Class: The Great EADD Debate

[Shambles]

I am part of the MuchoSicko class of people

Fix'd

 

[foolsgold]

thats about right yes lol

 

[serotonin-system]

I'm minted and my parents pay for everything. If it's over £100 it goes on dads credit card

 

[tjeff]

divide and rule, that's the rule.
By trade I'm middle class, by parentage I'm working class, by income and home I'm peasant.

I mentioned a while back what Irvine Welsh said when Melvy Bragg asked him if he was now middle class. He said most certainly not, I'm part of the aristocracy sincethe middle class are always struggling to pay the mortgage, the car the holiday, I can do what I want when I want

I'm surprised to see such a misapprehension from someone who has lived in this country all their life. He's confused about the meaning of both aristocracy and middle-class. Both have very little to do with money and far more to do with how you speak, your level of education, whether you are a member of a profession (doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant, engineer etc). Middle-class will tend to be white collar professionals (or the children of white collar professionals), they'll be privately educated or grammar school educated on the whole, tend to one their own home and sometimes own a buy to let. Their finances are characterised generally by stability and having something to fall back on.

Aristocracy means you are a hereditary peer, or you are the wife or child of one. The gentry are those people who are landowners without being aristocrats (though they will often be related to aristocrats). The aristocracy and gentry still send their boys to Eton, Harrow and Winchester. Their children still go to Oxford and Cambridge in disproportionate numbers. For professions, they still look to the city, the army, the bar (the one populated by barristers as opposed to drunkards), the art world, newspapers and television etc. They retain their link to the countryside and predominantly still own land that has been in the family for centuries. In no sense is Irvine Welsh an aristocrat.

Other countries aren't into class so much?

Nowhere I've been is as class-conscious as Britain