Class

[owl]

No opinions really, but a few questions:

 

Why, in a society where we hope the sexes are becoming equal, should we continue to be defined in any way by our fathers?

 

How do you fit the leftover bits of the old feudal system into the upper/middle/lower brackets? Where would you place a royal footman?

 

I definitely call myself declassified! Father: born to market gardeners who owned their own land. Went to a fairly well-known public school on a scholarship. Became administrator of a country estate, then enlisted and was killed in action before I was born. Only married briefly to mother, and they never lived together.

 

Mother: born to rural working class parents who brought me up until age 5. Then she married stepfather, son of highly educated and wealthy Russian Jewish refugees. He was the father of my sister. If you use the father's occupation yardstick, that would mean my sister and I, although brought up together, belong to different classes. She would be upper middle and I would be working class, even though I was a boarder at a public school for some years and she only attended state schools.

[EGAR]

My Father was a bus driver. My Mother was a chemist before she retired.

 

I hold a PhD in Zoology and run a rescue .

 

If I *did* classes, I would put me in the *weird section* .

 

I strongly believe that alot of peeps put themselves into *classes*.

[Trallwm farm]

How do you fit the leftover bits of the old feudal system into the upper/middle/lower brackets? Where would you place a royal footman?

 

 

By the door or serving at the table/personal errands.

 

Thats what he is paid to do.

 

Class is what is defined when he leaves work .At work he is defined by an even more fuedal system of title and judged by

a far more severe audience, His peers !

 

Footman is quite high up the scale compared to all the rest of the levels of employment.

 

The difference now days is that no one HAS to subscribe to that way of life but many still CHOOSE to.

[kats n greys]

If you want to throw another pebble in the pond - there is also the Socio-economic Classification

 

Which is usually how Government and maybe more importantly advertisers group society.

[safneo]

I dont hold with classes, just people I like or people I dont. But I suppose I would be working class.

Every man is equal in my eyes until they prove otherwise.

[Maria]

Working class by birth - middle class by marriage and education.

 

I'm intrigued as to why you think marriage and education changes your class?

My grandad won a scholarship to a local public school but had to leave earlier than normal because his family needed him to earn an income.He became a dustman. He was public school educated, but was very much considered and treated as working class.Tbh I think I would be insulted to be called middle class.

But I really don't hold with all this 'class' business , especially as a lot of it seems to be driven by a lack of self confidence in some people. I have been on the receiving end of and have witnessed class 'prejudice' many times in my life (one I mentioned in the Tony Blair thread) and another was when I was in the sixth form. A 'well connected' class mate arranged (through his dad) an interview for me at a small investment bank in the city. These jobs were never advertised, and normally filled by the sons / daughters of 'contacts'. I went along to this interview, and was mainly asked things like how I would cope with working with junior members of the swedish (I think it was) royal family. When I said I would treat them like anyone else I met at work, it went quiet. I was then asked similar questions several times over I wasn't asked about my exam results / projected results or ambitions, but I was asked a lot of etiquette - type questions, which naively I didn't really understand at the time. I obviously answered wrong, and they never even bothered to write to me to tell me - my class mate told me I wasn't successful.

What's important to me is how people treat one another, not where they come from or what jobs they do.

[Happylittlegreensquirrel]

When i went to India last year what saddened me most was the Caste system of classes. It broke my heart to see those thought to be the lowest literally living in the gutter, unable to work, unable to get medical treatment and unable to even be near those of higher castes.

 

When we think of Class here, it just breaks my heart to think that elsewhere it means so much yet for us now, whilst we might recognise class it doesn't really mean we're any different any more, and that's how it really should be.

 

 

The Caste system ( which is horrific ) is not as rigid / widespread in Sri Lanka but there is a class system that dictates what type of work you are able to get based on poverty/class/education etc , for example women from very poor backgrounds do very hard heavy manual labour ( like digging roads etc ) people socialise in there class and its rare for people of different classes to mix at any thing more than a superficial level

 

its hard to explain but its there and its very real for a lot of people and there is nothing in the UK that compares, nothing at all

 

I am sure that there are occasions when class may be a factor for some people in the UK but I don't feel it impacts on my life as I don't think of myself as any class at all. If some one else wants to categorise me then they are more than welcome to but it makes no odds to me at all.

