I know my place

When I was younger I used to say that anybody who has to work for a living is working class and you were kidding yourself if you thought otherwise. Upper class was the aristocracy and middle class was anybody in between. I still think that to a large extent, but I'm not ashamed to be working class and never have been.

The only way I could become my version of middle class would be to win the lottery or inherit a lot of money. If that ever happened, my thoughts would be about sharing my good fortune, not paying that kind of money for a handbag. My family and friends would come first, then charity. Of course, I would make sure I would be comfortable for the rest of my life and never have to worry about money.

Mind you, some people buy these extremely expensive things not to say use, but as investments.

Why worry about fitting in, I don't

I don't know where we fit in.

paddyann I agree with you that anyone who has to go out to work rather than live on their investments/the profits arising out of the work of others is "working class".

To maintain a system in which some people sit back and reap the rewards of other people's effort, it is useful to encourage the notion of class. That way people are so busy comparing themselves to, competing with and distancing themselves from other workers that they won't notice much larger inequities.

I am no Hyacinth Bucket GG, my sisters haven't room for a pony

New affluent workers - These people are economically secure, without being well-off. This class group is sociable, has lots of cultural interests and sits in the middle of all the groups in terms of wealth. They're likely to come from working class backgrounds.

This seems to be the group that would cover the many so called 'rich' pensioners we keep hearing about. Economically secure because of their final salary pension, rose up higher up the earnings scale after the war and into the 60s and 70s when jobs that required some skills were well paid with the sociability that came from the background of their parents.

I certainly didn't read it as nouveau-riche as you did Annie but then, if you are concentrating on being another Hyacinth Bucket as you suggested, we might see things differently I suppose.

michell Mone had a fantastic career from her poor start BUT she forgot where she came from when she voted to take away £30 a week from the disabled ,thats not "class"

in my 30's sorry keyboard issues

I did go to college with a young (english) woman who insisted she was middle class "because she had a washing machine and a freezer" lo and that was in the mid 80's when I returned to college in my [email protected] rest of us thought she was bonkers

and here I was thinking that if you work to earn a living you're working class....and thats just about everybody! The rest is a lot of pretentious nonsense,or as my late mother would have said ...folk who get on a wee bit and get carried awy and think it makes them better then even their parents ...and you know what? In a lot of cases she was absolutely right.If you need to depend on a wage then you're working class.Happy to say that its not a way of thinking that is the norm in Scotland ,this "class" thing is quite new to us and most of us dont accept it as fact

I don't suppose Lottery winners for example fit in anywhere really, they'd just be whatever 'class' they originally were - but rich!

I just wondered where they fitted in with these classes of society that were being discussed.

I wouldn't admire anyone who spent £17,000 on a handbag - "new" or "old" money.

I don't care what anyone calls it, Wilma said it meant something a bit different, I just joined in that conversation

Same thing, but if you insist on calling it 'new money' that's fine Annie - just don't expect everyone else to!

Yes Welshwife, so they are new money

Often nouveau riche were people who had actually earned their wealth because of an invention or because of the job they did such as the bankers - many of them started out as from fairly normal families who were not rich nor did they have inherited wealth but due to the job they did and more importantly the bonuses they were given became rich. Footballers etc could also be in this category. Nowadays there would be youngsters who have made themselves rich with an Internet business of some sort - think Facebook etc.

nouveau rich are new money,

Wilma, it means more than inherited wealth here, inherited wealth could be one generation. Old money are those who inherit estates, often titles and money down many generations.

After seeing a newspaper photograph of Michelle Mone I read up on her. A real rags to riches story and one to be admired but however rich I was I just couldn't pay £17,000 for a handbag, which was what the news article was about.

I could cope with being "nouveau rich" . I Would give it away like a woman with 5 arms.

GGMK2 I've also been in 5 groups across my life so far.

Annie I know that phrase too, but not in the same context. For me it was about people who inherited wealth (and I mean wealth) and people who acquired it like a lottery jackpot millionaire, a nouveau riche sort of thing.

I've still not come across the phrase you first mentioned in all the reports I've read, so perhaps the TV report you saw was the only time it was said. Life is too short to let something like that bother me for very long.

What happened to the 'nouveau riche' then?

This is interesting - this new scale looks at age profile as well - a new development. It reminds me of the once popular A,B1,B2,C1,C2,D,E classification system - but the focus was on job rather than income or wealth - and the job of the head of household - i.e. the man!
Then the sales & marketing people were interested in who bought products so we had the classification by "innovators" etc.
But what I'd like to see is which class is most content in their lives? Social mobility can go both ways - but going "down" (I don't like using the words up and down, but you know what I mean) doesn't necessarily equate to unhappiness and going "up" doesn't always bring contentment.
As for me I'm a classic case of working class grammar school girl who is now classed as "middle" - we used to be referred to as the "lieutenant" class - lost to the working class but not quite comfortable in the middle class.

I found new affluent amusing, here we say - old money and new money

Thank you, Wilma for that interesting information.