle class which I would disagree with. I tried it again leaving out the "visiting stately homes and art galleries" and came out totally different. Also I would say the differences within the earnings brackets were wrong likewise the savings.

There was no box to tick "reading books" which I do a lot of.

Katek That is your drama side influencing it. I appeared as elite when I ticked the opera, ballet and concert boxes - despite going to these only about once or twice a year. Well, it did say to tick the things you "often or sometimes" did!

Without that I was Traditional Working Class. Now my parents and grandparents would have out themselves down as that, though my father did get a degree and teaching certificate and thus probably moved into the middle class, but I started off at the place they had reached when I was growing up.

I'd say there need to be new names, which don't include the word "class" because there is still an element of snobbery (or inverted snobbery, which is just a damning in the way it labels people as better or worse than the speaker) There are different "types" of people, with different interests and skills and aspirations. Upper and lower don't come into it, except in earning power - and that doesn't make any difference to the type of person, neither does the way they vote or their religion.

Oh dear, I've come out as elite. Wouldn't have said that.

Precariet

I come out as Traditional Working Class, even when I rig the result by ticking those things that I used to go to and would go to if I were fit enough. I find that allocation a bit odd as the wife of a GP! Not that I mind at all - I think it is because our income is so low and we have such a broad spectrum of friends. I do not think anyone I know would describe us as any sort of working class!! Poncy cow maybe!