[Kathyw]

Most of my working life was in stockbroking and I usually worked directly for a partner. A few of the partners I worked for were hereditary peers of the Realm and without exception I can say that never was I made to feel lower/lesser than them and me with a very strong cockney accent, tempered a bit for work but there nonetheless.

 

My Dad always told us never to look down on anyone, we were beter than none

 

never look up to anyone, no-one was better than us

 

always look everyone straight in the eye, we were all equal.

 

Ray says they broke the mould when they made me - not sure how to take that

[BillyMalc]

Of course there are wealthy and less wealthy people in Holland but there isn't a defined class system as such, like you have here. I found it really hard to get my head round the idea that in some parts of the UK this "yes sir, no madam" business was still alive and not something out of a film that took place 100 years ago.

My dad worked in an office and my mum was a kindergarden teacher - I suppose that would make me middle class?

I don't know and I don't care to be honest. Class, race, or any of that, it don't bother me. You're either nice or you're not

[BeadyP]

I dont particularly have any views on class.No idea which one I fit.

The people who say they are proud to be whichever class they are,what is it you're proud of.

What do you identify strongly with?

I have always felt that I dont understand the class system.

[redditchlady]

I dont hold with classes, just people I like or people I dont. But I suppose I would be working class.

Every man is equal in my eyes until they prove otherwise.

 

Exactly Andrea.

 

 

Ray says they broke the mould when they made me - not sure how to take that

 

 

Dave says he is going to send my brain to medical research when I pop my clogs. I don't know if that is a compliment or not.

 

Kazz xx

[GSDFan]

The people who say they are proud to be whichever class they are,what is it you're proud of.

 

 

That's kind of difficult to answer, there are so many reasons, most of which I can't put into words.

 

I'm proud of my ancestors who struggled with less than nothing ( not that they had much choice ). Very proud of my Dad who was one of 12 kids, went away to service at 13 years old, eventually learnt to read and write, worked on farms, drove lorries, learnt loads and ended up as foreman of a small construction company.

 

I'm proud to be one of a class of people who frequently have to struggle against adversity and mostly still manage to raise decent kids and have decent homes.

 

When I was young and keen I really believed the 'working classes' might one day rise up and overthrow the 'upper classes' ( very Citizen Smith I was ). In my heart I still hope it will happen. Even if I'm a hundred and one when it happens I'd be there putting the idle rich against the wall. There's a few that live near me that I could start with and then spread outwards.

 

I don't think we should have a class system because I think wealth and property should be much more evenly spread than it is. We shouldn't have very rich people alongside very poor people. We certainly shouldn't have Lords, Ladies, Barons, Earls and gawd knows what else - either hereditary ones or otherwise.

[GSDFan]

How do you fit the leftover bits of the old feudal system into the upper/middle/lower brackets? Where would you place a royal footman?

 

Working class, they are one of the 'serving classes' and therefore working class.

 

I've known a few people who either have been royal footmen or wanted to be. Most of them were prepared to put up with the appalling conditions for the 'social life' which went with the job.

[mum24dog]

I'm intrigued as to why you think marriage and education changes your class?

 

Mother a factory worker. Father a mostly unemployed alcoholic. Both left school at 14.

Lived the first 8 years of my life with no bathroom or inside toilet.

 

University education myself. Married into a family where the father owned his own small business - mother impoverished former "gentry". All my generation in that family had university educations and are professionals. Husband also has his own business.

 

The expectations and ambitions of my family were very different from those of my husband's family.

 

If you're into dividing the community into "classes", there is a huge gulf between the two on the surface.

[redditchlady]

Working class, they are one of the 'serving classes' and therefore working class.

 

I've known a few people who either have been royal footmen or wanted to be. Most of them were prepared to put up with the appalling conditions for the 'social life' which went with the job.

 

 

But why???

 

Aren't we all the same. Classes don't mean a thing. Well they shouldn't. OH and I run a company, we aren't any class.

 

We work to pay the mortgage and the bills plus the vets bills etc.

 

We come out even or a bit in the red sometimes, but never in the black.

 

So to be perfectly blunt, I am sick to death of this "class" thing.

 

IMHO we should all be the same.

 

It really seems to me that the people that keep piping on about it seem to need to put "themselves "in a "rank".

 

Sorry but that is how it seems to me. Maybe I have got it wrong.

 

Kazz xx